In the present text I assess to what extent the existing WTO institutional design is appropriate for successful negotiations in the Doha Round, characterized by a structural disagreement between the established and the raising powers. I examine the institutional framework of the WTO from the perspective of quality of information transmission, i.e. I ask whether the institutional setup of the WTO effectively enables transmission of all the information that the actors need for successful negotiations. I put forward an argument that the purely intergovernmental design of the WTO is functionally inappropriate in a situation in which much of what is going on in the trade negotiations has potentially dramatic distributive consequences across societal groups within the negotiating states. To demonstrate this I develop and test a hypothesis about the WTO institutional setup (IV) and the quality and amount of information available to the negotiating parts about each other’s domestic political constraints (DV). In particular, I hypothesize that the amount and quality of the available information is directly related to the degree of directness of representation of interests at the international level, so that the information necessary for the bargaining counterparts becomes less credible as the negotiators themselves represent the given set of interests less directly (e.g. a government official represents the interests of the incumbent parliamentary opposition less directly than an opposition representative would). I test this hypothesis by examination of the Doha negotiation across different issue areas and across levels of negotiations. Validity of the causal statement is further assessed through an experiment simulating (with human subjects) the bargaining process.
