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.