The institutional shortcomings of the World Trade Organization (WTO) became apparent during the Doha Round of Trade negotiations that began in 2001 and which aimed to improve the success of developing countries' trading by lowering trade barriers and adjusting other trade rules. This "development agenda" meant different things to rich and poor countries. In addition, many of the circumstances that supported success in General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations of 1947 were no longer present after the WTO was founded in 1995. In Reconstructing the World Trade Organization for the 21st Century, Kent Jones examines the difficulties of the WTO in completing multilateral trade negotiations and possible ways to restore its ability to do so. The problem lies in the institutional structure it inherited from the GATT, which was designed for a more limited scope of trade negotiations among a relatively small number of wealthier, industrialized countries. Jones presents an institutional model of the GATT/WTO system, which describes why such an organization exists and how it is supposed to accomplish its goals. Institutional reforms will be necessary to restore the WTO's ability to complete global trade agreements, including a more flexible application of the consensus rule, a common understanding among all members about the limits of domestic policy space that is subject to negotiation, and clearer rules on reciprocity obligations. The popularity of bilateral and regional trade agreements, which have emerged as the alternative to WTO agreements, presents a threat to the WTO's relevance in trade negotiations, but also an opportunity to "multilateralize" new and deeper trade integration in future WTO agreements. Aid for trade may also play an instrumental role in bringing more developing countries into WTO disciplines. Above all, WTO members must develop new ways to find common ground in order to negotiate for mutual gains from trade.

Reconstructing the World Trade Organization for the 21st Century explores the reasons for the WTO's failure to achieve comprehensive multilateral trade liberalization in the new 21st century global economy. The solution to the problem must come from institutional reforms that can promote global agreement on achieving the gains from trade.

Two high-level commissions—the Sutherland report in 2004, and the Warwick Commission report in 2007—addressed the future of the World Trade Organization and made proposals for incremental reform. This book goes further; it explains why institutional reform of the WTO is needed at this critical juncture in world history and provides innovative, practical proposals for modernizing the WTO to enable it to respond to the challenges of the twenty-first century. Contributors focus on five critical areas: transparency, decision- and rule-making procedures, internal management structures, participation by non-governmental organizations and civil society, and relationships with regional trade agreements. Co-published with the International Development Research Centre and the Centre for International Governance Innovation

Around the world, populism has weaponized anxieties over globalization and other forms of cultural, social, and economic change. Many populist leaders have succeeded in conflating trade concerns with apprehensions over immigration, thereby creating potent campaigns to overturn existing trade agreements and the multilateral cooperation they embody. In the United States, avowed protectionist Donald Trump set out not only to raise tariffs, but to dismantle the system of global trade embodied in the World Trade Organization. In the UK, the Brexit referendum resulted in that country's withdrawal from the European Union, ending its commitment to trade integration with the continent. Populism and Trade explores the impact of populist regimes on protectionism and the damage they have inflicted on global trade and trade policy institutions. Focusing on the disruption caused by the Trump administration and the Brexit referendum, the book traces the influence of populism on trade policy today. Kent Jones shows how these methods will continue to damage global cooperation--something that is essential when faced with international crises like a deadly pandemic--until the sources of populist anger can be addressed. He argues that economic and institutional reforms, along with better education and adjustment policies, will be necessary to break the populist fever. In an age of global populism, open trade policy has become a victim of anti-globalization and economic nationalism. Populism and Trade traces the impact of these divisive political tactics to explain the fragile nature of global trade institutions and the steps needed to save them.

The Doha Blues investigates the failure of WTO members to conclude the Doha Round of trade negotiations, focusing on the "institutional friction" that has developed since the Uruguay Round. The legacy of GATT traditions, new WTO rules, the expanding scope of the trade liberalization agenda and the expanding WTO membership, have combined to make it extremely difficult for countries to reach consensus. The book concludes with recommendations for improving the environment for trade liberalization.

How ought scholars and students to approach the rapidly expanding and highly multidisciplinary study of international economic law? Academics in the field of international political economy used to take for granted that they worked with the overarching concepts of rules and governance, while legal scholars analyzed treaties and doctrines. However, over the past twenty years formerly disparate fields of study have converged in a complex terrain, where academic researchers and governmental policy analysts use a pluralistic set of theoretical and methodological tools to study the ongoing development of international economic law. This volume argues that the extensive development of international economic law makes it impossible to discuss international political economy and international law as if they were mutually exclusive processes, or even as if they were separate and mutually reinforcing. Rather, we must think of them as a deeply interconnected set of rapidly evolving activities. This is a paradigm shift in which we cease to think about an international system in which politics and law interact, and begin to think about an international system in which politics take place in a legal frame. Froese terms this a shift from politics and law, to the politics of international economic law. This book does for political economy what others have already done for law – introduces political scientists, economists, and other practitioners of IPE, to the potential of engaging with legal theory and method; it will be of great interest to scholars in a range of areas including IPE, global governance, IR and international law.

This report is about a huge contribution to our deepening understanding of what the global economy really means and how it is changing. The report helpfully distinguishes elements of an economy that are tradable and the large set that are non-tradable. Clearly the tradables set is expanding with the support of enabling technology. The report argues that connectivity in the networks that define the evolving architecture of GVCs is important. This Global Value Chain Development Report is the result of intensive and detailed work in assembling and analyzing data on the structure of economies and on how they are linked. It creates a much clearer picture of evolving patterns of independence. It also presents a much clearer picture of comparative advantage. --Publisher description.