Enhancing WTO Legitimacy: Constitutionalization or Global Subsidiarity?

Abstract

Increasingly, scholars have articulated the challenge of global economic governance in constitutional terms. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is often painted as an incipient global economic constitution. Its legitimacy would be enhanced, some contend, by transforming the WTO treaty system into a federal construct. But the application of the language of constitutionalism to the WTO is likely to exacerbate the fears of the “discontents” of globalization that the international institutions of economic governance are not democratically accountable to anyone. We argue that the legitimacy of the multilateral trading order requires greater democratic contestability. The notion of global subsidiarity would be a more appropriate model for the WTO than that of a “federal” constitution. This notion incorporates three basic principles: institutional sensitivity, political inclusiveness, and top–down empowerment.

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