Democracy and Accession to GATT/WTO

In this paper we argue that the level of democracy of an applicant country affects the time it takes to gain General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO) accession. An extensive empirical search suggests that the GATT/WTO accession duration is likely to be shorter for an applicant whose political regime is more democratic. Meanwhile, countries that initiated applications before 1995 took longer to accede to GATT than those that initiated applications after 1995 to accede to the WTO. The GATT/WTO accession is shortened if the applicant country's economy is large. Such findings are robust to the choice of different econometric methods, data sets and model specifications.