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Very Short Introductions #135
World Trade Organization: A Very Short Introduction
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is scarcely ten years old, but even in these early years of its existence it has generated debate, controversy and even outrage. Rulings on beef hormones and tuna-dolphin cases provide graphic examples of how the organization regulates and intrudes into areas of individual consumer choice, ethical preferences, and cultural habits. This deep and far-ranging impact of the WTO on peoples' everyday lives means that it is not just an institution of interest to economists, but to everyone, a fact that was perhaps most graphically illustrated in the popular demonstrations at the 1999 Seattle Ministerial. Such protests have become a regular feature associated with most high-level meetings of the WTO. This VSI will provide a timely and carefully considered explanation of what the WTO is, what it does, and how it goes about executing its tasks. A clear understanding of the mandate, structure and functioning of the WTO is essential to appreciate the controversy behind the organization, and how far it deserves the reputation that it has come to acquire.
142 pages, ebook
First published March 11, 2005
17 people are currently reading
529 people want to read
About the author
Amrita Narlikar
16 books5 followersAmrita Narlikar is the president of the GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studiesand Professor at the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences at the University of Hamburg, Germany. She was previously Reader in International Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the University of Cambridge, founding Director of the Centre for Rising Powers, and a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. She is an expert on international negotiations, the political economy of international trade, and rising powers.
Narlikar read history for her B.A. at St. Stephen's College, Delhi and graduated in 1996 with a M.A. from the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, earning the highest marks in the school's record. She was subsequently educated at Balliol College Oxford, where she completed her M.Phil. and D.Phil. in International Relations in 2000. She was a Junior Research Fellow at St John's College Oxford and has held academic positions in various universities including a Visiting Fellowship at Yale University, and an International Visiting Chair at Université Libre de Bruxelles. She was a member of the Warwick Commission on Multilateral Trade.
Narlikar is the author or editor of 9 books and has published more than 50 scholarly articles. Her books include New Powers: How to become one and how to manage them (Columbia University Press, 2010), The World Trade Organization: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005), and International Trade and Developing Countries: Coalitions in the GATT and WTO (Routledge, 2003). She is the editor of Deadlocks in Multilateral Negotiations: Causes and Solutions (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and guest editor of a May 2013 special issue of International Affairs on rising powers.
Narlikar is the daughter of journalist and author Aruna Narlikar and physicist Anant V. Narlikar. She is the granddaughter of physicist Vishnu Vasudev Narlikar.
(from Wikipedia)
Narlikar read history for her B.A. at St. Stephen's College, Delhi and graduated in 1996 with a M.A. from the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, earning the highest marks in the school's record. She was subsequently educated at Balliol College Oxford, where she completed her M.Phil. and D.Phil. in International Relations in 2000. She was a Junior Research Fellow at St John's College Oxford and has held academic positions in various universities including a Visiting Fellowship at Yale University, and an International Visiting Chair at Université Libre de Bruxelles. She was a member of the Warwick Commission on Multilateral Trade.
Narlikar is the author or editor of 9 books and has published more than 50 scholarly articles. Her books include New Powers: How to become one and how to manage them (Columbia University Press, 2010), The World Trade Organization: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005), and International Trade and Developing Countries: Coalitions in the GATT and WTO (Routledge, 2003). She is the editor of Deadlocks in Multilateral Negotiations: Causes and Solutions (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and guest editor of a May 2013 special issue of International Affairs on rising powers.
Narlikar is the daughter of journalist and author Aruna Narlikar and physicist Anant V. Narlikar. She is the granddaughter of physicist Vishnu Vasudev Narlikar.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 6, 2013
As the current WTO battleground fumes on in Bali, I thought it might be a good time to get some background on the organization and its history. I went into this one bracing for a particularly boring ride since it is hard to imagine institutional histories as being anything more. WTO and its history, however, is quite different since it is the new forum for old battles and a microcosm of much that has gone before. With this very organically constructed presentation, Narlikar, though she comes down unequivocally on the developing country side of things, provides an interesting blow-by-blow on how things came to a head in Geneva (etc). Repeatedly.
Narlikar traces out the details of the main issues plaguing the smooth functioning of the WTO and explains how they derive directly from the old-boy club nature of its predecessor (GATT), whose spirit continues to haunt its corridors.
She also points out, in great detail, how the minutiae of negotiation framework and organizational structure (and even the informal procedures that form the bulk of WTO’s realpolitik) skew outcomes in favor of the powerful. And dissects most of the fundamental problems that, quite presciently, has continued to inflame issues further, even questioning the very basis for WTO’s continued existence.
