Legitimacy of Global Economic Governance and Effectiveness of the World Trade Organization: An Empirical Investigation of 36 OECD and EU Member States

Abstract

The aim of this research is to examine the legitimacy of global economic governance and clarify to what extent the convergence of interests among state actors and non-state actors enhances the effectiveness of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The strengthened legitimacy of global economic governance and optimal effectiveness of the actions, operations and efforts of non-state actors ensure cooperation, sustainable development and economic stability. Within the context of state and non-state interactions, the striking role of transnational networks provides that the dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) can be handled in the pre-consultations and pre-mediations stages more appropriately. The research questions can be listed as follows: 1) Has global economic governance a significant influence on the DSM which comprises the consensus-building platforms and structured-dialogue encouragement in pre-consultations and pre-mediations stages of DSM that is dealt by the WTO? 2) Have the incline of multilateral trade system and trade collaborations a significant impact on the legitimacy of global economic governance and effectiveness of the WTO? 3) Do the WTO law and global economic governance have consistency and conformity with the rules and regulations of other international organizations; such as, the International Labor Organization, World Bank and so forth? In general, the research is in a tight manner bound on the criteria and factors of the Comparative Political Data Set 1990-2013 (36 OECD and EU Member States) which was prepared by Klaus Armingeon. Paradigmatically, positivism was applied as a scientific research method and SPSS 22 Software was used for comparative technical analyses.

Keywords: Global economic governance, legitimacy, effectiveness, WTO law, DSM

JEL Classification: B17, B27, F1, F01, F02, G3