Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-19T00:53:23.025Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Promoting Good Governance: From Encouraging a Principle to Taking Concrete Action - Examples from WTO Accession Protocols and the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement

from PART I - WTO Accessions and the New Trade Multilateralism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2017

By
Juneyoung Lee ,
Nora Neufeld  and
Anna Varyanik
Edited by
Alexei Kireyev  and
Chiedu Osakwe
Juneyoung Lee
Affiliation:
Accessions Division of the WTO
Nora Neufeld
Affiliation:
trade lawyer with a specialization in WTO matters
Anna Varyanik
Affiliation:
WTO Accessions Division
Alexei Kireyev
Affiliation:
International Monetary Fund Institute, Washington DC
Chiedu Osakwe
Affiliation:
World Trade Organization
Get access

Summary

Abstract

Long proposed in aspirational terms, good governance has increasingly become a subject of substantive global policy debate and international rule-making. An analysis of recent negotiating exercises, such as World Trade Organization (WTO) accession protocols and the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), shows that governance has been discussed among WTO members and embedded in WTO rules. This chapter first examines how WTO accession protocols addressed the issue of governance improvement by subjecting acceding governments to binding, accession-specific commitments. These commitments, in addition to ensuring greater market openness and integration in the rules-based global economy, established the legal basis for the increased rule of law for acceding members. The commitments undertaken by these members demonstrate their adherence to principles of transparency and predictability of trade policies, as well as their overall commitment to subject domestic trade regimes to international trade law. Improved governance is achieved through the entirety of WTO accession-specific commitments on rules, including the ones on transparency, policy enforcement, trading rights, state trading/state-owned enterprises (STEs/SOEs) and government procurement. A similar trend can be observed when analysing the good governance provisions of the new TFA, albeit with differences in their modus operandi. WTO members took a multifaceted and indirect approach, seeking to improve integrity by increasing transparency, strengthening due process rights and reducing space for discretionary action. Together, good governance provisions in accession protocols and the TFA contribute to building the upper floors of the new multilateral trading system by creating a binding set of rules and new standards that will be respected by virtually the entire trading world.

Good governance – commonly understood as taking and implementing sound government decisions – has been a much-discussed objective of international public policy for decades, to the point where it is now considered an indispensable ‘bedrock’ principle of global affairs. As far back as the 1990s, former United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan hailed it as perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development. But while this objective has long been pursued in aspirational terms, the world's good intentions have not always been matched by concrete actions. Frequently confined to best-endeavour undertakings, good governance rarely found its way into firm international commitments and binding global rules.

Type
Chapter
Information
Trade Multilateralism in the Twenty-First Century
Building the Upper Floors of the Trading System through WTO Accessions
 , pp. 150 - 174
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beslać, P. (2015). ‘Strengthening Transparency in the Multilateral Trading System: The Contribution of the WTO Accession Process’, in Dadush, U. and Osakwe, C. (eds.), WTO Accessions and Trade Multilateralism: Case Studies and Lessons from the WTO at Twenty. WTO, Cambridge University Press, pp. 885–905.Google Scholar
Neufeld, N. (2014). ‘The Long and Winding Road: How WTO Members Finally Reached a Trade Facilitation Agreement’, WTO Staff Working Paper ERSD-2014-06. Retrieved from www.wto.org/english/res_e/reser_e/ersd201406_e.pdf.
Osakwe, C. (2015). ‘Contributions and Lessons from WTO Accessions: The Present and Future of the Rules-Based Multilateral Trading System’, in Dadush, U. and Osakwe, C. (eds.), WTO Accessions and Trade Multilateralism: Case Studies and Lessons from the WTO at Twenty. WTO, Cambridge University Press, pp. 219–308.Google Scholar
World Trade Organization, Agreement establishing the World Trade Organization (‘Marrakesh Agreement’), signed on 15 April 1994.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Republic of Ecuador of 16 August 1995, WT/ACC/ECU/6.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of Mongolia of 18 July 1996, WT/ACC/MNG/11.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of Bulgaria of 2 October 1996, WT/ACC/BGR/7.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Republic of Panama of 2 October 1996, WT/ACC/PAN/21.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Kyrgyz Republic of 14 October 1998, WT/ACC/KGZ/29.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of Latvia of 14 October 1998, WT/ACC/LVA/35.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Republic of Estonia of 21 May 1999, WT/ACC/EST/30.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Republic of Georgia of 6 October 1999, WT/ACC/GEO/33.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan of 17 December 1999, WT/ACC/JOR/35.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of Albania of 17 July 2000, WT/ACC/ALB/53.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of Croatia of 17 July 2000, WT/ACC/HRV/61.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Sultanate of Oman of 10 October 2000, WT/ACC/OMN/28.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Republic of Lithuania of 8 December 2000, WT/ACC/LTU/54.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Republic of Moldova of 8 May 2001, WT/ACC/MOL/40.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the People's Republic of China of 10 November 2001, WT/L/432.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu of 11 November 2001, WT/L/433.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia of 15 October 2002, WT/L/494.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Republic of Armenia of 10 December 2002, WT/L/506.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Kingdom of Cambodia of 11 September 2003, WT/MIN(03)/18.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Kingdom of Nepal of 11 September 2003, WT/MIN(03)/19.
World Trade Organization Doha Development Agenda Work Programme, Decision Adopted by the WTO General Council on 1 August 2004, WT/L/579, Annex D, 2 August 2004.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia of 11 November 2005, WT/L/627.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Kingdom of Tonga of 15 December 2005, WT/L/644.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam of 7 November 2006, WT/L/662.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Republic of Cabo Verde of 18 December 2007, WT/L/715.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of Ukraine of 5 February 2008, WT/L/718.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of Vanuatu of 26 October 2011, WT/L/823.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Russian Federation of 16 December 2011, WT/MIN(11)/24, WT/L/839.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of Montenegro of 17 December 2011, WT/MIN(11)/28, WT/L/841.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of Samoa of 17 December 2011, WT/MIN(11)/27, WT/L/840.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Lao People's Democratic Republic of 26 October 2012, WT/L/865.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Republic of Tajikistan of 10 December 2012, WT/L/872.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Republic of Yemen of 4 December 2013, WT/MIN(13)/24, WT/L/905.
World Trade Organization Bali Ministerial Decision on Trade Facilitation of 7 December 2013, WT/MIN(13)/36.
World Trade Organization Protocol Amending the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, Decision Adopted by the WTO General Council on 27 November 2014, WT/L/940, 28 November 2014.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Republic of Seychelles of 10 December 2014, WT/L/944.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Republic of Kazakhstan of 27 July 2015, WT/L/957.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of Liberia of 16 December 2015, WT/MIN(15)/38, WT/L/973.
World Trade Organization Protocol on the Accession of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan of 17 December 2015, WT/MIN(15)/39, WT/L/974.
UN ESCAP (2009). What is Good Governance? Retrieved from www.unescap.org/resources/what-good-governance.

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×