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eBook details

• Title: Slouching Towards Australian Public Libraries: The WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services.
• Author : Australian Academic & Research Libraries
• Release Date : January 01, 2005
• Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 238 KB

Description

The extensive reach of the liberalisation agenda of the world's primary multilateral trade institution, the World Trade Organization (hereafter WTO) combined with the rapid global proliferation of free trade agreements is contributing to the transformation of the Westphalian notion of state sovereignty and political organisation in liberal democratic states. Many of the WTO trade agreements that member states such as Australia commit to domestically have significant implications for Western liberal democracies whose political organisation have at their genesis the ballot box. At their core, these trade agreements attenuate the capacity of domestic governments to regulate policy, rendering nugatory the political influence of the citizen upon its democratic representatives. One controversial example of the potential transformative power of these global trade agreements is the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (hereafter GATS) and the implications of the agreement for public libraries. Civil society has provided an important critique of the WTO, particularly of the far-reaching scope of GATS into areas of policy that have been traditionally the province of domestic governments, such as provision of education, water and health services. A key concern of many civil society (1) groups with GATS is the existence of an exemption provision that ostensibly precludes services that are provided in the exercise of governmental authority from the operation of the agreement. It is feared by many that the exemption will be read narrowly by the WTO so as to subject services provided in the exercise of governmental authority such as public libraries to liberalisation. To some extent these fears have been realised by a WTO directive that states the exemption will be construed narrowly. (2) It is the intention of this paper to provide a conspectus of GATS and outline the key concerns of its potential impact upon public libraries. Part I of this paper provides an overview of GATS, in particular, examining the public services exemption in Article 1.3. Part II considers the potential implications of GATS upon public libraries in Australia. In concluding, part III considers the broader human rights implications of GATS and the liberalising of services as has been highlighted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and other UN human rights institutions.

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