(RIPE Series in Global Political Economy) Klaus Dingwerth (Editor), Clara Weinhardt (Editor) - The Language of World Trade Politics - Unpacking The Terms of Trade (2018, Routledge) - Libgen - Li

The Language of World Trade
Politics
Outcomes in major multilateral trade negotiations are conventionally explained

as resulting from interests weighted by (trading) power. Offering a different
overview of the concepts we use to talk about the international trade regime, this
edited collection puts the ideational foundation of world trade politics centre
stage, and critically examines the terms in which we make sense of world trade
politics.
The concepts used to make sense of world trade politics are often employed
strategically, making some aspects of reality visible and others invisible. Reflect-
ing upon ten key concepts from ‘trade’ itself to ‘protectionism’ and ‘justice’, this
book poses two broad questions: first, how and by whom have the meanings of
different terms used to describe, challenge and defend world trade politics been
constructed? Second, how have the individual terms changed over time, and with
what consequences? The editors and contributors draw on a broad range of
theoretical approaches, from post-structuralism or cognitivism to normative
theory, shedding new light on why certain trade issues and agendas win out over
others, who benefits from the current system of trade governance, and what con-
temporary challenges the World Trade Organization faces. In doing so, the book
speaks to a growing and diverse constructivist literature in International Political
Economy.
This book will be of interest to scholars, students and policy professionals
working within International Relations, International Political Economy and
economics.
Klaus Dingwerth is Professor in Political Science with a Focus on the Political

Theory of the Globalized and Digital Society at the University of St. Gallen,
Switzerland and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute
(GPPi).
Clara Weinhardt is a Lecturer in International Relations at the Hertie School of

Governance and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute
(GPPi).
RIPE Series in Global Political Economy
Series Editors: James Brassett
University of Warwick, UK
Eleni Tsingou
Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
and Susanne Soederberg
Queen’s University, Canada
The RIPE Series published by Routledge is an essential forum for cutting-edge

scholarship in International Political Economy. The series brings together new
and established scholars working in critical, cultural and constructivist political
economy. Books in the RIPE Series typically combine an innovative contribu-
tion to theoretical debates with rigorous empirical analysis.
The RIPE Series seeks to cultivate:
• Field-defining theoretical advances in International Political Economy

• Novel treatments of key issue areas, both historical and contemporary, such
as global finance, trade, and production
• Analyses that explore the political economic dimensions of relatively neg-
lected topics, such as the environment, gender relations, and migration
• Accessible work that will inspire advanced undergraduates and graduate
students in International Political Economy.
The RIPE Series in Global Political Economy aims to address the needs of stu-
dents and teachers.
Transnational Capital and Class Fractions

The Amsterdam School Perspective Reconsidered
Edited by Henk Overbeek and Bob Jessop
The Language of World Trade Politics

Unpacking the Terms of Trade
Edited by Klaus Dingwerth and Clara Weinhardt
Power in North-South Trade Negotiations

Making the European Union’s Economic Partnership Agreements
Peg Murray-Evans
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/RIPE-

Series-in-Global-Political-Economy/book-series/RIPE
The Language of World Trade
Politics
Unpacking the Terms of Trade
Edited by Klaus Dingwerth and

Clara Weinhardt
First published 2019
by Routledge
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© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Klaus Dingwerth and Clara
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Contents
List of illustrations vii

Notes on contributors viii
Acknowledgements xi
List of abbreviations xiii
1 Terms of trade: introduction 1

K laus D in g wert h and C lara W ein h ardt
2 Trade 22
M att h ew E a g leton - P ierce
3 Protectionism 32
Gary W inslett
4 Foreign direct investment 50

L ukas L insi
5 Multilateralism 64
M att h ew L ouis B is h op and V albona M u z aka
6 Democracy 80
K laus D in g wert h
7 Civil society 97
M ic h ael S tran g e
8 Coherence 115
F elix A nderl
vi Contents
9 Development 132
C L A R A W E I N H A R D T A N D A n g ela Geck
10 Environment 152
E mily L yd g ate
11 Justice 176
C lara B randi
Index 193
Illustrations
Figures
8.1 Coherent with what? 125
8.2 Coherent with whom? 126
Tables
4.1 Where in Europe are the US multinationals? 57
8.1 Forms of coherence 123
9.1 Developing country categories in statements at GATT
sessions of contracting parties and WTO ministerial
conferences 144
11.1 Mapping justice-based arguments 177
11.2 Discursive dynamics and meaning-makers 181
Contributors
Felix Anderl is a Research Associate in International Relations at Goethe

University Frankfurt where he focuses on the interaction of protest move-
ments and international organizations, especially in the fields of economic
governance and development.
Matthew Louis Bishop has been Senior Lecturer in International Politics at

the University of Sheffield, UK since 2016. Previously, he worked at the
University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago, and has held visiting
positions at universities in the UK (Warwick, as Transatlantic Fellow), the
Netherlands (Institute of Social Studies and the Royal Netherlands Institute
of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) and China (Wuhan). Matthew is
also the founding managing editor of the Caribbean Journal of Inter-
national Relations & Diplomacy. His primary area of research interest is
the political economy of development, with a particular focus on small
states in general, and the Caribbean specifically. He also works on trade
politics, democratisation, rising powers, and international drug policy. He
is the author of two books: The Political Economy of Caribbean Develop-
ment, and, with Jean Grugel, Democratization: A Critical Introduction,
both published by Palgrave in 2013; and the co-editor, with Peter Clegg
and Rosemarijn Hoefte, of Post-Colonial Trajectories in the Caribbean:
the Three Guianas (Routledge, 2017).
Clara Brandi is Senior Researcher and Project Leader at the German Develop-
ment Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE). As an eco-
nomist and political scientist, she works on global governance questions,
trade and international normative theory, focusing on sustainable develop-
ment and the linkages between trade and the environment with a special
interest in the role of developing countries and rising powers. She has pub-
lished a number of journal articles, book chapters and policy briefs on these
and related topics. She completed her PhD at the European University Insti-
tute, a Master’s in Economics from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and
an MPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford.
Contributors ix
Klaus Dingwerth is Professor in Political Science with a Focus on the Political
Theory of the Globalized and Digital Society at the University of St. Gallen,
Switzerland. His research interests lie at the intersection of global governance
and political theory, with his current research focusing on the legitimation of
international organizations in general and the rise of a democratic legitima-
tion narrative in particular. His books include The New Transnationalism:
Transnational Governance and its Democratic Legitimacy (Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2007), Postnationale Demokratie (VS Verlag, 2011, with M. Blauberger
and Ch. Schneider), and International Organizations under Pressure (Oxford
University Press, forthcoming).
Matthew Eagleton-Pierce is a Lecturer in International Political Economy at the
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His primary
research interests lie at the intersection between political economy and soci-
ology, including the politics of world trade, the history of neoliberalism, and
the conceptual analysis of power and legitimacy. He is the author of Symbolic
Power in the World Trade Organization (OUP, 2013), a book which explores
how the thought of Pierre Bourdieu can shed new light on trade diplomacy; as
well as Neoliberalism: The Key Concepts (Routledge, 2016), a guide to the
vocabulary of contemporary capitalism. He previously taught at the University
of Oxford, the London School of Economics, and the University of Exeter.
Angela Geck is a Research and Teaching Associate at the Institute of Political
Science, University of Freiburg. Her research deals with discourses, practices
and power structures in international institutions. In her PhD, completed in
2015, she analysed practices of strategic arguing in WTO negotiations and
their linkage to north-south power relations. Currently, she works on institu-
tional dynamics in the fields of climate change and human rights.
Valbona Muzaka is Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at the
European and International Studies Department, King’s College London, UK.
Her research interests include issues related to the governance of intellectual
property rights, trade and global public health, as well as the knowledge
economy, development and the emerging economies, especially India and
Brazil. She is the author of a book on the politics of intellectual property
rights and access to medicines, The Politics of Intellectual Property Rights
and Access to Medicines (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and of a
number of journal articles and book chapters on these and related topics. She
is currently completing a new book on the politics of biotechnology and
access to medicines in India and Brazil.
Lukas Linsi is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Amster-
dam. His research interests cover the role of narratives in international eco-
nomic affairs, the politics of statistics and the political economy of executive
remuneration. He completed his PhD at the London School of Economics in
2016 and was previously a Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center
for International Affairs.
x Contributors
Emily Lydgate is a Lecturer in Law at the Law School of the University of
Sussex. She specialises in the legal dimensions of international trade, and in
particular its interaction with environmental governance and regulation.
Emily is a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory and has consulted at
the United Nations Environment Programme Economics and Trade Branch.
She has published articles in the Journal of World Trade, World Trade
Review and Journal of International Economic Law.
Michael Strange is Reader in International Relations at the Dept. of Global
Political Studies, Malmö University. He has authored Writing Global Trade
Governance – Discourse and the WTO (Routledge, 2013), and his research
has appeared in journals including Critical Policy Studies; Politics; Inter-
national Journal of Public Administration; Global Discourse; Alternatives:
Local, Global, Political; Journal of Civil Society; Media, Culture & Society;
and, Geopolitics. He is a regular reviewer for journals including European
Journal of International Relations, International Political Sociology; and,
Third World Quarterly. He has a background in institutional analysis of both
the European Union and the World Trade Organization, and he is a co-
founder of the IPE Öresund network. His research covers both trade govern-
ance, civil society, social movements, and transnational forms of legitimacy
and democracy.
Clara Weinhardt is a Lecturer in International Relations at the Hertie School of
Governance and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute
(GPPi). She previously held positions as postdoctoral researcher at the
Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences and at the Univer-
sity of St. Gallen. She has also been a Research Associate at GPPi’s Innova-
tion in Development programme. Her research interests combine questions of
global governance with theoretical approaches to international negotiations,
with a particular focus on the issues in the areas of trade and development.
Her empirical research focuses on EU–Africa relations, and emerging coun-
tries, especially China. She completed her PhD in International Relations at
the University of Oxford; her work appeared among others in International
Studies Quarterly and the Journal of Common Market Studies.
Gary Winslett completed his Ph.D. in Political Science at Boston College in
2016 and was a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University
Institute in 2016–2017. In 2018, he joined the Political Science department
and International Politics and Economics Program at Middlebury College.
His research focuses on the political economy of international trade and spe-
cifically on the intersection of trade and domestic regulations pertaining to the
environment, consumer safety, labour standards, and intellectual property. He
also researches the political economy of the relationship between the tech
industry and the U.S. government.
Acknowledgements
It has been a while since our idea for this book first emerged after a workshop
we hosted in St. Gallen in spring 2015. Titled ‘Thinking about Trade: Cognitive
Approaches to World Trade Politics’, the workshop explored how the ways we
imagined, understood and made sense of world trade politics were, at the same
time, forces that shaped how actors behaved in world trade politics. While the
two of us had not approached the workshop with an edited volume in mind, the
many discussions over coffees, lunches, dinner and drinks led us to see some
value in a different kind of product: a book that maps the mind maps we use to
make sense of world politics; that provides insights into how thinking about
trade has developed over time; that values essays as a form of writing in the
social sciences; and that could itself be of value to the efforts of lecturers as well
as students tackling conventional questions of world trade politics from a slightly
different angle.
This book is the outcome of these discussions and the longer process of
writing, rewriting and editing to follow. We hope it delivers on the promises
listed above. Like with any academic project, however, it took more than just us
to get it started, let alone cross the finishing line. In brief, this book could not
exist without the support numerous individuals and institutions have offered.
Starting with individuals, our biggest thanks goes to the contributing authors.
Some of them were part of the initial workshop; others joined the project at a
later stage when we were looking for experts on a particular ‘term of trade’. All
of them had many other commitments besides their contribution to our volume.
And yet, they not only signed up to write one-word titled chapters along the lines
we suggested, but also responded carefully and – most often – quickly to several
rounds of comments from us as well as to the recommendations we received
from two anonymous reviewers. Hence, this book is the product of its contrib-
uting authors as much as it is ours.
Institutionally, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF ) helped with a
mobility grant that allowed Clara to visit St. Gallen for two months and prepare,
among many other things, the workshop that led to this volume. Our collabora-
tion was further facilitated by a subsequent grant from the University of St. Gal-
len’s Basic Research Fund where Stefan Graf was particularly helpful in figuring
out how to make things possible. The Global Democratic Governance Profile
xii Acknowledgements
Area at the University of St. Gallen provided funding for the initial workshop,
with Hilde Engelen lending a hand in the organisation of the workshop itself.
Finally, the University of St. Gallen (in Klaus’s case), the University of Bremen,
and the Hertie School of Governance (in Clara’s case) provided the institutional
environments in which an edited volume like ours could thrive. We gratefully
acknowledge the support of all these bodies.
Beyond the authors and facilitators, we are grateful to all those who have
commented on earlier drafts of the book or its parts. At the initial workshop,
Carolyn Deere-Birkbeck, Regina Hack, Juan Sebastian Palacio, Ellen Reichel,
Henning Schmidtke, and Silke Trommer provided valuable comments on the
papers that were presented. Subsequently, Felix Berenskoetter provided written
comments on our framework chapter. In addition, two anonymous reviewers
commissioned by Routledge carefully read the entire manuscript and made thor-
ough and very constructive recommendations that helped us to further hone our
arguments. In the final stages of making this book, Pieter Rhynhart provided
valuable research assistance.
Finally, at Routledge, we encountered much enthusiasm and support for our
ideas. We thank Rob Sorsby for his guidance throughout the process; Eleni
Tsingou, James Brassett and Susanne Soederberg for taking our volume under
the wings of the RIPE Series in Global Political Economy; and Claire Maloney
for her advice in the final stages of preparing our manuscript.
Berlin and St. Gallen in March 2018
Abbreviations
ACP group African, Caribbean and Pacific group of countries

