ABSTRACT
For the past two decades three major international economic institutions have gone through difficult times. Two of them, the IMF and the WB, succeeded in triggering controversies for considerable periods of time. The third institution, the GATT, in 1995 renamed the WTO, was already in crisis long before its crisis-stricken meeting in Seattle in December 1999. This attracted the attention of a larger public only after numerous interest groups took to the streets of Seattle to express their discontent with the WTO’s policies, protests that were widely covered by the mass media. There is a pressing need to explore what went wrong with these international institutions. This article will analyze problematic issues confronted by GATT, and currently by the WTO.
