- Title
- Accession as dialogue: epistemic communities and the World Trade Organization
- Creator
- Toohey, Lisa
- Relation
- Leiden Journal of International Law Vol. 27, Issue 2, p. 397-418
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0922156514000077
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2014
- Description
- ccession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) is viewed as a major step in the development of a state, and the commitments made by acceding states are often interpreted as a symbolic commitment to international economic and political community. However, as a subject of scholarship, WTO accession is under-theorized – there has been no sustained academic attempt to build a theory that accounts for the complexity of the accession process. Traditional, positivist approaches can point to increasingly onerous terms of accession, but fail to probe past Article XII's one-dimensional concept of ‘the acceding state’ negotiating with ‘the WTO’. This perspective dislocates the accession process from the broader political, economic, and legal reforms that involve both state and non-state actors. This article examines the role of these actors as epistemic communities, and argues that these epistemic communities engage in a series of dialogues about the nature of law and the legal system in the acceding state.
- Subject
- accession; international economic law; socio-legal methodology; World Trade Organization; WTO
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1356450
- Identifier
- uon:31713
- Identifier
- ISSN:0922-1565
- Language
- eng
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