ABSTRACT
While the democracy frame had emerged earlier, it gained significant prominence in the Seattle protests. The chapter shows how, in the wake of the protests, the WTO consciously adopted it and successfully re-defined its core content to match the organisation’s practices. Even as the centrality of the democratic frame decreased in recent years, its addition after Seattle proved consequential. Among other things, basing its democratic credentials on the consensus norm inhibits a growing WTO with over 160 members from weakening the consensus principle in the face of a gridlocked Doha Round.
