Non‐economic gains of Sri Lanka's FTAs with neighbours

Jayatilleke Bandara and Wusheng Yu

International Journal of Social Economics, 2012, vol. 39, issue 10, 750-763

Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to answer the question: does a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) lead to an improvement in the security of a member country and greater peace between two member countries in the developing world? Design/methodology/approach - This paper reviews existing literature and uses the idea of non‐economic gains from regional trading agreements to explain how Sri Lanka managed to use FTAs to neutralise India and obtain military assistance from Pakistan using its FTAs with two countries during the recently concluded war. Findings - Even though political objectives were not explicitly outlined in Sri Lanka's two FTAs with its big rival neighbours (India and Pakistan), the FTAs helped Sri Lanka to successfully execute the war against the LTTE (the Tamil Tigers) by neutralising India on the one hand and gaining military assistance from Pakistan on the other. Research limitations/implications - The research approach is basically qualitative. However, there is need to develop a comprehensive theoretical model to capture non‐economics gains from FTAs. Originality/value - Although there is a growing body of literature on the underlying political and strategic motivations of countries forming regional and bilateral trading arrangements, this paper adds to understanding of what motivates small developing countries to form trade agreements with big neighbours.

Keywords: FTAs; Sri Lanka; LTTE; India; Pakistan; Non‐economic gains; Developing countries; State security; Free trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:ijsepp:v:39:y:2012:i:10:p:750-763

DOI: 10.1108/03068291211253377

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Social Economics is currently edited by Professor Terence Garrett

More articles in International Journal of Social Economics from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().