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Socio-Economic Review Advance Access published online on November 8, 2009
Socio-Economic Review, doi:10.1093/ser/mwp023
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Producing legitimacy at the World Trade Organization: the role of expertise and legal capacity

Joseph A. Conti*

Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

* Correspondence: jconti{at}ssc.wisc.edu

This qualitative study of disputing at the World Trade Organization (WTO) examines how expertise is acquired and maintained over time and how it influences perceptions of legitimacy held by WTO practitioners. The research demonstrates that expertise is derived from individuals' direct experience with disputing. Trade delegations employ or acquire expertise through the development of in-house experts, contracting private legal representation and seeking legal assistance. Institutionalizing expertise acquired by individuals is a primary challenge for building legal capacity and is linked to serial participation, building informal professional relationships and creating economies of scale in expert practitioners. Nonetheless, challenges remain, particularly related to the cost and difficulty of maintaining expertise over time and the role of market power in retaliation. How countries are able to gain expertise underwrites the legitimacy perceptions of practitioners, which emphasizes opportunities to acquire expertise over the persistence of inequalities in legal capacity.

Key Words: law • legalization • governance • international economic order


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