New Wine into Old Wineskins? Regime Diffusion by the Powerful from International Trade into Cyberspace

Conflicts and competition among different norms in cyberspace 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, this study argues that the norms of liberal international 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, such as cyberspace. This 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.