AEHT Amazon Europe Holding Technologies
AEU Amazon EU Sarl
AfDB African Development Bank
BEA US Bureau of Economic Analysis
BPM Balance of Payments Manual
CITES Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
of Wild Fauna and Flora
CPB Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety
CSOs Civil society organisations
CTE Committee on Trade and Environment
CUSTA Canadian–United States Free Trade Agreement
DFQF Duty-Free Quota-Free
DG Director-General
DG Trade European Commission’s Directorate General for Trade
DMD Doha Ministerial Declaration
EEC European Economic Community
EGS Environmental Goods and Services
EIF Enhanced Integrated Framework
EMIT group Group on Environmental Measures and International
Trade
EPA U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
EU European Union
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization
FTAs Free trade areas
G20 Coalition of developing countries pressing for ambitious
reforms of agriculture in developed countries
G77 Group of 77 developing countries
GATS General Agreement on Trade in Services
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GI Geographical indications
GSP Generalized System of Preferences
xiv Abbreviations
ICSTD International Centre for Trade and Sustainable
Development
ILO International Labour Organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
IP Intellectual property
ISD Investor–state dispute
ISO International Organization for Standardization
ITO International Trade Organisation
LDCs Least Developed Countries
MDGs Millennium Development Goals
MEAs Multilateral environmental agreements
MFN Most-favoured nation
MNC Multinational Corporation
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
NGO Non-governmental organisation
NIEO New International Economic Order
NPR Non-product-related
NTBs Non-tariff barriers
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OIE World Organization for Animal Health
PPMs Processes and production methods
RTA Regional Trade Agreements
S&D Special and Differential Treatment
SIDS Small Island Developing States
SPEs Special Purpose Entities
SSM Special Safeguard Mechanism
TBT Technical Barriers to Trade
TPP Trans-Pacific Partnership
TRIPS Agreement Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights
TTIP Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
UNCHE UN Conference on the Human Environment
UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNEP United Nations Environmental Program
UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
US United States
USTR United States Trade Representative
WIPO World Intellectual Property Organization
WTO World Trade Organization
1 Terms of trade
Introduction
Klaus Dingwerth and Clara Weinhardt
Introduction
Each year in fall, before they embark on their journey to warmer places, migra-
tory birds congregate in large numbers in the Northern hemisphere. For some
species, the sites at which they gather remain fixed over the years; other kinds
are more flexible, thus allowing them to choose among several places that offer
a set of specific qualities the birds cherish. Once the birds arrive, however, the
scenes resemble each other: gatherings of pre-migration flocks are not only very
lively, but also full of sound. Chirping and tweeting is heard all over the place,
with some birds quacking aloud while others intone a finer melody.
In a way, the meetings of the international trade policy community are not so
different. Throughout the year, that community also meets regularly, with meet-
ings including quite some posturing and comparing status. Towards the end of
each year, moreover, the world trade calendar brings together the entire com-
munity in one place. Its members meet to take stock, negotiate and formulate an
agenda that will lead them, not to a warmer place, but into a more prosperous
future. For a long time, the place of their gathering has been fixed. Traditionally,
meetings took place in Geneva, the city that hosted the secretariat of the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) from the latter’s establishment in 1947.
Once the old GATT gave way to the new WTO in 1995, the rhythm of the meet-
ings changed from annual to biennial. The places of meetings have also become
more diverse; but they, too, need to fulfil certain criteria. While birds appreciate
wetlands, coastal zones or isthmuses, the trade policy community requires the
proximity of an international airport, a large enough congress centre and
effective guarantees for the physical security of the delegates. But most impor-
tantly, like the gathering site of a pre-migration flock, meetings of the inter-
national trade policy community include a lot of chirping and tweeting, with
some delegates raising their voices while others seek to gain attention by
weaving a subtler argument.
Granted, the analogy is a bit of a stretch. But the same could be said of some
of the analogies and metaphors the trade policy practitioners use to argue their
case. To do so, they claim that a ‘conclusion of the Tokyo Round [is] absolutely
essential to the future health of the world trading environment’ or that, on the
2 Klaus Dingwerth and Clara Weinhardt
whole, ‘the system had withstood the shocks to which it had been subjected’.
They hold that the GATT is ‘the guardian of free trade’ and the export sector an
‘engine of growth’ for GATT members. And they maintain that the world
economy is ‘at a crossroads’, that ‘dark clouds are on the horizon’ or that GATT
members need to ‘stem the tide’ when protectionist pressures mount.1
Of course, we all know that the world trading environment can neither be
‘sick’ nor particularly ‘healthy’ in a literal sense; that the export sector is an
‘engine’ only in a figurative way and that ‘dark clouds on the horizon’ are a code
for something else, namely the prospect of something unpleasant happening. But
if this is so, why would the delegates of GATT members wish to use figurative
language at all when seeking to defend the interests of the countries they
represent?
This question is puzzling indeed when seen from the perspective of conven-
tional approaches that explain world trade politics as resulting from interests
weighted by power. If interests and power were all that counted, there would be
no need to package one’s interests in imaginative language. Game theorists
might account for linguistic tricks as tools to deceive the other side about one’s
true intentions, or as a means of publicly tying oneself to a position in a negoti-
ation; but they would not see language as a key dimension of trade politics itself.
In this volume, we take a different route. We start from the assumption that
language, to use yet another image, is the vehicle we use to make sense of trade
politics in the first place: it is the means through which we come to imagine
international trade and its regulation. Language, however, does not only matter
where it is used in a figurative sense to conceive of ‘one kind of thing in terms of
another’ (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, p. 5). In contrast, many of the chapters in
this volume show that language matters as a means to define – and institutional-
ise – ‘what is’ and to draw boundaries (Boltanski, 2011). Based on this assump-
tion, we use this book to unpack the terms of trade in a more literal sense,
namely by examining the concepts through which we have come to make sense
of world trade politics.2
In which different ways is ‘multilateralism’ used and understood in trade pol-
itics? Which images and which other concepts do speakers invoke when they say
that ‘progressive liberalisation’ is a prerequisite for ‘inclusive growth’? Which
roles do these and other concepts play in the politics of world trade? And how
and where does contestation over the terms of trade, literally understood, take
place?
Finally, the concepts we use to make sense of trade politics are not merely
descriptive but also normative. They define not only ‘what is’, but also ‘what has
value’ (Boltanski, 2011). Thus, if someone says the WTO is ‘not democratic’,
competent speakers will recognise that the statement communicates a description
as well as an evaluation: the WTO is not democratic, but it should be! Actors
thus often use a specific term of trade strategically to make sense of world trade
politics in a particular way: concepts make some aspects of reality visible and
others invisible, thereby giving specific meanings to the phenomena that sur-
round us. At the same time, while many things may be said, not all of them will
Terms of trade: introduction 3
be equally persuasive to a target audience. Instead, the concepts trade policy
(and other) actors have built in the past constitute a social structure that shapes
how world trade politics may be represented, what prior beliefs we have about it
and, finally, which policies can be imagined, made and publicly justified.
In short, a further aspect of our initial analogy may be more to the point. For
as bird flocks gather at their pre-migration sites, their chirping and tweeting
remains incomprehensible to most of us, except maybe a few ornithologists.
Nonetheless, we can assume that the birds themselves can ‘decode’ and ‘make
sense of ’ the same chirping and tweeting and put it to use in coordinating their
communities. In the trade world, too, the language that trade policy practitioners
use is full of jargon and often unintelligible to outsiders. Which layperson, for
instance, could decipher and correctly interpret a statement of US trade diplo-
mats that asserts that ‘ “non-violation” complaints are fully appropriate under the
[Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS
Agreement)]’ (WTO, 2015, p. 37)? For those on the inside of the world trade
discourse, however, terms like ‘non-violation complaints’, ‘special and differen-
tial treatment’ or the ‘Singapore issues’ are not only full of content and history,
but they also fulfil important and often very specific functions as reference points
in a broader discourse.
It is these forms of content, histories and roles in which we are ultimately
interested in this book. In terms of their content, the terms of trade we examine
are linked to particular sets of ideas, ideologies and beliefs that underpin social
order. In terms of their histories, the meaning of specific terms of trade are not
fixed. Instead, they may change depending on the discursive and historical
context and on the power the actors who seek change can summon behind their
position (see Berenskoetter, 2016a, pp. 9–11). Finally, in terms of their roles, the
terms of trade we examine reflect and reify social realities by shaping what kinds
of action are conceivable and desired.
Set against this background, the individual contributions in this volume
respond to three broad questions. First, how and by whom were the meanings of
different terms used to describe, challenge and defend world trade politics
originally constructed? Second, how have the meanings as well as the roles of
the concepts we use to make sense of world trade politics become contested?
And third, how did the changing ‘terms of trade’ create some possibilities for
actions while closing the door on others? In their efforts to answer these broad
questions, our contributing authors study concepts primarily in their socio-
political function rather than as analytical categories that are part of an academic
discourse. As a result, they pay attention to the ways in which political actors
contest and reconstruct the changing meanings of a concept over time, and how
new interpretations shift the boundaries of what is politically possible. The
answers they give provide a fresh perspective on world trade politics. They shed
light on how we have come to think about the trade regime the way we do, on
why certain trade issues and agendas win over others, on who benefits from the
ways trade governance is discursively structured, and ultimately also on why
multilateral trade talks have come to a halt.
In larger perspective, our book contributes to a growing body of literature on
‘concepts in world politics’ (Adler-Nissen, 2012; Berenskoetter, 2016b; Mhur-
chuú and Shindo, 2016). In very general terms, we build on this literature in our
effort to trace ‘ongoing attempts to challenge (reimagine) the possibilities of
state-based international relations’ (Mhurchuú and Shindo, 2016, p. 2). More
specifically, we contribute to this strand of writing by reconstructing particular
instances of concept invention, concept fixation and concept transformation
(Berenskoetter, 2016a, p. 10). Doing so in relation to world trade politics natur-
ally links our effort to others in the field, notably Matthew Eagleton-Pierce’s
(2016) Neoliberalism: Key Concepts and Erin Hannah, James Scott and Silke
Trommer’s (2015) collection Expert Knowledge in Global Trade. We go beyond
this literature, however, by focusing specifically on how a set of concepts have
been or become central terms of trade in recent decades. In doing so, we follow
Koselleck (2011, p. 32) in selecting what we see as key terms of the world trade
regime for pragmatic reasons. Yet, while all terms examined in this volume play
a central role in the socio-political language that has come to characterise our
conceptions of world trade politics, our list is neither conclusive nor exhaustive.
Notably, concepts like ‘trade’ and ‘protectionism’ have been at the core of the
world trade regime for a long time, whereas other concepts like ‘democracy’ and
‘environment’ have gained prominence only recently. As a result, the dynamic
nature of the terms of trade becomes an important part of what we seek to
unpack in this volume.
Finally, a focus on language does not imply that material interests and power
do not matter in trade politics. Such a claim would be silly. What we do claim,
however, is that material interests and trading volumes are not all that matters,
and that one important form of power lies in the ability to define the terms of
trade. If these terms shape how we imagine trade politics, they are not merely
analytical lenses; and if actors are aware of the power of words, they will seek to
employ them to make sense of world trade politics in particular ways: to make
some aspects of reality visible and others invisible, to make some aspects seem
problematic while normalising others, or to make some responses appear reason-
able while others remain ‘incomprehensible’ (Suchman, 1995, pp. 582–584). In
other words, because the terms of trade shape the ‘arena of political possibilities’
(Wilkinson, 2009, p. 600), the language in which world trade politics is made
and imagined reflects but also recreates hierarchies and power relationships.
What concepts do
Concepts, Gregory Murphy (2002, p. 1) states in his Big Book of Concepts, are
‘the glue that holds our mental world together’. Concepts, and the way they
relate to each other – be that in classificatory schemes or in ‘chains of equiva-
lence’ – shape how we perceive the world. It is in this sense that Nicholas Onuf
can argue that, ‘ruled by language and its rules, we make rules and instantiate
rule, thereby making the world what it is for us’ (Onuf, 2013, p. xv). Yet con-
cepts do not only provide the basis to make sense of the world for us. In contrast,
language also plays a role, as Onuf (2013, p. xviii, emphasis added) further elab-
orates, in making the world ‘seem more or less the same for everyone’. As a
consequence, language is inherently linked to power in the sense that ‘the world
thus made will always work to the advantage of some at the expense of others’
(Onuf, 2013, p. xv). It is these three basic ideas – language as a means of world
making for us, language as a means of world making for everyone, and language
as a means of structuring power – that broadly inform our volume.
Language and world making for us

Without concepts, we could not organise our sensual impressions, let alone begin
to reason. So, concepts are a basic ingredient for making sense of the world. In
brief, ‘by relating certain phenomena to each other and keeping others apart, con-
cepts fulfil the central function of ordering and structuring our perception of the
world’. Moreover, by allowing us to generalise, they are also ‘fundamental to indi-
vidual and collective learning processes’ (Dingwerth and Pattberg, 2006, p. 186).
That is a relatively simple idea, but since ‘our conceptual system is not some-
thing we are usually aware of ’ (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, p. 3), we tend to
underestimate how much it shapes how we see the world. Basically, concepts
and conceptual schemes respond to questions such as ‘What is X?’ or ‘What is
X a case of?’, but the role of language also goes further in that it allows us to
draw analogies – responding to questions such as ‘What is X structurally similar
to?’ – or establish metaphorical links between phenomena, responding to the
question like ‘In terms of which other thing could X be conceived?’.
The latter aspect has been emphasised in the work of Lakoff and Johnson
(1980) who argue that many of our concepts are ‘metaphorically structured’: we
conceive arguments in terms of war, time in terms of money, ideas in terms of
objects, and words as containers of such objects. This is not to say that we some-
times say that ‘time is money’ but rather that, in our everyday talking about time,
we make use of a long list of expressions that follow the logic of ‘time is money’
– for instance when we ‘invest’, ‘spend’ or ‘give’ time. As a result, Lakoff and
Johnson (1980, pp. 7–9) argue, our concept – and hence our understanding – of
time is systematically structured in terms of another concept, namely money. In
the social realm of politics, the contributions to Terrell Carver and Jernej Pikano’s
(2008) Political Language and Metaphor underline the relevance of metaphors in
domestic as well as international political debate, while Michael Marks’ (2011)
analysis of International Relations theories reveals how our understanding of
international politics is influenced by metaphorical constructions.
Language and world making for everyone

Lakoff and Johnson (1980, p. 3) use language as ‘an important source of evid-
ence for what the [conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting] is like’.
Accordingly, their primary focus is on how language in general – and metaphor-
ical structures more specifically – helps us to make sense of the world. Social
scientists, in contrast, have mainly been interested in how language structures
the world for the members of a given community or for those forming part of a
common social order.
The label under which much of this work falls is, of course, ‘social construc-
tion’. Ian Hacking’s (1999) The Social Construction of What? not only reveals
how long the list of things said to be ‘socially constructed’ has become in recent
years, but also what the common structure of arguments about social construc-
tion looks like. According to Hacking (1999, p. 12), a key assumption shared by
many works is that ‘In the present state of affairs, X is taken for granted; X
appears to be inevitable’, with the work then demonstrating how X is, in fact,
contingent rather than inevitable. ‘The economy’, he thus holds, could be exam-
ined as a social construct:
Every day we read that the economy is up or down, and we are supposed to
be moved to fear or elation. Yet this splendid icon, the economy, was hard
to find on the front pages of newspapers even forty years ago. Why are we
so unquestioning about this very idea, ‘the economy’? One could argue that
the idea, as an analytical tool, as a way of thinking of industrial life, is very
much a construction.
(Hacking, 1999, p. 13)
Or, he imagines, social constructivist researchers could unmask the idea of a

‘deficit’ by showing how it was ‘constructed as a threat, a constraining element
in the lives of many, an instrument of the hegemony of capital’ (Hacking, 1999,
pp. 13–14). The important aspect here is that once the term ‘deficit’ functions in
this way within a social order, it becomes a vehicle for collective world making
that makes certain forms of behaviour more plausible, more appropriate or even
more imaginable than others. These insights on how language, and the meanings
constructed through it, are central to any social order also apply to the realm of
global governance. As Bjola and Kornprobst (2010, p. 1) remind us, ‘global
(in)action amidst collective problems is not just interest-, issue- or inspiration-
driven, but – on a more fundamental level – shaped by the argumentative pro-
cesses that define what the actors’ interests, global issues and political
imagination are in the first place’.
In a related fashion, Luc Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology of critique takes the
uncertainty which results from the fact that ‘each individual can only have one
point of view on the world’ (Boltanski, 2011, p. 59, emphasis in the original) as
its starting point. The means to cope with (rather than overcome) such uncer-
tainty are institutions. Boltanski understands institutions as primarily semantic,
hence comprising definitions as well as classificatory schemes. On this account,
institutions constitute ‘the means it seems necessary to employ to reduce [uncer-
tainty], or at least to diminish the unease it creates, and to get something to hold
together even minimally – that is to say, for there to be some reality’ (Boltanski,
2011, p. 61, emphasis in the original). The way in which institutions accomplish
this feat is by fixing the relationship between states of affairs (which Boltanski
calls ‘the world’) and symbolic forms (which Boltanski calls ‘reality’): institu-
tions state ‘what is’ and ‘what has value’ (Boltanski, 2011, pp. 69–70). As a
result, a strong institution in Boltanski’s use of the term is one that provides for
a particularly ‘robust reality’ – a ‘reality’ that is unlikely to be questioned. This
might be because the ‘reality’ formulated by an institution is so taken for granted
that alternative ways of seeing the world are either hard to imagine or fail to per-
suade a sufficiently large audience. Or it might be because the fixing of meaning
that is associated with institutions produces costs for those who, willingly or not,
ignore the ‘reality’ thus constructed.
Applied to the world of global governance, these insights point to the arbit-
rary nature of some of the ways in which international institutions ‘fix’ a par-
ticular reality – and the consequences such a fixing may have. Nelson and
Katzenstein (2014, p. 379), for example, point out how the financial crisis of
2008 was made possible by the economic conventions the actors adopted to cope
with uncertainty. Banks and credit rating agencies relied on deeply flawed con-
cepts when modelling risks because their risk-management models ‘offered the
illusion that irreducible uncertainty could be transformed into manageable risk’.
But language is not only about ‘fixing reality’. It is also essential for creating
specific realities, notably through ascribing the status that an object or person
holds. Such status ascriptions go hand in hand with certain understandings of
‘what is good, right and permissible to do to others’ (Bjola and Kornprobst,
2010, p. 12), thereby contributing to world making for everyone. For instance,
the collective ascription of a status as a ‘benevolent hegemon’ in international
politics leads to a reality in which it is permissible for the hegemon to carry out
state interventions. This contrasts with a view of the world in which the hegemon
is ascribed the status of a ‘tyrant’. Language thus shapes which status actors or
objects hold within a social order, and it constitutes the most basic frame of
reference in which actors interpret and appraise choices they and others make
(Kratochwil, 1989, p. 11).
Language and power
This latter point provides a natural link to questions of power. For constructivist
scholars ranging from feminists to Foucauldians, it has always been self-evident
that their studies about the ‘social construction of X’ were essentially studies of
power. Yet, other strands of writing tend to associate power more readily with
its material dimension – for example, as the ability to get one’s will by physic-
ally threatening or economically incentivising others to behave in a certain way.
As a result, those adhering to theoretical traditions other than constructivism
have occasionally found it difficult to notice how studies of ‘webs of meaning’,
rather than of the relative size of armies or treasuries, could shed light on the
question of power. It may thus be useful to spell out that link, if only to avoid
the impression that our volume, while possibly comprising some interesting
stories, ultimately says little about how power is exercised in global trade
governance.
As a starting point, notions such as ‘productive power’ (Barnett and Duvall,
2005) or Bourdieu’s ‘symbolic power’ (Bourdieu, 1991) that have been central
to critical IR scholarship draw our attention to the link between language and
power. Fixing meanings is not merely a linguistic exercise. Instead, ‘discourses
are sites of social relations of power because they situate ordinary practices of
life and define the social fields of action that are imaginable and possible’
(Barnett and Duvall, 2005, p. 56) – an insight which draws on Foucault’s ana-
lysis of how discourses normalise particular actor positions (Foucault, 1972,
pp. 50–55). A particular meaning of trade, for instance, defines not only which
social activities count as trade, but also what the identity of a ‘trader’ entails, and
whose knowledge matters in shaping trade relations.
Drawing on Bourdieu, Eagleton-Pierce (2013, p. 49) argues that political lan-
guage – ‘as a pre-eminent symbolic system’ – is essential to creating and main-
taining power relations in world trade politics (see below). Such understandings
of the link between power and language often focus on semantic constructions,
and the ways in which they create ‘orders of justification’. In a way, Boltanski’s
work already entails the claim that semantic institutions are closely connected to
power because they define what is and what has value. By implication, then,
those who have a capacity to affect, shape or even control semantic institutions
wield significant power. Yet power, unless its exercise is effectively masked, is
usually subject to ‘the requirements of justification’ (Boltanski, 2011, p. 2).
Accordingly, those who hold power will usually seek to defend the underlying
asymmetries as legitimate. These defences draw on as well as inform what
Rainer Forst has labelled ‘social orders of justification’: orders that are, once
more, discursively structured. Like Boltanski, Forst holds that power is rooted in
accepted justifications – that it takes, as he calls it, a primarily ‘noumenal’ form
(Forst, 2015, p. 65). To have power, then, means to be able ‘to influence, make
use of, define occupy or even seclude’ the realm of accepted justifications for
others (Forst, 2015, p. 66, our translation). This ability is primarily, though not
exclusively, rooted in language, hence turning the ability to shape language into
a fundamental source of power in social orders.
The role of language in world trade politics

