Decision-Making by Consensus in the WTO
Decision-making processes are among the most important methods of functioning against which the legitimacy of one institution may be rated. It is because they show how the organization treats its members and thereby fulfils the first and minimal level of accountability. Moreover, in the recent trend of international fora, especially the WTO, decision-making by consensus has become popular. This characteristic of the WTO makes it considerably and significantly different from other international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), where decisions are based on weighted voting. In the WTO, consensus based decision-making is popular, while voting is possible and/or mandatory only in some special cases. In voting process, each member state has one vote and therefore allowing equal status to all members irrespective of trade shares or general economic size. The principle of equality of voting status of member states is clearly seen in the formal structures of the WTO. The top body of the WTO is the Ministerial Conference, which meets every two years. The day-to-day workings of the WTO are carried out by the General Council. The General Council also meets in the guise of the Trade Policy Review Body and the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB). Below the General Council are the Councils for Goods, Services and Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), along with Committees that report directly to the General Council. Representation at all three levels is open to all members of the WTO. The provisions stipulate the use of consensus and voting in the WTO covered Agreements will be examined in the first section. The advantages and disadvantages of consensus are the core discussion in section 2. On the one hand, consensus in decision-making offers developing countries with equal voice with their developed partners irrespective of trade shares and economic sizes. On the other hand, from the viewpoint of developing countries, they have to face a lot of disadvantages deriving from the consensus based decision-making. Finally, in order to help WTO become the most democratic, efficient, transparent and legitimate organization in promoting international trade, some recommendations about the reform of the WTO in the field of decision-making are raised.
Management games for research on stragegy: evidence of team diversity and R&D orientation as moderators of consensus-performance relationship
En la presente Tesis se propone a los juegos de empresas como posible metodo a utilizar en las investigaciones empiricas relacionadas con el campo de la direccion estrategica. Se considera que, hasta la fecha, los juegos de empresas, como experimento de laboratorio al alcance de nuestra disciplina, han sido poco explorados como metodologia de investigacion. El objetivo general de esta tesis es demostrar la viabilidad de los juegos con el proposito de acceder a datos validos para la realizacion de investigaciones empiricas en el campo de la direccion estrategica. Los objetivos especificos incluyen: (a) la realizacion de un detallado estudio teorico sobre la practica del uso de juegos de empresas en investigaciones; (b) describir la experiencia en el desarrollo de un juego; (c) utilizar un juego en dos estudios relacionados con el consenso estrategico: diversidad de equipos de alta direccion y orientacion estrategica a la investigacion y desarrollo. Los resultados generales indican que los juegos pueden tener un papel importante en la construccion de teorias, permitiendo replicar y criticar estudios empiricos anteriores, testar nuevas variables, controlar el experimento y proponer nuevos modelos y relaciones alternativas a la teoria existente. Los resultados empiricos indican que el juego desarrollado facilito la prueba de nuevas medidas de consenso, ademas de permitir el acceso a datos fiables. Los resultados indican que: (a) la relacion bivariante entre consenso y resultado es positiva y estadisticamente significativa, considerando que el consenso ha sido verificado en una secuencia de toma de decisiones, (b) la misma relacion puede ser mas fuerte en presencia de equipos con alta diversidad, y (c) la orientacion estrategica a la investigacion y desarrollo, actividad caracterizada por un alto grado de incertidumbre, modera negativamente la relacion consensoresultado.
United States – Anti-Dumping Act of 1916 (Original Complaint by the European Communities) – Recourse to Arbitration by the United States under 22.6 of the DSU, WT/DS136/ARB, 24 February 2004: A Legal and Economic Analysis
This arbitration on the level of countermeasures, pursuant to the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) 22.6, originates from findings against the United States with respect to a provision of the 1916 Anti-Dumping Act, which permits a private cause of action for treble damages against an alleged dumping importer or producer where the dumping meets certain criteria including, notably, a predatory intention. An unusual feature of this case is that, apparently, the provision in question has never been used, at least against the European Community (EC), the complainant. In any case, the provision in question was found to be in violation of the WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement, both because it would impose measures on dumping other than and in addition to anti-dumping duties, and because in so doing, the procedural requirements of the Anti-Dumping Agreement would not be followed.