This VSI stretches only till the Cancun Ministerial or thereabout, and leaves out the important developments that followed post the DDR commencement. The fact that it is a bit outdated is abundantly clear from the fact that Narlikar was still capable of optimism about the Doha Rounds and for a possibility of amity and cooperation. She does predict the increasing tendency for bilateralism that will continue to eat at the roots of WTO. Don't let the fact that this VSI is not fully updated keep you from reading this very insightful short history. It presents a bleak picture but the next few days should help us understand further where things are headed.
July 4, 2010
Again these Oxford "very short introduction" books show their worth. Narlikar's succinct, 138-page book answers all the basic questions one might have had about the WTO but were afraid to ask.
First, Narlikar analyzes the history of international trade negotiations since World War II, from Bretton Woods to the current Doha round, and describes how these influenced the structure of GATT (the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs), and then, after 1994, the WTO itself.
Her description of the failure of the International Trade Organization (ITO) is particularly illuminating. Apparently at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference the ITO was meant to be a substantial compliment to the IMF and the World Bank on the international scene. Its 106 article "Havana Charter" gave it a broad mandate to not only lower tariffs, but to set standards for employment, antitrust, and even humanitarian issues. Yet this broad mandate ultimately brought it down, and even though 53 countries had signed on, the US Congress, Republican after 1946, refused to support such an overpowering international institution, and Truman withdrew the treaty from consideration in 1950. GATT, when it was negotiated at the 1947 Geneva Conference, was merely supposed to be an interim agreement to facilitate trade until ITO was ratified. Its main advantage was that, unlike the ITO treaty, the more limited GATT could be approved by the US President unilaterally under the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. Yet this interim agreement became the foundation for world trade negotiations for the next 50 years. Interestingly, although it was just a somewhat vague standard for tariff negotiations, GATT gradually acquired all the airs of an independent institution. At first governments (known merely as "CONTRACTING PARTIES") just met semiannually, but soon they set up a small group to organize airmail packages and telegraph communications, and then this was soon replaced by an official Secretariat, the Interim Commission for the International Trade Organization (ICITO). The ICITO soon acquired its own rules and mores, which later evolved later into the WTO. It was an almost natural evolution of necessity, though it took much hard work and constant negotiations on all sides.
Narlikar focuses more on the structures of the GATT and WTO than the rules and regulations they promulgated. She shows that despite their simple majority-rule decision making process, the de facto principle has always been for all countries present at a trade discussion to reach an agreement by consensus about new rules. Although this seems simple enough, Narlikar shows some surprising ramifications of the "present at the discussion" rule. Originally, the "Principle Supplier Principle" obliged deference to the main supplier of a good during the "agenda setting process," which functionally meant the First World nations always decided what was going to be discussed at future meetings. These nations would then go to an invitation-only "Green Room" session to debate tariff reductions and goals, where again the First World dominated by its design of the participants. When the agreements were finally proposed, many Third World nations who had no input into the discussion were forced to acquiesce out of ignorance. Later, even when invitations and Green Room meetings became less important, poor countries' lack of sophisticated negotiators and their lack of money for sufficient long-term representatives at the WTO base in Geneva meant they were often excluded or marginalized from trade debates that might have had some interest for them. It is strange to think that the lack of money for hiring a few Swiss lawyers could shape the contours of world trade, but for many poor nations WTO representatives are very low on the list of national priorities.
Although all this sounds like the author might be bashing the organization, Narlikar is generally a big fan of free trade and the general goals of the WTO; she mainly just wants to open it up to more participants. She shows that this has become vastly more important since the official creation of the WTO at the Uruguay round of negotiations in 1994, because since then the WTO has become increasingly intimate in the national lives of all its member countries. While the GATT dealt only with tariff barriers (some "plurilateral agreements" between voluntarily grouped nations allowed for control of non-tariff barriers), the WTO now rules on such things as Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) barriers to trade, which basically mean a nation's health rules and regulations. The WTO, through its much praised and surprisingly independent Dispute Settlement Mechanism, now evaluates such issues as whether national health regulations have a scientific basis or are merely a sub rosa means of restricting international competitors (this recently forced the EU to open itself to US beef sales and overturned the EU's older, irrelevant restrictions on any animals treated with hormones). The new standards these SPS negotiations set, however, often impose very high costs on all nations (but especially the Third World) to upgrade their research and customs equipment to accommodate now prevailing norms. For better or worse, the WTO is now vigorously encroaching on ground once left entirely to sovereign nations.
