The World Trade Organization (WTO) plays an enormous role as a global trade regulator that contributes to developing and strengthening the bonds between countries through facilitating mutually beneficial partnerships aimed for selling and buying goods and services. Unfortunately, despite WTO positions itself as a global organization that claims to be open for all, does not seem to represent each country’s interests equally. The particular issue is economic dispute settling mechanism that WTO considers to be functioning flawlessly but in fact generates no profit for developing countries that have only a nominal access to it. That brings up an issue of underrepresentation of such countries in the system of WTO dispute settlement. There is a clear need for studying the question of whether and how the situation could be amended. This problem has been given attention in the number of scholarly researches, which can be a ground for a systematic review. Such method is thought to allow testing a following hypothesis: Saudi Arabia can influence other countries in WTO to address the problem of developing countries’ access to the WTO dispute settlement mechanisms.
Literature Review
In his article, Najah Hassan Salamah (2016) has reviewed the state of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in the WTO and whether the decision to join the organization was right for the economy of the state. The study uses quantitative approach to measure the support of private companies within the country for membership in WTO. The article pays a great deal of attention towards outlining the main mechanisms and principles Saudi Arabia can utilize to effectively use the potential WTO possesses to enhance KSA global trade perspectives. From the point of view of this research the study performed by Salamah provides a valuable insight into the place of Saudi Arabia in WTO. The possible downside of this research is the methodology design that seems to incorporate a certain bias connected to the self-reported data that is used as a main data source, on the basis of which all the assumptions are made.
Another valuable research that will possibly be used for the current study is a comprehensive work performed by Kristin Bohl. Bohl (2009) presents an extensive overview of WTO as an international organization that plays the role of a dispute settler. He vividly underlines the problem of underrepresentation of developing countries as one the main problems that harms the WTO’s prestige and its ability or desire to influence trade relationships globally. He builds a solid case uncovering statistical evidence and discussing implications for trade in developing countries. One of the main problems of such state of affairs Bohl (2009) names finding facts, absence of adequate connection between private business and governments, and a lack of political will that obstructs proliferation of the spread of healthy trading relationships between countries.
The above-mentioned paper seems to present the issues using the author’s work experience and scientific knowledge as a ground for conclusions. Apart from WTO documents and other research that proves his point of view the research does not seem to offer many other opinions on the matter. However, Bohl (2009) has conducted a solid research into the foreign issues of developing countries and the problems they encounter in connection with mechanisms of economic dispute settlement in the setting of WTO. His research could become a valuable addition to the current research, as it presents statistical and empirical data on participation of developing countries in WTO dispute settlement. Additionally, it provides an analysis of major WTO program documents that regulate the dispute settlement issues.
In his research, Bohl (2009) mentions that there is a need to review current mechanisms of influence that are available within the WTO organization for alleviation of the issue of underrepresentation of developing countries in dispute settlement programs. The current research could provide such a review. Also he notes that the issue needs to be influenced from within and be advocated for by countries whose weight in the organization is enough to affect other countries policy decisions or at least draw the attention of other members to this problem. It could be argued in the current paper that Saudi Arabia is capable of doing that. Thus, the research would address the gap of knowledge on methods of influencing opinions within WTO to address the issue of inaccessibility of dispute settling services to developing countries.
Hypothesis
The present study is aimed to research into the Saudi Arabia as an international agent whose influence on the international arena seems to grow with each passing year. Since KSA represents a growing market for high quality products that it might sell or purchase from other countries that are not that developed, there is a need for steady partnerships and trusty mechanisms that would allow KSA trade with other nations and have WTO protection working for both developing countries and Saudi Arabia (Salamah, 2016). In the reviewed literature, researchers raise a problem of poor functioning of WTO dispute settling programs which makes developing countries vulnerable.
Vulnerability of trade partners in its turn projects additional risks on KSA (Salamah, 2016). Since the voice of these countries in the WTO is rather inaudible as compared to the US or EU countries, there is a need of an advocate with a strong economy and promising agenda that will include strengthening themselves and their trade partners on the international arena. Such advocacy seems to be a wise proactive step that build long-term steady relationships with foreign counterparts and, provided the initiative would be successful, KSA would gain additional political points. Due to those assumptions and literature review a hypothesis for the current study could be the following: Saudi Arabia can influence other countries in WTO to address the problem of developing countries’ access to the WTO dispute settlement mechanisms in order to gain stabile trade partners and political influence.
Methodology
The research will use quantitative methods to identify specific markers in the literature that will allow to answer the question of whether KSA could advocate for change in the policies of WTO. Data collection tools will include Google Scholar search engine and university library catalogue. The sample will include quantitative, qualitative, meta-analysis, and literature reviews published in scholarly journals for the last ten years. The size of the sample will range from 15 to 30 sources, depending on the amount of literature addressing or touching the topic that will be available. The study will specifically search for methods and historical cases mentioned or studied in the sample sources that will allow to confirm the above mentioned hypothesis. The tools for analysis tools may include descriptive statistics such as mean and mode values.
Timetable and Available Resources
The research is projected to occupy a span of 4 weeks. The first week will be allocated to finding the necessary literary sources in the university library and in Google Scholar. On the second week, the sources will be scrupulously studied and specific citations will be marked for use in the body of the paper. On the third week, quantitative analysis tools such as descriptive statistics will be used to analyze data. The fourth week will be occupied with drawing discussion and conclusion sections together with formatting the final research paper. Available resources include university library, and Google Scholar data base of scientific papers.
Conclusion
This study could help address the gap in the scientific literature that is devoted to analyzing the role of KSA as a mediator in international relations in organizations such as WTO. It is also a paramount task to research into problems of developing countries as Saudi Arabia is close to Egypt and Sudan, India, which could be perspective partners in trade. Strengthening economic and political ties to developing countries could produce a substantial incentive for local businesses to produce goods and services to export. This will provide a boost to the country’s economy by diversifying it. Learning of existing and newly emerged methods that could be used by KSA to gain influence on international scale will contribute to forming positive image of Saudi Arabia in the WTO and in the world. Implementing the diplomatic experience of other nations could be potentially beneficial for gaining political influence both in domestic affairs and foreign ones. Overall, the project could provide a scientific basis for further study of foreign trade policy of KSA, economic relations, and WTO membership.
References
Bohl, K. (2009). Problems of developing country access to WTO dispute settlement. Chicago-Kent Journal of International and Comparative Law, 9(1), 131-197.
Salamah, N. H. (2016). The impact of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) on local marketing of national products. International Journal of Business & Economic Development, 4(3), 64-75.