International bureaucrats under transparency: The case of the WTO TRIPS Council
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11558_2025_Article_9606.pdf
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1.8 MB
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226a24b59c48fa3c8675e1a0c1ae16eb
Author(s)
Park, Sojun
Kim, Minju
Date Issued
November 11, 2025
Journal
The Review of International Organizations
Publisher
Springer US
Citation
Park, S., Kim, M. International bureaucrats under transparency: The case of the WTO TRIPS Council. Rev Int Organ (2025).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
How does transparency affect the behavior of international bureaucrats tasked with facilitating negotiations? Existing theories offer opposing expectations—greater transparency might induce international bureaucrats to engage more with contentious issues that matter to the public or lead them to avoid those issues whenever possible. We assess these competing perspectives by analyzing the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s 2002 document de-restriction reform that enhanced transparency to the public. Specifically, we examine how prompt public disclosure of documents shapes the way the WTO Secretariat writes reports about the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Using network statistics to estimate the state preference distributions on key topics, we find that, after the reform, the WTO Secretariat is more likely to issue reports on polarized topics in negotiations, using accountability-enhancing words. Our analysis at the country-year level shows that the reform led to greater national newspaper coverage of the WTO TRIPS, which in turn raised public awareness. The results suggest that transparency could empower international bureaucrats to tackle divisive issues in times of member-state gridlock.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for International Studies
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-025-09606-2
