Assessing the World Trade Organization Fit for Purpose?

The World Trade Organization (WTO) recently celebrated twenty years of existence. The general wisdom is that its dispute settlement institutions work well and its negotiation machinery goes through a phase of prolonged crises. Assessing the World Trade Organization overcomes this myopic view and takes stock of the WTO's achievements whilst going beyond existing disciplinary narratives. With chapters written by scholars who have closely observed the development of the WTO in recent years, this book presents the state of the art in thinking about WTO performance. It also considers important issues such as the origins of the multilateral system, the accession process and the WTO's interaction with other international organisations. The contributions shed new light on untold stories, critically review and present existing scholarship, and sketch new research avenues for a future generation of trade scholars. This book will appeal to a wide audience that aims to better understand the drivers and obstacles of WTO performance.

Part I. Introduction and Setting the Stage: 1. Introduction Manfred Elsig, Bernard Hoekman and Joost Pauwelyn; 2. Thinking about the performance of the World Trade Organization: a discussion across disciplines Manfred Elsig, Bernard Hoekman and Joost Pauwelyn; Part II. New Insight from the Early Times: 3. The GATT's starting point: tariff levels circa 1947 Chad P. Bown and Douglas A. Irwin; 4. Negotiating in the early GATT: norms, rules and the US tariff schedule Judith Goldstein and Robert Gulotty; Part III. General Trends and Patterns in WTO Dispute Settlement: 5. Dispute settlement in the WTO: from a deliberately designed to a spontaneously grown order Frieder Rössler; 6. About the melting of icebergs: political and economic determinants of dispute initiation and resolution in the WTO Dirk de Bièvre, Arlo Poletti and Aydin Yildirim; 7. The WTO dispute settlement system: consolidating success and confronting new challenges Giorgio Sacerdoti; 8. Does trade comply? The economic effect(iveness) of the WTO dispute settlement process Soo Yeon Kim and Tobias Hofmann; Part IV. Zooming in on Specific Debates: 9. Twenty years of third party participation at the WTO: what have we learned? Krzysztof J. Pelc; 10. Mind the gap: navigating between the WTO agreement and its accession protocols Julia Qin; 11. The age of innocence - the evolution of the case-law of the WTO dispute settlement: subsidies as a case-study Luca Rubini; 12. The presence of the World Trade Organization within preferential trade agreements Todd Allee and Manfred Elsig; 13. The WTO and regional trading agreements: is it all over for multilateralism? L. Alan Winters; 14. Performance and international organisations' borders: the case of the World Trade Organization Cèdric Dupont and Manfred Elsig; 15. The GATT/WTO system and national trade policies: which comes first? Joseph Michael Finger.

Manfred Elsig is Associate Professor of International Relations and Deputy Managing Director of the World Trade Institute, Universität Bern, Switzerland.
Bernard Hoekman is Professor and Director, Global Economics at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence.
Joost Pauwelyn is Professor of International Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Trade and Economic Integration at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva.