The Evolution of the Trade Regime offers a comprehensive political-economic history of the development of the world's multilateral trade institutions, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO). While other books confine themselves to describing contemporary GATT/WTO legal rules or analyzing their economic logic, this is the first to explain the logic and development behind these rules.
The book begins by examining the institutions' rules, principles, practices, and norms from their genesis in the early postwar period to the present. It evaluates the extent to which changes in these institutional attributes have helped maintain or rebuild domestic constituencies for open markets.
The book considers these questions by looking at the political, legal, and economic foundations of the trade regime from many angles. The authors conclude that throughout most of GATT/WTO history, power politics fundamentally shaped the creation and evolution of the GATT/WTO system. Yet in recent years, many aspects of the trade regime have failed to keep pace with shifts in underlying material interests and ideas, and the challenges presented by expanding membership and preferential trade agreements.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Sober and reasonably balanced (a bit more than 4 stars):
This book offers a reasonably balanced discussion of the WTO, especially from an historical, political point of view. The workings of the WTO are very much based on power politics, notwithstanding its ostensible one member, one vote constitution. Some of the topics I was impatient to hear discussed during the first three-fourths or so of the book, such as environmental issues, point of view of developing countries, "democracy deficit," etc., are dealt with in Chapters 6 and 7, so some patience is... more info
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