Dispute settlement in world politics: States, supranational prosecutors, and compliance

Abstract

This article addresses one prominent expression of the interplay between politics and law in international cooperation: the dynamics of bargaining in the settling of compliance disputes. Our central argument is that the formal structure of dispute settlement systematically shapes the likelihood and terms of negotiated compliance settlements. We introduce an ideal type distinction between interstate dispute settlement, where the authority to sue states for non-compliance resides exclusively with states, and supranational dispute settlement, where this authority is partly or entirely delegated to a commission or secretariat with a prosecutorial function. We hypothesize that systems relying on supranational prosecution are more effective in addressing non-compliance, and more likely to mediate the impact of power asymmetries on dispute settlement outcomes, compared to systems relying on state-initiated complaints only. We find support for this proposition in an in-depth comparison of dispute settlement and compliance bargaining in the World Trade Organization and the European Union, and in a brief survey of experiences from other international organizations.

Is the WTO Passé?

“…While Tallberg and Smith (2014) report that very few (roughly twenty) disputes were 18 The Euroepan Union has a different institutional design, including a supranational framework that initiates disputes against member states from within and thus does not rely exclusively on the " state-to-state" framework of dispute resolution found in the WTO and many other PTAs. One result is that the EU's dispute-settlement provisions have led to thousands of disputes.…”

“…Like MERCOSUR, NAFTA also has its own dispute-settlement provisions, and they have also rarely been triggered; e.g., fewer than fifteen disputes were initiated under NAFTA between 1994 and 2010, and NAFTA dispute settlement largely fell into disuse after 2001 (Tallberg and Smith 2014). Nevertheless, the small number of NAFTA disputes should not necessarily be interpreted as evidence that its PTA partners are not experiencing bilateral trading frictions that require third party mediation.…”

Sustainable Digital Environments: What Major Challenges Is Humankind Facing?

“…This would change if new structures (meaning accommodations) for supranational taxation systems were to be introduced. Supranational systems (which have Kompetenz-kompetenz and may penalize deviants) are supposed to be "more effective in addressing non-compliance, and more likely to mediate the impact of power asymmetries on dispute settlement outcomes, compared to systems relying on state-initiated complaints only" [182].…”

The Transition of Global Order

“…More precisely, while for many scholars the 1990s seemed to pave the way toward multilaterally regionalizing cooperation, and while the early 2000s appeared to present the heyday of this development, which was also supported by states in the region propagating the advent of the "ASEAN Community", events related to order transition have forcefully derailed such efforts since then (Buzan and Waever 2003;Emmers 2012;Fawcett and Hurrell 1995;Mansfield and Milner 1999;Roberts 2013). Concomitantly, political ambitions toward the adoption of dispute settlement procedures in the region, as applied elsewhere, have failed (Beckman 2013; Goldstein et al 2000;Tallberg and Smith 2014). As a result, these countervailing developments have powerfully underscored the notion of strategic distrust which has characterized US-China relations in recent years.…”