COMPLETION REPORTInternational Trade and Emerging Regimes in Cyberspace: How The United States and Japan Cooperateand Conflict
Dr. Yoo In Tae
Postdoctoral ResearcherYonsei University
First of all, I would like to sincerely appreciate the support from The Sumitomo Foundation. It allowed
me to conduction research on the topic suggested in what was originally titled “International Trade and Emerging
Regimes in Cyberspace: How do the United States and Japan Cooperate and Conflict.”
My question posed was how regimes regarding cyberspace emerge and develop. In particular,international digital trade as an issue area was highlighted. Given the broad research goal, although due to the time
limit I did not complete as was planned originally, I made progress in a couple of intellectual frontiers.
Through the research period, I have found that conﬂicts and competition among different norms incyberspace are increasing, especially among powerful states, such as the United States, the European Union,Russia, China, and Brazil, and most notably among democratic and nondemocratic countries. Unlike the current
literature, which tends to concentrate on either international power distribution among states or domestic
preference formation within them, however, my study discovered and articulated that the norms of liberalinternational trade, especially the free ﬂow of goods and services, have been most inﬂuential in shaping trade
regimes within cyberspace. To diffuse their preferred norms, powerful states often use a grafting tactic, in which
well-established norms, such as those of liberal trade relations, are adopted as new norms in an emerging area, suchas cyberspace. The United States is the main country that adopted this tactics, but its allies including Japan also
were part of the strategy. My case study of the Trans-Paciﬁc Partnership agreement, one of the ﬁrst mega-regional
trade agreements to explicitly include provisions related to the digital economy, demonstrates that the United States
has utilized multiple multilateral venues to pursue its national interests and traces why and how only certain norms
in international trade are grafted into cyberspace.
Unfortunately, the research period was too short to cover not only the U.S. approach to TPP but also
Japan’s approach to TPP. This topic falls in such a new area, so that this research had to start from a scratch,
identifying the structural aspect of newly emerging international trade issues. However, had I been given moretime, I would look into domestic preference and policy making process, especially of Japan, because Japan’s
approach has not come out clear on TPP during this research round. I am hoping another opportunity to continue
further my research on the matter and develop based on this research, especially based exclusively on Japanese
strategies in the issue area.1/2

Publication of the Results of Research Project:
Verbal Presentation (Date, Venue, Name of Conference, Title of Presentation, Presenter, etc.)
This research has been presented at multiple venues including academic conferences. To name a few, thisresearch was presented as, “Regime Diﬀusion by the Powerful from International Trade into Cyberspace.” TheFifth Global International Studies Conference, Taipei, Taiwan, April 1–3, 2017; “New Wine into Old
Wineskins? Regime Diﬀusion in Cyberspace through International Trade.” The 2017 International Studies
Association Convention, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, February 22–25, 2017; and “Interacting Regime Complex:
Intersection between International Trade and Cyberspace by the Powerful.” The Korean Political ScienceAssociation, Seokcho, South Korea, October 21–22, 2016.
Thesis (Name of Journal and its Date, Title and Author of Thesis, etc.)
None (too short period for one)Book (Publisher and Date of the Book, Title and Author of the Book, etc.)
None (too short period for one)