This chapter describes the WTO dispute settlement system, focusing on its structure, procedures, and recent challenges. The WTO system, established in 1995, was a significant innovation in international trade law, featuring mandatory jurisdiction and a detailed set of rules in the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU). It aimed to ensure adherence to WTO commitments and provide predictability to the trading system.However, recent US concerns over the Appellate Body’s functioning led to blocked appointments, rendering the Appellate Body defunct and the system non-binding. This crisis has led to the exploration of alternative mechanisms like the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA) and increased reliance on regional trade agreement dispute settlement mechanisms.

The cultural discontinuities following the collapse of the Late Bronze Age Mycenaean kingdoms include the abandonment of major centers and smaller settlements accompanied by loss of social structures, literacy, quarried stone architecture, and figured representations. Archaeological evidence from four centuries later, in the eighth century BCE, shows that there were also important continuities, e.g., the Greek language, names of divinities, a warrior ethos, and communal feasting. Greek commerce both eastwards and westwards increased, and Greeks began to settle in the West Mediterranean and North Africa. This volume examines the Greek Iron Age, ca. 1200–700 BCE, between the Mycenaean collapse and the beginning of the Archaic period. The relative chronology of this period, based on carefully constructed sequences of pottery styles, provides a stable framework. However, recent radiocarbon dates have suggested that the absolute dating of the pottery styles should be revised upwards.

A brief introduction surveys current thinking on how to subdivide the period into phases of broadly similar durations spanning roughly a century and a half in absolute years. The remainder of the chapter focuses on three distinct topics: ceramic pictorialism in post-palatial Mycenaean art; an update on scholarship dealing with the dark-surfaced, handmade, and burnished ceramic classes that have been recognized as significant novelties in Aegean container assemblages from the end of the thirteenth through the eleventh centuries BCE, along with their spread eastward in some cases to Cyprus and southwestern Syria during the twelfth century; and the noteworthy spatial expansion of production centers of Mycenaeanizing decorated fine wares during the twelfth century to multiple locations on Cyprus, in Macedonia, and at various sites along the Levantine mainland from Cilicia in the north to Philistia in the south.

This chapter examines the relationship between preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and the multilateral trading system represented by the WTO. It explores the historical context of PTAs, their proliferation, economic effects, and WTO surveillance. The chapter analyses the legal texts governing PTAs, including GATT Article XXIV, GATS Article V, and the Enabling Clause, and discusses controversies surrounding their interpretation. It also delves into regulatory issues within PTAs, such as rules of origin and provisions extending beyond WTO rules. Furthermore, the chapter addresses WTO dispute settlement cases involving PTAs and the evolving landscape of trade agreements, including digital economy and critical minerals agreements. Finally, it considers the systemic effects of PTAs on the multilateral trading system, highlighting both positive and discriminatory aspects.

This chapter explores the complexities of discrimination in international trade law, a core principle that mandates equal treatment of foreign and domestic goods, services, and intellectual property. Despite its significance, the definition of discrimination remains contested, with debates focusing on intent versus impact and the comparability of products. The chapter analyses these issues, examining key legal texts like the GATT, GATS, and TRIPS agreements, and the evolving jurisprudence of GATT panels and the WTO Appellate Body. It highlights the shifts in interpreting ‘discrimination’, including the move from considering both ‘aim and effect’ to focusing primarily on the effect of trade measures. The chapter concludes by discussing the challenges in reaching a clear, agreed-upon standard for discrimination and the implications for international trade.

This chapter examines the relationship between trade and development. Centring the heterogeneity of developing states within the World Trade Organization (WTO), the chapter briefly analyses some of the trade law interests that are most important to these different types of developing country. It then turns to a question: how has international trade law accommodated the needs of different types of developing country through special and differential treatment?  The chapter contends that the rules of the global economic order and the WTO in relation to trade were developed and are being implemented in the shadow of a fiercely contested geopolitical power struggle. Despite the flexibilities in the WTO, developing and small island developing states’ trade interests are significantly marginalised in the rules’ implementation. Without fundamentally reimagining the inequities in our international trade regime, mere ‘window dressing’ or adoption of new rules of trade would only further marginalise the trade interests of the developing countries and SIDS in a non-inclusive way.

This chapter examines the international rules governing SOEs, including those in the World Trade Organization and various free trade agreements (FTAs), focusing on the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The chapter analyses the specific provisions of CPTPP Chapter 17, which sets forth a comprehensive set of disciplines on SOEs, including definitions of SOEs, commercial activities, commercial considerations, designated monopolies, and non-commercial assistance. It also discusses the concepts of adverse effect and injury caused by SOEs, as well as exceptions to the disciplines. Finally, the chapter offers observations on the CPTPP’s rules, including the definition of SOEs, the scope of commercial activities, and the extraterritorial effect of FTAs.

The Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex, or SACC, a collection of city-states that surrounded the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea during the early first millennium BCE, is traditionally understudied by researchers interested in contacts between the Aegean and the Near East. In part this is due to the interest garnered by the Phoenicians and their far-flung colonies, but it is also because the complicated ethnolinguistic composition of the city-states themselves defies easy categorization. This chapter presents an overview of the material evidence for the robust exchange between the Aegean and SACC during the early first millennium BCE. Syro-Anatolian finds in the Aegean, especially luxury items including worked ivory and bronze objects, couple with Aegean ceramics in the Levant and southeastern Anatolia to index a surprisingly robust exchange between the two spheres. Although the mechanisms of this exchange remain unclear, it is now apparent that SACC was a major component of Iron Age eastern Mediterranean cultural and economic networks.