Extract
Interest groups, power politics, and the risks of WTO mission creep.
To its detractors, the WTO is an ominous international bureaucracy. (1) It is purportedly plagued by a democratic deficit that will gradually usurp the domestic regulatory prerogatives of sovereign states. (2) My presentation suggests that these concerns of judicial and bureaucratic overreaching by the WTO are exaggerated and reflect a misconception of the relationship between domestic political actors and the WTO.
First, the WTO's substantive mission is unlikely to extend much beyond its current scope. The reason for this is rather straightforward: such mission creep would be unpalatable to the politically salient groups that currently benefit from the international trade regime. My argument assumes that trade agreements are ostensibly contracts among self-interested politicians seeking to maximize their political fortunes and that these politicians would be reluctant to alienate the core po...See the full content of this document
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