The Emergence of Global Administrative Law and International Institutions

Abstract

nderlying 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 situation where the presence of transnational governance structures is being increasingly felt throughout the globe has resulted in accountability concerns being expressed against such international institutions and herein lies the importance of the Global Administrative Law (GAL) Research Project at the New York School of Law. 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.

The present paper is a small contribution to the same. It examines the functioning of the World Trade Organization (WTO) from a GAL perspective. The question asked 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 reached here is that one way to deal with the democracy deficit concerns could be the development of an all encompassing GAL regime.