scholarly journals How to solve a crisis of legitimacy?

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 133-146
Author(s):  
Anne Reiff
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
World Trade Organization ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Public Forum ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
The World

Who participates in the discourse of legitimation taking place in the WTO Public Forum and how do the participants evaluate the World Trade Organization (WTO)? This paper offers two empirical insights into the phenomenon of Global Governance. Firstly, the discourse of legitimation is analyzed with a quantitative text analytical tool. Secondly, as the framework of the discourse is a forum founded by the WTO to start dialogue with civil-society after the crisis of legitimacy in the 1990s, it sheds light on a strategy of Re-legitimation. The empirical results show that (1) the discourse in the forum is “emptying-out” as NGOs are largely replaced by Academia and national politicians and (2) that it is limited by power inequalities between the actors.

Perpetual Peace or Perpetual Process: Global Civil Society and Cosmopolitan Legality at the World Trade Organization

2003 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 673-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
RUTH BUCHANAN
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
World Trade Organization ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Global Civil Society ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Perpetual Peace ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Preceding Discussion

This article argues that a contemporary form of ‘cosmopolitan legality’ serves as an animating force behind contemporary practices of global civil society and global governance. The first part provides an account of the recent history of civil society engagement with the World Trade Organization. It observes that civil society groups have focused their collective efforts on issues relating to procedural legitimacy, including accountability, openness, and transparency, potentially to the detriment of efforts to bring about more fundamental change. In the second part of the article, various theoretical approaches to cosmopolitan legality are discussed, including their claimed Kantian origins, and are mapped on to the preceding discussion of the place of a global public sphere in global governance. Programmatic approaches that purport to mobilize cosmopolitanism in the service of either a political or legal project are ultimately rejected, and a provisional alternative reading is suggested.

Ways out of the Globalization Trilemma

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carsten Herrmann-Pillath
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Trade Policy ◽  
World Trade Organization ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
The World ◽  
Operational Criterion

Based on Rodrik’s diagnosis of a “globalization trilemma” in designing the institutions of international economic exchange, this chapter suggests a solution that applies Sen’s argument favoring realization-focused comparisons over transcendental institutionalism in evaluating institutions. In the paradigm of deliberative trade policy, this contribution approaches the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a regime of deliberation, reaching beyond the scope of interactions with civil society. This prepares the ground for normative principles of WTO reform that shift the emphasis from efficiency to justice, mainly in the procedural sense. The central operational criterion is the inclusiveness of international trade and trade policy. This is applied on the issues of multilateralism versus regionalism and the design of the dispute settlement process. A WTO renewed under the auspices of deliberative trade policy can meet the challenges of new trade policy issues such as coordination of regulatory regimes under the conditions of rapid and unpredictable technological change, and can resolve the tension between democracy and globalization as laid out in the globalization trilemma.

5. The Evolution of the Global Trade Regime

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Capling ◽  
Silke Trommer
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
World Trade Organization ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Global Trade ◽  
Doha Round ◽  
Trade Regime ◽  
The Past ◽  
System P ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Antecedents

This chapter focuses on the evolution of the global trade regime, with particular emphasis on how it has been established through the actions of trading countries over the past 150 years, how it became institutionalized in the World Trade Organization (WTO), and why it is facing difficulties now. It first considers the historical antecedents of the global trade regime from 1860 to 1945, focusing on the golden age of liberalism and the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934. It then looks at the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT), the Uruguay Round, the WTO, and the Doha Round, along with the WTO's relationship with civil society. It concludes by outlining the range of challenges to the multilateral trade system.

Vietnam in 2004: Popular Authority Seeking Power?

Asian Survey ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Fforde
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
World Trade Organization ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Rapid Economic Growth ◽  
The World ◽  
Slow Progress

Vietnam in 2004 saw a combination of rapid economic growth with continued evidence of weak central political authority. The ruling Vietnamese Communist Party, having granted greater freedoms in order to legitimize dissent, refused to abandon its Leninist politics that were hostile toward what appears to be a rapidly emerging ““civil society.”” The loss of quotas on exports of garments and footwear and slow progress toward joining the World Trade Organization suggest that 2005 could be an interesting year.

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