WTO Governance Research Articles

The Politics and Economics of the US-China Trade War

The US declared trade war after substantial defections from the internationalist (in geo-strategy and economics) lobby in US politics to a new coalition between conflict-is-inevitable proponents and anti-globalization activists. Many internationalist businesses changed sides after experiencing disappointments on economic fronts including China's non-compliance with some of its WTO obligations; China's acquisition of foreign technology at lower-than-expected prices; and the serious inadequacies in the WTO's governance of global trade. Many of the disillusioned internationalists have given too much weight to the contribution of globalization to negative developments in the US labor market, and too little weight to the role of powerful capital-biased technological changes and to the inadequacies of state-provided programs for social insurance and human capital formation. Resolution of the trade war and prevention of its frequent occurrence will become more likely when (a) China adopts much greater reciprocity in its economic engagement with the advanced countries despite its status as a developing country under WTO rules; and (b) US stops equating geostrategic competition with economic competition; recognizes that economic dynamism and economic resilience comes from strengthening indigenous innovation capability rather than from holding China back technologically; and institutes social programs to significantly reduce the trauma that is created by frequent job changes. Deep reform of WTO is urgently needed but is unlikely to happen in the medium run. For the medium-run, the US should mobilize country cooperation in regional settings (like the TPP) to introduce policy innovations to serve as templates for a re-designed WTO architecture, and to harness collective market power to be used in future negotiations on WTO reform.

Between 'Member-Driven' WTO Governance and 'Constitutional Justice': Judicial Dilemmas in GATT/WTO Dispute Settlement

Globalization and the recognition of human rights and constitutionalism by all UN member states entail that also international courts increasingly interpret their judicial mandates and multilateral treaties in conformity with 'constitutional principles' as multilevel governance of transnational public goods (PGs) constraining intergovernmental power politics through judicial protection of transnational rule of law for the benefit of citizens. US President Trump, the 'Brexit', and an increasing number of non-democratic rulers (e.g. in China, Russia, and Turkey) challenge multilateral treaty systems, international adjudication and 'cosmopolitan rights' by ‘populist protectionism’ prioritizing ‘bilateral deals’. This contribution uses the US blockage of the WTO Appellate Body system for illustrating the 'republican argument' that transnational PGs cannot be protected without judicial remedies, rule of law and democratic governance. Adversely affected governments, citizens and courts of justice must hold power politics more accountable so as to protect PGs for the benefit of citizens and their constitutional rights. WTO members should use their power of majority voting for authoritative interpretations of WTO law supporting ‘judicial administration of justice’ in multilevel governance of the world trading system. Multilevel judicial control of trade regulation legitimizes ‘member-driven governance’ by protecting rule of law as approved by parliaments for the benefit of citizens, their equal rights and social welfare.

Trade Policy Options of Ukraine: East or West

textabstractThe dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 has led to the independence of fifteen new states. Twelve of these, including Ukraine, joined the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) whose goal was to form a common economic space with free movement of goods, labor and capital. Twenty five years later, CIS countries still face important trade policy choices, the implementation of which is conditional on the quality of governance and infrastructure. The evaluation of these policy choices gains therefore considerable importance. Using an unbalanced panel data set of bilateral export flows among 159 economies, we estimate the gravity model of trade using alternative estimation approaches that account for zeros in trade: Heckman, Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood and Martin-Pham Tobit. Our empirical results show robust outcomes and advocate importance of WTO membership, governance and effective distance (corrected for infrastructure). Using scenario analyses we assess counterfactuals for Ukraine and find, for example, that improved infrastructure would on average lead to a 22% increase in Ukrainian exports while improved governance would, ceteris paribus, almost double its trade. Most of these changes originate from the intensive margin of trade.

