Dispute Prevention via Exploratory Institutional Cooperation

Abstract

This chapter investigates the EU-US exploratory institutional cooperation that has followed from the process of rule-making cooperation. After successful rule-making cooperation, informal efforts at exploratory institutional cooperation emerge as new ways to review, evaluate and possibly expand international cooperation in competition relations. This exploratory institutional cooperation, which can occur bilaterally and/or multilaterally, is the most recent and experimental process of EU-US cooperation in competition policy. This chapter tests for the expected patterns of behaviour in EU-US exploratory institutional cooperation in competition policy across two case studies: the bilateral EU-US Merger Working Group (MWG) and the multilateral International Competition Network (ICN).