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International organizations climbing on a ladder of public involvement – comparative study of the WB and WTO

Civil Society
Institutions
Political Participation
Public Policy
WTO
Qualitative
World Bank
NGOs
Jan Dostál
Charles University
Jan Dostál
Charles University

Abstract

The issue of public involvement in international economic organizations has not been quite in the forefront of the scholarly attention. Despite the multiple crises they have faced and the fact, that a lot of attention has been paid to the issue of legitimacy of IOs and to the “transnational turn of global governance,” a gap still exists in terms of explaining differences in specific cases of IOs and their various approaches to involving public, especially in connection with new online platforms. This article brings the evidence from two specific cases of IOs, the World Bank Group (WBG) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the instruments they have chosen for letting public partake in its activities and also their practical usage. It argues that the need for implementation of the IO policies on the ground drives its approach towards involving non-state actors and partly also participation of these actors. These two cases have been chosen as a most likely and a least likely case among the multilateral economic institutions, which are the focus here as one of the primary critiques of the legitimacy debate after the global economic crises and also because they could follow the example of the regional economic institutions, respectively European Union, as a “pioneer” in terms of openness. To examine this issue, the paper employs a comparative case study of procedures, tools and means of public involvement used by the WBG and the WTO and their development in the last 10 years, since 2012 until now, as most of the social media became widely used. The effect of the new platforms also meant a significant change for the IOs and their relationship to public, which this piece also tries to uncover more. In trying to achieve these goals, the paper gives a detailed account of the existing rules, official documents, provisions, charters and guidelines and the contours it gives for the public to be engaged in shaping their policies, including the access it gives to non-governmental actors. It also looks on the transparency measures and policies, the principles of access to information and its general availability, involving also the inquiry into usage of various communication channels. This paper suggests that there are different levels of how much the public could be involved, distinctive “rungs” on a “ladder” of public engagement in IOs in general, similar to one proposed by Arnstein on a (sub)national level. As it is shown specifically, the WBG incorporate instruments like official information requests, public consultations and grievance mechanisms in its decision-making processes and uses it mainly when the issue contains a local impact, on the other hand an embedded culture of secrecy could characterize the WTO and its internal functioning and also its relations with external actors. Therefore, based on the comparison of the two cases, we can link the degree of public involvement to the need of implementation of the IO policies and the amount local activities of the IO.