Trade Reform and Institution Building: Peru and Argentina under the WTO

AbstractBeyond removing restrictions, trade reform in Latin American in the 1980s and 1990s was in significant part an attempt to change the domestic politics of trade and to reformulate the culture of policy management by introducing procedural characteristics that WTO trade remedy rules advance. This paper examines how trade reform in Peru and Argentina has gone since the reforms of the 1990s. Peru provides a valuable example of sustaining reforms. Leaders have used negotiations and other international instruments to disseminate among Peruvians a positive vision of Peru in the international economy, and to extend the application of WTO-based governance principles. Peru has introduced few new restrictions and all of them have been through WTO-sanctioned policy instruments. Argentina, on the other hand, has introduced multiple restrictions, through procedures that eschew WTO governance principles. Moreover, leaders there have returned trade politics to thedependenciaphilosophy that sees the international economy as an exploitive environment.The paper brings out the weakness of international obligations to limit Argentina's return to import substitution and the pains at which Peru has gone to maintain the management of its economy within the same rules that Argentina has so easily violated. To have commercial value, the GATT/WTO principle that members applyonlyapproved methods of trade control must have operational expression innationalinstitutions.

Émergence et dynamique institutionnelle multilatérale : le NAMA-11 dans la négociation de l'Organisation mondiale du commerce

L’article analyse la stratégie de la coalition NAMA-11 dans les négociations sur la libéralisation multilatérale des biens industriels. En mobilisant la théorie des régimes internationaux et les hypothèses du réalisme structurel, il cherche à savoir si les pays émergents contestent ou endossent le régime OMC. Il défend la thèse d’un changement dans le régime et non d’un changement du régime. L’ascendance de puissances non hégémoniques s’accompagne d’un mouvement contradictoire d’endossement des principes et des règles du régime et de contestation des modalités et dispositifs de gouvernance.

Running into a Brick Wall: The WTO Doha Round, Governance Gap and Geopolitical Risks

Running into a Brick Wall: The WTO Doha Round, Governance Gap and Geopolitical Risks

Food sovereignty movement activism in South Korea: national policy impacts?

The transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC) seeks to reestablish food sovereignty authority within national borders by removing agriculture from the WTO system. The WTO is a membership organization of participating nation-states that have agreed to abide by the rules of the WTO governance regime. Nominally, at least, changes in these governance rules must be approved by the nation-state members. This paper examines the extent to which South Korean affiliate organizations of LVC, the Korean Peasant League and the Korean Women Peasants Association, have been successful in placing food sovereignty issues on the national agri-food policy agenda in South Korea that challenge the WTO’s neoliberal global governance regime for agriculture. In effect, the success of transnational movements like LVC in challenging global institutions may rest on how well their member affiliates are able to play domestic agri-food politics.

Book Review: Gary P. Sampson (ed.), The WTO and Global Governance: Future Directions (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2008, 277 pp., £19.99 pbk)

Book Review: Gary P. Sampson (ed.), The WTO and Global Governance: Future Directions (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2008, 277 pp., £19.99 pbk)

The Hidden World of WTO Governance: A Rejoinder to Richard H. Steinberg

In academic literature the WTO is largely viewed as synonymous with its novel system for the settlement of disputes. We seek to demonstrate in this article that there is more to the WTO than this, and to exemplify this claim by reference to two specific sites of non-judicial governance in the WTO. We suggest that these two WTO committees perform important functions which are largely hidden from view. In particular, we point to the role that they play in generating and disseminating information, and as facilitators of technical assistance and regulatory learning. We also suggest that these committees contribute to the emergence of interpretive communities which serve to elaborate upon the open-ended norms laid down in the relevant agreements. Having surveyed the activities of these two sites of non-judicial governance in the WTO, we then situate them in the context of three contemporary narratives of global governance (transgovernmental networks, global administrative law, and managerialism), and use these as a way of critically evaluating the developments we describe. It is our view that the material that we have uncovered in relation to these two examples is sufficiently rich to justify further research in this domain.

The Hidden World of WTO Governance: A Reply to Andrew Lang and Joanne Scott

EJIL (2009), Vol. 20 No. 4, 1063–1071 doi: 10.1093/ejil/chp099 In ‘The Hidden World of WTO Governance’, Andrew Lang and Joanne Scott rightly identify WTO committees as an understudied site of WTO governance. Their analysis deploys frameworks based largely on the sociology of global technocracy, lenses which bring into focus WTO behaviour not usually given much consideration, yet their description and analysis are incomplete, for they miss the central role of states as principals directing the activities of their representatives on the committees, as well as the power politics within and around WTO committees. Only by also considering the state, state interests, the relative power of states engaged in committee deliberation, and WTO committee participants as government representatives can we more fully understand and assess WTO committees as sites of governance.

