Trade governance : legal institutionalism as a magnet for non-trade issues. A study of the mixed benefits of WTO dispute settlement for enforcing international obligations

Legal institutionalism is a form of international governance characterised by a heavy reliance on legal rules, action and processes to exercise authority, especially as seen through formal regimes, lawyers and courts. A modern example of legal institutionalism is the World Trade Organization (WTO), in particular its compulsory dispute settlement system. Its apparent success, as seen in a perceived high level of compliance by member states with their international trade obligations, generates a 'magnet effect' that pulls or attracts other 'non-trade' issues such as human, labour and environmental rights into its regulatory reach. The challenge is to understand whether this attraction to legal institutionalism is beneficial for the enforcement of non-trade issues. This chapter examines the concept oflegal institutionalism as embodied in the WTO to assess the concept's significance for the international enforcement of trade and non-trade obligations. The chapter considers the experience of developing and developed member states in the WTO's dispute settlement system over 15 years (from 1995 to 2010) to determine the extent to which a heavily legalised dispute settlement system provides an equality of opportunity for strong and weak states to enforce heavily legalised obligations. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the mixed blessings oflegal institutionalism for transnational governance.