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Is the World Trade Organization (WTO) in a legitimacy crisis and might the protracted Doha negotiations be evidence of it? This article understands the notion of 'legitimacy crisis' as a severe threat to an institution's viability due to fundamental shifts in the legitimising ideas underlying the institution, an external threat to its values or its ability to fulfil its functions. It contends that the WTO is not yet definitely in a legitimacy crisis because the Doha negotiations still reveal the commitment of the WTO members to the values and legitimising ideas of the WTO. Perception of a legitimacy crisis fuels the negotiation of free trade agreements (FTAs) amongst key WTO members, which could be used to advance the Doha negotiations, force developing countries into agreement and shape the outcome of the negotiations in favour of developed countries. Such an outcome, this chapter cautions, could be the real onset of a legitimacy crisis if developing countries gain very little from a Doha agreement. To prevent a crisis and move the negotiations forward this chapter suggests that the different trade-related development needs of developing countries need to be assessed more seriously and developing countries need to be enabled to address serious adverse consequences linked to any trade liberalisation they undertake.

This article understands risk dialectically as a decision-making resource stressing probability but as also giving rise to further uncertainties. It shows that the panel report in EC -Biotech reflects an understanding of risk as decision-making that is deterministic and leaves little room for the application of precautionary approaches and non-scientific factors. It submits that such an approach is unsuitable for novel technologies with limited background knowledge and reduces the accountability of risk regulators. A different approach is put forth, which allows members greater scope for precautionary action while preventing trade protectionism. The article concludes that law can enhance its authority and epistemic validity through scientific evidence but only if it recognizes science's epistemic and its own limitations. Law has to approach science as contested knowledge and risk regulation as political decision-making, leading -inevitably -to more indeterminate solutions to legal conflicts.

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