Razeen Sally's New Frontiers in Free Trade - Chapter 5

Sally writes that Preferential Trade Agreements are generally hedges on the part of nations that see the WTO multilateral negotiations as weak and slow. These PTAs “secure preferential access to major markets and are a means of managing and defusing trade tensions with powerful players.” He states that these should ideally go above and beyond the liberalization that is agreed upon during multilateral negotiations.
These agreements are frequent in East and Southeast Asia between the booming markets. However, these agreements are proving to be generally ineffective because disciplinary action for lack of compliance is a weak force. Thus countries do not have strong incentives to abide by more than the original WTO agreements.
Of course it would be lovely if nations would act in less political of a manner during PTA negotiations and if they would abide by their self-imposed restrictions. But again, trade agreements between sovereign nations are secondary in the eyes of executives who want to be reelected and guard their respective nations. It seems that Sally is pushing political science to the wayside and writing idealistic views on these agreements.