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Transparency in the WTO SPS and TBT Agreements: The Real Jewel in the Crown by Marianna B. Karttunen Cambridge University Press, 2020
World Trade Review ( IF 2.2 ) Pub Date : 2021-01-19 , DOI: 10.1017/s1474745620000579
Fabian Bohnenberger

In this extraordinary work, Marianna Karttunen explores the crucial role of transparency in theWTO focusing on the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). Based on a detailed assessment of both legal requirements and actual practice, she identifies a range of interrelated transparency mechanisms and reveals how these accomplish several essential functions, including alerting governments and traders to (proposed) regulatory changes, monitoring compliance, facilitating international regulatory cooperation, and resolving trade frictions. By shifting academic attention to seemingly mundane everyday processes such asmanaging notifications and discussing so-called Specific Trade Concerns in theWTO committees, this contribution heralds a broader trend in the trade literature. Partlymotivated by the paralysis of the WTO’s negotiation and dispute settlement functions, a new generation of scholars has recently focused their curiosity (and PhD dissertations) on the organization’s ‘regular work’, which is mainly concerned with implementation and monitoring (Manak, 2019; Dorlach and Mertenskötter, 2020). Overall, Karttunen provides a convincing and innovative, albeit at times more descriptive than analytical, account of transparency in the multilateral trade system. The book is subdivided into three parts: the first part offers a detailed discussion of the legal framework established by the SPS and TBT Agreements. It explains the central function of transparency within this framework, elaborates on an earlier typology of WTO transparency tools (‘decentralised’, ‘centralised’, and ‘collaborative’ transparency, cf. Collins-Williams and Wolfe, 2010), and establishes the link between transparency and international regulatory cooperation. The second and third parts study to what extent the various transparency tools act as ‘substitutes’ for or ‘complement’ to formal dispute settlement under the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU). Part two starts with a data-driven explanation of what Karttunen labels the ‘Disputing Pyramid’, with the many notifications that members submit to the WTO forming the pyramid’s base and the rare Appellate Body reports sitting at the top. Showing how transparency can help resolve disagreements among members before these escalate into formal disputes, part two focuses on the bottom half of this pyramid. Part three, in turn, discusses the upper portion, or transparency as a complement to dispute settlement, explaining how committee debates feed into formal disputes and assist members in collecting the necessary information for them. The author is very careful in acknowledging some limitations of her analysis. The key one is that this account is limited to the SPS and TBT areas; it draws no comparisons to other WTO areas or international organizations, and neither does it incorporate or explicitly address the broader scholarship on transparency in (global) governance. This unfortunately limits the broader appeal of the study, which otherwise offers much new and fascinating empirical detail. By radically prioritizing analytical depth over breadth, the account also remains relatively indifferent to the broader struggle over transparency that has defined the WTO since its creation – members’ failure to comply fully with their notification obligations is a ‘historical constant’ (VanGrasstek, 2013, 273). The book thus provides an admirably thorough account of notifications, committee debate and dispute settlement over time and for different groups of developing and developed WTO members. But we learn little

中文翻译:

WTO SPS 和 TBT 协议的透明度:王冠上的真正宝石 Marianna B. Karttunen 剑桥大学出版社,2020 年

在这项非凡的工作中,Marianna Karttunen 探讨了透明度在 WTO 中的关键作用,重点关注《实施卫生和植物检疫措施协议》(SPS)和《技术性贸易壁垒协议》(TBT)。基于对法律要求和实际实践的详细评估,她确定了一系列相互关联的透明度机制,并揭示了这些机制如何完成多项基本功能,包括提醒政府和贸易商注意(拟议的)监管变化、监控合规性、促进国际监管合作、并化解贸易摩擦。通过将学术注意力转移到看似平凡的日常流程,例如管理通知和在 WTO 委员会讨论所谓的特定贸易问题,这一贡献预示着贸易文献中的更广泛趋势。由于 WTO 谈判和争端解决功能的瘫痪,新一代学者最近将他们的好奇心(和博士论文)集中在该组织的“常规工作”上,该工作主要关注实施和监督(Manak,2019;Dorlach和 Mertenskötter,2020 年)。总体而言,Karttunen 提供了一个令人信服和创新的多边贸易体系透明度说明,尽管有时更具描述性而非分析性。本书分为三个部分:第一部分详细讨论了 SPS 和 TBT 协议所建立的法律框架。它解释了该框架内透明度的核心功能,详细阐述了 WTO 透明度工具的早期类型(“分散式”、“集中式”和“协作式”透明度,参见 Collins-Williams 和 Wolfe,2010 年),并建立了透明度与国际监管合作之间的联系。第二部分和第三部分研究了各种透明度工具在多大程度上充当了《争端解决谅解》(DSU)下正式争端解决的“替代”或“补充”。第二部分从数据驱动的解释开始,解释了 Karttunen 将什么称为“争议金字塔”,成员向 WTO 提交的许多通知构成了金字塔的底部,而罕见的上诉机构报告位于顶部。第二部分展示了透明度如何有助于在成员之间的分歧升级为正式争议之前解决分歧,第二部分侧重于这个金字塔的下半部分。第三部分反过来讨论了作为争端解决补充的上层部分或透明度,解释了委员会辩论如何融入正式争端并帮助成员为他们收集必要的信息。作者非常谨慎地承认她的分析存在一些局限性。关键是这个账号仅限于SPS和TBT领域;它没有与其他 WTO 领域或国际组织进行比较,也没有纳入或明确解决关于(全球)治理透明度的更广泛学术研究。不幸的是,这限制了该研究的更广泛吸引力,否则它提供了许多新的和引人入胜的经验细节。通过从根本上优先考虑分析深度而不是广度,该账户对自 WTO 成立以来就定义了透明度的更广泛的斗争也相对漠不关心——成员未能完全遵守其通知义务是一个“历史常数”(VanGrasstek,2013 年,273)。因此,这本书为不同的发展中和发达的 WTO 成员群体提供了关于通知、委员会辩论和争端解决的令人钦佩的详尽描述。但我们学的很少
更新日期:2021-01-19
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