In the mainstream literature on world trade politics, language plays only a mar-
ginal role.3 Amrita Narlikar, Martin Daunton and Robert Stern’s (2012) Oxford
Handbook of the World Trade Organization, for example, provides a compre-
hensive overview of what the World Trade Organization (WTO) does, how it
goes about fulfilling its tasks, its institutional evolution, agency in the WTO, and
how it might contend with some critical challenges. An ideational perspective,
however, is not systematically covered, leaving little space for a critical examin-
ation of the role of language in shaping central terms of world trade politics.
Tellingly, while the Handbook’s section on ‘Normative Issues’ deals with fair-
ness, labour standards, human rights and the link between trade and environ-
ment, it remains silent on the normative underpinnings of the very terms that
define the core of the world trading system – including the language used to
define ‘free trade’, ‘multilateralism’ or ‘regulatory measures’.4 On ‘free trade’,
the handbook, for instance, simply assumes that ‘the case in favour of free trade
is theoretically clear and empirically rich’ (Narlikar et al., 2012, p. 2).
This omission reflects a general tendency in the mainstream literature to con-
ceive of world trade politics primarily in terms of interests weighted by power
(see Hoekman and Kostecki, 2009). A growing constructivist body of literature
on International Political Economy (for an overview, see Abdelal et al., 2010),
however, has begun to acknowledge the importance of discourses and the ideas
embedded therein for trade governance. While the existing literature does not yet
provide a systematic overview of key ‘terms of trade’ and their contested nature,
it touches upon several insights about the role of language that the different con-
tributions of this volume build on in diverse ways.
First, constructivist scholars highlight that the historical evolution of the
world trading system cannot be understood without regard to the dominant eco-
nomic ideas and paradigms that have prevailed over time. What John Ruggie
(1982) referred to as ‘embedded liberalism’ – a liberalism that grants govern-
ments some policy space at the domestic level to reduce the social costs of trade
openness – has become a powerful reference point in thinking about the social
purpose and legitimation of the post-war trading order. More recently, Andrew
Lang shows from a legal perspective how the concept of ‘neoliberalism’ gradu-
ally replaced the ‘embedded liberalism’ compromise from in the 1970s onwards
(Lang, 2011; see also Eagleton-Pierce, 2016). These shifts in economic thinking
transformed the purpose of the world trading regime itself. Instead of balancing
the social welfare state with the gains in free trade, the pursuit of ‘progressive
growth’ increasingly became an end in itself.
Neoliberal ideas thus led to a re-imagination of the nature of politics, as it
made it increasingly illegitimate for governments to intervene in the economy to
reduce the social costs of trade liberalisation (Lang, 2011, p. 7). Language mat-
tered for this transformation to take place, because neoliberal narratives provided
a new understanding of the government’s most efficient way to regulate the
economy – an understanding that became dominant ‘by appealing to scientific
generality’ (Blyth, 2002, p. 148). The constructivist literature also points out
some of the key ‘norm entrepreneurs’ (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998) that helped
to establish these new economic ideas in the discourses on trade. They range
from business foundations such as the Scaife Funds and the Olin Foundation in
the US (Blyth, 2002, p. 159), the members of the so-called Chicago school (see
Chwieroth, 2010) to international economic institutions such as the International
Monetary Fund (Best, 2013) or the World Bank (Moretti and Pestre, 2015;
Weaver, 2010).
Some authors among this strand of the literature also point out that the domi-
nance of neoliberal economic ideas in the trade discourse limits the power of
actors who seek to move global trade politics in an alternative direction – one
that is not easily reconcilable with the core tenets of neoliberalism. In the early
to mid-1990s, so-called ‘non-trade values’ were introduced into the debate about
trade politics. In particular, civil society actors claimed that the GATT and the
newly built WTO undermined member states’ efforts to protect ‘the environ-
ment’, keep ‘food safety’ standards intact or secure adequate ‘labour standards’
(O’Brien et al., 2000).
Yet, as Lang (2011) claims, the neoliberal turn imposes severe constraints on
re-imagining trade in ways that may include non-trade values. For instance, the
language of ‘coherence’ that came to dominate the relationship between the trade
regime and trade-related issue areas such as the environment or human rights
shifted debates to questions of institutional design (Lang, 2011, p. 130; see also
Anderl, this volume). Others point out how the ‘liberal and legal epistemic
foundations’ made it more difficult for NGO actors to push for more just and
sustainable trade policies (Hannah, 2011, p. 181), or emphasise the biases inher-
ent in the terms associated with economic liberalism. For instance, government
regulation is discredited as a ‘non-tariff trade barrier’, while the term ‘neo-
liberalism’ is notably absent in the discussions at the WTO’s largest annual out-
reach event, the WTO Public Forum (Hopewell, 2015, p. 1139). Yet, not all
scholars regard the language of world trade politics as a constraint on the power
of certain actors. Cho (2014, p. 689), drawing on a ‘thin’ version of constructiv-
ism, emphasises that the WTO’s legal norms are important for establishing
a shared language among its members, which in turn facilitates interaction by
creating ‘certain stabilized standards or expectations’.
Second, constructivist-leaning scholars shed light on the techniques actors
use to change the dominant ways of talking about trade, often to counteract a
marginalised position they find themselves in. Matthew Eagleton-Pierce (2013),
for example, draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic power to explore
the strategies Southern countries adopt in their pursuit of a more equitable
trading order. He shows not only how seemingly technical or neutral terms are
in fact highly political, but also reveals how developing countries make use of
framing and mimicry – a technique of either social adaptation or subversive
appropriation of an opponent’s argument – to legitimate their demands for
‘asymmetrical market opening’ in the WTO’s negotiations over agriculture.
Mlada Bukovansky (2010, p. 88), in turn, examines Southern countries’
attempts to delegitimise the position of Northern countries as a ‘hypocrisy of
the strong’ in which Northern countries are depicted as unwilling to cut their
own domestic trade-distorting subsidies on agriculture, while they demand
others to further liberalise their markets. Similarly, Jane Ford claims that devel-
oping countries (re)defined their identity in ways that became more compatible
with the community of ‘multilateral traders’, thereby enabling them to discredit
the arguments of Northern countries. This worked, notably, by ‘[adopting] the
language of liberal economics to de-legitimate attempts to incorporate labour
and environmental standards in the trading regime’ (Ford, 2003, pp. 5 and 8). In
the context of free trade negotiations, Del Felice (2014) shows how NGO actors
strengthened the West African side’s opposition to signing a free trade agree-
ment with the economically much stronger European Union through discursive
processes of politicisation.
In contrast, actors can also employ discursive strategies to sustain dominant
power positions they already maintain. Rorden Wilkinson’s (2009) work thus
shows how developed countries have strategically used a particular discourse on
the concept of ‘crisis’ of the multilateral trading system to put pressure on devel-
oping countries. Based on a ‘crisis’ discourse, the latter were asked to make
stronger concessions to avoid the alleged possibility of collapse. The use of
metaphors, such as trade as a ‘bicycle’ that needs to be kept in motion, can also
legitimise the ways in which the multilateral system already functions while
diverting attention away from the outcomes it produces (Wilkinson, 2014).
Moreover, Siles-Brügge (2013, p. 599) shows how the European Commission’s
Directorate General for Trade strategically employed narratives on globalisation
to legitimise neoliberal economic programmes that were controversial at the
level of member states and their societies.
Finally, some constructivist-leaning scholars have begun to focus more expli-
citly on the role of ‘experts’ and ‘expertise’ – including its strategic use – in
shaping the discourses of global trade politics. Drawing on Bourdieu’s field
theory, Hopewell (2015, p. 1139) argues that mastering the technical language of
trade is a key ‘expertise’ for trade actors if they want to be regarded as credible.
Hannah, Scott and Trommer (2016) assess in detail the structures that shape the
monopoly over knowledge that trade experts hold, how expert knowledge in turn
shapes trade policy making, and what tensions it leads to as actors seek to chal-
lenge the status quo.
Third, the ‘thick’ constructivist literature that makes use primarily of post-
structuralist methodologies shows how concepts are constitutive of world trade
politics. Mortensen emphasises that legal classifications within the WTO project
introduce a ‘rights’ discourse into global trade politics, which ‘provide[s] a
structuring space, or communicative framework, in which actors debate over
what is legitimate’ (Mortensen, 2012, p. 82). For instance, the reliance on
customs classifications from the World Customs Organization has structured the
field of trade in renewable energy in ways that legitimised the use of subsidies,
despite opposition from developing countries. Michael Strange (2013) advocates
for a theoretical perspective that reveals the discursive character of the WTO. It
allows us, he argues, to examine ‘how something like “trade” can be articulated
– and rearticulated’, including how language (re-)creates the boundaries of the
world trade regime (Strange, 2013, p. 15). Empirically, his study shows that
trade liberalisation was initially understood as a ‘weapon of the free world’
(Strange, 2013, pp. 41–42). Over time, it turned into a tool for development or
an instrument against protectionist pressures, which had implications for the
kinds of actors that were understood to be part of the trade regime. Accordingly,
what trade is defined as being good for also determines who will be able to say
how trade should be regulated. As a result, just how discourses about the terms
of trade are fixed over time defines not only the realm of possible actions (see
Epstein, 2008), but also who counts as a legitimate actor in world trade politics
at a given point in time (see also Strange, this volume).
How concepts change
We have seen that concepts are important tools of world making. They render
certain forms of behaviour plausible and create hierarchies by structuring the
realm of accepted justifications. Yet, as the notions of invention, fixation, trans-
formation, and disappearance suggest, concepts as well as the semantic fields
they are part of are in constant flux (Berenskoetter, 2016a). While the meaning
of words can be fixed, concepts by definition comprise ‘an abundance of mean-
ings’ (Koselleck, 2011, p. 20).5 They are never truly fixed, and their dominant
interpretation may change over time. With this volume, we therefore seek to
shed light on the different ways in which the terms of trade change, how these
changes come about, and how they matter.
As all chapters show, to uncover how concepts change requires us to pay
attention to the linguistic and socio-political contexts in which contestation
occurs. New concepts as well as new meanings of concepts are necessarily built
in relation to existing ones which they can either replace, compete with or com-
plement. First, some meanings of concepts – or entire concepts – may be
dropped because the discourses in which they are embedded become marginal-
ised. Initially, for example, trade was portrayed as a powerful tool for peaceful
cooperation. This discourse receded to the background when other meanings like
sustainable development became more central to the concept. Second, concepts
may also come to mean new things as novel discourses emerge. The concept of
‘protectionism’ is a case in point. Initially referring to conventional tariffs or
quotas as barriers to trade, it came to denote a broader range of ‘barriers’, includ-
ing less tangible ones like labelling requirements or food safety standards (Wins-
lett, this volume). Third, concepts may be linked in new ways. When calls for
‘democracy’ became more prevalent in the recent decades, the WTO Secretariat
justified its decision-making procedures by linking the concepts of ‘democracy’
and ‘consensus’ in new ways. This linkage allowed it to argue that its decision-
making culture based on consensus made it the ‘most democratic’ of all inter-
national economic organisations (Dingwerth, this volume). Similarly, there are
different ways to interpret the assertion in WTO treaties that trade and environ-
ment are ‘mutually supportive’ (Lydgate, this volume).
How meanings change over time is, however, not arbitrary. As the authors
demonstrate, the linguistic fields in which concepts are embedded reflect specific
socio-political contexts. Material changes in the ‘world’ may mean that concepts
become obsolete or acquire new meanings. That the concept of trade has been
broadened from the 1970s onwards was partly a result of the changing nature of
trade, notably the turn towards ‘beyond the border’ regulation (Eagleton-Pierce,
this volume). Similarly, the far greater number of countries with more diverse
interests operating in a context of shifting power relations in the world trading
system means that the concept of ‘multilateralism’ has come under strain in the
world trading system (Bishop and Muzaka, this volume). Likewise, the rise of
new powers like Brazil, India and China has led to contestation of the binary dis-
tinction between developed and developing countries in the world trading
system, including the differential rights they have access to (Weinhardt and
Geck, this volume). In sum, it is therefore important to recall that both drivers of
change – material and discursive changes – go hand in hand. With regard to the
concept of trade itself, we see for instance changing forms of capitalist exchange
interacting with the norms, values and beliefs of trade experts to generate new
understandings of the thing called – and regulated as – ‘trade’ over time
(Eagleton-Pierce, this volume).
In addition, our conceptual apparatus can also change because actors trans-
late, reinterpret and reframe existing concepts or invent new ones – a phenom-
enon that Ronald Krebs and Patrick Jackson (2007) have aptly described as a
contest of ‘twisting tongues’. All chapters therefore emphasise the role of
meaning makers as ‘change agents’. The chapter on ‘democracy’, for instance,
pits the WTO Secretariat and civil society actors against each other in a discur-
sive struggle over how to define what makes the WTO more democratic (Ding-
werth, this volume). Similarly, developed and developing country representatives
make different claims about what it takes for the world trading system to be
‘just’ (Brandi, this volume) or ‘development-oriented’ (Weinhardt and Geck,
this volume). There can be, however, limits to the reinterpretation of concepts
for strategic purposes. For instance, the chapter on ‘coherence’ shows that the
term is probably the wrong argumentative instrument for a radical critique of the
key norms of the world trading system (Anderl, this volume).
Moreover, some of the chapters that follow draw attention to how scholars
themselves are implicated in the ways in which concepts change. As the chapter
on foreign direct investment illustrates, the failure to make transparent the cri-
teria that both scholars and policy-makers rely upon when referring to ‘Foreign
Direct Investment’ reproduces the biases inherent to different measurement tech-
niques that underpin the concept (Linsi, this volume). As scholars, we are also
providers of and – often unconscious – diffusing agents for ‘specific ways of
imagining worlds’ (Mhurchuú and Shindo, 2016, p. 7).
Finally, the chapters show that while all concepts become contested over
time, which leads to changes in the meanings attached to them, their degree of
contestation varies. Walter Bryce Gallie (1956) prominently put forward the
thesis that many concepts that relate to human relations are ‘essentially con-
tested’. Their contested nature is linked not only to particular characteristics of
concepts, such as being ‘open’ in character (Gallie, 1956, p. 172), but also to the
inherent difficulty of fixing the meaning of concepts that relate to human
behaviour rather than the natural world. As John Gray (1977, p. 339) has argued,
‘the major part of what makes a concept essentially contested is that criteria for
its correct application embody normative standards’. The concept of ‘justice’ in
the world trade regime is an example (Brandi, this volume). As universal agree-
ment on its meaning is unlikely in ‘a social environment marked by profound
diversity’ (Gray, 1977, p. 337), contestedness is inherent to the concept itself.
Yet, as the chapter on ‘coherence’ (Anderl, this volume) reveals, even concepts
that are less directly linked to normative standards become focal points for con-
testation, for instance when actors disagree whether to strive for ‘narrow’ or
‘comprehensive’ coherence of trade with other issues (Anderl, this volume). In
conclusion, paying attention to the normative standards that our communities
associate with a concept allows us to account for different degrees of
‘contestedness’.
Outline of the book
Each of the following chapters engages with a specific term of trade. The authors
build their arguments on a systematic analysis of texts, ranging from annual
reports of the GATT or WTO to international trade agreements, government
statements on trade policy issues, and media representations of trade politics.
Their analyses reveal the historical as well as the contemporary usage of the
respective concepts in international trade politics, and they provide a contextual-
isation and theoretical reflection of the specific terms of trade they look at.
At the beginning of each chapter, the authors provide a critical conceptual
history of the specific term in the world trade regime. This overview addresses
questions related to the mind maps, the discursive dynamics and the meaning
makers of international trade politics. In relation to the mind maps, we ask: What
precise role do concepts and ideas play in the world trade regime? How have
they come to play these roles? And how exactly do they function in these roles?
In view of the discursive dynamics, we examine: How has the meaning of the
term evolved historically? How did change become possible? And what pre-
vented change when it seemed possible? Finally, in response to the meaning
makers, we ponder: Which trade actors have sought to coin the terms of trade?
What explains their successes and failures? And what are distributional con-
sequences of their more successful efforts to change our conception of inter-
national trade politics?
In the second part of each chapter, authors zero in on a specific aspect of that
conceptual history they find particularly noteworthy. While part one of each
chapter thus serves to make the volume coherent, part two of each chapter brings
the different theoretical perspectives of our diverse set of authors to the fore-
front. Combining a common ground in part one with a more creative and diverse
approach in part two, we hope, makes explicit how we have come to see the pol-
itics of world trade in a very particular way, but also to imagine what alternative
understandings might possibly look – or have looked – like.
The order in which we present our terms of trade follows the logic of the
policy field. We first present concepts that are fundamental to the very substance
of the world trading system: ‘trade’, ‘protectionism’ and, as an example of an
economic concept that relates to but goes beyond the notion of trade, the term of
‘foreign direct investment’. What follows are concepts that speak more directly
to the institutional dimension of the world trade regime, its ‘multilateral’ nature
and presumably ‘democratic’ decision-making procedures, as well as the ques-
tion of whether or not ‘civil society’ counts as an actor that may participate in
them. Finally, we focus on concepts that link trade politics to other issues,
including ‘development’, the ‘environment’ and ‘coherence’ as a more recent
master frame. We conclude our examinations with the normative yardstick of
‘justice’ that has been at the heart of public contestations of the world trade
regime since at least the Seattle protests in 1999.
In Chapter 2, Matthew Eagleton-Pierce explores three sets of struggles over
the meaning and practice of the concept of trade itself. In doing so, he helps to
clarify the relationship between changing material forms of capitalist exchange,
the representation of such practices through concepts, and the experts who define
such meanings in specific social and political contexts. In very general terms,
Eagleton-Pierce presents a two-fold argument: first, that a historical look at
‘trade’ as a category reveals how it can be treated as a malleable ‘container’ into
which different actors can empty their meanings; second, that the privileging of
certain interests over others reveals how agendas linked to the concept of ‘trade’
are far from neutral.
In Chapter 3, Gary Winslett examines the concept of protectionism. He argues
that, since the late nineteenth century, protectionism has generally been under-
stood to mean a curtailment of trade designed to protect domestic businesses
from foreign competition. What has changed and, in the process of change also
become highly contested, is exactly which trade policies can accurately be
labelled protectionist. The chapter traces the concomitant transition in the major
barriers to international trade and the mission creep expansion of how protec-
tionism has come to be understood. Moreover, it shows that contestation over
the meaning of protectionism has not just grown more contentious but expanded
to new fronts, including practices of labelling.
In Chapter 4, Lukas Linsi explains and illustrates some of the basic issues
related to defining the term Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as a statistical unit.
He outlines how ‘FDI’, although practically existing for centuries, was only
really discovered as an economic concept in the post-war era when an emerging
expert consensus saw FDI as different from other cross-border capital flows. The
chapter presents an overview of how the key criteria the International Monetary
Fund (IMF ) advocated to be used by national agencies to statistically distinguish
FDI from other portfolio capital flows changed over time. Highlighting some of
the shortcomings of contemporary FDI statistics, the chapter also raises ques-
tions about the extraordinary authority and discursive power of socially con-
structed economic indicators more generally.
In Chapter 5, Matthew Bishop and Valbona Muzaka critically examine the
discourse on multilateralism in the world trading system. They argue that multi-
lateralism is both a simple and relatively uncontroversial concept at first sight.
Throughout its history, however, its application has waxed and waned, and it has
been applied to describe, explain and legitimise a range of quite distinctive insti-
tutional arrangements in global governance. As a consequence, conflation of the
concept with contemporary arrangements rests on an idealised caricature of the
actually existing multilateralism of the past that reifies – in the case of trade –
the WTO and constrains our understanding of the challenges the institution
faces. The chapter argues that, when critics lament the alleged decline of multi-
lateralism in today’s area of global trade politics, they obscure what is a far more
troubling concern: the lack of a ‘shared social purpose’ for governing global
trade.
In Chapter 6, Klaus Dingwerth examines the role that the concept of demo-
cracy plays in the world trading system. The chapter starts by reconstructing the
process through which democratic values have become a legitimacy standard for
the World Trade Organization. The reconstruction shows that, once the demo-
cratic frame had gained prominence in the highly visible Seattle protests, the
WTO consciously adopted it and successfully re-defined its core content to
match the organisation’s practices. Highlighting the legacy of Seattle, however,
the chapter hints that this may have been a Pyrrhic victory. When WTO officials
held that the organisation’s voting rules, its consensus-based decision-making
culture, and its practice of making a wealth of documents available to the public
made it the ‘most democratic’ international economic organisation in existence
today, they essentially accepted the protesters’ claim that ‘democracy’ was an
appropriate normative yardstick for the WTO. Moreover, by building their
democratic credentials on the consensus principle, they further reduced the scope
for curtailing the latter in an organisation that had grown from 23 to over 160
members, thereby making the achievement of consensus a much more difficult
endeavour.
In Chapter 7, Michael Strange looks at the concept of civil society, which as a
category of actorness has become central to global trade governance. Starting
with a mind map of ‘civil society’, the chapter moves towards identifying a
history of discursive battles over who or what can legitimately be classified as
‘civil society’. Underpinned by the normative recognition that the ‘civil society’
term has gained in global governance, the outcomes of these battles shaped who
or what was recognised as an ‘NGO’ eligible for attendance at major trade
summits like Ministerial Conferences of the World Trade Organization. In addi-
tion to the processes of normalisation that lead us to think we know what civil
society is, the second part of the chapter discusses the processes of politicisation
and identity re-articulation through which once nationally focused groups came
to include a perspective on global trade governance within their own campaign-
ing portfolios.
In Chapter 8, Felix Anderl discusses the concept of coherence and the ways it
has been used in the context of international economic policy making over time.
Based on a conceptual discussion of the term as an instrument of internal or
external critique, he argues that different actors in the world trade regime refer to
very different sets of problems when they publicly employ the term coherence.
The WTO Secretariat, business actors, and governments of industrialised
states primarily refer to a narrow concept of coherence that serves to integrate
prevailing discourses around trade. Advocacy groups and some governments of
developing countries, in contrast, use a more expansive definition of coherence
to highlight the externalities trade policies have for other policy goals like devel-
opment, environmental protection, health or human rights. While Anderl identi-
fies a progressive potential in the focus on trade’s coherence with other public
goods, his chapter shows that the dominant understanding is narrow and hence
conservative. Hinting at the dynamic nature of political discourse, he thus pro-
poses that activists ought to continue their campaign for a broader concept of
coherence.
In Chapter 9, Clara Weinhardt and Angela Geck examine how the common
understanding of development has changed within the world trade system over
time. The chapter maps key competing arguments and narratives within the dis-
course related to the term ‘development’ in the world trade regime and their evo-
lution over time. The authors present two key arguments. First, they maintain
that the turn in economic development theory from dependency theory to neo-
liberalism delegitimised developing countries’ demands for special treatment in
terms of both special protection and preferential market access. Second, the
increasing contestation of who belongs to the group of developing countries
made it more difficult for many countries to claim the special rights that the
world trading system guarantees to developing countries.
In Chapter 10, Emily Lydgate discusses the use of the concept of environment
in the world trade regime. Approaching the issue as a legal scholar, the author
highlights the role of language in international law, for instance when govern-
ments employ the inherent ambivalence of concepts to maintain flexibility and
reach tacit agreement on contentious issues. This functionality of ambivalence
might be particularly relevant in the post-1995 context of a highly legalistic
world trade regime. Substantively, the chapter shows that pressures from
Member States as well as from civil society have led the WTO to recognise
environmental concerns as integral to the WTO’s activities. While this has led to
formal inclusion of the environment and sustainable development on the negoti-
ating agenda, the overriding goal of WTO engagement with environmental prob-
lems is to identify areas in which trade liberalisation can further environmental
goals. This approach is not surprising given the overall aims of the WTO. Yet it
circumscribes the extent to which the organisation responds to environmental
problems. Rather than confronting conflicts between trade and environment
head-on, environmental problem-solving becomes an epiphenomenon in the
world trade regime.
In Chapter 11, Clara Brandi discusses different notions of justice and assesses
empirically how actors refer to the term in the context of the world trading
system. Based on an analysis of statements made by representatives of GATT/
WTO member states, the chapter argues that justice-based demands in the trade
regime have become less ambitious over time, mostly at the expense of the needs
and concerns of the weakest members of the system.
Taken together, the chapters display the diverse ways in which language has
shaped world trade politics. Looking at the world around us, it is easy to see how
these ways continue to be central. On the one hand, a global ‘trade war’ is on the
agenda again, with the US Government imposing tariffs on imports from steel
and aluminium and announcing protective measures that target China specifi-
cally. Public justifications – be they ‘national security concerns’, allegedly
‘unfair trade practices’ or the labelling of Chinese breaches of intellectual prop-
erty rights as acts of ‘aggression’ – are part and parcel of these recent disputes in
world trade politics. This shows how global power shifts are negotiated not only
at the level of trade policy rules, but also at the level of trade policy discourse
where actors seek to legitimise their positions in front of diverse constituencies.
On the other hand, we see a rise of populism that comes with a proliferation of
simple narratives of ‘us’ – the nation, the people – versus ‘them’ – the elites,
foreign countries, migrants. In the realm of trade, this has led to the prominence
of economic nationalist voices that promise to ‘put their country first’ and
‘ignore the World Trade Organization’. In view of such challenges, the liberals
who have built, promoted and defended the world trade regime as we know it
are searching for an equally simple and powerful answer. Whatever their
response will be, the language trade policy actors employ will inevitably render
some futures more imaginable, more plausible, and more desirable than others
and hence prepare the paths societies will eventually embark on. This makes it
all the more important to unpack the ‘terms of trade’ and examine the language
of world trade politics more closely.
Notes
1 Quotes are taken from the summary records of speeches or from full transcripts of
speeches made at GATT Contracting Parties meetings between 1978 and 1989 (GATT
Document No. SR.34/2, p. 21; SR.34/3, p. 43; SR.42/ST/3, p. 2; SR.42/ST/13, p. 1;
SR.45/ST/9, p. 2; SR.45/ST/16, p. 2; and SR.42/ST/14, p. 2; all emphases added).
2 For the sake of simplicity, we use ‘terms’ and ‘concepts’ interchangeably in the context
of this book; this approach contrasts with the existing literature that introduces a dis-
tinction not only between ‘concepts’ and ‘words’, but ‘terms’ as an intermediate cat-
egory (see Koselleck, 2011, p. 20). While such distinctions are analytically useful in
many ways, they are less relevant for our book, notably since we accept that both
‘terms’ and ‘concepts’ – which are difficult to disentangle empirically – are central in
shaping the world trading system.
3 For an exception, see Moschella and Weaver’s (2013) Handbook on Global Economic
Governance, which acknowledges the importance of language to a much greater extent.
Yet it remains grounded within a positivist framework that emphasises ideas merely as
‘causal factors’. Moreover, only 5 out of the 22 chapters deal explicitly with the world
trade regime.
4 Note that the role of language is indirectly acknowledged in one chapter that mentions
disagreement over the idea of liberalisation as a structural context factor (see chapter
26 by Elsig and Dupont) – albeit one that does not fundamentally shape the actors’
conceptualisation of the world trade regime and what it could possibly look like. As a
result, limited information exchanges are seen to prevent actors from reaching an
agreement (Elsig and Dupont, 2012, p. 593) – rather than the possibility that actors fail
to settle on shared ‘mental maps’, including of how the economy works, that allow
them to interpret information in similar ways in the first place.
5 We thank Fabian Steininger for providing input on the study of conceptual history.
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2 Trade
Matthew Eagleton-Pierce
This chapter explores three sets of struggles over the meaning and practice of
‘trade’. In doing so, it helps to mind map the relationship between changing
material forms of capitalist exchange, representation through concepts, and,
more precisely, the experts or figures of authority who define such meanings in
particular socio-political contexts. First, the discussion considers what could be
called the classical sense of trade as the physical exchange of commodities. This
intuitive meaning, with ancient roots, was the predominant sense from the early
development of capitalism through to the twentieth century. Second, the discus-
sion moves forward to explore how, from the 1980s, this original conception of
trade was progressively stretched in new directions as a result of the turn towards
‘beyond the border’ regulation. Here, attention is devoted to how ‘trade’, includ-
ing through the work of lawyers, became associated with services and intellec-
tual property rules, among other key examples. From the 1990s, the meaning of
trade was further reconfigured in light of labour and environmental activism,
resulting in an influential framing of such (oppositional) forces under the heading
of ‘trade and’. Third, the chapter evaluates the recent heightened contestation
over trade policy, including arguments from both the political left and political
right in the context of capitalist crises. These debates form part of a general trend
towards problematising the presumed benefits of trade liberalisation. Overall, the
history of the category of trade shows how it can be treated as a malleable ‘con-
tainer’ into which different actors can empty their meanings, yet the privileging
of certain interests over others reveals how agendas linked to the term are not
neutral.
Early conceptions of international trade

