Johns & Pelc: Fear of Crowds in WTO Disputes: Why Don't More Countries Participate?

Leslie Johns (Univ. of California, Los Angeles - Political Science) & Krzysztof Pelc (McGill Univ. - Political Science) have posted Fear of Crowds in WTO Disputes: Why Don't More Countries Participate? Here's the abstract:

WTO members that are affected by a trade dispute can join litigation as a third party and gain access to otherwise private negotiations. Participation has a negligible cost. Yet states rarely join cases as third parties, even when they have a material interest at stake. We construct a formal model of strategic third party participation in the WTO that shows that third parties increase the probability of litigation. This creates strategic interdependence: as more states become third parties, the benefit of participation decreases and each state becomes less likely to join. We test our theoretical model by examining each country's decision to participate or not in every WTO dispute since 1995. The findings offer strong support for our model: states shy away from joining when it's too crowded.