An Introduction to Utopian and Dystopian Post-WTO Regimes and Environments

This paper described the project and its potential approaches related to a series of workshops held in 2019 around the world at which participants considered a world without the WTO—where it was either abolished or functionally inert. While all participants uniformly believed that neither of those possibilities would be desirable, it was conceded that history has shown that significant geopolitical changes can happen even when totally unexpected, such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fall of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and Brexit. The paper notes that such discussions of a “post-WTO” are necessary: (1) to help keep the current regime alive by showing how difficult and challenging (dystopian) might be the international economic legal order in a post-WTO world; (2) to show in its utopian scenarios, ideas that could be used for future reform of the WTO; (3) and because it was the role of academics to be forward thinking about such very sensitive issues, when governments and international organisations likely would be unable to do so. In addition to discussing the traditional methodologies that could be employed when conducting such analyses, this paper also suggests some general approaches to help scholars undertake such studies.