International Trade Law and Domestic Policy: Canada, the United States, and the Wto

Critics of the World Trade Organization argue that its binding dispute settlement process imposes a neoliberal agenda on its member states with little to no input from their citizenry or governments. If this is the case, why would any nation agree to participate?

In International Trade Law and Domestic Policy, Jacqueline Krikorian explores this question by examining the impact of the WTO's dispute settlement mechanism on domestic policies in the United States and Canada. She demonstrates that the WTO's ability to influence domestic arrangements has been constrained by three factors: judicial deference, institutional arrangements, and strategic decision making by political elites in Ottawa and Washington.

In this groundbreaking assessment of whether supranational courts are now setting the legislative agenda of sovereign nations, Krikorian brings the insights of law and politics scholarship to bear on a subject matter traditionally addressed by international relations scholars. By doing so, she shows that the classic division between these two fields of study in the discipline of political science, though suitable in the postwar era, is outdated in the context of a globalised world.