The Hidden World of WTO Governance

In academic literature the WTO is largely viewed as synonymous with its novel system for the settlement of disputes. We seek to demonstrate in this article that there is more to the WTO than this, and to exemplify this claim by reference to two specific sites of non-judicial governance in the WTO. We suggest that these two WTO committees perform important functions which are largely hidden from view. In particular, we point to the role that they play in generating and disseminating information, and as facilitators of technical assistance and regulatory learning. We also suggest that these committees contribute to the emergence of interpretive communities which serve to elaborate upon the open-ended norms laid down in the relevant agreements. Having surveyed the activities of these two sites of non-judicial governance in the WTO, we then situate them in the context of three contemporary narratives of global governance (transgovernmental networks, global administrative law, and managerialism), and use these as a way of critically evaluating the developments we describe. It is our view that the material that we have uncovered in relation to these two examples is sufficiently rich to justify further research in this domain.

An Empirical Analysis of why the WTO is Broken and cannot be Fixed – yet

This article empirically examines the WTO’s dispute settlement performance over the past decade. Dispute settlement is the most significant deliverable of WTO governance and embodies all that is both problematic and progressive about that international institution. The article analyzes a number of important and unforeseen institutional consequences of the shift from an informal GATT mechanism to the mandatory norms and processes of WTO litigation. The rise to prominence of antidumping trade remedy action, a retaliatory dynamic of dispute settlement and the continued dominance of developed countries at the Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM) has contributed greatly to the current negotiating deadlock.

The Inconveniences of Transnational Democracy

Despite some limited moves toward openness and accountability, suprastate policy formation in such bodies as the World Trade Organization remains fundamentally exclusive of individuals within states. This article critiques the “don't kill the goose” arguments commonly offered in defense of such exclusions. It highlights similarities between those arguments and past arguments for elitist forms of democracy, where strict limitations are advocated on the participation of nonelites in the name of allowing leaders to act most effectively in the broad public interest. Advocated here is movement toward a strongly empowered WTO parliamentary body that would be guided in practice by a principle of democratic symmetry, attempting to match input to the increasing impacts of WTO governance. A parliament with codecision powers broadly similar to those of the European Parliament is offered as a long-term institutional ideal.

WTO Governance and the Doha Round

WTO jurisprudence and governance will not be explicit subjects of discussion or negotiation at the Hong Kong Ministerial Meeting, with the partial exception of dispute settlement review. Nonetheless, governance questions are at the heart of debates about the WTO’s legitimacy and deserve serious consideration. With this mind, a checklist and a series of questions are provided that are deemed to be relevant to the immediate future of the WTO and the ultimate fate of the Doha Round negotiations. Several issues are raised, as follows. The architecture of the WTO as represented in the “Single Undertaking” requires all WTO Members to adhere to the WTO Agreement even when doing so may not always be in a country’s interest. Decision-making in the WTO is based on consensus, and there may be a need for the design of more effective procedures and for better representation of the different views of Members. The accountability of the WTO as an institution may be at issue insofar as it relates to the roles of different members and the relationships with civil society. There is a clear need for technical assistance, policy development, and policy surveillance to make the WTO a more open, transparent, efficient, equitable, and socially responsible institution. Robert Howse is Alene and Allan F. Smith Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. His research and teaching interests are focused on international economic law (trade, investment and finance) and legal and political philosophy (theorizing law and governance beyond the state, and especially the thought of Alexandre Kojeve and Leo Strauss). His recent books include The Regulation of International Trade, Third Edition, co-authored with Michael J. Trebilcock, to be released this month in the US; The Federal Vision, co-edited with Kalypso Nicolaidis (2001); and Alexandre Kojeve Outline of a Phenomenology of Right (2000), co-translator with Bryan Frost and principal author of the interpretative commentary. Howse has also authored or co-authored opinion essays in general interest publications such as The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Policy Review, and Legal Affairs. He is series editor of the Oxford Commentaries on WTO Law and serves on the editorial advisory board of the European Journal of International Law. He has also been a reporter on WTO law for the American Law Institute. For part of the fall 2005 semester, Howse has been a visiting instructor at the University of Paris I (Pantheon-Sorbonne).

