From the GATT Gospel to Democratic Global Governance

The chapter re-examines the history of legitimation contests around the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Descriptively, it shows how environmentalists and trade unions successfully challenged the traditional ‘GATT gospel’ in the early 1990s, with public protests ensuring that so-called ‘non-trade values’ became major reference points in the legitimation contest. The GATT and WTO eventually delegated labour standards to the International Labour Organization, awarded environmental values quasi-constitutional status, and turned democracy into a core norm around which to rebuild legitimacy after the Seattle protests. Analytically, the chapter confirms the relevance of politicization: protests in the wake of enhanced international authority provoked a recalibration of the legitimation discourse. At the same time, the chapter reveals how the post-Seattle decision to rebuild legitimacy around the notion of ‘democracy’ constrains the options the WTO faces in answering the most recent challenges to its legitimacy.