Participation of Developing Countries in the World Trade Organizations' Dispute Settlement System.

The dispute settlement system of the World Trade Organization is designed as to provide equal opportunities to its member states to participate. In reality, participation is not distributed equally. Some member states do not participate at all, amongst which many developing countries. This research is aimed at identifying reasons why some developing countries participate in the system while others do not, focussing on the variables that could explain (non-) participation within the countries, rather than at the level of the DSS itself. The outcome of a logistic regression analysis is that none of the variables researched are significant. However, an independent sample t-test shows that economic growth and financial capacity are likely to lead to participation, as well as a good functioning bureaucratic apparatus. A high level of perceived international political pressure is shown to be likely to give a negative incentive towards participation.