In the recent past, scholars have sought better to understand the evolving EU-US relationship, both in its own right, and as an important example of emerging forms of international governance.1 Particular attention has been paid to the important role that transnational actors have begun to play in this relationship. Business, consumer, labour and environmental interests have been given a formal voice in EU-US relations through the creation of various dialogues. This literature has found that business interests play by far the most important role in this process, through the Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) (Green Cowles, 2001; Bignami and Charnowitz, 2001; Knauss and Trubek, 2001). The Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) is seen as playing a subsidiary role, while the Transatlantic Environmental Dialogue (TEAD) and Transatlantic Labour Dialogue (TALD) are respectively suspended and moribund. This body of work has provided an excellent beginning point for our understanding of transatlantic relations, and the role that transnational actors play within them. However, by focusing on the implication of transnational actors for the transatlantic relationship, it has in part neglected the reverse relationship; the implications of the transatlantic relationship (and its dialogues) for transnational actors. Further, general conclusions about which interest group is stronger or weaker overall in the process may be misleading; different actors may play more or less substantial roles in specific policy areas. Even if the TABD may have substantially more influence than other interests in a global sense, it may play a less prominent role in certain policy areas than those others.
Henry Farrell, “Transnational Actors and the Transatlantic Relationship in E-Commerce – The Negotiation of the Safe Harbor Arrangement,” Creating a Transatlantic Marketplace, ed. Michelle Egan (Manchester University Press: 2005).