Overcoming the Development Deficit of Article XXIV: Promoting Equality through North-South RTAs

Gammage Clair ()
Additional contact information
Gammage Clair: Lecturer of Law, University of Bristol School of Law, U.K.

The Law and Development Review, 2016, vol. 9, issue 1, 69-93

Abstract: Regionalism has been conceptualised as a development strategy for integrating developing countries into the global economy, and there has been an increase in the number of North-South regional trade agreements (RTAs) being negotiated among WTO Members. Notified under Article XXIV GATT 1994, members of North-South RTAs must liberalize substantially all trade on a reciprocal basis, within a reasonable period of time, irrespective of their development status. Challenging the assumptions on which North-South regionalism rests, this article submits that Article XXIV has created a regulatory framework that sustains a monocultural conception of development which is synonymous with economic growth. Rejecting the economic model, this article argues that development should be understood as a multidimensional process, with an emphasis on equality of opportunities for all countries. Through a deconstruction of the textual interpretation of Article XXIV, and by analysing the practical application of this provision in the EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements, the gradual erosion of development from the process of trade liberalisation will be revealed. This article argues that the “rationalizing spell” of legal formalism must be broken in order to reimagine the legal framework, so that a concept of development, grounded in equality, is facilitated by the multilateral trading system.

Keywords: north-south FTAs; regionalism; development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/ldr-2015-0023 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:lawdev:v:9:y:2016:i:1:p:69-93:n:3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/ldr/html

DOI: 10.1515/ldr-2015-0023

Access Statistics for this article

The Law and Development Review is currently edited by Yong-Shik Lee

More articles in The Law and Development Review from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().