How to Begin to Think About the 'Democratic Deficit' at the WTO

How to Begin to Think About the 'Democratic Deficit' at the WTO

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There is an increasingly widespread intuition that the World Trade Organization lacks adequate democratic legitimacy, or has a ‘democratic deficit’ to use an expression derived from debates about the European Union. Views on the issue of the WTO and democracy range from the dismissal of the ‘democratic deficit’ based on the notion that since the WTO rules are approved by national governments they must be democratic or adequately so, to claims that the WTO along with other institutions and actors of globalization as essentially destroyed democracy as we have known it. Despite the intensity with which the issue of democracy and the WTO is contested there is essentially no literature aimed at bringing analytical clarity to the problem. As Susan Marks notes, democracy itself “is a hugely contested concept”. In other work, I have identified a range of conceptions of ‘democracy’ that is at play in debates about democracy and governance beyond the nation state, including representative democracy, deliberative democracy, corporatist or consociational democracy, republican or communitarian democracy, and democracy as decentralization. All of these views of democracy have salience in determining democratic legitimacy, and they are in important ways inter-related. For example, while representative democracy is identified with formal representative institutions, such as elected parliaments, the legitimacy that flows from such processes surely presumes elements of deliberative democracy, such as the possibility—and reality—of debate and confrontation of different points of view on public policy. Not only dreamy academics but politicians and activists for secession and regional autonomy movements, among others, invoke republican conceptions of democracy to justify their cause, despite the reality that representative institutions in modem democracies appear to offer on a daily basis little of the collective self-determination of which Rousseau waxed eloquent in his more poetic moments. A further complication, often forgotten, is that democracy is not the only source of legitimacy for policy outcomes. Decisions of a constitutional court to constrain majority will, for example, may be legitimated in significant measure by deontological conceptions of human autonomy or equality. Decisions of autocratic or authoritarian regimes may have a certain legitimacy, even in the absence of ‘democracy’, if they are respectful of social diversity, and reflect a process of consultation with the people. As if the complexity, interrelationship, and contestability of salient alternative conceptions of democracy didn't make the task of analytical clarity hard enough, the perception of a democratic deficit in institutions of globalization such as the WTO occurs at a time when there is significant disillusionment with domestic democratic institutions and practices, indeed with domestic governance. Thus, it is not sufficient to address the ‘democratic deficit’ from a static perspective, merely asking to what extent outcomes in the WTO are less democratically legitimate than policy outcomes within domestic polities. Many of the most outspoken critics of the WTO are also outspoken critics of the real world of democracy within the nation state—of course, it isn't the fault of the WTO that the goal posts, as it were, are being moved, but to some extent they are, and if the claims for a higher standard of legitimation domestically are well-founded, then it is besides the point, or at least somewhat inadequate, to point out that the WTO doesn't fare that badly measured against the arguably low domestic ‘status quo’. Within the confines of this essay, it is possible only to begin to suggest what sort of analytical framework could clarify issues of this complexity. Thus, I have proceeded by looking at one model of democracy, representative democracy, as it has been actually practiced in the ‘West’ in the post-war period, as well as how its practice has been conceived ideally by scholars of democracy. In order to attempt to refine the inquiry into the existence of a democratic deficit, I have identified four separate issues or questions that are of relevance, which often get elided or confused with one another, in debates about the WTO and the democratic deficit. The first, which is the most obvious, relates to whether WTO rules are sufficiently underpinned by democratic consent. A second concern is whether the substance of the rules themselves is democracy-enhancing or undermining. A third kind of concern relates the nature of WTO rules as pre-commitments—assuming arguendo that there is an adequate initial act of consent to the rules, today's majority is purporting to bind tomorrow's. WTO rules are not reversible without cost, should there be a change in popular will in a given Member country—nor would such rules have much value, if they could be abandoned freely. There is nothing inherently undemocratic about democratic pre-commitment—most liberal democratic constitutions purport to bind and constrain the majority will in the future. Yet such pre-commitments usually require special or extraordinary procedural justifications—super-majority votes in the legislature, referenda and plebiscites—or extraordinary substantive ones (such a deontological account of the primacy of certain rights over any expression of popular will). The question is whether such justifications exist with respect to WTO rules, and whether they are strong enough, given what appear to be the costs of reversibility in response to a change in the direction of the popular will in a Member State. A forth concern arises from the character of democracy as not merely a set of legitimating institutional mechanisms, but also as a set of values or behaviors. Among the values often plausibly associated with democracy are openness, accountability, equality, value pluralism and inclusiveness. One dimension of the issue of democracy at the WTO is whether the behaviors and attitudes of the actors in the system, or closely associated with it, are appropriately reflective of such values.

Source Publication

International Economic Governance and Non-Economic Concerns: New Challenges for the International Legal Order

Source Editors/Authors

Stefan Griller

Publication Date

2003

How to Begin to Think About the 'Democratic Deficit' at the WTO

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