From a political science paper by Fouad Pervez:
What explains the variation in timing of WTO disputes over antidumping duties? Without a clear domestic opposition group, countries have incentives to bring up disputes as quickly as possible so as to limit the harm to their domestic industries subject to these duties. However, the average amount of time between duty imposition and WTO dispute initiation is quite large: almost 6 years, with a standard deviation of nearly 6 years. I argue that countries time their disputes around elections of executives so as to gain political support from large domestic industries, especially countries where trade is a more salient political subject. Using data on all WTO disputes dealing with antidumping duties, I test this hypothesis with a discrete time hazard model and find evidence that countries are more likely to bring up a dispute the closer they get to elections.
If this is right, the Rules Division of the WTO Secretariat can structure its temporary hiring around the election seasons of major trading countries.