Overall, the book provides an interesting example of how bureaucratic processes and seemingly insignificant rules have a real effect on world governance. It gives one a little better understanding of an organization that even most news sources are reluctant to discuss in detail.
First, Narlikar analyzes the history of international trade negotiations since World War II, from Bretton Woods to the current Doha round, and describes how these influenced the structure of GATT (the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs), and then, after 1994, the WTO itself.
Her description of the failure of the International Trade Organization (ITO) is particularly illuminating. Apparently at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference the ITO was meant to be a substantial compliment to the IMF and the World Bank on the international scene. Its 106 article "Havana Charter" gave it a broad mandate to not only lower tariffs, but to set standards for employment, antitrust, and even humanitarian issues. Yet this broad mandate ultimately brought it down, and even though 53 countries had signed on, the US Congress, Republican after 1946, refused to support such an overpowering international institution, and Truman withdrew the treaty from consideration in 1950. GATT, when it was negotiated at the 1947 Geneva Conference, was merely supposed to be an interim agreement to facilitate trade until ITO was ratified. Its main advantage was that, unlike the ITO treaty, the more limited GATT could be approved by the US President unilaterally under the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. Yet this interim agreement became the foundation for world trade negotiations for the next 50 years. Interestingly, although it was just a somewhat vague standard for tariff negotiations, GATT gradually acquired all the airs of an independent institution. At first governments (known merely as "CONTRACTING PARTIES") just met semiannually, but soon they set up a small group to organize airmail packages and telegraph communications, and then this was soon replaced by an official Secretariat, the Interim Commission for the International Trade Organization (ICITO). The ICITO soon acquired its own rules and mores, which later evolved later into the WTO. It was an almost natural evolution of necessity, though it took much hard work and constant negotiations on all sides.
Narlikar focuses more on the structures of the GATT and WTO than the rules and regulations they promulgated. She shows that despite their simple majority-rule decision making process, the de facto principle has always been for all countries present at a trade discussion to reach an agreement by consensus about new rules. Although this seems simple enough, Narlikar shows some surprising ramifications of the "present at the discussion" rule. Originally, the "Principle Supplier Principle" obliged deference to the main supplier of a good during the "agenda setting process," which functionally meant the First World nations always decided what was going to be discussed at future meetings. These nations would then go to an invitation-only "Green Room" session to debate tariff reductions and goals, where again the First World dominated by its design of the participants. When the agreements were finally proposed, many Third World nations who had no input into the discussion were forced to acquiesce out of ignorance. Later, even when invitations and Green Room meetings became less important, poor countries' lack of sophisticated negotiators and their lack of money for sufficient long-term representatives at the WTO base in Geneva meant they were often excluded or marginalized from trade debates that might have had some interest for them. It is strange to think that the lack of money for hiring a few Swiss lawyers could shape the contours of world trade, but for many poor nations WTO representatives are very low on the list of national priorities.
Although all this sounds like the author might be bashing the organization, Narlikar is generally a big fan of free trade and the general goals of the WTO; she mainly just wants to open it up to more participants. She shows that this has become vastly more important since the official creation of the WTO at the Uruguay round of negotiations in 1994, because since then the WTO has become increasingly intimate in the national lives of all its member countries. While the GATT dealt only with tariff barriers (some "plurilateral agreements" between voluntarily grouped nations allowed for control of non-tariff barriers), the WTO now rules on such things as Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) barriers to trade, which basically mean a nation's health rules and regulations. The WTO, through its much praised and surprisingly independent Dispute Settlement Mechanism, now evaluates such issues as whether national health regulations have a scientific basis or are merely a sub rosa means of restricting international competitors (this recently forced the EU to open itself to US beef sales and overturned the EU's older, irrelevant restrictions on any animals treated with hormones). The new standards these SPS negotiations set, however, often impose very high costs on all nations (but especially the Third World) to upgrade their research and customs equipment to accommodate now prevailing norms. For better or worse, the WTO is now vigorously encroaching on ground once left entirely to sovereign nations.
Overall, the book provides an interesting example of how bureaucratic processes and seemingly insignificant rules have a real effect on world governance. It gives one a little better understanding of an organization that even most news sources are reluctant to discuss in detail.
April 6, 2011
Of the three major international financial organisations, The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and The World Trade Organization (WTO), the last one is by far the youngest, yet it garners most headline news and controversy these days. In order to understand why, it is worthwhile to invest some time in reading about the origins of WTO in General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the organization that preceded it, as well as to understand how agreements are brokered and reached in WTO. This book provides a useful and informative introduction to WTO that answers those general questions fairly well. However, one gets a sense that the motivation behind the book was somewhat geared in direction of the critics of the WTO, rather than providing a more balanced account of the purposes and goals of the organization. In books defense it covers the origin and ramifications of the most recent controversial issues involving WTO fairly well, and it would be a useful and informative read for anyone interested in some basic facts about this organization.
