Legal Capacity and Developing Country　Performance in the Panel Stage of the WTO　Dispute Settlement System

摘要

Existing literature has yielded some evidence suggesting that developing countries are less likely to file World Trade Organization (WTO) trade disputes or to secure concessions in the consultation stage instead of the panel stage of the dispute settlement process. Furthermore, this 'bias' in the use of the dispute settlement mechanism against developing countries has often been attributed to developing countries' lack of legal capacity, or the financial, human and institutional resources available to analyse, pursue or litigate a dispute. However, much of this literature focuses on the constraining effect of legal capacity in the pre-panel ruling stage of the process. This article extends previous research and uses various alternative measures of legal capacity to more systematically analyse the effect of legal capacity on developing countries' performance during the panel stage of the dispute settlement process. Empirical analysis of WTO disputes filed by developing countries that have ended with a panel ruling between 1980 and 2010 shows that developing countries with greater government efficiency and regulatory quality are more likely to obtain positive panel rulings, although there is little evidence suggesting that legal capacity as measured by the size of a country's delegation in Geneva or its past experience in initiating WTO disputes may enhance its prospect of successfully defending its legal claims in the panel stage of the dispute settlement process. This result reinforces prior findings about the disadvantages developing countries face in the dispute settlement system and underscores the need for developing countries to engage in domestic capacity building in order to enhance their chances of successfully litigating at the WTO.