The World Trade Organization (WTO) has been the target of criticism -- from both scholars and social movements -- for establishing and enforcing free trade rules that favor powerful economies over weaker ones. But there is little available research on factors that affect WTO decisions. Almost no empirical work has attempted to test claims that the WTO's dispute resolution mechanism is biased in favor of the most powerful countries. The Dispute Settlement Understanding, one major result of the Uruguay Round of negotiations that established the WTO, provides a mechanism for countries to litigate when they believe their rights under the terms of the WTO agreements have been violated. Over 300 disputes have been initiated to date, and the WTO maintains an online database with extensive details on each case. This dissertation uses this unique database to examine various kinds of outcomes of the dispute resolution process: disputes that conclude through litigation, disputes that end amicably in a formal mutually agreed solution, and disputes that are inactive, withdrawn, or otherwise abandoned. The analysis focuses not just on winners and losers in formal WTO decisions, but also on the more ambiguous category of cases that are dropped -- often after protracted negotiation -- without any formal resolution. The study will use event history techniques to analyze an expanded data set of all WTO cases initiated between January 1, 1995 and December 31, 2003 (the entire case history of the WTO dispute settlement process to date). The findings of this updated model will be supplemented and expanded upon with twenty interviews with well-placed relevant actors involved in a small set of exemplary cases. The findings will address the equity of WTO practices and legal processes, which has potential broader implications for both scholars and activists. It will contribute to on- going debates in globalization, world systems, and the sociology of international law about the structure of global governance, the role of the nation-state therein, and the nature of power in international institutions.