Debates on the meaning and practice of commercial exchange, either internally
within a particular jurisdictional space or externally across territories, is a long-
running theme in the Western tradition. Before the development of classical
liberal thought by Adam Smith and his contemporaries, the understanding of
trade was shaped by different moral traditions and doctrines. Two legacies of
thought can be briefly highlighted here for their salience: medieval scholastic
thought and natural law philosophy. In reference to the former, from the twelfth
Trade 23
to the sixteenth century, scholasticism drew upon Christian theology and Aristo-
telian philosophy to chart a more favourable conception of commerce when
compared to early Christian beliefs. For instance, Thomas Aquinas argued that
trade did not inevitably lead to fraud, greed, and failures of virtue but, rather,
suggested that the moral worth of such activity depended upon the motives and
conduct of each trader in question (Aquinas, 1949). Through the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, scholastic writers who followed in the footsteps of Aquinas
continued to embellish his ideas. By the Portuguese and Spanish colonial
encounters from the fifteenth century or, elsewhere, in respect to the rise of city-
states such as Florence and Venice, one can see the emergence of a more positive
discourse on international trade in which one only had the potential to be cor-
rupted and that commerce could even be viewed as an ethically neutral pursuit to
which all could potentially benefit (Viner, 1991; Irwin, 1996).
While the scholastics tended to focus on objective methods for studying
moral behaviour from an individual perspective, the philosophers of natural law
considered how the state could be organised in accordance with so-called ‘uni-
versal’ principles. One can note here how phrases such as ‘freedom of trade’
began to be articulated and were gradually conflated with the legitimate ‘rights
of nations’. In reference to the sixteenth century, for instance, Francisco de
Vitoria (1557) argued that ‘freedom’ could be linked to ‘the sovereign’ and, in
turn, sought to use such an association to legitimise the Spanish conquest of the
Americas: ‘neither may the native princes hinder their subjects from carrying on
trade with the Spanish; nor, on the other hand, may the princes of Spain prevent
commerce with the natives’. Elsewhere, Hugo Grotius, the leading natural law
thinker of the seventeenth century, made similar claims that the ‘right to engage
in commerce pertains equally to all peoples’, and that ‘freedom of trade is based
on a primitive right of nations which has a natural and a permanent cause; and
that right cannot be destroyed’ (Grotius, 1983). In short, the natural law theorists
were searching for arguments to justify the freedom to trade across territorial
boundaries in the context of the so-called ‘universal economy’. Yet, to under-
score, the actual practices of trade relations were strongly bound up with con-
quest, piracy, and war.
The origins of the phrase ‘free trade’ or, to be more precise, ‘a free trade’ as it
was initially expressed, are difficult to locate precisely but seem to first appear in
the late sixteenth century. Within this period, in the context of parliamentary
debates in England, political figures, merchants, and other advisors debated how
to reform royal grants which gave monopolistic rights for certain traders to
engage in foreign commerce. The meaning of ‘freedom’ in such calls was not
focused on the lowering of tariffs – a primary topic of attention in our con-
temporary age – but, rather, largely pivoted around who had privileged access to
lucrative trade routes (Irwin, 1996; Heckscher, 1934). By the seventeenth
century and, in particular, in the eighteenth century, the critics of mercantilist
thought grew louder in their opposition. They began adopting a more consistent
stance in favour of free trade, testing out ideas and propositions that would serve
as sources of inspiration for Adam Smith’s key synthesis in the Wealth of
24 Matthew Eagleton-Pierce
Nations (1776). For instance, the French physiocrats were famous for advancing
the maxim of laissez-faire et laissez-passer (implying freedom to produce and
freedom to trade). Although the physiocrats did not devote much analytical
attention to international trade per se, they were significant for arguing that self-
interested motives lay at the heart of many economic exchanges and that unless
there was a good reason, one should not intervene in the market.
In the discipline of economics, as well as international law, the case for free
trade was strengthened by the nineteenth century. Although Smith furnished a
classical liberal articulation for commercial exchange, it was David Ricardo
(1817), along with James Mill (1821), who composed the famous mathematically-
founded justification for trade through comparative advantage: the idea that
mutual gains from trade can be realised when nations specialise in producing
those goods in which their opportunity cost is lowest. When Paul Samuelson, a
leading twentieth century economist, was asked to name one proposition in the
social sciences that was both true and non-trivial, he named ‘the Ricardian
theory of comparative advantage’ (Samuelson, 1969, p. 9). From the early theo-
rists, through to the Victorian valorisation of Smith as a liberal godfather, the
popular image and professionalisation of economists has thus become closely
associated with arguments that defend free trade as a quasi-law of capitalism
(Magnusson, 2004; Howe, 1997). Similar to our current debates, the legitimation
of such claims has always been informed by an opposition to a ‘negative Other’:
protectionism, a category which had become crystallised in a dichotomy with
free trade by the mid-nineteenth century (see Winslett, this volume).
This struggle over the meaning of the notion of trade has, however, never
been the sole preserve of economists and lawyers who plot dry calculations of
tariff schedules and the like. Rather, within many country settings, the rhetorical
and social power of the free trade argument has also been tied to wider visions
of national identity, moral virtues, and the cultivation of new consumer identities
(for instance, on the British case, see Trentmann, 2008). In other words, while
economists and lawyers have been major meaning makers, discourses on trade
have always encompassed a range of social actors. This capacity for ‘trade’ to be
treated as a vessel into which social agents can enter their own interests, desires,
and anxieties helps to explain its ideological dexterity. In this respect, to borrow
from the philosopher Paul Ricoeur, we might suggest that arguments around the
term have always displayed an ideological ‘surplus of meaning’. While the
liberal tradition on commercial exchange contains a consistent ideological mor-
phology, with certain central tenets, the discourse also remains open to multiple
readings, revisions, and interpretations. Appreciating the category of trade
through this perspective helps, in turn, to explain the journey of the word through
recent decades, a theme to which we can now turn.
The conceptual inflation of trade

Any conceptual evaluation of the notion of trade confronts the problem of what
phenomenon should be included within the category. This question is not a mere
Trade 25
academic point of clarification but, at the same time, it is often intertwined with
uneven struggles over the distribution of material and political resources. Histor-
ically, as noted, international trade meant the exchange of goods which one
could tangibly feel or hold in the hand, from wine, spices, and clothes to cars,
computers, and solar panels. In this sense, through most of the twentieth century,
international trade was predominately understood through a substantialist mode
of thinking. But from the 1970s, the concept of trade has been stretched and
applied to other senses. This brings forward the concern for how trade rules both
reflect and constitute larger trends in capitalist value creation and, with relevance
to one of the themes in this book, the particular meaning makers who have a
powerful voice in shaping new discourses. Such developments have often been
understood through attention to ‘beyond the border’ concerns whereby ‘trade’ is
used as a policy window to promote deeper regulatory agendas. For example,
on such meaning making, one can highlight here how the multilateral trade
policy agenda incorporated services and intellectual property concerns into the
mainstream.
In respect to the former, it is interesting to note the relations between legal
classifications and political interests in the history of services trade. Building on
the earlier work of William Drake and Kalypso Nicolaïdis (1992), Jane Kelsey
(2008) has examined how ‘trade in services’ – an alien notion in trade politics
prior to the 1980s – was in part legitimised through the work of institutions such
as the OECD which acted as a restricted forum and knowledge producer for
developed countries to debate how services could be classified in the GATT
system. The point of such enquiries is to trace how ‘trade in services’ had par-
ticular roots in the commercial interests of US, European, and Japanese corpora-
tions, but was subsequently legitimised through a ‘globalising’ process that was
aided by the OECD. Andrew Lang (2009) has enriched the analysis further by
showing how this ‘regime of knowledge’ in services was constructed and moni-
tored by interested actors. In particular, he draws attention to the potential for
law to ‘close’ opportunities for contestation over time through the work of objec-
tification and officialisation. For example, Lang argues that through the legal
codification of particular definitions of the GATS (such as the four ‘modes of
supply’ in Article I), as well as the ongoing professional labour of statistical ana-
lysis, particular dominant meanings acquire a certain salience and have the
potential ‘to reflect and embody shared ways of classifying services’ (Lang,
2009, p. 34). Thus, these types of critical enquiries try to reveal the politicisation
of trade knowledge, particularly when such knowledge may appear apolitical or
‘universal’ (also see Lang, 2006 and 2007; Adler and Bernstein, 2005).
In relation to intellectual property rules, when reflecting upon the GATT
Uruguay Round (1986–1994) negotiations, one needs to note how the US
economy was shifting into ‘knowledge’ industries and desired to further promote
them internationally. As documented by Susan Sell, intellectual property rules
would not have become ‘a trade issue’ without a cluster of major corporations
promoting the cause, notably pharmaceutical firms and their lobbies, as well
as Hollywood studios (Motion Picture Association of America) and industry
associations for music and publishing. The inclusion of intellectual property was
the product of a campaign of intense lobbying by the US, supported by the Euro-
pean Union, Japan and other developed nations. Coercive tactics under Section
301 of the US Trade Act of 1974 played an important role in defeating com-
peting policy positions that were championed by developing countries, most
notably Korea and Brazil, but also Thailand and India. The US strategy of
linking trade policy to intellectual property standards can be traced back to the
entrepreneurship of senior management at Pfizer in particular who, from the
early 1980s, mobilised corporations in the US and made maximising intellectual
property rights a priority of national trade policy (Sell, 2003 and 2010; also see
May, 2009).
With an eye on mapping and understanding how meaning making is accomp-
lished in the conceptual treatment of trade concerns, we can situate these empiri-
cal examples in light of the ‘trade linkage’ debate. For David Leebron (2002),
there are two types of linkage claims commonly seen in the trading world: sub-
stantive linkage and strategic linkage. The former refers to circumstances
whereby an issue is claimed to be ‘linkable’ to trade because there is some
coherence between the two sets of norms governing each issue or domain. This
may take the form of norms that are either congruent (that is, offering some
degree of similarity) or, alternatively, conflictual. For instance, ‘trade and
environment’ has often been formulated in conflictual terms; although others
have preferred ‘sustainable development’ as a kind of mutual bridging norm.
The latter linkage claim – strategic linkage – refers to uses within bargaining
environments. Here, we are interested in how an actor may try to link an issue
area where they are strong with an issue area where they are weak, often in order
to improve their power or resource deficit. Strategic linkage claims are also crit-
ical to understanding how trade politics are conducted within negotiations, such
as with the WTO or in preferential deals.
In a more critical examination of the trade linkage debate, with implications
for understanding the uneven effects of discursive configurations, Lang (2007)
has argued that the common ‘trade and’ debate does not actually accomplish
what it claims to do. At first glance, it appears that trade lawyers are opening up
a debate to accommodate voices that may not always have been heard, such as
environmentalists or trade unionists. But Lang (2007) suggests that, while
lawyers have made significant efforts to engage and evaluate the critiques of
these historically marginalised figures, the ‘trade and’ debate has come to ‘legiti-
mise and naturalise precisely those concepts which it ought to be contesting’.
Subsequently, he argues that when debates are organised between, on the one
hand, ‘core’ or ‘self-evident’ ‘trade values or understandings’ and, on the other
hand, other ‘non-trade values or understandings’, this does not represent an apo-
litical, disinterested move on the part of analysts or political agents. Rather, this
very conceptual compartmentalisation often reveals how only particular opinions
of what is believed to be the liberal trade project become privileged and
defended (that is, assigned to the positive category of ‘trade’, rather than the
negative category of ‘non-trade’). ‘Trade values’ do not automatically appear to
Trade 27
be ‘human rights values’ or ‘environmental values’ within this discursive
framing. Lang suggests that the results of this conceptual construction can have
implications for those actors who critically examine the trading system and
advance enquiries that may, indeed, aim to transform it to another state, rather
than simply amend or complement it. In short, this analysis aims to address how
potentially threatening oppositions to the trading order can be incorporated into
the orthodoxy, in the process sapping critique of its most potent elements.
However, no trade orthodoxy is capable of adequately pre-empting and respond-
ing to all forms of critique. Protests, miscalculations, or mundane ignorance
inevitably blur the deceptively straight lines of orthodox reason. It is with this
context that we can turn to the third theme on the modern trade landscape.
The contemporary political contestability of trade

