Explaining the WTO Accession of Afghanistan: From the Neo-Liberalist Approach

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.220504.255How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Afghanistan; the WTO; Neoliberalism; Policy

Abstract

The essay aims to explore why Afghanistan has accessed the WTO and the impact of the WTO accession on the country. Afghanistan has finally accessed the WTO in 2016 after long rounds of negotiations, but the impact of the WTO accession on the country remains controversial. The essay uses a case study method. Through the case study of Afghanistan, the essay seeks to have a broader lesson about other countries in the Middle East. The result of the essay reveals that multiple reasons have driven Afghanistan to enter the WTO, while the expansion of the international market and foreign direct investment hold the key. Therefore, the result of the essay partly confirmed the explanatory power of the neo-liberalist approach. Nevertheless, the research result also revealed what the neo-liberalist approach has failed to explain, which is that Afghanistan had achieved limited gains from its WTO accession. In conclusion, the essay deepens our understanding of the mechanism of the WTO as an international organization and the empirical process of Afghanistan’s accession to the WTO. In addition, the essay has proved the applicability of the neo-liberalist theory in the Middle East through the case of Afghanistan and developed the neo-liberalist approach that should be conditioned on the domestic political, economic, and religious reality of the country. Finally, the essay can be useful to policy recommendations to international organizations such as the WTO and the national governments such as Afghanistan to achieve better development. Admittedly, the essay only focused on Afghanistan and only tested the explanatory power of the neo-liberalist theory. Therefore, future studies can look into WTO accession in other countries in the Middle East and explore alternative theories such as realism and constructivism.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Tianyue Wang
AU  - Jiahao Xu
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/06/01
TI  - Explaining the WTO Accession of Afghanistan: From the Neo-Liberalist Approach
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 8th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1409
EP  - 1412
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220504.255
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.220504.255
ID  - Wang2022
ER  -