Chad P. Bown. 2009. Self-Enforcing Trade: Developing Countries and WTO Dispute Settlement (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press)

Abstract

In Self-Enforcing Trade: Developing Countries and WTO Dispute Settlement, Chad Bown delineates the many complexities of developing country participation in the World Trade Organization (WTO), from the multilateral trade negotiations for reducing commercial barriers to the “self-enforcement” mechanism of the global trade regime. As the WTO does not itself initiate or prosecute cases of violations but provides the neutral forum for the arbitration of trade disputes among its members, the rules of trade codified in the WTO’s agreements are “self-enforcing,” and it is incumbent on the member countries and affected firms to actively pursue their rights under the WTO agreements through legal recourse to the process under the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU). A consistent theme of the book, and one that would find wide agreement in the literature, is that developing countries face significant challenges in their ability to self-enforce market access commitments made by WTO members. Absent self-enforcement, Bown argues, enforcement is not possible and thus the benefits offered by the rules-based WTO agreements remain out of reach for the world’s poorer trading states. The book thus emphasizes this linkage between the WTO agreements and the self-enforcement needs of developing countries. It identifies the systemic weaknesses of the WTO’s dispute settlement process that make it difficult for firms and policymakers in developing countries to fully engage this process. The main obstacle, Bown contends, is the cost of self-enforcement, which determines the ease with which developing country governments and firms can navigate the legal labyrinth of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. The central finding of this book is that developing countries lack the information necessary to identify WTO-inconsistent trade policies in other member countries and to self-enforce the latter’s WTO commitments. As information gathering requires technical information from economic analysis, legal knowledge of WTO agreements, and political analysis of compliance and reform in other WTO Rev Int Organ (2010) 5:497–499 DOI 10.1007/s11558-010-9083-4