DEBESH CHAKRABORTY, “The Impact of ASEAN+3 Trade Agreements on the South Asian Economy: An Analysis in GTAP

Underlying the emergence of a global administrative law is the recognition of the fact that increased global interdependence has led to a situation where decision making has moved beyond national boundaries. This research project is an effort to view diverse international governance structures from an administrative law perspective so as to identify some patterns of commonality and connection sufficiently deep and far-reaching as to constitute an embryonic field of global administrative law, which would enable the international community to deal with such accountability concerns. It examines the functioning of the World Trade Organization (WTO) from a Global Administrative Law (GAL) perspective. The question addressed here is that how has the WTO as an institution fared at the democracy deficit allegations which have been levied against various international organizations including the WTO? The conclusion to this is that one way to deal with the democracy deficit concerns could be the development of an all encompassing GAL regime. The papers have looked at the WTO from a GAL perspective. It started with reviewing the democracy deficit concerns of the trading regime from the GATT days. This historical account was followed by an academic debate which gave a brief account of the arguments that have been used for and against the opening up of the WTO. After the theoretical debate was in place, the paper proceeded on with reviewing the WTO dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO in light of the arguments used in the legitimacy debate and concluded that the dispute settlement mechanism has maintained a fine balance between the two opposing schools of thought.