Consensus Decision-Making and Democratic Discourse in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1947 and World Trade Organisation

Abstract

This paper provides a genealogy of consensus decision-making and democratic discourse in the multilateral trade regime. It argues that the contemporary link between the World Trade Organisation’s consensus procedure and ideas of ‘international democracy’ has its roots in a struggle that took place over the international economic order in the 1960s and 1970s.