The WTO and the Anti-Corruption Movement

This article explores the role of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in promoting good governance while placing WTO within the larger framework of the ongoing global anti-corruption movement. Governmental policies aimed at fighting corruption are part of the good governance criteria set forth by the World Bank and other donor agencies. An important element of good governance is transparency, which has also been one of the pillars of the multilateral trading system. This article argues that from the perspective of the post-Cold War anti-corruption movement, the WTO is an important institution because it provides a comparatively successful forum for the expression and development of good governance values such as transparency. The article first reviews the transparency obligations of the WTO agreements. Second, it reviews the post-cold war anti-corruption movement and its evoluion, and, finally, contrasts WTO's efforts in promoting transparency to the more direct approaches in combatting corruption undertaken by the World Bank