Bulletin n. 2/2016
December 2016
INDICE
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
  • Kristen Hopewell
    Invisible Barricades: Civil Society and the Discourse of the WTO
    in Globalizations , Volume 14, Issue 1 ,  2017 ,  51-65
    Concerns about the legitimacy and accountability of international institutions have prompted a sizable literature on the potential of civil society to help democratize global economic governance. Attention has primarily focused on the institutional factors impacting civil society participation in global governance. In this article, however, I point to the existence of yet more fundamental barriers operating at the level of discourse. I use critical discourse analysis (CDA) to analyze the discourse of the World Trade Organization (WTO), focusing on a key text in which it attempts to engage directly with the concerns of civil society, supported by a broad range of additional data sources, including documentary materials, interviews, and observation. Drawing on the case of the WTO, I argue that the discourse of global governance institutions can itself act as an ‘invisible barricade’, preventing the meaningful inclusion of civil society in policy debates and deliberations.
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