Unexpected Bedfellows: The GATT, the WTO and Some Democratic Rights

The WTO system and democratic rights are unexpected bedfellows. The GATT/WTO requires governments to adopt policies that provide foreign products (read producers) with due process, political participation, and information rights related to trade policymaking. Because these nations also provide these rights to their citizens, a growing number of people are learning how to influence trade-related policies. As trade today encompasses many areas of governance, these same citizens may gradually transfer the skills learned from influencing trade policies to other public issues. Thus, the WTO not only empowers foreign market actors, but also citizens in repressive states. We use both qualitative and quantitative analysis to examine whether membership in the WTO over time leads to improvements in these democratic rights. Our qualitative analysis shows that these issues are discussed during accessions and trade policy reviews. Quantitative analysis examines how members of the GATT/WTO perform on these democratic rights over time. We use a cross-national time series design of all countries, accounting for selection issues of why countries become members of the GATT/WTO regime. We find that longer GATT/WTO membership leads to stronger performance on our metrics for political participation, free and fair elections, and access to information.

世界贸易组织（World Trade Organization, WTO）体系与民主权利，实则为出人意料的关联伙伴。关贸总协定（General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, GATT）/世界贸易组织要求各国政府出台相关政策，为外国产品（亦即外国生产商）提供与贸易决策相关的正当程序、政治参与及信息获取权利。由于这些国家同样为本国公民赋予此类权利，越来越多民众开始掌握影响贸易相关政策的路径。鉴于当前贸易已覆盖诸多治理领域，这些民众可逐步将从影响贸易政策中习得的技能，迁移至其他公共议题当中。由此，世界贸易组织不仅赋能外国市场主体，亦为威权国家的公民拓展了参与空间。本研究同时采用定性与定量分析方法，检验加入关贸总协定/世界贸易组织的时长是否会随时间推移改善相关民主权利。定性分析结果显示，此类议题会在成员国加入谈判及贸易政策审议过程中得到讨论。定量分析则考察关贸总协定/世界贸易组织成员国在上述民主权利指标上的长期表现。本研究采用覆盖所有国家的跨国时间序列研究设计，考量了国家为何选择加入关贸总协定/世界贸易组织体系的样本选择偏误问题。研究结果表明，关贸总协定/世界贸易组织的成员时长越长，成员国在政治参与、自由公正选举及信息获取这三项指标上的表现便越优异。