The duty to cooperate in free trade agreements (FTAs) is commonly framed as a ‘soft’ commitment for the parties to work together on a given issue. However, this article deepens and broadens how we understand the duty to cooperate in FTAs. It is deeper in that the duty may include legal obligations to develop norms and improve their implementation, in part by creating an institutional (social) framework through which to do so. It is also broader in that the duty to cooperate can extend beyond the FTA in question, domestically by shaping bilateral and plurilateral initiatives that cascade downward to influence domestic policies, and internationally by creating obligations to advance and strengthen multilateral rules. This article examines fisheries subsidies as a case study to illustrate how cooperative commitments in FTAs function in a multi-institutional context (including the WTO). It focuses on UK agreements which incorporate the two dominant FTA ‘styles’ (EU and US). In doing so, this article explores how different formulations of the duty to cooperate create different types of obligations for the parties with attendant social institutions, generating a multi-institutional framework of norm development. By deepening and broadening the understanding of the duty to cooperate in FTAs, the article contributes to the analysis of international governance across diverse bodies and lays the foundations for further research in other areas that benefit from multi-institutional strategies.
Peres et al. (Thu,) studied this question.