Commentary on the Doha Round: Institutional Issues

Commentary on Robert Howse's article "WTO Governance and the Doha Round." Debra Steger is Executive in Residence at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law where she is working to establish a new institute for international law, economy and security in Canada. Previously, she was Senior Counsel with Thomas & Partners, a law firm specializing in international trade and investment matters. From 1995-2001, she served as the founding Director of the Appellate Body Secretariat of the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, during which time she helped to establish the Appellate Body as the first appellate tribunal in international trade. She is Chair of the Trade and Customs Law Committee of the International Bar Association, and has been on the executive of the Trade Committee of the International Law Association for the past 10 years. She is also a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal for International Economic Law. She participates on the Advisory Council of the UNCTAD Project on Building Capacity through Training in Dispute Settlement in International Trade Investment and Intellectual Property as well as the Governing Council of the World Trade Law Association. During the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations, she was the Senior Negotiator for Canada on Dispute Settlement and the Establishment of the World Trade Organization as well as the Principal Legal Counsel to the Government of Canada for all of the Uruguay Round agreements. From 1991—1995, she was General Counsel of the Canadian International Trade Tribunal in Ottawa, the agency responsible for administering the antidumping, countervail, safeguards, and government procurement legislation in Canada. Her most recent book is entitled: “Peace Through Trade: Building the WTO” which was published by Cameron May International Legal Publishers in 2004. Steger holds an LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School, an LL.B. from the University of Victoria Faculty of Law, and a B.A. (Honours) in History from the University of British Columbia.

The politics of participation: Decision-making processes and developing countries in the world trade organization

Particularly since the Seattle Ministerial and in the run-up to Doha, unprecedented attention has been devoted to the processes of operation of the WTO. Debates have raged over the subjects of internal and external transparency of WTO processes, the accountability and legitimacy of the institution, and possibilities of institutional reform. This paper addresses one key question that underlies many of the debates and provides the first and crucial hinge on which all other issues of institutional democracy, accountability, legitimacy, and the very functioning of the WTO depend. It asks to what extent have the decision-making processes of the WTO affected (facilitated, impeded, or been neutral to) the participation of the majority of its members, namely developing countries? It also analyses and assesses some of the proposals for institutional reform. Many of these proposals may deal with intricate details of decision making but they have far-reaching implications on the character of the WTO and global economic governance. Given the dangers that some of these implications entail, the paper puts forth the case for cautious reform rather than radical restructuring of the WTO and suggests ways in which other international bodies could facilitate the more effective participation of developing countries.

Competing Political Visions: WTO Governance and Green Politics

It has long been recognized that environmental concerns transcend borders. As a result, they pose problems, the solution of which requires new forms of cooperation beyond the conception of international politics as structured by the interests of nation-states. Today, such cooperation has to be sought in the context of emerging global governance. This article traces differing conceptions of the political nature of global governance in the context of the debate over the trade-environment link. This link is being constructed for the global level at the WTO, and contested either with reformist intent or in more radical terms by environ-mentalists. Following an exposition of the genesis of the trade-environment link and of the different conceptions of it held by proponents of the free trade agenda and environmentalists, the article concludes by arguing for a more sustained appreciation of the issues raised by the radical critics.

Distributed governance at the WTO-WIPO: an evolving model for open-architecture integrated governance

WTO governance has traditionally reflected the interests of producers channeled through government trade negotiators. The producer-driven governance model is not suited to the highly integrated international society of the 21st century. The WTO governance structure should be adapted to account for more diverse interests, including those of marginalized developing countries, NGOs, and individuals. One aspect of this adaptation should involve more highly integrated relations between the WTO and other multilateral institutions. The inter-institutional relationship that has evolved between the WTO and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) since the conclusion of the Uruguay Round evidences a number of characteristics that might usefully form the basis for relations between the WTO and other international organizations. The WTO-WIPO relationship effectively enhances the breadth of subject matter interests and the administrative capacity of each organization, and it provides a suitable forum for the negotiation of incremental and experimental intellectual property rules that are needed in response to technological change. A second aspect of institutional adaptation concerns increasing the participation of wider segments of international society in multilateral rule-making. The WIPO Internet Domain Name Process was a unique governance exercise that employed elements of direct democracy at the international level and the management of an organizational bureaucracy (the WIPO International Bureau). This type of process might usefully be employed in other contexts, such as by the FAO/WHO in developing health and safety guidelines in connection with genetically modified organisms (GMOs).