Are the Contents of International Treaties Copied-and-Pasted? Evidence from Preferential Trade Agreements

Aug 31, 2026

A 2008 preferential trade agreement containing a misinserted “Schedule of Colombia” in a Canada–Peru context motivates a systematic test of treaty copy-pasting. By comparing several hundred trade liberalization agreements using novel text analysis, the study finds that most PTAs copy verbatim large majorities of prior content, often reaching 80% or more, and frequently above 95% for key provisions. Copying is especially prevalent where low-capacity governments use templates or powerful states aim to disseminate preferred rules globally.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPaper Templates

FormatDOCX

Pages44

Reading Time15 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Motivating anecdote and research question

Method: comparing treaty texts

Key findings on copy-pasting and robustness

Explanations: templates and power

Implications for international cooperation and treaty regimes

EMBED Word.Document.12 \s Working Paper No.8 | August 2016 Are the Contents of International Treaties Copied-and-Pasted? Evidence from Preferential Trade Agreements Todd Allee / Manfred ElsigUniversity of Maryland / University of Bern tallee@umd.edu / manfred.elsig@wti.org Research for this paper was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation under a grant to the National Centre of Competence in Research on Trade Regulation, based at the World Trade Institute of the University of Bern, Switzerland. NCCR TRADE WORKING PAPERS are preliminary documents posted on the NCCR Trade Regulation website ()and widely circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment. These papers have not been formally edited. Citations should refer to an “NCCR Trade Working Paper”, with appropriate reference made to the author(s). Are the Contents of International Treaties Copied-and-Pasted? Evidence from Preferential Trade Agreements Todd Allee Department of Government and Politics University of Maryland tallee@umd.edu Manfred Elsig World Trade Institute University of Bern manfred.elsig@wti.org We thank Andrew Lugg for excellent research assistance and acknowledge generous financial support from the Swiss Science Foundation (www.nccr-trade.org). For helpful comments on earlier versions of this research, we thank participants at the following conferences: the 2014 and 2015 Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association (Washington, DC and San Francisco, CA), the 8th Annual Conference on the Political Economy of International Organizations (Berlin, Germany), and the 5th General Conference of the European Political Science Association (Vienna, Austria). Introduction A lengthy preferential trade agreement (PTA) signed in 2008 contains annexes to its government procurement chapter that list the goods, services, and entities in Canada and Colombia that are covered by the agreement’s procurement rules. The sections that contain the “Schedule of Colombia” are unremarkable, except that the agreement in question is actually between Canada and Peru! Canada was indeed negotiating PTAs with both Peru and Colombia at the same time, and would sign the two agreements a week apart. This odd insertion of language about Colombia in a Canadian agreement with Peru certainly appears to be the result of sloppy copy-and-pasting between treaties. This anecdote goes against most of what we know from literatures on bargaining, diplomacy, and international negotiation – all of which suggest that widespread copy-pasting of treaty texts is unlikely. But to some the above mistake may be unsurprising, since legal scholars frequently note the propensity for contracts to be drawn from standard or “boilerplate” language. Likewise, scholarship from international relations and international law increasingly alleges that new treaties are produced from models and that emulation is common. Empirical evidence of wholesale copy-pasting of treaty text is scant, however. Thus the primary question we explore in this research note is whether significant portions of important international treaties are copied-and-pasted from one agreement to the next? To answer this question, we systematically compare the texts of several hundred agreements that address a common issue, in our case trade liberalization. Utilizing a novel and appropriate type of text analysis, our analyses reveal that most PTAs copy verbatim a sizeable majority of their content from an existing agreement. In fact, at least 100 PTAs take 80% or more of their contents word-for-word from an earlier treaty, with many copying 95% or more. Copy-pasting is even more pronounced when we compare the main substantive provisions of trade agreements – such as chapters on antidumping, services, or intellectual property – where we regularly find chapters that are copied in their entirety from a pre-existing treaty. These findings are highly robust to different methods of comparison and the co

FAQs

What question does the introduction focus on?

Whether significant portions of important international treaties are copied-and-pasted from one agreement to the next.

How do the authors investigate treaty copy-pasting?

They systematically compare the texts of several hundred agreements addressing a common trade liberalization issue using a novel type of text analysis.

What do the findings show about the extent of copying?

Most PTAs copy verbatim a sizeable majority of their content from an existing agreement, with at least 100 PTAs taking 80% or more word-for-word and many copying 95% or more.

Aug 31, 2026

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