Redesigning the World Trade Organization for the Twenty-first Century

Debra Steger is a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa, where she teaches international trade, international dispute settlement, and international investment law. She is also the founder and director of the EDGE Network on the emerging, dynamic, global economies - a multidisciplinary research network focused on institutional reform of the World Trade Organization. She served recently as chair of a WTO panel and from 1995 to 2001 was the first director of the Appellate Body Secretariat of the World Trade Organization in Geneva. She is the author of Peace through Trade: Building the World Trade Organization (2004) and co-editor of Law in the Service of Human Dignity: Essays in Honour of Florentino Feliciano (2005).

``This volume addresses the need to reform the WTO as protectionist forces mount after the economic and financial turbulence of the 2000s as as the most recent trade liberalization initiative ... has run aground and individual countries busily cut their own bilateral trade deals. Contributors do an excellent job laying out the key issues. The book begins with the underlying rationale for WTO reform and then discusses in detail the WTO;s decision-making machinery and its internal management; the role of transparency and public participation in its workings; and the threats and opportunities caused by regional trade initiatives, which have now been around long enough to asses their efficacy.... This is an important resource for readers interested in this crticial dimension of the global economy.... Highly recommended.'' -- I. Walter, New York University -- Choice, January 2011, 201012

• Table of Contents for Redesigning the World Trade Organization for the Twenty-first Century , edited by Debra P. Steger Foreword | Julio Lacarte Muró Acknowledgements List of Acronyms Part I: Why Institutional Reform Is Necessary Why Institutional Reform of the WTO Is Necessary | Debra Steger Reinvigorating Debate on WTO Reform: The Contours of a Functional and Normative Approach to Analyzing the WTO System | Carolyn Deere Birkbeck Part II: Decision-Making in the WTO A Two-Tier Approach to WTO Decision-Making | Thomas Cottier WTO Decision-Making: Can We Get a Little Help from the Secretariat and the Critical Mass? | Manfred Elsig Improvements to the WTO Decision-Making Process: Lessons from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank | Alberto Alvarez-Jiménez Part III: Internal Management of the WTO Internal Management of the WTO: Room for Improvement | Debra Steger and Natalia Shpilkovskaya Part IV: Transparency and Domestic Consultation From the Periphery to the Centre? The Evolving WTO Jurisprudence on Transparency and Good Governance | Padideh Alaâi Selective Adaptation of WTO Transparency Norms and Local Practices in China and Japan | Ljiljana Biukoviç Domestic Politics and the Search for a New Social Purpose of Governance for the WTO: A Proposal for a Declaration on Domestic Consultation | Seema Sapra Enhancing Business Participation in Trade Policy-Making: Lessons from China | Heng Wang Part V: Public Participation Options for Public Participation in the WTO: Experience from Regional Trade Agreements | Yves Bonzon Non-Governmental Organizations and the WTO: Limits to Involvement? | Peter van den Bossche Part VI: Regional Trade Agreements and the WTO Accommodating Developing Countries in the WTO: From Mega-Debates to Economic Partnership Agreements | Gerhard Erasmus Saving the WTO from the Risk of Irrelevance: The WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism as a âCommon Goodâ for RTA Disputes | Henry Gao and Chin Leng Lim Regional Trade Agreements and the WTO: The Gyrating Gears of Interdependence | Pablo Heidrich and Diana Tussie Bibliography Contributors Index Contributors Padideh Alaâi is Professor of Law at Washington College of Law, American University in Washington, D.C., where she specializes in areas of international trade law, development, and comparative legal traditions. She teaches World Trade Organization law and writes in the areas of history and free trade, international efforts to combat corruption, and trade and good governance. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1988 and was in private legal practice with the law firms of Jones Day and Reichler, Milton and Medel prior to joining the American University in 1997. From 2003 to 2005, she was the Co-Chair of the International Economic Law Group of the American Society of International Law. Alberto Alvarez-Jiménez is a Colombian lawyer and holds a Doctor of Laws from the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa. He is a former Research Fellow of the EDGE Network and now serves as a consultant and law professor. He has lectured in North America, Latin America, and Europe, and his articles on international trade law and foreign investment law have been published in a number of leading international journals. Ljiljana BiukoviÄ is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia, Canada. She teaches Contracts, European Union Law, External Relations of the European Union, and Global Law. Her current research interests are in the areas of international trade, in particular on the adaptation of international legal norms by national