Normative Path Dependence in International Organizations: The Case of Democratic Norms in the World Trade Organization
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2018-07
Author(s)
Abstract
Re-reading the 1999 Seattle protests against the WTO through a historical institutionalist lens, I use the paper to develop three case-specific arguments as well as one more general point. First, I argue that democratic legitimation claims have entered the GATT and WTO discourse only relatively recently and under very specific circumstances. Yet when they became part of the legitimation discourse, democratic frames could build on discursive links with normative frames that had been around for a while, notably the notion of ‘consensus’ and developing countries’ calls for ‘full participation’ in multilateral trade negotiations. In important ways, the seeds for democratic frames had thus already been planted in earlier decades, and the mind map for public evaluations of the world trade regime changed gradually rather than abruptly. Second, I show that once the democratic frame had gained prominence in the highly visible Seattle protests, the WTO consciously adopted it and – in many ways successfully – re-defined its core content so that what counted as ‘democratic’ came to match the organization’s practices. Arguing that its voting rules, its consensus-based decision-making culture, and ist practice of making a wealth of documents available to the public made it the ‘most democratic’ of all international economic organizations, WTO officials thus became important meaning makers in the discursive contest for legitimacy. Third, I maintain that, while the role democratic legitimation plays in official WTO communications has decreased more recently, adding the democratic frame after Seattle continues to prove consequential. Notably, it has led the WTO to tie its democratic quality to the consensus norm, thereby impeding a growing WTO with now 162 members to give in to pressures to weaken the consensus norm in the face of the current deadlock of the Doha Round. Employing these three arguments as a stepping-stone for my more general point, I then use the final section to develop and reflect upon the theoretical notion of normative path dependence. In brief, I argue that normative paths share important similarities with institutional paths more generally. As a result, constructivist IR research can benefit from the insights of historical institutionalists and vice versa.
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Event Title
7th Biennial Conference on Regulatory Governance “Regulation between Effectiveness and Legitimacy”
Event Location
Lausanne
Event Date
4-6 July 2018
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
254648