Advancing Economic Development Through Soft Law: Governance by Indicators at the WTO

This article argues that, similar to the World Bank and other global economic affairs institutions, the time has come for the World Trade Organization (WTO) to devise governance indicators to advance economic development across the full WTO spectrum. This would change the topography of global trade governance in such a way that it would shift the responsibility on Members to design trade policies that can enable them reap more benefits from trade, as well as to adopt truly inclusive trade policies. Not only could this help silence the serious criticism, particularly from the developed world, that has called into question the role of trade as a tool for advancing development, but it would also be consistent with the treaty-based development goals that are enshrined in the WTO treaty. In parallel, through the use of indicators, the WTO would be able to address the negative effects of automation and disruptive technologies, by providing a measurement of the extent to which such externalities are offsetting the benefits that should otherwise be attributed to trade liberalization. The WTO has already given signals of its openness to create indicators and that its Secretariat counts with the technical capacity to build complex soft law mechanisms even if the necessary data to build the same implies stepping out of the WTO system.