The WTO: Beyond Club Model

This paper focuses on trends that are changing WTO nature. In my perspective, some key trends such as power redistribution within the WTO, increasingly public opinion resistance against free trade in developed countries, deferent views among WTO members on its purposes and functions and increasing role of NGOs in global governance, are changing the nature of the WTO form club of rich countries to a real global institution. In consequence of the above mentioned processes, hegemonic stability theory and club model that traditionally were used to theoretically explain the institute have lost their explanatory capability.