scholarly journals The democratizing effects of multilateral organizations: a cautionary note on the WTO

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 487-507
Author(s):  
MANFRED ELSIG
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Trade Organization ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Potential Application ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Cautionary Note ◽  
The World ◽  
Trade Politics ◽  
Long Time

AbstractThe field of international relations has been obsessed with democracy and democratization and its effects on international cooperation for a long time. More recently, research has turned its focus on how international organizations enhance democracy. This article contributes to this debate and applies a prominent liberal framework to study the ‘outside-in’ effects of the World Trade Organization. The article offers a critical reading of democratization through IO membership. It provides for an assessment of the dominant framework put forward by Keohane et al. (2009). In doing so, it develops a set of empirical strategies to test conjectured causal mechanisms with respect to the WTO, and illustrates the potential application by drawing on selected empirical evidence from trade politics. Finally, it proposes a number of analytical revisions to the liberal framework and outlines avenues for future research.

Multilateralizing Investment Facilitation at the WTO: Looking for the Added Value

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 973-988
Author(s):  
N Jansen Calamita
Keyword(s):  
World Trade Organization ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Added Value ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Organization Framework ◽  
Investment Facilitation

ABSTRACT Since 2017, World Trade Organization members have been engaged in Structured Discussions aimed at agreeing on a multilateral framework on investment facilitation for development. The negotiations focus on establishing binding disciplines for investment facilitation, which will likely be made subject to the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Understanding. Investment facilitation, however, is that something states already do. Over the past decade, states have adopted record numbers of reforms at the domestic, regional, and international levels to facilitate foreign investment. These reforms show no signs of slowing. This begs an important question regarding the World Trade Organization initiative: given all the attention that investment facilitation already receives from states and international organizations, how, if at all, would the conclusion of a World Trade Organization Framework bring added value to states, i.e. value that cannot be achieved by ongoing efforts? Examining this question is the focus of this paper.

Rethinking Value Chains

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World Trade Organization ◽  
World Bank ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Production Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Backlash

Today, production processes have become fragmented with a range of activities divided among firms and workers across borders. These global value chains are being strongly promoted by international organizations, such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, but social and political backlash is mounting in a growing variety of forms. This original volume brings together academics and activists from Europe to think creatively about the social and environmental imbalances of global production and how to reform the current economic system.

The WTO as Linkage Machine

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
José E. Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Trade Organization ◽  
International Law ◽  
World Trade ◽  
International Regimes ◽  
Intergovernmental Organizations ◽  
Interstate Cooperation ◽  
The World ◽  
State Actors

The contributors to this symposium, both principal authors and commentators, ably demonstrate that there are indeed “overarching constructs” linking the subdisciplines of international law. All of the writers here assume that linkage issues arise for the World Trade Organization, as they have with respect to a number of other intergovernmental organizations, precisely because centralized, quasi-autonomous institutions maybe relatively effective vehicles for the promotion of interstate cooperation between rational, egoistic state actors. All of them assume, as scholars of international relations and economists have long recognized, that many international regimes are linkage machines by their very nature. It is important to recall why this is so in order to consider when or how an organization’s attempts at linkage may fail.

The Dynamics of China’s Accession to the WTO: Counting Sense, Coalitions and Constructs

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 263-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Marc F. Blanchard
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Trade Organization ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Internal Factors ◽  
Extant Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
Policy Construction ◽  
Wto Accession

AbstractThis article probes China’s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO). China’s WTO accession deserves further analysis because much of the extant literature is divorced from the international relations (IR) literature. Moreover, while past analyses have considered external and internal factors shaping China’s stance towards joining the WTO, they have rarely gone beyond this to probing when particular variables mattered more. For its part, research that emphasises domestic factors falls short because it often treats such factors generically or fails to detail the path through which they affect issue identification, policy construction and implementation. This article addresses these lacunas by conducting a theoretically informed study of China’s WTO accession. While traditional interest-, power- and idea-based IR approaches to international governmental organisations (IGOs) capture various aspects of the story of China’s effort to join the WTO, they miss other critical features. This article argues that a leader-oriented cost-benefit model best explains China’s continued quest to become a WTO member, its aggressive pursuit of accession in the second half of the 1990s, and its willingness to tolerate very demanding WTO entry terms.

The World Trade Organization’s Records and Archives Management Policy: an overarching framework for ensuring information continuity

Comma ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2019 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-108
Author(s):  
Jesús Galán ◽  
Maria Bressi
Keyword(s):  
World Trade Organization ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Management Strategy ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Management Policy ◽  
Intergovernmental Organizations ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
The World ◽  
And Control

This article describes the process of creation and discussion of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Records and Archives Management Policy, the first such policy ever issued by the Secretariat, after 25 years of existence. It outlines, firstly, the methodology followed to assemble and articulate the Policy, and its alignment with the standards and best practice followed by other international organizations; secondly, how the Policy was presented to different stakeholders and approved; and thirdly, the structure and contents of the Policy which aims to be a comprehensive, cross-organizational records and archives management strategy to ensure accountability and transparency at all levels of the WTO. The lack of a regulatory framework and the specificity of Intergovernmental Organizations’ (IGO) institutional structures can represent a challenge for archivists and records managers with regard to the creation and control of informational assets in a systematic and verifiable manner; the article suggests a methodology for the drafting and implementation of records and archives management principles in the context of such international organizations.

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