When examining the last three decades of global trade regulation, there has been
a notable trend towards sharper forms of public criticism, often in relation to
developing countries but increasingly developed nations as well. In turn, this has
caused renewed problems for how defenders of the system justify policy
agendas. This pattern has tended to result in a tarnishing of the rhetoric of trade
liberalisation in particular, including more vocal arguments stressing sover-
eignty, protectionism, and fairness. These ideas have emanated from the political
left and right, and sometimes both at once on particular trade questions. From
the mid-1990s, notably within Europe and North America, trade policy took on a
more politicised accent or, to be more precise, its inherent political content
acquired a wider popular resonance. From 1994, with the signing of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the establishment of the WTO,
public debate over an expanding global trade agenda became increasingly visible
within many industrialised countries, such as the US, Canada, the UK, France,
Germany, the Netherlands, and South Korea. In 1999, the WTO system, notably
the Secretariat and major powers, were shaken by the protests at the Seattle Min-
isterial when around 40,000 demonstrators registered their opposition to
‘corporate-led globalisation’, an agenda which they viewed as derived from how
international trade policy was designed and prosecuted. Such protests were part
of the wider alter-globalisation movement which featured a significant theme
around making trade socially ‘fair’ and sensitive to environmental impacts
(McNally, 2002; Smith, 2008).
How the case for trade liberalisation has been problematised by particular
civil society organisations (CSOs) and public intellectuals needs to be noted
here. By doing so, we can return to how critically inclined meaning makers have
reshaped the discursive space for argumentation on trade policy and, in some
cases, caused difficulties for policymakers and established agendas (Tussie,
2009; Murphy, 2010; Hannah, 2014). For instance, from the late 1990s, CSOs
who had a stake in trade debates, such as Oxfam, the World Wildlife Fund, and
Greenpeace, sought to increase their investment in research and campaigning,
generating substantial attention from public audiences. Oxfam’s Make Trade
Fair campaign, supported by the report Rigged Rules and Double Standards
(Oxfam International, 2002), represents a good illustration of effective, research-
led activism on trade politics, one which subsequently informed a number of
developing country trade delegates in the WTO Doha Round and how other
CSOs sought to critique trade reforms. The intervention of particular academics
also helped to add legitimacy to these arguments, such as Dani Rodrik’s (1997
and 2017) case for pluralising policy pathways involving trade, particularly
around the role for institutions; and Ha-Joon Chang’s (2002) revisionist history
on the high tariff levels used by Western countries at their earlier stages of
development in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Since the fallout from the global financial crisis in 2007–2008, popular
opposition to new trade agreements has resurfaced in a number of industrialised
countries, particularly in the West. This criticism has taken place against the
return of ‘patrimonial capitalism’ as Thomas Piketty (2014) has expressed it,
including rising intra-country inequalities, oligarchic forms of governance, and
stagnating wages within many Western societies (Milanovic, 2016). In the US,
these conditions have informed (or have been cynically exploited for) political
purposes in debates on trade policy. Among notable features, one can observe
how partisan differences have widened since the beginning of the campaign for
the 2016 presidential election. In October 2016, in the context of Donald
Trump’s consistent criticism of existing US trade deals, only 29 per cent of
Republicans and Republican-leaning independents agreed that free trade agree-
ments have been good for the US, down from 56 per cent in early 2014. On the
same question, however, Democrats have remained committed to free trade
agreements and, indeed, registered an increase in support to 67 per cent by April
2017 (Pew Research Center, 2017). For some, the US withdrawal from talks on
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the renegotiation of NAFTA has sig-
nalled how Trump governs as a populist plutocrat (Pierson, 2017). What has
emerged is a stronger, nationalistic rhetoric on trade – one which is by no means
radically new to US politics, as students of Hamilton can attest to – but is dis-
tinctive in its coarseness and suspicion of arrangements of ‘global governance’.
In sum, these multiple and sustained forms of criticism on trade policy, eman-
ating from both the political left and right, have tended to recalibrate how trade
liberalisation has been defended by major international institutions (including
the WTO, World Bank, OECD) and within economics generally. On the one
hand, theorists have issued more cautious assessments regarding what precisely
international trade can accomplish for countries and firms, particularly in terms
of the ties between trade, growth, and poverty (Love and Lattimore, 2009; Wade,
2004). For instance, scholars have debated the use of different measurements of
openness and encountered problems with evaluating causal relationships. In one
prominent analysis, Francisco Rodríguez and Dani Rodrik (2000, p. 266) cri-
tiqued the econometrics underpinning some major studies, arguing that the case
for the relationship between trade openness and growth was not ‘general’ and
‘unambiguous’, but most likely ‘contingent’ and ‘dependent on a host of country
and external characteristics’. Other studies have revealed how the relationship
Trade 29
between domestic trade policy and poverty reduction is highly complex and case
specific, making generalisation difficult (Turner et al., 2008). Such conclusions
have dovetailed with a broader concern for examining how the consequences of
trade policy changes are connected to factors such as industrial organisation,
domestic political institutions, and the so-called ‘sequencing of reforms’. In sum,
as a normative baseline, while trade liberalisation continues to be treated in
positive terms by many prominent voices in the field, such opinions are now
marked by many different shades of grey, certainly when compared to the 1990s.
Conclusion
This chapter has discussed how the concept of trade can be understood through
three readings: (1) a focus on early historical meanings which helped to fashion
a core, substantialist sense, (2) the modern ‘stretching’ of the term from the
1980s in the context of ‘beyond the border’ regulatory agendas, and (3) con-
temporary debates which have further politicised ideas and agendas under its
name. In doing so, the debate helps to probe the links between processes of eco-
nomic exchange and the changing representation of such dynamics through lan-
guage. Like a kaleidoscope that radiates out shifting hues with each turn, the
meaning of linguistic resources associated with ‘trade’ can be variegated and, at
times, unpredictable. This is similar to other master terms of political and eco-
nomic discourse. Agents with a stake in trade discourse actively produce social
reality through the mundane activities of sense-making, but they do so based on
the positions they occupy in an objective space of constraints and opportunities.
The cognitive tools chosen, and imposed, issue out of such social spaces
(Eagleton-Pierce, 2013). In other words, the capacity to shape the meaning of
master concepts, such as ‘trade’, is never evenly distributed but, rather, some
material practices are surrounded by a greater degree of social recognition than
others. On this aspect, therefore, the discussion in this chapter has placed a par-
ticular emphasis on studying the knowledge producers who have been able to
shift the meaning of the term. The marking of the boundaries and content of a
trade ‘issue’ is, therefore, always a socio-political construction in the making.
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3 Protectionism
Gary Winslett
Introduction
The central contestation over the meaning of the term protectionism is less about
what protectionism is and more about what exactly constitutes protectionism.
Since the late nineteenth century, protectionism has generally been understood
to mean a curtailment of trade designed to protect domestic businesses from
foreign competition. That definition, generally speaking, is still what people
mean when they use the word protectionism. That has not changed. What has
changed and what has become highly contested is exactly which trade policies
can accurately be labelled protectionist.
In the mind maps of trade politics, the role played by the concept of protec-
tionism is to rhetorically delineate those trade policies that are to be considered
illegitimate from those deemed acceptable. It came to play that role through the
combined meaning making efforts of export-oriented businesses and government
officials who sought to use the term protectionism as a criticism against those
trade policies they disagreed with. Their ability to shape how this term has been
understood has created a political landscape that favours, in a subtle but never-
theless powerful way, their attempts to reduce trade barriers. The key discursive
dynamic surrounding the concept of protectionism is the expansion of what pol-
icies are thought of as protectionist and thus which policies international trade
institutions have the authority and obligation to constrain.
Protectionism has generally been thought of in terms of effect and intent.
Does the policy limit trade, and is it meant to give advantage to domestic firms?
Over time, as a result of successful meaning maker efforts by export-oriented
businesses, the threshold at which policies are considered to have unacceptably
negative effects on trade flows has been lowered. Furthermore, exporting busi-
nesses and some government officials have come to portray a number of govern-
ment measures that have plausible public policy goals as their stated objective to
actually be motivated by protectionist intent.
The definitional contest over the meaning of protectionism has major ramifi-
cations for which trade policies are seen as legitimate, for which political actors’
preferences get written into international trade rules, and for determining the
extent to which trade rules may impinge on national sovereignty. Given that
Protectionism 33
reality, an explanation of the rhetorical arc of the term protectionism and the
contestation over its definitional contours sheds a great deal of light on the shape
and trajectory of global trade politics. This chapter provides that explanation. To
do so, I first trace the transition in the major barriers to international trade and
the expansion of what policies have been understood to be protectionist from the
pre-General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) days to the end of the
Tokyo Round. I then explain how export-oriented businesses opposed to trade-
limiting policies were able to portray those policies as protectionist in the
Uruguay Round and use that round to construct the World Trade Organization
(WTO) in such a way that it constrained the use of those policies. I also discuss
civil society activists’ attempts to push back against these narratives and how
government officials have participated in the social construction of protection-
ism. Finally, I use an examination of labelling requirements to demonstrate the
contours of the political contestation over this crucial term that is at the centre of
trade politics.
The meaning of protectionism
Protectionism in the GATT (1947–1979)

Tariffs and quotas constituted the primary trade barriers in the period before and
immediately following the Second World War. Their intent and impact on trade
were straightforward and clear. As US President Grover Cleveland pointed out
in his 1887 State of the Union Address, along with raising government revenue,
giving advantage to domestic businesses was the central point of a tariff (Cleve-
land, 1887). Similarly, the rhetoric of all of the participants at the 1930 Inter-
national Conference for a Tariff Truce demonstrates quite clearly that they
understood these measures to be intentional barriers to trade meant to protect
domestic firms (see United States Department of State, 1930). These measures
were meant to block trade and that is exactly what they did. Roughly half of the
25 per cent decrease in world trade during the Great Depression can be attributed
to the increase in these trade barriers (Douglas, 2012). It was thus easy to label
those policies protectionist. In fact, even those political actors who defended the
use of these policies did not dispute that they constituted protectionism.1
Because these policies were widely associated with the counterproductive,
beggar-thy-neighbour responses to the onset of the Great Depression and thus
believed to have exacerbated the Great Depression, government officials came to
view protectionism as a counterproductive approach to trade that should be cur-
tailed (see e.g. Kennedy, 1962).
Over the course of six GATT rounds from 1947 to 1969, tariffs, especially
those on manufactured goods, fell to a fraction of what they were in the 1930s
(World Trade Organization, 1995). As tariffs receded, non-tariff barriers such as
subsidies and government procurement policies became relatively more
important. The intent of these policies and their impact on trade were much less
clear than had been the case with tariffs and quotas. Government procurement
34 Gary Winslett
policies illustrate why.2 Governments are frequently the primary purchasers of a
wide range of goods and services. Government procurement policies that favour
domestic firms may act as trade barriers against foreign firms that would seek to
provide those goods and services. Superficially then, such policies are discrimi-
natory, but are they protectionist?
These policies are widely understood to constitute trade barriers (Trionfetti,
2000; Arrowsmith, 2003). However, if protectionism is conceived in terms of
intent, defenders of discriminatory government procurement policies argue that
the intent of those policies is not to privilege domestic businesses but instead
some other policy goal; the trade discrimination is incidental. For example,
defenders of the United States government’s procurement policies in the defence
industry favouring domestic firms argue that favouring domestic firms can help
ensure security of supply as well as protect sensitive technologies and classified
information (McCarl, 2011). Critics argue that these policies are simply dis-
guised protectionism (Saltmarsh and Wayne, 2008).
These same dynamics have also occurred on other non-tariff barriers ranging
from subsidies to competition policy.3 In contrast to the defenders of tariffs and
quotas, when these non-tariff barriers became the subject of trade negotiations in
the Tokyo Round (1973–1979), the government officials that were the primary
defenders of these policies did not rhetorically accept that they really counted as
protectionist; conversely, exporting businesses that believed these policies were
hurting them, as well as the governments of the states they were based in, held
that these policies were just as protectionist as tariffs and quotas.4
The trajectory of this disagreement had three important implications for the
term protectionism. First, it did not actually challenge the notion that protection-
ism was to be viewed with suspicion and that protectionism rather than liberal-
ism bore the burden of proof. Relatedly, the defenders of these policies did not
try to reclaim the label protectionist and try to modify it by saying that they were
for ‘social protectionism’ or ‘legitimate protectionism’ or some other qualified
version of protectionism. Instead they abandoned the label altogether. That even
the defenders of policies that curtailed trade seemed to accept the idea that pro-
tectionism was to be avoided added to the strength of the term as a rhetorical
device for delegitimising policies that inhibited trade. Second, because intent is
so very difficult to definitively prove, by making the discourse around protec-
tionism focus on the intent of the policy in question, it set the stage for mutual
scepticism and bitter disputes later on. The defenders of a policy that curtails
trade can plausibly argue that their motivation is not protectionism and that the
trade curtailment is simply a side effect, yet because that trade curtailment is still
very real, the opponents of that policy can plausibly claim that the curtailment is
the real motivation.5 Third, it meant that the debate over protectionism would no
longer be about the overall direction of trade policy but over which policies were
or were not protectionist. In this way, it created a subtle but nevertheless
powerful discursive context that privileged greater trade liberalisation.
That discursive context aided, and was aided by, the rise of neoliberal eco-
nomic thought. Both privileged commercial aims and worked to discredit
Protectionism 35
government policies that were perceived to stand in the way of those aims. Neo-
liberalism and the belief that non-tariff barriers constituted protectionism, rather
than a necessary and even benign component of embedded liberalism, went
hand-in-hand. The turn away by developing countries from import-substitution
industrialisation and embrace of export-oriented growth as a result of the Latin
American debt crisis and development successes of East Asian countries only
further augmented this ideational background.
The Uruguay Round
The negotiating outcomes of the Uruguay Round and thus the rules embedded in
the WTO reflected the preferences of those actors who were most successful at
getting policies they disliked to be socially constructed as protectionist. Export-
oriented businesses fought to expand the definition of protectionism and thus
delegitimise policies that acted as barriers to their commercial aims. Firms across
a range of industries including services, finance, and telecommunications were
able to socially construct policies that inhibited their trade aims as protectionist
(Braithwaite and Drahos, 2000). Businesses heavily reliant on intellectual prop-
erty (IP) in particular illustrate how firms can effectively shape and expand the
mind map of protectionism to promote their commercial interests.
Intellectual property and protectionism

IP-intensive businesses, and especially Pfizer, IBM, and Monsanto, were highly
effective meaning makers in the early stages of the Uruguay Round. They suc-
cessfully sought to use the charge of protectionism, and trade policy more gener-
ally, to entrench their policy preference in international rules.
In the early 1980s, they wanted an international IP-regime that had two char-
acteristics. First, they wanted developing states’ IP regulations to be raised to
match US regulations (Devereaux et al., 2006; Drahos and Braithwaite, 2002).
Patent terms should be extended; all classes of products, including pharmaceuti-
cals, should be patentable; and the means to break these patents should be greatly
circumscribed (Drahos and Braithwaite, 2002). Second, they wanted this new
regime to have strong enforcement capabilities to prevent those developing
countries from backsliding or ignoring their own laws whenever it was conven-
ient (Drahos and Braithwaite, 2002). At the time, the primary international
organisation for IP issues, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
had no real means of enforcement and no dispute settlement mechanism
(Devereaux et al., 2006; Maskus, 2000). Also, because it only dealt with IP
issues, there was no possibility of cross issue linkage (Devereaux et al., 2006).
Even worse, from the perspective of these firms, was that it had a one-country,
one-vote structure, which meant it was dominated by developing states (Sell and
Prakash, 2004; Harrison, 2004).
IP-intensive firms argued that developing states’ lower IP-standards were
essentially theft of their intellectual property and amounted to piracy. They also
36 Gary Winslett
argued that developing countries’ less stringent IP regulations amounted to pro-
tectionism because they assisted those domestic firms engaged in that piracy
(Drahos and Braithwaite, 2002). These businesses successfully sold the causal
story that intellectual property rights lead to free trade and investment and so
promote economic growth (Sell and Prakash, 2004).
According to them, linking IP with trade would have several advantages.
First, through the US Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) and other pref-
erential trading arrangements, it meant that there was something that could be
exchanged for a country agreeing to higher IP regulations.6 Second, the single
undertaking of the Uruguay Round meant that states could not pick and choose
areas of the agreement to sign. It thus created cross-issue linkage and so states
that never would have countenanced more stringent IP rules in isolation could be
bought off with concessions in other areas. Finally, the GATT, unlike WIPO,
had a dispute settlement mechanism, albeit a relatively weak one (though it
would get strengthened as part of the Uruguay Round).
The industry’s lobbying efforts to place IP regulations on the Uruguay Round
agenda were considerable. According to one US trade negotiator, Edmund Pratt
and John Opel, the bosses of Pfizer and IBM respectively, ‘basically engineered,
pushed, and cajoled the government into including IP as one of the topics for the
negotiation’ (Devereaux et al., 2006, p. 53).
The linkage of piracy with protectionism was highly effective at getting
Western government officials to take a very hard line in favour of higher IP
standards, as it made it a moral issue with many fewer shades of grey (Weiss-
man, 1996; Harrison, 2004). The framing of lower IP protection as piracy was
crucial because it was that framing that served to portray that lower protection as
an illegitimate choice that profited domestic business at the expense of foreign
business. It was the piracy framing that allowed lower IP protection to be con-
structed as protectionism. It was this framing that intellectually underpinned US
Trade Representative Clayton Yuetter’s statement that he saw ‘no difference at
all between stealing the patent for a product and stealing the product itself …
thievery is thievery’ and his argument that developing countries’ lower IP regu-
lations were ‘really an indefensible way to run a society. I don’t see how any
nation in the world can defend piracy’ (Harrison, 2004, p. 81).
IP-intensive firms’ effectiveness as meaning makers is evidenced by the fact
that the business community’s assessment of what IP-trade policy should be,
which was titled ‘Basic Framework of GATT Provisions on Intellectual
Property: statement of Views of the European, Japanese, and the United States
Business Communities’, became the foundation of the United States Trade
Representative’s negotiating position in the Uruguay Round (Drahos and
Braithwaite, 2002).
Having convinced Western governments, and especially the United States, to
think about IP leniency as protectionist attempts to shield pirates, IP-intensive
firms were able to embed their policy preferences in the WTO. All signatories
now had to have patents that lasted 20 years. None were allowed to prohibit
patents on drugs. The use of compulsory licenses was constrained.7 All states
Protectionism 37
were required to stringently enforce IP regulations. Failure to do any of these
could lead to that state being taken before the WTO’s dispute settlement mech-
anism, which was much more robust than the GATT’s had been.8 Not only was
the threshold of what counted as protectionism being lowered, but now because
of the new dispute settlement mechanism crossing that threshold came with
much more significant consequences.
IP regulations were not the only regulations that businesses wanted to prevent
from inhibiting trade. Environmental and labour regulations as well as health
and safety standards also had the potential to impede businesses’ trade aims by
raising their cost of production and/or inhibiting their access to new markets.
Businesses would attempt to portray regulatory differences in these areas as pro-
tectionist but soon found that the civil society activists most interested in those
regulations were highly motivated to oppose that definitional framing.
New actors start caring about the meaning of protectionism

