Policy Space and Policy Autonomy under the WTO: A Comparison of Post-Crisis Industrial Policies in Brazil and the US

Legal scholars engaged with the Law and Development literature usually propose two subtypes of scholarship. One type looks at a given law and tries to fix it, assuming that there is a positive relationship between law and socio-economic change. The second type of scholarship challenges the assumptions about the nature of the relationship between law and socio-economic change. This paper is situated in the second group. By analyzing domestic and international legal regimes and how they relate to domestic and international economic policy, this article addresses the disparities between the relative capacities of countries in different developmental trajectories to innovate in terms of industrial policies. This paper offers a distinction between the concepts of policy space and policy autonomy within the World Trade Organizations’ legal framework that reflects how countries with different regulatory traditions interact with the world trade regime. Focusing on the industrial policies implemented by the United States and Brazil in the period after the 2007–2009 economic crisis, it compares the room for policy space and policy autonomy under the WTO regime.