Recasting UNCITRAL Working Group III

Abstract

Who participates in international economic lawmaking, and who should participate? What roles are appropriate for private industry or private legal practitioners, or for academics or civil society, and what roles are reserved for states? The composition of international economic lawmaking bodies is often relatively fluid, not fixed as it appears from the outside. There are both natural fluctuations and orchestrated shifts in participation—states and other actors can strategically shape who participates, and this fluidity means questions about participation emerge regularly. We examine how these questions played out in one international economic lawmaking body—the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Working Group III—as it transformed between 2017 and 2020. During these years, reform-minded states and others recast the Working Group by pushing private arbitral practitioners out and pulling state officials in. We use large-N attendance data, ethnographic observation, and interviews with participants to illustrate the decision to recast, the new cast of officials, and the various responses to recasting from the old cast of practitioners. We document how the physical presence of practitioners changed, then chronicle how arbitral experience changed in value, and how practitioners’ views on their role diverged.