The importance of the institutional dimensions to international trade law over the last decades is brought to light in this volume of previously published articles. The collection focuses on the World Trade Organization (WTO), the most important institution in international trade, and includes a selection of key contributions to the field. The approach is multi-disciplinary, encompassing mostly law, but also political science and economics, and the issues addressed are significant and diverse: the overall legitimacy and effectiveness of the WTO, the relationship between legal and judicial branches of the WTO, the path to membership in the organization, the WTO's institutional complex of councils, committees and panels, the role of the WTO secretariat, and the relationship between the WTO and regional trade frameworks. The combined strengths of the articles in the collection, which reveals a dynamic, multi-layered and complex institutional structure, make this volume of special importance to students and practitioners of international trade or international relations.

This book shows how the current reform in investment regulation is part of a broader attempt to transform the international economic order. Countries in the North and South are currently rethinking how economic order should be constituted in order to advance their national interests and preferred economic orientation. While some countries in the North seek to create alternative institutional spaces in order to promote neoliberal policies more effectively, some countries in the South are increasingly skeptical of this version of economic order and are experimenting with alternative versions of legal ordering that do not always sit well with mainstream versions promoted by the North. While we recognize that there are differences in approaches to the investment regimes proposed by countries in the South, we identify commonalities that could function as the founding pillars of an alternative economic order.