Non-state actors are often affected by foreign governments that violate international law,
but lack access to formal enforcement mechanisms, such as dispute settlement procedures.
In the context of the GATT/WTO, exporters are hurt by trade barriers abroad, but they are
not able to file trade disputes. This paper suggests that, in an explicitly state-centric institutional
design, non-state actors can nonetheless be important contributors to the monitoring
and enforcement of international law; that the involvement of non-state actors is a function
of the design of both domestic and international institutions; and that the involvement of
non-state actors creates an empirically testable link between domestic institutions and the
rate at which governments participate in the enforcement of international law.