Governing and Democratizing Globalization. A Plan for the WTO's Reform
by Lucio Levi
The globalisation process has eroded state sovereignty, producing a contradiction between market and civil society dynamics (that tend to become global) and resistance from nation-states (that remain national). In other words, markets have gained the upper hand over politics. Two opposing projects are confronting with each other in the challenge to govern globalisation: the federalist, which advocates the globalisation of political power and democracy, and the nationalist that pursues the return to the nation-states.
The World Trade Organization (WTO), established in 1995 to liberalise world trade, should be made compatible and consistent with the principles of equitable and sustainable development, addressing issues such as labour rights, consumer, health and environmental protection, tax evasion and elusion. Constitutionalising and democratising the WTO is the way to transform this organisation into the building block of a new global architecture. The judiciary body, established to solve trade disputes, is the first step in a process leading to the introduction of global taxes to finance global public goods and towards creating an Economic Security Council and a Parliamentary Assembly.
The EU is an institution that governs an international economy and can act as a model and engine of the WTO’s reform, endowing it with the powers to govern globalization and parliamentary institutions to enable citizens to exercise parliamentary control on global market.
Link to the research paper Governing Globalization and the Role of the World Trade Oragization by Lucio Levi
www.csfederalismo.it/.../research.../1251-governing-globalizationand-the- role-of-the-world-trade-organization