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Why do states initiate trade disputes under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) or its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO)? Existing studies suggest that democracies should either experience and litigate fewer trade conflicts or at least resolve them more cooperatively. Other works contend that improvements in the trade dispute settlement regime account for the rising number of trade complaints in recent years. This paper provides the first large-scale test of these hypotheses and others, using multivariate regression and exhaustive new data on dispute initiation within all GATT/WTO directed dyads from 1948 through 1998. The evidence contradicts prevailing explanations. It turns out that democracies participate in more, not fewer, GATT/WTO disputes, and they resolve those disputes less cooperatively as well. Moreover, changes in the dispute settlement regime have not had the predicted impact.
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