The new rules brought about by the Tokyo Round, completed in 1979, and the
Uruguay Round, completed in 1994, more significantly constrained anti-
dumping, subsidies, countervailing duties, government procurement, safeguards,
and other non-tariff barriers.9 As a result of these new rules as well as a number
of other trends, the differences between states’ domestic regulations on the
environment, consumer safety, labour standards, and intellectual property
became the most significant barriers to international trade.10
That made the political terrain over what constituted protectionism even more
contested. At least earlier non-tariff barriers had been almost entirely economic
in nature and generally only pitted export-oriented businesses against import-
competing businesses. Now that a broader range of regulations were part of the
trade agenda, civil society groups that had previously been uninterested in trade
policy now became engaged in trade politics because trade now affected the reg-
ulations by which they were very much motivated. Thus the roster of political
actors in trade widened to include environmentalists, consumer advocacy organi-
sations, and labour activists, as well as other NGOs.
Environmentalists were concerned that regulations designed to protect the
environment could be invalidated by the GATT or other trade institutions if
those regulations interfered with trade. They defended these standards by arguing
that their purpose was not to give advantage to domestic businesses, but instead
to promote a valued public policy goal. Environmentalist organisations such as
the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Sierra Club strongly rejected the asser-
tion that they were protectionist (Doyle, 1993; Wu, 1992). Consumer safety
advocates also made the same kinds of arguments, asserting that because com-
mercial discrimination was not the motivation animating the regulatory stand-
ards they promoted, those standards, even if they inhibited international trade,
did not count as protectionism and thus were legitimate.11 Ecological economists
Herman Daly and Robert Goodland summarised this argument best saying that
‘protecting hard won social gains from blind standards lowering competition,
38 Gary Winslett
that is what we are interested in – not the protection of some inefficient entre-
preneur who wants to grow mangoes in Sweden’ (Herman and Daly, as cited in
Aaronson, 2001, p. 177).
Conversely, businesses charged that the public policy justifications given in
defence of these standards were simply fig leaves meant to mask their true pro-
tectionist intent. A US Chamber of Commerce representative argued that efforts
to link trade policy to labour and human rights standards were simply veiled pro-
tectionism (Howard, 1987). When the US Consumer Product Safety Commis-
sion ordered a recall of rayon skirts made in India in 1994 and justified it by
arguing that the skirts were excessively flammable, the Indian government
charged that this was simply a protectionist ploy to curb an increase in textile
imports (Rao, 1994).
Because the disagreement between these businesses and civil society activists
was over the true intent of the regulatory trade barriers, those firms and activists
came to believe that the other side was not just wrong but actively duplicitous,
which made finding acceptable compromises on these regulatory barriers that
much more difficult. In the Uruguay Round negotiations, trade officials had
hoped to split the difference between the two sides. They wanted to leave states
adequate policy space to address social concerns but did not want that space to
be so expansive that states could use specious public health and safety arguments
to engage in protectionism.
The WTO’s three-fold test

The rules created by these trade officials in the Uruguay Rounds subjected national
regulations to a three-fold test. First, if a state’s regulations matched the recom-
mendations of a designated international non-governmental organisation such as
the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) or the World Organiza-
tion for Animal Health (OIE), that regulation would automatically be considered
WTO-compliant. Second, if a state’s regulations did not match those recommenda-
tions, they had to have a scientific basis. Third, that regulation had to be the least
trade restrictive means of achieving the regulatory goal. The WTO was attempting
to respect states’ regulatory prerogatives but limit their ability to use regulatory
means for protectionist ends. Each stage in this test had important implications for
which regulatory trade barriers would be considered protectionist and delegiti-
mised and which would be considered not to be protectionist and thus upheld.
The first stage subtly shifted the terms in defining protectionism. Even though
the regulations promulgated by ISO and other standards bodies are not legally
binding, because they are automatically considered WTO-compliant and thus not
considered protectionist, there is still a powerful incentive to adopt those stand-
ards. In other words, the mere threat of a policy being labelled protectionist
exerts a centripetal force pushing states’ regulations towards an international
centre point.
When observers talk about the WTO having power or influence, they often
are referring to the WTO’s dispute settlement process. The dispute settlement
Protectionism 39
process receives most of the attention for understandable reasons. The most
obvious way in which the WTO influences a state’s policy is when that state
amends a policy after a WTO dispute such as when the United States curtailed
its subsidies to cotton farmers after a dispute with Brazil. Another way to think
about the WTO’s influence however is not just to think about when a state
amends its policies after a dispute but also when a state adopts an ISO or
Codex or OIE standard because that is the path of least juridical resistance
when they otherwise would have implemented their own specifically national
standards. The centripetal nudge that this first stage delivers is thus frequently
underappreciated.
It also bears pointing out that many of these international standard setting
bodies give far more representation to international businesses than to non-
business groups. For example, business controls the lion’s share of representa-
tion at Codex; the more decisions that can be made at a forum dominated by
business, the more influence business has over those regulations (Braithwaite
and Drahos, 2000, pp. 407–408). The power of this first stage then is subtle but
it nevertheless constitutes a strong mechanism through which the WTO influ-
ences how different trade policies are understood and implemented. At first
glance, the first step in the WTO’s three-fold test appears to be an exercise in
resolving coordination problems but in fact, it tilts the ideational playing field in
favour of the expansive understanding of protectionism promoted by export-
oriented businesses.
The second stage creates an additional constraint on states’ regulations by
implicitly asserting that regulatory differences not based on science must be
motivated by a desire to give an unfair advantage to domestic firms and thus are
simply disguised protectionism and not WTO-compliant.12 Adding this stage was
necessary because sometimes businesses’ complaints about veiled protectionism
had considerable merit. One of the most obvious examples occurred when Japan
created regulatory barriers on skis (one of the few goods in which foreign com-
panies had a considerable domestic market share) and based their decision on the
argument that Japanese snow was special (Rodger, 1986). Still, just because
businesses’ complaints were sometimes justified does not mean that all regu-
latory differences were just veiled protectionism. The scientific justification was
meant to help adjudicate between different regulatory trade barriers.
This requirement nevertheless provides another centripetal force by assuming
that a regulatory barrier has a protectionist intent until proven otherwise. Even
when there is scientific basis for the regulatory difference, firms in other states,
and their governments, may and often do contend that the scientific justification
is nothing more than a fig leaf for a protectionist intent.
Even with a scientific justification, the third stage places another constraint by
forcing a state to use the least trade restrictive regulatory means possible. Once
again, the assumption implied by that rule is that a regulation that is more trade
restrictive than absolutely necessary is protectionist. This rule also limits the
level of protectionist impact even if protectionist intent cannot be established. If
protectionism is defined in terms of intent and impact, the second and third parts
40 Gary Winslett
of this test are set up to constrain protectionism as much as possible. The root
norm embodied in these rules is that protectionism is bad and must be curtailed.
As I discussed earlier, the threshold at which policies are considered to have
unacceptably negative effects on trade flows has been lowered. The second and
third stage of the WTO’s process effectively lowered the threshold of intent as
well because the norm of anti-protectionism and the institutional backing it has
as a result of these rules means that the defenders of a regulatory trade barrier
bear the burden of proving that the policy they prefer is not protectionist.
The meaning of protectionism and the Doha Round deadlock

By the Doha Round, developing countries had become much more significant
meaning makers in trade politics and thus, in contrast to the Uruguay Round,
developed states were much more limited in their ability to impose their defini-
tional preferences. Disagreements between developing and developed countries
over which policies count as protectionism and thus should be curtailed, and
which policies do not count as protectionism and thus should not be constrained
in the name of trade liberalisation, contributed to the political deadlock at the
Doha Round.
Developing countries insisted, with considerable justification, that the EU and
Japan’s agriculture and textile policies still greatly advantaged domestic produc-
ers and that any new multilateral deal had to reduce those protectionist policies
(Kharge, 2011). US inflexibility with regard to agricultural policies only com-
pounded the difficulties surrounding this issue. Conversely, developed countries
asserted that developing countries’ regulations in four areas – investment, com-
petition, government procurement, and trade facilitation – constituted protection-
ism (Gallagher, 2008). Once developed countries could not get developing
countries to accept regulatory trade barrier reductions in those areas, they refused
to offer further concessions on agriculture and textiles (Gallagher, 2008). Not
only could the two sides not find a mutually acceptable solution to these issues,
they continually disagreed over whether these policies did or did not constitute
protectionism.
Adding to this disagreement, developed and developing countries became
deadlocked over the extent to which large emerging countries could claim the
right to special and differential treatment in the same manner as other develop-
ing countries (see Weinhardt and Geck, this volume).13 The idea underlying
special and differential treatment all along was that though protectionism ought
to be curtailed in general, small impoverished countries could be allowed to
engage in protectionism on normative grounds given their impoverishment, and
in any event, their small economic size meant that their doing so did not consti-
tute any real disruption of global trade. Larger emerging countries’ claims that
they too should get to benefit from special and differential treatment was looked
at askance by developed countries on both grounds. They were less impover-
ished than the least developed countries and so the normative case was less
obvious. At the same time, their considerable and growing economic heft meant
Protectionism 41
that extending special and differential treatment to them very much would create
significant disruptions in global trade. Thus, the parties’ failure to find a mutu-
ally acceptable understanding of which trade policies constitute protectionism
and which countries could legitimately derogate from the normal injunctions
against engaging in protectionism were core reasons why the Doha Round
broke down.
New fronts of debates about protectionism and labelling

standards
Product versus process

An additional front in the political contestation over the meaning of protection-
ism revolved around the precise understanding of what products were to be con-
sidered ‘like products’. One of the GATT’s foundational pillars was ‘national
treatment’, the idea that a state could not treat imported and domestic goods
differently. The legal language used by the GATT and later the WTO is that
governments are not allowed to discriminate against ‘like products’.
Just as the wrangling over the meaning of protectionism grew more conten-
tious and more complex, so too did the fight over what exactly ‘like products’
means. The definition of like products was traditionally based on characteristics
of the product and thus fairly straightforward. A shirt is a shirt. As activists
became involved in trade politics they sought to reconstruct the meaning of ‘like
products’ to include process rather than just product characteristics. To a human
rights activist, two shirts may be the same in terms of product characteristics, but
if one of those shirts is made under deplorable working conditions, those shirts
are not really ‘like products’ and so a state may regulate the sale of those shirts
differently. In the famous Tuna-Dolphin case, the GATT established that, for the
most part, only product-based regulatory barriers are legal.
Environmentalists believed that this decision amounted to international trade
institutions running roughshod over legitimate public policies. Later however, in
the Shrimp-Turtle Case, the WTO sided with American environmentalists and
the US Environmental Protection Agency in holding that states could impose
regulations based on process characteristics that inhibited trade so long as those
regulations were not discriminatory. Notwithstanding this decision, in other
cases, especially in developing countries in regards to labour standards, export-
ers have still contended that process characteristics are protectionism and should
be struck down.14 In this way, the contestation over the meaning of protection-
ism has not just grown more contentious but expanded to new fronts.
Labelling standards
The contested social construction of the meaning of protectionism can be seen in
the use of labelling requirements and how trade actors and institutions have
reacted to those requirements. Labelling requirements have long been one of the
42 Gary Winslett
primary ways in which governments have attempted to protect consumers.
Labelling standards also raise the costs of international commerce for businesses
by forcing them to create different labels in different national markets. More
significantly, national labelling standards can undermine businesses’ commercial
aims in two different ways. First, it can prevent them from advertising their
products as they would wish. For example, British sausage makers were pro-
hibited by German regulations from advertising their product as sausage; instead
they were forced to label their product as the far less appetising ‘pork-filled offal
tubes’ (Trebilcock and Howse, 2005, p. 203). Second, they can force business to
divulge information that they would prefer to remain un-scrutinised. An example
of this is requiring producers to label goods that include genetically modified
organisms.
GATT and WTO panels have cited labelling standards as a preferred option
because labelling requirements are presumed to be less trade restrictive than
other policy measures such as sales bans. The WTO has thus accepted, at least
by implication, that labelling standards are less protectionist than other trade
policy measures. Activists have pushed for labelling requirements to promote
consumer safety. The activists’ and the WTO’s opinion notwithstanding, busi-
nesses (with the notable exception of those seeking geographical indications)
have still opposed specifically national labelling requirements and have sought
to portray those labelling requirements as veiled protectionism.
An aspect of the meaning-making politics surrounding labels that is worthy
of note is that despite some examples of disguised protectionism such as Japan’s
ski regulation, regulatory differences related to labelling, in most cases, are pro-
moted by activists and government officials, not by import-competing businesses
seeking an advantage. For example, many US meat suppliers, rather than support
US country of origin labelling laws that Canadian suppliers argued discriminated
against them, actually opposed those laws as they created more costly tracking
requirements (Gerlock, 2015). If this were really nothing more than disguised
protectionism, the opposite pattern should have been seen. In Japan, it has been
consumer safety advocates, not businesses that have promoted that country’s
stringent set of labelling requirements (Vogel, 1992; Maclachlan, 2002). In the
United States, it was the consumer movement, not protection-seeking businesses,
that successfully pushed for the passage of the Fair Package and Labeling Act.15
The same could be said about labelling requirements in the 2001 US Consumer
Right to Know Act (Smythe, 2014). Because import-competing businesses are
not generally engaged in lobbying in support of specifically national labelling,
that leaves export-oriented businesses as the primary meaning makers in the
business community.
Country of origin labelling of beef illustrates some of the dynamics discussed
here. After the mad cow crisis in Europe, the EU began requiring that labels on
meat packages indicate the meat’s country of origin (Birmingham Post, 2000).
Consumers wanted these labels because such labels could allow them to avoid
British beef, which they believed was less safe than continental beef; in response
to these country of origin labels, Philip Seng, the president of the Meat Export
Protectionism 43
Federation, asserted that ‘protectionism is often disguised as animal health
issues, or consumer concerns, or sanitary and phytosanitary rules or regulation
of biotechnology’ (Freudmann, 1999). The same dynamic has occurred in North
America. US consumer groups have demanded country-of-origin labelling of
beef; Canadian suppliers have argued that these labelling requirements discrimi-
nate against them (Chase, 2003; Qiu, 2005).
Businesses have not only been opposed to these labelling requirements, they
have also rejected that there is any legitimate policy motivating them. Rather
they are merely protectionism by another name. Significantly, here too they have
been effective meaning makers as in many instances they have convinced gov-
ernment officials and trade negotiators to adopt that line of reasoning as well.
For example, Victor Bradley, an official at the Canadian Department of Foreign
Affairs and Trade, argued that he had never ‘run across any process labelling
requirements that had anything to do with consumers. They all have to do with
establishing trade barriers’ (Bailey, 2002).
It is plausible that some labelling regulations may have protectionist intents
behind them but that is almost impossible to prove. Moreover, claims that these
labelling standards are not about discriminating against foreign businesses are
just as plausible. In the German sausage example above, a German regulator
could easily argue that German consumers expect a product labelled ‘sausage’ to
have certain characteristics and that the British product in question did not meet
that standard; thus allowing that British company to advertise its product as
‘sausage’ would have amounted to state-sanctioned false advertisement.
Similarly, some officials might argue that labelling requirements related to
geographical indications (GIs) are a sop to agricultural producers that merely
want to increase the rents they earn from their location.16 Others can just as
easily respond that GIs are one important means of protecting intellectual prop-
erty and ensuring that consumers are getting the product they believe they are
supposed to be receiving rather than an inferior knock-off.
Again, it is worth pointing out how far the mind map over whether these
labelling standards are protectionist has shifted. If tariffs had a clear intent to
discriminate against foreign businesses and had a clear impact in that regard, it
is not nearly as clear the extent to which labelling standards have protectionist
intent or the extent to which they harm foreign business. And yet, because they
have the potential to undermine some businesses, those businesses have
attempted, with some success, to portray those labelling requirements as
protectionism.
There is also an important distinction here that often goes unmade. Tariffs, in
effect, are governments discriminating against foreign products. Country-of-
origin labels are simply governments allowing their citizens to choose whether
they want to discriminate against foreign products or not. Even if one accepts
that government-based discrimination amounts to illegitimate protectionism, it
does not automatically follow that citizens choosing to discriminate against
foreign products also amounts to illegitimate protectionism. Should consumers
not have that right? This distinction between government discrimination and
44 Gary Winslett
consumer discrimination is highly important and yet it is nowhere in the mind
map concerning protectionism because the most effective meaning makers, inter-
nationally oriented businesses, have had a direct incentive in papering over, if
not shrouding, that distinction.
Trump, Sanders, and Brexit: is ‘what’ giving way to ‘for

