The World Trade Organization:
Institutional Reform and Development
The World Trade Organization:
Institutional Reform and Development
Project Duration: 1 June 2004 until 31 March 2007
Funding: German Research Institute for Public Administration Speyer
Project Leader: Univ.-Prof. Dr. iur. Eberhard Bohne, M.A.
Senior Researcher: Dr. Sonja Bugdahn, M.A.
Project Description
1. Project Background
Until recently, international organizations have failed to attract broad public attention. The legitimacy of decision taken by international organizations is traditionally deducted from the consent of their member states. More recently, public attention has focused on international organizations. The impact of international regulatory frameworks on national regulation has narrowed down policy spaces of states. Against this background, an increasing number of NGOs and anti-globalization activists criticize both undemocratic decision-making processes and decision outputs of international organizations.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) that was created by the Marrakesh Agreement 1995 has become a target for criticism by externals. The WTO has faced difficulties in making progress in trade liberalization in recent years. Non-governmental organizations staged sometimes violent protest at the failed Ministerial Conferences of Seattle (1999) and Cancún (2003). Trade negotiations are also affected by the growing diversity of WTO members. Following a number of accessions, the WTO has now close to 150 member states, the majority of which are developing countries.
Representatives of different academic disciplines have started discussing proposals for a reform of the WTO. However, public administration scholars have not yet systematically explored international organizations. Therefore concepts derived from organization theory are mainly used for the analysis of domestic organizations and are not applied international organizations.
2. Research Objectives
It
is the objective of the project to describe and analyse the World Trade
Organization WTO based on public administration concepts. Appropriate reform proposals shall be developed on
this basis.
First, it shall be determined what type of organization the WTO is. For this purpose, the ideal types of “club organization” and “corporate organization” together with their typical features are described. The question is which features dominate in the WTO.
Second, deficits of the WTO in the areas of effectiveness, equity of member states and objectives and empirical legitimacy shall be analysed. Which deficits have been identified in the WTO, and to what extent can these deficits be explained by the type of organization that the WTO represents?
Third, approaches to reforming the WTO shall be developed. A starting point is that organizational features of the WTO affect both its daily functioning and its capacity for reform. Therefore reform proposals can only be made taking into account legal and political framework conditions.
3. Method
In a first step, literature on international organizations in general and on the WTO was reviewed systematically with regard to organizational features and deficits concerning effectiveness, equity and legitimacy. To gain further practical insights, approximately 20 experts interviews have been carried out with the following expert groups: (1) employees of the WTO-Secretariat, (2) representatives of member states of the WTO, (3) representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and (4) representatives of other intergovernmental organizations.