Globalizing The Gatt: The Soviet Union’s Successor States, Eastern Europe, And The International Trading System

The main strength of this book is its narrative of the negotiations that brought Poland, Romania and Hungary into GATT and of the failed efforts by Bulgaria. Its weakness is that in correctly emphasizing the way political considerations dominated these matters it provides only a thin treatment of the problems created by the differences in national economic systems. There is excellent material drawn from interviews and unpublished documents, but little is said about what benefits east European countries could realistically expect from participation in GATT or what changes they (and Western countries) would have to make for the best results.