Supply of Policy Information in the World Trade Organization: Cross-National Compliance with One-Time and Regular Notification Obligations, 1995–2014

Abstract

This text presents the first systematic quantitative descriptive and explanatory account of World Trade Organization (WTO) member states’ compliance with their one-time and regular notification obligations. The system of around 170 notifications, through which states are obliged to provide to the WTO relevant information on their policies, constitutes a key mechanism of transparency in the global trade regime. Based on data for the one-time and regular obligations from the years 1995–2014, we seek to map and explain the variation in the degree to which states comply with these obligations. Descriptively, we identify enormous differences in the compliance values of states, ranging from compliance well above 80% to below 20%. To explain those differences, we test five theoretical explanations that concentrate on the trade policy preferences of states and on their institutional characteristics. The empirical findings support four of the tested explanations. In particular, they highlight the relevance of states’ administrative capacities and membership in international organizations (IOs). In addition, the empirical analysis shows that compliance levels are strongly positively connected with the economic size of the members.

The Process Performance of the WTO Trade Policy Review Mechanism: Peer‐Reviewing Reconsidered

“…With widely observed troubles of hard, legalized cooperation, across various issue areas, an increased focus on soft cooperation mechanisms, such as peer reviews, is perhaps only natural (for a review of the troubles of major global cooperation schemes, see Hale and Held, 2017). 1 Second, in the last 2 or 3 years the problem of transparency (and a lack thereof) has received major political attention in the WTO, especially from the European Union and the United States (Wolfe 2017;Edwards, 2018;Karlas and Par ızek, 2019). Third, while we acknowledge that the previous findings about the limited performance of the TPRM have some relevancy, we also argue that the existing research on this topic is marked by several key deficiencies.…”

“…Such topics as the authority of peer-reviews in IOs (Jongen, 2018) or their politicization have been addressed (Terman and Voeten, 2018). 1 Second, in the last 2 or 3 years the problem of transparency (and a lack thereof) has received major political attention in the WTO, especially from the European Union and the United States (Wolfe 2017;Edwards, 2018;Karlas and Par ızek, 2019). 1 Second, in the last 2 or 3 years the problem of transparency (and a lack thereof) has received major political attention in the WTO, especially from the European Union and the United States (Wolfe 2017;Edwards, 2018;Karlas and Par ızek, 2019).…”

El rol actual de la Organización Mundial del Comercio en la gobernanza multilateral del comercio: crisis y continuidades

“…En lo que refiere al grado de cumplimiento de las obligaciones de notificación, el informe anual del director general de la omc de 2022 señala que los progresos siguen siendo demasiado lentos y que el incumplimiento de las obligaciones de notificación a los diversos órganos de la omc resulta problemático, porque socava los distintos acuerdos (omc, 2022b, p. 106). El índice de cumplimiento varía según los miembros, con algunos por encima del 80 % y otros por debajo del 20 % (Karlas & Parízek, 2019a), al tiempo que las respuestas a los cuestionarios periódicos emitidos por el director general son en general débiles (Hoekman & Wolfe, 2021). 17 Durante la pandemia de la covid-19, la tendencia de incumplir con las notificaciones continuó y muchas medidas implementadas como respuesta no las notificaron los miembros de la omc (Hoekman, 2020).…”

Why states inform: Compliance with self-reporting obligations in universal treaty regimes

“…Recently, scholars have started to consider the effects of self-reporting on state behaviour (Creamer and Simmons, 2019; Koliev et al, 2020). Yet the number of studies that explain the actual self-reporting activity of states remains low (Creamer and Simmons, 2015; Karlas and Parízek, 2020; LeBlanc et al, 2010; Lebovic, 2006; Neumayer, 2002). Moreover, each of these studies only deals with a single institution, or with institutions pertaining to a single-issue area.…”