whom’?
One of the most intriguing aspects of trade politics, and especially of the idea-
tional contestation surrounding it, is that it is constantly evolving. An analysis of
the rhetoric around protectionism simply cannot ignore the sea change that has
taken place in the United States and Britain. More than any other nations, these
two underwrote the post-Second World War expansions of international trade
and the global governance that went with it. They were the champions of the
liberal international order. And now, via Brexit and the election of Donald
Trump, they appear to be retreating from that role in favour of a more truculent,
drawbridges up stance vis-à-vis the rest of the world. At the same time, even if
future elections bring the left to power in both states, the left’s growing scepti-
cism of trade means that such a political reversal may not usher in a renewed
enthusiasm for international commerce. The rising calls for trade curtailment
directly relate to the preceding discussion because they suggest that the frames
by which protectionism has been conceptualised may be shifting. In short, the
rhetorical fight over protectionism and trade policy more generally is transition-
ing from being primarily about ‘what’ questions to being primarily about ‘for
whom’ questions. Instead of being driven by the ideational debate over what pol-
icies promote the greatest wealth creation and what policies are acceptable
burdens on commerce, the politics of protectionism may be turning into a much
rawer struggle for resources as policy-makers increasingly claim the right to use
defensive trade policy instruments to protect national economic interests.
Three aspects of Donald Trump’s thinking (all of which are in stark contrast
to the post-war order) are particularly relevant here. First, whereas the architects
of post-war embedded liberalism envisioned a rules-based international system,
Trump’s statements suggest that he views political economy in power-based
terms. Second, President Trump does share Carl Schmidt’s division of the world
into friends and enemies, and for Trump, the friend is his electoral base and the
enemies with respect to trade policy are other countries’ citizens that he sees as
stealing wealth from the friends. That isn’t how free traders and small-l liberals
view the world at all. Third, it is difficult to overstate just how central zero-sum
frames are to Trump’s rhetoric. Trump’s book The Art of the Deal is not a guide
of how to create win-win scenarios, far from it. Instead, it is a celebration of
Donald Trump’s ability to enrich himself at others’ expense. That is how he sees
the world. It is thus no surprise that that is how he sees international trade. Not
only does he hold this worldview, he also seems to be convincing his base and
thus the Republican Party (the erstwhile defender of free trade in US politics) to
Protectionism 45
adopt that kind of view. He is thus currently a quite powerful meaning maker in
shaping trade discourse.
He is not alone. Marine Le Pen portrays globalisation and the trade that
underpins it as a theft of prosperity and identity from the average Frenchman.
Ditto for the AfD in Germany. Nigel Farage too depicted Brexit, the tearing
asunder of Britain’s trading relations with Europe, as a successful wrenching
back of power for the people and against the other (Eurocrats, foreigners, etc.).
This transition from a discussion of ‘what policies are considered the best at cre-
ating wealth?’ to a battle over who deserves wealth amounts to a meaningful
shift from the main trade politics argument being between ideas about how to
govern markets to a much more openly tribal and nakedly zero-sum trench war
for economic advantage.
Despite this potentially significant shift in the ways that trade curtailments are
framed though, protectionism is still not a word that political actors want to
apply to themselves, and that is telling. Trump sells his vision as putting America
First. Brexiteers sell their crusade as a struggle for independence. Bernie
Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, and other leftists across the Western World frame their
criticism of trade as standing up to multinational corporations. Trade opponents
are not standing up and saying ‘I am a protectionist.’ That they will not do so
speaks volumes about the discursive stability of that word. Even now, even after
the political earthquakes of 2016, that word is an epithet.
Conclusion
The concept of protectionism has been expanded over the course of the last 70
years. Whereas it once applied to policies like tariffs that clearly were intended
to discriminate against foreign businesses and were successful at doing so, the
effective meaning making efforts of businesses and some government officials
both strengthened the power of the term protectionism as a slur and expanded
which policies, up to and including labelling rules, were considered to be protec-
tionist. This expansion was concomitant with the reduction of tariff barriers and
the relative rise in importance of non-tariff barriers, especially regulatory differ-
ences. How protectionism was socially constructed underpinned which trade
policy areas, like intellectual property, became more greatly constrained as part
of the construction of the WTO and how the WTO would adjudicate which regu-
latory differences were considered protectionist and thus illegitimate and which
were acceptable. Disagreements over what constituted protectionism were
central to the Doha Round and contributed to the lack of progress in that round.
It also created new areas of political disagreement such as product versus process
characteristics being used as the definitional framework of ‘like products’ as
well as the extent to which labelling requirements were considered unfair trade
barriers.
The political contestation over the concept of protectionism pitted export-
oriented businesses and government officials who wanted to constrain policies
that might have a negative impact on trade against civil society activists and
46 Gary Winslett
other government officials who wanted to promote some policy goal other than
commercial expansion. The political fight over the definition of protectionism
has thus not been a narrow, legalistic fight. Instead, it has been a political fight
over the relative prioritisation of economic and non-economic policy goals as
well as the relative strength of global interconnection and national sovereignty.
The language used to discuss trade politics has powerfully shaped the terrain
that battle has been fought on. That language delineates what is thought of as fair
and unfair, legitimate and illegitimate, possible and impossible. The expansion of
the p-word as both a concept and a cudgel, pushed by export-oriented businesses
and the government officials who side with them, has helped mark policies that
would constrain those businesses as unfair, illegitimate, and legally impossible.
The shifting contours of the language surrounding protectionism did not by them-
selves create today’s trade politics but it is nevertheless difficult to account for how
that politics came to be without fully appreciating those contours.
Notes
1 See for example the response of Reed Smoot, co-author of the infamous Smoot–Haw-
ley Tariff, to candidate Franklin Roosevelt’s advocacy of lower tariffs (New York
Times, 1932).
2 For a history of OECD negotiations over the procurement policies as they related to
trade in the 1960s and 1970s, see Pomeranz (1982).
3 Subsidies are a particularly important policy tool that falls into this contested space.
Some such as export subsidies clearly distort trade and are understood to be protec-
tionist, but governments also subsidise all manner of economic activity in ways that,
to any reasonable observer, are clearly intended to promote that form of economic
activity rather than discourage trade or hamstring foreign firms. The rub, of course, is
that there are a myriad of subsidies that both distort trade and have at least somewhat
plausible justifications. In this way, the political fights over subsidies and protection-
ism mirror the rest of the broader ideational contestation over protectionism.
4 On the negotiations surrounding these NTBs in the Tokyo Round, see Winham
(1980/81), Wolff (1980) and Meier (1980).
5 This is essentially the argument that occurred between European and Chinese officials
in 2007. European officials argued that their consumer safety responses in the wake of
scandals involving tainted and counterfeit imports from China were about promoting
public health. Chinese officials predictably responded that this was simply an excuse
to engage in protectionism (Anderlini, 2007).
6 The GSP is an American trade programme dating back to 1974 that grants developing
countries additional tariff reductions on items they export to the US in order to
promote poverty reduction. The European Community also introduced a GSP trading
scheme in the 1970s, though at this point (1980s) the EC was generally less eager to
use its GSP system as leverage to get other states to raise their level of intellectual
property regulation.
7 For a state to use a compulsory licence under TRIPS, (a) that state must have
attempted to obtain use on ‘reasonable commercial terms’, (b) the licence must be
non-exclusive, (c) the licence must primarily be for the domestic market, not exports
and (d) adequate compensation must be given.
8 In contrast to the GATT dispute settlement, the WTO dispute settlement under-
standing cannot be blocked by the accused, proceeds more expeditiously, possesses a
greater ability to enforce its decision by sanctioning retaliation, and has more
Protectionism 47
formalised panel proceedings. On the WTO dispute settlement procedures, see Trebil-
cock and Howse (2005, pp. 112–147).
9 For a review of how the WTO governs the use of these policies, see Trebilcock and
Howse (2005).
10 These trends include: (1) the expansion of both international trade and state regula-
tions, (2) increasing sophistication of traded products, (3) the growth of intra-industry
trade, (4) the increasing importance of economies of scale, capital intensity, and
export orientation of business, and (5) the move away from ISI as a development
model (Winslett, 2016).
11 A number of consumer and activist groups made these kinds of arguments during the
Uruguay Round negotiations (Rowen, 1990).
12 This was very much intentional. During the negotiation of the Uruguay Round, USTR
Clayton Yuetter argued that ‘standards that cannot be supported scientifically will
properly be subject to WTO challenge. Bad science is too often just disguised protec-
tionism’ (Yuetter, 1994).
13 For more on these disagreements and the Doha Round, see (Baldwin, 2016), Muzaka
and Bishop (2015), and Narlikar (2015).
14 For what it’s worth, the International Labour Organization has disputed that the way
these labour standards are usually included and implemented in trade agreements
actually constitute protectionism (International Labour Organization, 2015).
15 On the consumer movement’s political engagement, see Cohen (2003, pp. 345–387).
16 On the politics of geographical indicators, see Raustiala and Munzer (2007).
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4 Foreign direct investment
Lukas Linsi
Due to the growing transnationalisation of production and wealth chains, trade

and foreign direct investment (FDI) activities have become intrinsically linked
phenomena.1 Recent estimates suggest that intra-firm transactions account for
no less than one third of global trade flows (Maurer and Degain, 2010, p. 10),
making FDI an influential determinant of global trading patterns. As a result,
FDI statistics have become increasingly important pieces of information in
trade negotiations as well as scholarly analyses and public debates about global
trade. When being used in such contexts, FDI statistics are commonly inter-
preted as indicators of the volumes of capital going from one country to another
to finance the establishment of new companies there. However, this corresponds
to only a small part of what statisticians measure when they measure FDI. As a
matter of fact, substantial shares of measured global FDI flows do not cross any
physical border in a meaningful sense, nor are they directly associated with the
creation of new factories (or jobs). In short, the conceptual gaps between
common notions of FDI in economic discourses and the content inside the sta-
tistics that measure those transactions are pronounced. Simultaneously, statisti-
cal agencies’ ability to track capital flows between nation-states in a globally
integrated system of off-shored finance is further complicated by daunting tech-
nical difficulties, which can lead to large measurement inaccuracies in these
figures. And because not all statistical agencies handle these challenges in the
same way, different agencies can be measuring different things when they
measure ‘FDI’, limiting the degree to which these statistics can be compared
across countries. Needless to say, the combination of these factors makes
FDI statistics a problematic construct. It is no secret, for instance, that discrep-
ancies between total reported global in- and outflows of FDI are large and per-
sistent (although, at least theoretically, the difference should be zero) and that
close to half of global FDI flows are channelled through special purpose entities
(SPE) that make the identification of the function, ultimate ownership and
destination of these investments virtually impossible. And yet, although many
of these problems are fairly obvious and despite the repeated warnings and
caveats issued by statisticians who collect this data, more often than not, FDI
statistics are simply taken at face value, a ‘hard fact’ reflecting the ‘true’ levels
of FDI.
Foreign direct investment 51
In this light, this chapter pursues a dual function: on the one hand, it intends
to inform readers about some of the serious issues underlying FDI as a statistical
unit and highlight the practical implications they may entail. On the other hand,
the chapter uses these issues as an entry point to engage with deeper questions
about the production of economic statistics and their significance in the world
economy. Unlike other economic statistics such as inflation or debt indicators,
FDI statistics on their own do not carry major distributional consequences and it
is not clear that there are any ‘winners’ or ‘losers’ of a certain statistical defini-
tion of FDI. The theoretical implications thus do not so much refer to traditional
political power dynamics, but to the more subtle ways through which the epi-
stemic deliberations that create statistical indicators can affect our understanding
of the world economy.
In this view, the first point that the chapter wishes to highlight consists of the
observation that statistical indicators do not only feed political discourses about
the world economy, but that they are themselves simultaneously shaped by the
latter. They are not simply neutral reflections of real economic developments,
but powerful mind maps that affect what we see and how we see what we see
(Hirschman and Popp-Berman, 2014; Mügge, 2016). Second, the chapter
demonstrates that statistical communities deserve greater analytical attention as
a distinct type of international bureaucracy (see Brunsson and Jacobsson, 2000;
Barnett and Finnemore, 2004). As the chapter illustrates, using the example of
the central role played by IMF statisticians in the creation and dissemination of
global standards on how to measure FDI, statisticians do not merely report
objective figures. They play critical roles in international affairs as meaning
makers who, through discreet but powerful ways, shape the lenses through which
we see the world. Third, the chapter describes an empirical pattern, which
emphasises the importance of cognitive ‘stickiness’ within discursive dynamics.
While most of the other contributions to this volume conceptualise discourses as
a source of change, this chapter illustrates how discursive resistance to change
in the face of substantial structural transformations – a dynamic akin to Thelen,
Hacker and Pierson’s (2013) concept of ‘institutional drift’ – can have equally
important effects on common (mis)understandings in international economic
affairs. While the theoretical concept of FDI as long-term investments with a
controlling interest has remained largely uncontested during the post-war era, the
fundamental structural changes in the nature of transnational economic trans-
actions in the late twentieth century have led to an ever-wider divergence
between what FDI statistics are supposed to measure and what they actually do.
The remainder of this chapter proceeds as follows: the first section briefly
outlines how ‘FDI’, although practically existing for thousands of years, was
only really discovered as an economic concept in the post-war era. The second
section presents an overview of the evolution of the key criteria advocated by
the IMF to distinguish FDI from other cross-border capital flows in statistical
terms through an analysis of subsequent editions of the Balance of Payments
Manual (BPM), the most authoritative guidelines for the collection of inter-
national economic statistics. The third section illustrates some of the mismatches
52 Lukas Linsi
between the statistical operationalisation of FDI and the theoretical concepts that
underlie it. The fourth section zooms in on additional issues of an accounting-
technical nature. The last section concludes.
Drawing boundaries: discovering and defining FDI

Economic analysts are primarily interested in a country’s in- or outflows of FDI
in a given time-period and the accumulated FDI stock.2 While these numbers are
widely used in contemporary debates and even though companies operating
simultaneously in several jurisdictions have existed for thousands of years
(Moore and Lewis, 1998), they are in fact a relatively recent invention. As eco-
nomic historians have estimated retrospectively, the type of capital flows which
we would today define as FDI had already grown to fairly substantial levels
during the so-called ‘first period of globalization’ before the First World War
(see Wilkins, 1981; Jones, 2005). Yet, in accordance with the observed ‘general
lack of concern about the nationality of [economic] ownership’ (Jones, 2005,
p. 202), they were typically not seen as substantially different from other types
of cross-border capital investments. This started to change during the First World
War when warring parties began expropriating domestic assets held by foreign
companies domiciled in enemy countries (Jones, 2005). But it was only in the
aftermath of the Second World War that economic policymakers explicitly
recognized FDI as a special type of capital flow, which they wished to track and
monitor systematically (Whichard, 2005, p. 620).3 In order to collect data on
FDI, the concept then first had to be operationalised as a measurable statistical
unit. While the difference between ‘long-term’ and ‘short-term’ investments is
more or less clear on theoretical grounds, the statistical implementation of the
distinction proved to be (and remains until today) an issue fraught with concep-
tual as well as technical difficulties.
Although the collection of FDI statistics is the responsibility of national gov-
ernments, international organisations (in particular, the IMF and OECD) have
played an important role as coordinators and standard-setters for the collection
of national balance of payments statistics. To better understand the evolution of
FDI as a statistical unit over time it is therefore useful to track the changes in its
definition in the IMF ’s Balance of Payments Manuals (BPM), which have
decisively ‘shaped … the currently dominant [statistical] definitions of FDI’
(Bertrand, 2005, p. 597). The first edition of the Balance of Payments Manual
(IMF, 1948) did little more than provide a short general definition of (outward)
FDI as ‘the amount invested by [a country’s] residents in an enterprise or other
commercial property abroad effectively controlled by its residents’ (IMF, 1948,
p. 49 [emphasis added]). In other words, what set FDI apart from other types of
cross-border (portfolio) capital flows in the opinion of the authors of BPM1 was
the notion of ‘control’; that is, the idea that FDI investors seek not merely a yield
on the invested capital, but also some sort of managerial influence over the
company they invest in (see Lipsey, 2001). Yet, otherwise, albeit emphasising
the importance to record short- and long-term capital flows separately, BPM1
remained largely silent on the question how to differentiate the two from each
other. Even though BPM1 mentions the share of a company’s voting stock held
by foreign investors as a potential key indicator in these regards,4 the authors
refrained from establishing one clear threshold. In contrast to more recent edi-
tions of the BPM, the statisticians in charge emphasised that the identification of
‘effective control’ was ultimately a qualitative judgement that is best decided on
a case-by-case basis. The ultimate decision was deliberately left in the compet-
ence of national statisticians.
Although the definition of FDI gradually grew from a few words in BPM1 to
entire chapters in later editions, the three subsequent versions of the BPM (IMF,
1950, 1961, 1977) kept to the notion that the identification of ‘FDI’ was essen-
tially a qualitative judgement. All three editions reiterated the identification of
situations in which foreign investors held more than 50 per cent of a company’s
voting stock, or in which one single foreign investor held at least 25 per cent, as
possible criteria that may be used as a shortcut to differentiate FDI from port-
folio investment when a more in-depth qualitative assessment of the situation
was impractical. But the authors emphasised repeatedly that these were only sug-
gestions and explicitly encouraged national statistical offices to also use their
own criteria. For example, in BPM3 (IMF, 1961) it was underlined that
[i]t is not important to draw clear border lines between branches, subsidiar-
ies, and other direct investment enterprises, nor is it desirable to give a rigid
definition of the concept of the direct investment enterprise. The following
definition of this concept should be applied with flexibility and interpreted
by each country in the manner most useful for analysing its balance of pay-
ments. In particular, the specific percentages suggested for determining
whether a given enterprise is to be classified as a direct investment enter-
prise should be regarded as no more than rules of thumb.
(IMF, 1961, p. 120 [emphasis added])
Similarly, it was explicitly acknowledged in BPM4 (IMF, 1977) that ‘[t]he

establishment of a border line that will adequately serve to set direct investment
capital apart from other types of capital, which may have many of the same
observable characteristics, is sometimes not a simple matter’ (IMF, 1977,
p. 137). The authors went to great lengths to reiterate their view that it was not
desirable to impose one specific threshold:
As the difference basically depends on the motives of the investor, objective

criteria will not necessarily enable the balance of payments compiler to
make the desired distinction in all instances.… The[se] national practices [to
identify effective control], which have no doubt developed largely out of
experience, are currently quite diverse; hence it would not be very helpful to
single out any one percentage criterion as the most reasonable standard that
could be applied by every country.
(IMF, 1977, p. 138)
54 Lukas Linsi
Interestingly, by the early 1990s international statisticians’ view on this key
issue for the statistical operationalisation of FDI had transformed substantially.
In contrast to the pragmatic bottom-up approach advocated throughout BPM1–
BPM4, the BPM’s fifth edition (IMF, 1993) adopts a markedly different
approach. While the IMF had previously emphasised the role of qualitative
judgements and deliberately encouraged a certain degree of national autonomy
for the collection of balance of payments statistics, the approach shining through
the assertive language used in BPM5 corresponds to a top-down approach
towards the harmonisation of statistical measurements, which leaves as little
room for discretion as possible. With regards to FDI, instead of admitting the
inherent subjectivity of the distinction between FDI and portfolio capital flows,
BPM5 asserts confidently that
a direct investment enterprise is defined … as an incorporated or unincorpo-

rated enterprise in which a direct investor, who is resident in another
economy, owns 10 percent or more of the ordinary shares of voting power
(for an incorporated enterprise) or the equivalent (for an unincorporated
enterprise).
(IMF, 1993, p. 86)
In other words, the IMF established that, for statistical purposes, any cross-
border investment involving at least 10 per cent ownership of a company’s
voting stock is to be recorded as ‘FDI’ while investments below this threshold
are to be classified as portfolio capital flows5 (henceforth referred to as the ‘10
per cent rule’).
Of apples and oranges: conceptual problems

Although the 10 per cent rule is still not universally implemented today,6 it has
become the dominant criterion that national statistical agencies use in order to
identify FDI. The obvious advantage of having such a clear-cut mechanical rule
– as opposed to more qualitative evaluations of FDI – is that it can in principle
be implemented in a straightforward fashion across nations. But it also has its
drawbacks. Most importantly, the statistical unit that the rule defines does not
directly correspond to the theoretical concept of FDI. In effect, as this section
illustrates briefly, the statistical operationalisation of FDI lumps together such a
great variety of economic transactions that it becomes indeed questionable if the
resulting quantity can really be a useful indicator to inform any kind of policy
debates.
The first major conceptual issue of the statistical operationalisation of FDI is
that it fails to distinguish between heterogeneous types of long-term cross-border
investments that have potentially very different policy implications. For
example, it makes no distinction by the source of capital. One of the key benefits
commonly attributed to FDI is that it represents an exogenous ‘addition’ to a
nation’s physical capital stock that ‘brings in money’ from abroad. However, a
substantial amount of the transactions statistically defined as FDI do not actually
cross any border in a meaningful sense because they are re-invested earnings (i.e.
the profits generated by affiliates from their activities in their host economy),
tax-motivated round-trip investments, or money that foreign companies raise on
local capital markets.7 Albeit this appears to be an important distinction from a
national monetary perspective, the statistical operationalisation of FDI fails to
take it into account. Furthermore, foreign investors can enter a country through
different modes: they can create a new company (so-called ‘greenfield’ invest-
ments), or they can acquire an already existing firm (merges and acquisitions, or
‘brownfield’ FDI). And it is very well possible that the economic and political
effects of FDI – such as its job creation effect – do depend on investors’ mode of
entry. While opinions on this question are starkly divided in the current liter-
ature, the crux of the matter is that it remains very difficult to assess the oppos-
ing claims empirically since standard FDI statistics classify them as one and the
same thing.
The second major conceptual issue of the dominant statistical operationalisa-
tion of FDI is that they at the same time include a large number of economic
transactions that are much more akin to short-term capital flows. If it was true
that measured ‘FDI’ flows are primarily the outcome of long-term investment
strategies based on ‘real’ economic developments in a host economy, then the
correlations between FDI in- and outflows should be low or even negative (sup-
posedly, investments would unambiguously increase [decrease] in situations in
which the fundamental growth prospects were good [bad]) and largely immune
to short-term fluctuations in global capital markets, such as major monetary
policy changes. Yet, a recent analysis by Julien Acalin and former IMF chief
economist Olivier Blanchard shows that the correlation between quarterly FDI
in- and outflows as well as the correlation between measured FDI flows and
changes in US monetary policy is surprisingly high, leading the authors to the
conclusion that ‘some of these measured FDI flows are much closer to portfolio
debt flows, responding to short-run movements … rather than to medium-run
fundamentals of the country’ (Blanchard and Acalin, 2016, p. 1).
The principal reason for their finding is the existence of a very significant
third category of ‘FDI’ flows: special purpose entity (SPE) FDI; that is, cross-
border capital flows involving ownership stakes above the 10 per cent threshold
that are passed through holding companies. The function of these colloquial
‘letter-box companies’ is not to oversee any industrial activities but merely to
‘hold’ shares in other companies in order to take advantage of favourable tax
provisions.
To give one simplified real-world example (based on Davies and Marks,
2016): all European operations of the US online distributor Amazon are chan-
nelled through a holding company based in Luxembourg (called Amazon Europe
Holding Technologies, AEHT), which holds the exclusive rights to use Ama-
zon’s intellectual property rights outside of the US. AEHT, in turn, licenses these
rights to another Amazon subsidiary in Luxembourg (Amazon EU Sarl, AEU),
which operates Amazon’s European businesses. For its right to use Amazon’s
56 Lukas Linsi
intellectual property, AEU then pays very large sums of royalties to AEHT,
thereby significantly reducing AEU’s declared profits (and tax bill). In this way,
most of Amazon’s profits from its European business are transferred to the
AEHT holding company, which is legally incorporated as a structure, which
according to Luxembourg’s tax laws is required to pay no more than a minimal
amount of tax.
These kind of ownership structures and transactions create massive chal-
lenges for the collection of FDI statistics. The parts of profits officially declared
as intra-company transfers or re-invested earnings by AEHT in the example
above will end up being counted as inward FDI to Luxembourg although
Amazon in fact undertakes almost no industrial activity there. In other words,
standard FDI statistics will give a heavily distorted picture of the actual eco-
nomic relationship.
While SPEs are not a new phenomenon, the shares of global FDI flows that
are channelled through such structures have increased very rapidly in recent
years.8 Estimates from the US Bureau of Economic Affairs, for instance, suggest
that the share of US FDI flows going to a SPE in the first place rose from less
than 10 per cent in 1980 to as much as 50 per cent today (Ibarra-Caton and Mat-
aloni, 2014).
To illustrate the scale of this problem, it is instructive to have a look at the
uniquely detailed data on the activities of US multinational enterprises abroad,
which the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (US BEA) maintains.9 Unlike other
FDI datasets, the US BEA data provides information not only on figures of
aggregate FDI flows from the balance of payments statistics, but also operational
details of US multinational corporations (MNCs) abroad such as the geograph-
ical distribution of their declared net income, total assets, sales revenues or the
number of employees. Table 4.1 draws from this dataset to show the official US
outward FDI stock, the total net income and the number of employees that US
MNCs declared to have in European economies in 2013 (in ranked order), and
the declared net income per employee.
The picture is striking. While the distribution of the net income (i.e. profits
after taxes) declared by US MNCs correlates strongly with the distribution of the
official FDI stock, the correlation with the distribution of employees is weak.
Specifically, the FDI stock data and the reported profits suggest that the bulk of
operations of US MNCs are located in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Lux-
embourg, Ireland and Switzerland. However, the third row shows that in fact US
MNCs employ only a small number of people in Ireland, Switzerland and Lux-
embourg, with much larger workforces being present in Germany, France, Italy,
Spain or Russia. The calculation of declared profits per employee (see last row)
further highlight these disparities: while the reported net income per employee is
US$30,263 in Germany and 18,792 in France, the ratio reaches numbers beyond
half a million US$ per employee in Ireland, Switzerland and the Netherlands.10
The possibility that workers in Ireland are 50 times more productive than their
peers in France is rather implausible, however. It seems much more likely that
the unrealistically high ratios in small tax-haven jurisdictions are driven by
Table 4.1 Where in Europe are the US multinationals?
FDI stock (2013) (million US$) Net income (2013) (million US$) Employees (2013) Ratio: net income/employee (US$)
Netherlands 740,740 Netherlands 147,047 United Kingdom 1,482,300 Ireland 940,579

