International economic law (IEL) is influenced by diverse theoretical approaches. This article emphasizes that international economic activity is a social phenomenon and international trade should also be conceived as a specific type of social interaction. The scarcity of sociological analysis...

This Article critiques the rational-institutional analysis of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that Gregory Shaffer and Joel Trachtman present, and proposes an alternative “sociological” framework. The Article notes that rationalism, although a powerful heuristic of the WTO’s operation,...

Traditional theories suggest that developing countries lack influence in the trade regime. In this text, Jane Ford uses a social theory or constructivist approach to show that developing countries played a critical role in strengthening multilateralism in the World Trade Organization