Title: Varieties of Legitimacy at the World Trade Organization
Abstract: As the international trading system expanded considerably in recent decades, the World Trade Organization (WTO) played a controversial role in reconfiguring people’s relationships to consumer goods and business services. There has been considerable opposition from the losers in the free trade system and attendant challenges to the legitimacy of the WTO. As the preeminent organization in charge of managing tensions associated with the phenomenon and institution of free trade, the WTO thus found itself responding to more diverse constituents and than in the past and drawing on outside experts when ruling on issues of scientific and economic uncertainty. This chapter analyzes how the WTO has sought legitimacy for itself and for the underlying institution of free trade in the midst of questions regarding its organizational mandate and management of international trade negotiations. Initially, legitimacy was claimed to derive from an expanding membership and the lowering of tariffs in progressively more categories of goods and services. More recently, legitimacy comes from institutional deepening by means of dispute resolution procedures and rulings by the dispute settlement body. This shift, it is argued, raises foundational questions of expertise, the relationship of models to real-world outcomes, and methods for bounding disputes over scientific facts. Based on a trend analysis of over 400 total WTO disputes and a case study of the Brazil – Upland Cotton Dispute, this chapter finds that the WTO dispute process is helping to legitimize the institution of free trade through a public display of rational authority and neutral expertise. At the same time, dispute panels have begun to pass judgment on issues of scientific and econometric uncertainty. As a result, the basis for the broader legitimacy of the WTO is shifting from questions of representation that have long drawn attention to epistemic issues, especially concerning the design of econometric models. This chapter thus offers insights on the resolution of disputes in global trade while also contributing more generally to our understanding of the evolving role of expertise and econometric modeling at international organizations.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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