The creation of the World Trade Organization and the establishment of an advocacy regime

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1496
• Author: Martina Piewitt
• Published date: 01 February 2015
• Date: 01 February 2015

■Academic Paper

The creation of the World Trade

Organization and the establishment of

an advocacy regime

Martina Piewitt*

Collaborative Research Center “Transformations of the State”, Bremen University, Bremen, Germany

Interest group research is a nascent domain in the literature on the World Trade Organization (WTO). This article

seeks to explore the development and the current status of the WTO’s advocacy regime. It reviews the role of interest

groups in the history of the multilateral trading regime and explores the mechanisms of interest representation at the

WTO. The paper shows that the design of the WTO’s advocacy regime goes back to international efforts for a new

governance of global economy after World War II. It is presented that the system is not static but subject to frequent

changes, and it is contended that the recently implemented access badges mechanism is one important step toward a

conventional lobbying regime as known from the nation states. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

The creation of the World Trade Organization

(WTO) in 1994 was a turning point in the relations

of the multilateral trading regime with civil society

and interest groups. While the former regime of

the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade(GATT)

was closed to non-governmental actors, the WTO

has introduced several mechanisms of societal

interest representation since its inception (Keohane

& Nye, 2001; Charnovitz, 2000). The result of these

efforts can be described as the establishment of an

advocacy or lobbying regime that is receiving

growing attention from the scientif‌ic community

(Hanegraaff et al., 2011; Piewitt, 2010). This article

has two objectives: (1) to review the history of the

multilateral trading regime and the creation

of the WTO and (2) to outline the establishment

and the development of the WTO’s advocacy regime

with an update of recent developments.

The WTO has its roots in the multilateral efforts to

establish the International Trade Organization (ITO)

after World War II. The planned ITO was only one

element of a broader plan to establish an interna-

tional architecture for governing world economy

(Matsushita et al., 2004; Reisman, 1996), but the ITO

never entered into force, and the GATT regime was

created instead. One major difference between the

ITOandtheGATTregimeistherelationwithcivil

society.The ITO was designed to cooperate and to con-

sult with interest groups and civil society organiza-

tions (CSOs). The GATT, by contrast, closed its doors

to civil society (see, for instance, Charnovitz, 2000,

2002), and therefore, decision making at the GATT is

also referred to as a ‘club model’of international pol-

icy-making (Keohane & Nye, 2001; see also Dam,

1970: 385). The replacement of the GATT with the

WTO involved a profound change in the dealing with

interest groups and civil society. The involvement of

civil society is directly associated with the frequently

observed WTO’s legitimacy crisis. Since its inception,

the WTO has gradually introduced mechanisms for

civil society to represent their interests and concerns

in international trade policy-making. In this paper, I re-

view the development of the WTO’sadvocacyregime

and I show that recently initiated mechanisms are akin

*Correspondence to: Martina Piewitt, Research Associate, Collab-

orative Research Center “Transformations of the State”, Bremen

University, Bremen, Germany.

E-mail: martina.piewitt@sfb597.uni-bremen.de

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 15 Number 1 pp 65–78 (2015)

Published online 12 November 2013 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1496

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.