ABSTRACT

This chapter seeks to complement the diagnostic analysis of the previous empirical chapters with positive prescriptions for WTO institutional reform. It discusses alternative modes of interest representation in global governance, and suggests that the strengthening of more direct modes of interest representation would help deal with some of the problems of the WTO. It specifically discusses the representation of parliamentary assemblies and of non-state actors, both businesses and civil society organizations. Furthermore, the chapter takes the core argument of the book, developed with reference to international organizations and the WTO, and links it to the comparative politics literature on constitutional engineering and various systems of interest representation. I argue theoretically that the dysfunctions of the inter-governmental modes of representation in the WTO and other international organizations are analogous to problems faced by majoritarian (as opposed to proportional) electoral systems in domestic politics when political polarization is high.