Unseen and Everyday: International Secretariats Under the Spotlight

In “Who Guards the ‘Guardians of the System’? The Role of the Secretariat in WTO Dispute Settlement,” Joost Pauwelyn and Krzysztof Pelc make a novel and compelling contribution to our understanding of the secretariat of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Firmly grounded in principal-agent theory, their analysis nonetheless resonates with—and thereby suggests some advantages in pursuing—other, complementary approaches that probe the complex inner lives of the secretariats of international organizations. Two central themes in the article, one explicit and the other implicit, provide especially useful entry points for comparison and linkages with these other approaches. In exploring these themes, this Essay aims to build on Pauwelyn and Pelc's insightful work to encourage more critical engagement with the governance dynamics and effects of international secretariats.