governments and the impact of regionalism on multilateral trade negotiations, as well as the development of European Union law. She is an Associate of the Institute for European Studies at UBC. She recently received the Farris Award to examine the interface between commercial arbitration and the courts in Canada. Yves Bonzon is a doctoral student at the Faculty of Law, University of Lausanne in Switzerland. In 2007â08, he was a Visiting Researcher at the Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., and in 2005â06 a researcher for the NCCR Trade Regulations project based at the World Trade Institute in Bern, Switzerland. He is now completing a doctoral thesis on the regulation of non-state actorsâ participation in WTO decision-making. Thomas Cottier is Managing Director of the World Trade Institute, Professor of European and International Economics Law, and Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Bern, Switzerland. He directs a national research program on trade law and policyâ NCCR-Trade. He was a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, and currently teaches also at the Europa Institut Saarbrcken, Germany, and at Wuhan University, China. Professor Cottier has had a long-standing involvement in GATT/WTO activities. He served on the Swiss negotiating team of the Uruguay Round from 1986 to 1993, first as chief negotiator on dispute settlement and subsidies for Switzerland, and subsequently as chief negotiator on TRIPs. He has held several positions in the Swiss External Economic Affairs Department and was the Deputy-Director General of the Swiss Intellectual Property Office. He has also served as a panel member in a number of disputes in the WTO. Carolyn Deere Birkbeck is the Director of the Global Trade Governance Project in the Global Economic Governance Programme, University College, Oxford. She is also a Senior Research Associate at Oxford Universityâs Centre for International Studies and a Resident Scholar at the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) in Geneva, Switzerland. Manfred Elsig is a Senior Research Fellow at the World Trade Institute in Bern, Switzerland, and a Visiting Lecturer at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. From 1997 to 1999, he worked at the Swiss Federal Office for Foreign Economic Affairs. He later joined the Institute of Political Science of the University of Zurich and received his Ph.D. in 2002. After working as a personal advisor to the Minister of Economy in Zurich, he taught at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2004â05. His research focuses primarily on the international political economy of trade, European Union trade policy, international organizations, and private actors in global politics. Gerhard Erasmus is an Associate with the Trade Law Centre for Southern Africa (TRALAC), in Stellenbosch, South Africa, which he founded in 2002 with the initial financial assistance of the Swiss Government. He is also Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Law, University of Stellenbosch. He has been involved in the drafting of new constitutions in Namibia, Malawi, and South Africa and has worked on regional water law projects in southern Africa. He holds an LL.B from the University of the Free State, South Africa, a Masterâs degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston, Massachusetts, and an LL.D from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He is an Advocate of the Supreme Court of South Africa and serves on the editorial boards of a number of African law journals. Henry Gao is currently on leave from the Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong, and is Associate Professor of Law at Singapore Management University. He has published widely on issues relating to China and WTO. He has spoken at conferences around the world and trained hundreds of government officials on WTO issues. A consultant to several national governments and international organizations, including the WTO, the World Bank, and the APEC, he is also a frequent commentator in major international media such as the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and Bloomberg. Pablo Heidrich is Senior Researcher, Trade and Development, with the North-South Institute in Ottawa, Canada. Previously, he worked for the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) and the Latin American Trade Network (LATN) in Argentina, where his research focused on issues of regionalism, energy integration, and infrastructure. He studied political economy and public policy at the University of Southern California, focusing on the links between financial crises and trade policy in the developing world. He holds a Masterâs degree in International Political Economy from the University of Tsukuba in Japan. Julio Lacarte Muró was the first Chairman of the WTO Appellate Body and Chair of the Uruguay Round negotiations on the establishment of the WTO and the dispute settlement understanding. He was Delegate or Head Delegate to numerous international conferences, including the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, International Labour Organisation, UNCTAD, UNESCO, the Organization of American States, Latin American Free Trade Association, the River Plate Basin, Economic Commission of the United Nations for L