January 8, 2020
Lots of information and argument about the need for some institution that organizes trade internationally, but also the problems with the current system (or any system)-yet with a chapter on reform prospects. There is a focus on the conflicts between developed and developing countries' interests and strategies without entering into overly arcane trade disputes instead of just the history and principles of the WTO (the book could reasonably be retitled as 'international trade organization and conflicts: history since the GATT'). However, oftentimes Narlikar puts forward arguments for/against certain debates in trade rather than categorizing different positions (which would have been more useful in an introduction in order to allow a reader to understand general positions and then see how the are manifest in particular debates about particular commodities). I sometimes found myself having to look up certain concepts repeatedly in the book and online, so it is necessary to read actively (and a glossary would have been nice). But the writing style is clear and never esoteric. In addition, be warned about the heavy use of acronyms-which comes with territory of reading anything about international relations; and an understanding of basic economics is also useful.
January 12, 2018
Sometimes it is interesting how one reads one book after an other than give different insights. I just finished Jared Diamond's Collapse where one of his points is that the consumer will need to take responsibility and simply show that we no longer accept certain behaviours from the companies. After reading Narlikar's book this sounds like more of a challenge than what Diamond indicates. It is not that Diamond is idealistic, rather the opposite, but when looking at all the different interests that govern trade in the world today I get the feeling that the consumer is only part of the picture. So if the consumer is needed to solve the environmental crisis, but the consumer has less influence than what one would want in the area of trade, then there is not much hope perhaps? Or as Diamond says, the environmental crisis will be solved, but it is a question if it can be solved "nicely" or by severe devastation by civilisation and human life.
I realise that this is not so much a review of this book, for that I am sorry. I was mostly interested in the introduction and the final two chapters since they discussed WTO more generally and its implications in society.
I realise that this is not so much a review of this book, for that I am sorry. I was mostly interested in the introduction and the final two chapters since they discussed WTO more generally and its implications in society.
April 16, 2024
Chapter 1: Who needs an international trade organization?
Chapter 2: The creation of the World Trade Organization
Chapter 3: Decision-making and negotiation processes
Chapter 4: The expanding mandate
Chapter 5: Settling disputes
Chapter 6: The Doha Development Agenda
Chapter 7: The burden of governance
Chapter 2: The creation of the World Trade Organization
Chapter 3: Decision-making and negotiation processes
Chapter 4: The expanding mandate
Chapter 5: Settling disputes
Chapter 6: The Doha Development Agenda
Chapter 7: The burden of governance
November 15, 2023
A bit dry and in the weeds, though I'm not entirely sure what I expected. I did appreciate how she explained the structural issues that prevent developed and developing countries from working together effectively in the WTO.
July 24, 2025
Although some information has become obsolete, this book gives a good framework of how WTO works. I like especially the information about how things work in practice.
February 26, 2015
Everyone should read the book simply to have a basic literacy on this institution and world trade issues. But it needs an update. And although it's a very short introduction, I think endnotes are necessary for followup. The further reading section is insufficient. Despite being an introduction, the book is still unnecessarily difficult for the uninitiated at times because of the frequent use of WTO jargon (and the jargon is tiresome - "grand bargain", "single undertaking") and terms - a glossary would help. (It amuses me that the WTO website has its own "jargon buster" page.)
November 13, 2016
The book is much informative to start with. And it discusses the role and standpoint of both the developing nations and the developed nations in the WTO. The book states up to Cancun summit. In my opinion the book is good with its analysis on the GATT and WTO front. If there is an update to this 2005 edition then it is a bonus for the readers who seek to know more about WTO and its working processes.
January 21, 2011
The book details the legal-political structure of the WTO and explains the 'why' behind many of the provisions/agreements. While she propounds the developing country view point,all the arguments are backed up by hard data and facts.
A must read for anyone interested in trade law/power politics in international trade.
A must read for anyone interested in trade law/power politics in international trade.
August 12, 2016
yeah I figured that this topic isn't necessarily the most interesting, but jesus christ is this author dry. I think if someone asked her to tell a joke she would have a seizure and smoke would start billowing from all her orifices like a fucking looney tunes character
August 10, 2012
Very well-organized and informative, without being too technical. For the most part, very easy to understand without getting bogged own in economic language.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews