Open Plurilateral Agreements, International Regulatory Cooperation and the WTO

• Published in: Global policy 2019-09, Vol.10 (3), p.297-312
• Main Authors: Hoekman, Bernard, Sabel, Charles
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cooperation; Developing countries; Environmental regulations; International cooperation; International trade; LDCs; Product safety; Social conditions; Social conditions & trends; Sovereignty; Trade agreements
• ISSN: 1758-5880; 1758-5899
• DOI: 10.1111/1758-5899.12694

Sustained high growth in many developing countries (‘the rise of the rest’) combined with long‐standing World Trade Organization (WTO) working practices hamper the ability of the WTO to perform its routine functions and paralyze efforts to adapt to new circumstances. For want of an alternative, preferential trade agreements have taken up some of the slack in addressing differences in domestic regulation of product safety, environmental and social conditions, but these are exclusionary and inefficient from a global perspective. In this article, we argue that a new type of agreement based on open plurilateral cooperation offers better prospects for groups of countries to explore and develop their potential common interests on regulatory matters, while safeguarding core aspects of their national regulatory sovereignty and increasing the possibility of regenerating the WTO from within. By embracing OPAs the WTO would reduce the dangers of fragmentation from within and the risks of creating, at the margins of the global trade order, ad hoc, patchwork—and therefore typically fragile—regimes to deal with important collective action problems.