ABSTRACT
Reports of the death of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are exaggerated. Even with the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations in suspended animation since 2011, the importance of the WTO to the daily life of the trading system is undiminished. Formal rounds of negotiations and resort to the dispute settlement system are the traditional ways of thinking about the role of the WTO, but the third dimension of ongoing WTO work, which can be broadly grouped as transparency and accountability mechanisms, may be the most important. Some think transparency is the antechamber to dispute settlement; I think dispute settlement, useful for managing a limited range of conflict, is what happens when transparency and accountability mechanisms fail. Drafting a new agreement and entertaining legal arguments about what such an agreement might mean—both forms of codification—are less important in this constructivist interpretation of social life than the interaction structured by the agreement. The focus of this chapter, therefore, is on how Members use the WTO agreements to make the trading system a living thing. Sunshine is the foundation.
