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Who Gets to Be In the Room? Manipulating Participation in WTO Disputes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2014

Leslie Johns  and
Krzysztof J. Pelc
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Abstract

Third parties complicate World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement by adding voices and issues to a dispute. However, complainants can limit third parties by filing cases under Article XXIII of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), rather than Article XXII. We argue that third parties create “insurance” by lowering the benefit of winning and the cost of losing a dispute. We construct a formal model in which third parties make settlement less likely. The weaker the complainant's case, the more likely the complainant is to promote third party participation and to settle. Article XXII cases are therefore more likely to settle, controlling for the realized number of third parties, and a complainant who files under Article XXIII is more likely to win a ruling and less likely to see that ruling appealed by the defendant. We provide empirical support using WTO disputes from 1995 to 2011.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 68 , Issue 3 , Summer 2014 , pp. 663 - 699
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2014 

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