United Kingdom 537,714 Ireland 105,627 Germany 654,900 Switzerland 661,214
Luxembourg 460,029 United Kingdom 90,617 France 494,400 Netherlands 620,713
Ireland 220,670 Switzerland 64,799 Netherlands 236,900 Austria 63,962
Switzerland 128,490 Germany 19,819 Italy 234,300 United Kingdom 61,133
Germany 111,724 Belgium 10,231 Spain 189,900 Finland 51,327
France 78,667 France 9,291 Russia 162,400 Spain 39,447
Belgium 51,966 Spain 7,491 Ireland 112,300 Germany 30,263
Norway 40,617 Denmark 4,926 Switzerland 98,000 Russia 21,034
Spain 33,879 Russia 3,416 Czech Republic 90,200 France 18,792
Sweden 31,675 Austria 3,019 Turkey 68,000 Czech Republic 15,089
Italy 25,829 Hungary 2,075 Austria 47,200 Turkey 13,103
Austria 15,630 Czech Republic 1,361 Norway 43,300 Belgium N.A.
Denmark 13,397 Finland 1,006 Finland 19,600 Denmark N.A.
Russia 13,280 Turkey 891 Luxembourg 14,200 Greece N.A.
Poland 12,480 Greece 265 Belgium N.A. Hungary N.A.
Czech Republic 6,383 Italy N.A. Denmark N.A. Italy N.A.
Hungary 6,317 Luxembourg N.A. Greece N.A. Luxembourg N.A.
Turkey 3,845 Norway N.A. Hungary N.A. Norway N.A.
Portugal 1,978 Poland N.A. Poland N.A. Poland N.A.
Finland 1,919 Portugal N.A. Portugal N.A. Portugal N.A.
Greece –584 Sweden N.A. Sweden N.A. Sweden N.A.
Note
All raw data from US BEA, www.bea.gov/iTable/index_MNC.cfm [accessed 1 November 2016].
58 Lukas Linsi
transfer pricing structures, which heavily distort the location of profits declared
by US MNCs in their financial statements.
In addition to the phenomenon of transfer pricing to low-tax jurisdictions, the
complexities of holding company structures can lead to several additional com-
plications for the collection of FDI statistics. Because SPEs are frequently used
in order to make corporations’ (or individuals’) balance sheets deliberately non-
transparent, they can not only distort the picture of the distribution of economic
activities (as in the Amazon example above), but the laws of certain offshore
jurisdictions that do not require companies to disclose the identity of owners
mean that it is nearly impossible for statisticians to establish the ultimate origin,
destination or ownership of some of the FDI flows channelled through such
jurisdictions. At the same time, they can also further dilute the distinction
between long-term and short-term investments. For example, if a company trans-
fers money to a holding company, which it fully owns, this will be recorded as
an outflow of ‘FDI’. However, it is possible that the holding company in ques-
tion actually does not hold a majority position in any other company, but instead
functions like an investment fund, which holds a portfolio of minority invest-
ments in a large number of companies. Ultimately, SPE structures can even
make it unclear whether recorded ‘FDI’ flows actually leave the country of
origin, or if they are merely used for corporate inversions or other types of
‘round-tripping’ investments. For example, in 2013 the Russian state-owned oil
producer Rosneft acquired the Russian oil company TNK-BP for US$55 billion;
because 50 per cent of the shares of TNK-BP were owned by a holding company
incorporated in the British Virgin Islands (ultimately owned by Russian indi-
viduals), the transaction led to a very strong increase in recorded FDI outflows
from as well as inflows into Russia in the same year (Nougayrède, 2016). In
reality, however, these figures measured little more than the acquisition of a
Russian company by another Russian company.
Given recent estimates that roughly 50 per cent of global FDI flows are chan-
nelled through SPEs, this leaves us with the troubling prospect that for half of
global FDI flows we do not know: (i) what the ultimate destination of the capital
flow and the associated economic activities really were; (ii) if the investment
involved holding a controlling interest in any other company at all; or (iii) whether
it was even invested outside of the ultimate owner’s home economy.
The devil is in the details: technical measurement problems

The conceptual mismatches between the theoretical and statistical unit of FDI
and the growing complexity and non-transparency of transnational company
ownership structures thus pose a number of serious problems for the collection
of FDI statistics that together seriously threaten to undermine their usefulness to
inform policy debates. But even in an optimistic scenario, in which these prob-
lems were to be solved, the estimation of the ‘true’ (or at least internationally
comparable) levels of flows and stocks of FDI faces many additional obstacles
of a more ‘technical’ nature.
A particularly important technical challenge is the definition of clear rules on
how to calculate the net value of FDI inflows and their accumulated stock.11 In
effect, attributing one single economic value to an FDI transaction involves a
multitude of (to some extent necessarily arbitrary) accounting decisions, such as
to determine the timing of the recording of the transaction, whether to use values
before or after tax, whether or not to deduct write-offs and capital depreciation,
whether to record a transaction’s book value or to estimate its market value, etc.
For the purposes of this chapter it is not necessary to treat these various dimen-
sions of accounting techniques in much depth. But it is worth noting that despite
all the sustained efforts of international organisations to standardise such prac-
tices, cross-national differences continue to persist on a number of these issues,
even among OECD member countries (see IMF and OECD, 2003). And
although the impact of some of these variations on reported FDI flows may be
negligible, others can have substantive impacts.
While issues of valuation are relevant for figures estimating both FDI flows
and stocks, they are particularly important for the latter because the aggregation
of figures on historical flows can compound the effect of seemingly minor tech-
nical differences. Traditionally, the dominant valuation method that most coun-
tries used to calculate FDI stock figures was based on foreign investments’
historical cost or book value – that is, past investment flows were valued accord-
ing to their price at the time that the transaction took place. However, in more
recent years, the IMF and OECD have moved away from this practice towards a
preference for market-based valuation techniques.12 The goal of these techniques
is to estimate the current value of a past investment by taking into account the
evolution of inflation rates, exchange rate movements and stock prices over the
time-period that has elapsed since the original investment was made. While these
procedures can be relatively straightforward for assets that are publicly traded,
they are more complicated for those that are not, such as FDI flows going into
unlisted equities.
Yet, the differences among the two methods alone can lead analysts to radic-
ally different conclusions. For example, a study by Ricardo Hausmann and Fed-
erico Sturzenegger (2007) – following up on earlier work undertaken by the US
BEA in the early 1990s (see Landefeld and Lawson, 1991) – argues that not only
the size but even the direction of the US economy’s actual net investment posi-
tion depends on the valuation method that one uses to calculate the value of its
outward FDI stock. While the officially reported statistics (using historical cost
valuation methods) indicate that the US net investment position had deteriorated
sharply since the mid-1990s, Hausmann and Sturzenegger show that the picture
looks very differently if FDI stock data is adjusted to price increases in stock
market indices over the period. Because historically US MNCs had expanded
abroad long before MNCs from other countries started investing in the US at a
similar scale, Hausmann and Sturzenegger argue, the book value of the US
outward FDI stock vastly underestimates the US’ ‘real’ investment position.
Multiplying the value of historical FDI in- and outflows by the factor by which
US stock market valuations have increased since then, their results suggest that
60 Lukas Linsi
the US economy might actually be a net creditor rather than a debtor. In other
words, one of the most heated topics of debate in US foreign economic policy of
recent years seems to be entirely contingent on the choice between two equally
legitimate accounting methodologies.
At the same time, the question how to value past FDI flows does not simply
boil down to a binary choice of either historical cost or market value methods,
since a number of ways exists to calculate each of them. As a striking recent
study by Jannick Damgaard and Thomas Elkjaer (2014) illustrates, the most up
to date IMF guidelines for the collection of balance of payment statistics (IMF,
2009) recommends seven different methods to estimate the value of unlisted
FDI. Re-calculating the inward FDI stock according to these seven methods with
Danish data, the authors come to vastly different results regarding Denmark’s
‘real’ investment position, with figures ranging anywhere between 48 and 340
billion euro (corresponding to numbers accounting for anything between 22 and
156 per cent of Danish GDP). The measurement of FDI is thus not only plagued
by difficult conceptual issues, but at the same time key FDI figures are also
highly contingent upon the accounting techniques that are used in order to
estimate the value of those flows.
Conclusions
FDI statistics are widely used in economic policy debates, most prominently so
as supposedly ‘hard’ indicators of countries’ levels of globalisation or economic
attractiveness. Yet, digging just a little beneath the measurement techniques
giving rise to the much-advertised headline figures, a great variety of problem-
atic and difficult-to-solve issues arise: Aggregate FDI statistics reflect the sum of
a great variety of different types of cross-border flows (e.g. greenfield, M&A or
SPE FDI, which can all come from abroad or be raised from local capital
markets) that can have very different implications for policy. The measurements
include economic activities that do not seem to correspond to the theoretical
concept of FDI, such as the purchase of holiday homes or, more problematically
in quantitative terms, corporate inversions and other types of SPE FDI. Simul-
taneously, they exclude others despite good theoretical reasons to include them,
such as a substantial investment by a foreign investor that comes with a seat on
the board of directors, although it falls short of the official 10 per cent ownership
threshold used to identify FDI. And last but not least, statistical practices to
measure and calculate the value of FDI flows vary greatly across countries,
raising serious questions about their comparability. Dissecting the measurement
of FDI is in this sense not dissimilar from peeling an onion: once the first layer
is removed, the second comes off fairly easily, and so on; and when all they
layers are gone, it seems rather unclear what we are being left with.
FDI is certainly a crucial phenomenon in current economic affairs and
undoubtedly does require systematic attention. But analyses of FDI are unlikely
to be particularly insightful in the absence of a serious engagement with the
content of the data upon which they rely. As this chapter has shown, the most
commonly used aggregate figures on FDI flows and stocks are fraught with con-
ceptual and accounting-technical difficulties. And at the end of the day, it
remains fundamentally unclear whether FDI statistics are a useful approximation
to the economic phenomenon that analysts intend to scrutinise when they analyse
FDI data. In practical terms, it thus seems imperative for FDI data consumers to
acknowledge the difficulties surrounding the collection of FDI statistics by being
clear what they ‘talk about when they talk about FDI’ (see Kerner, 2014): green-
field or M&A, FDI in general or in specific sectors, ‘new’ investments only or
including the re-invested earnings by previously established foreign enterprises,
and so on. Moreover, they will need to assess critically whether the data they use
is aligned with the theoretical concept they are referring to: flows or positions,
including or excluding SPE FDI, book values or market values, etc. Finally,
there is the challenge to make sure that the data that is compared is actually com-
parable by checking carefully whether the agencies assembling the data followed
the same methodology when compiling them.
On a theoretical level, the issues highlighted by the assessment presented here
are applicable far beyond the case of FDI statistics. Similar problems are indeed
inherent in nearly all economic statistics. In this sense, the broader point of the
chapter is to encourage a more critical engagement with economic measure-
ments, which acknowledges that they are not simply objective truths, but socially
constructed products (see Mügge, 2016). And therefore, in order to make sense
of them, questions about how statistics are being constructed and by whom
should be all-important considerations that deserve much greater attention than
they have received so far.
Notes
1 For helpful comments and suggestions, I am grateful to Daniel Mügge, the editors and
two anonymous reviewers. Financial support provided by the Netherlands Organisa-
tion for Scientific Research (Vidi grant 016.145.395) is gratefully acknowledged.
2 Conceptually, the FDI stock is simply a measure of the total sum of flows that has
accumulated over time. The difference between the inward and outward stock is used
to estimate a country’s net ‘investment position’.
3 Academic economists took even longer to distil this insight, with the pioneering
studies by Charles Kindleberger, John Dunning and Stephen Hymer only appearing in
the late 1950s–1960s. See Dunning (1958), Hymer (1960) and Kindleberger (1969).
4 The manual specifies that in the case of subsidiaries
‘[c]ontrol’ … should be inferred if (i) 50% or more of the voting stock is owned
by residents of X, or (ii) 25% or more of the voting stock is concentrated in the
hands of a single holder or organized group of holders in X, or (iii) a resident of X
has in fact a controlling voice in its policies …
(IMF, 1948, p. 49 [emphasis added])
5 In reality, the simultaneous embrace of the principles of a ‘fully consolidated system’
(FCS) in BPM5 (IMF, 1993), which aims to also record all indirect investments of a
parent company in an unbroken chain of ownership as FDI, means that investments
far below the 10 per cent threshold (in a direct relationship) are also to be recorded as
FDI. For example: if a foreign parent company holds 50 per cent of the voting stock
in company X, which in turn holds 50 per cent of company Y, which holds 10 per
62 Lukas Linsi
cent of company Z, the principles of FCS define the parent company’s indirect owner-
ship of company Z as ‘FDI’ even though it actually amounts to only (0.5*0.5*0.1=)
2.5 per cent. See Bertrand (2005, p. 613).
6 For example, a recent OECD/IMF survey revealed that two OECD member countries
(Italy and Turkey) did not use the 10 per cent rule and six further member countries
used other criteria in addition to the 10 per cent threshold to determine a foreign
investor’s ‘effective voice’ (a practice that is explicitly not recommended by the
OECD and IMF ). See IMF and OECD (2003).
7 The latter is especially true in host economies with advanced capital markets.
8 The suggestive findings of Acalin and Blanchard suggest that it is not only well-
known tax havens (such as the British Virgin Islands or the Netherlands) that serve as
places of conduit of SPE FDI, but a great variety of countries including Hungary, Bul-
garia, Chile, Malaysia and many others.
9 For earlier similar exercises, see Lipsey (2001) and Kerner (2014).
10 Unfortunately, net income is not reported for Luxembourg; but given the huge size of
the reported FDI stock and the very small number of employees there, it is likely that
the ratio would amount to several million US$.
11 This is also an important issue for the estimation of many other economic indicators.
See, for example, Mügge and Stellinga (2014).
12 Survey evidence suggests that practices are still far from being harmonised, with
roughly half of the sample of the surveyed countries using either method in 2002. See
IMF and OECD (2003).
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5 Multilateralism
Matthew Louis Bishop and Valbona Muzaka
Introduction
When we speak of multilateralism in global trade we think instinctively of the
WTO. Of course, the WTO – and the GATT before it – both certainly represent
clear expressions of highly evolved multilateral institutions. However, trade
multilateralism as a concept cannot be reduced to the WTO. Recognition of this
is crucial, for three reasons. First, theoretically-speaking, multilateralism is both
a seemingly simple and – perhaps unusually – relatively uncontested concept in
a general sense, yet throughout its history its application has waxed and waned
and it has been applied to describe, explain and even legitimise a range of quite
distinctive institutional arrangements in global governance. Second, and as a
consequence, conflation of the concept with contemporary arrangements rests on
an idealised caricature of the multilateralism of the past which in turn contributes
to reifying – in the case of trade – the WTO. The organisation is often seen not
only as a multilateral institution, or an example of a particular form of multilat-
eralism, but it is also equated with multilateralism; as truly emblematic of it.
This is problematic: it narrows our imagination and constrains our understanding
of what the essence of multilateralism is, and in a more immediate sense it con-
ceals the very real challenges that the institution faces. Third, in focusing on the
apparent decline of multilateralism in today’s arena of global trade politics,
critics reproduce these problematic tendencies and, in turn, obscure what is from
our perspective a far graver problem: the absence of a ‘shared social purpose’
for governing global trade.
In light of this, the chapter unfolds according to two broad agendas. The first
half essentially substantiates the case laid out above. This involves conceptualis-
ing the notion of multilateralism, and illustrating how it has evolved over time
according to real-world changes in both global governance in general and global
trade politics in particular. We then move on to probe the contemporary
challenges faced by the WTO and explain how this matters for multilateral
trade governance, while arguing that the two are not reducible to each other.
In the second half of the chapter, we explain what is meant by the WTO’s
‘missing social purpose’ and why it matters for both the practice of global trade
politics, and also our understanding of it. We end by reflecting on what might
Multilateralism 65
characterise a meaningful social purpose on which the institutional edifice of
multilateral trade politics might be erected, how it might be nurtured, and what
the realistic prospects for achieving it might be.
Trade multilateralism: past and present

Multilateralism is a term that is often spoken and written about, but insufficiently
conceptualised and understood. Robert Keohane (1990, p. 731) once defined it
as simply ‘the practice of co-ordinating national policies in groups of three or
more states’. While small groups of countries getting together to determine col-
lective policy may be considered ‘multilateral’, often it is not; such activity may
be as much about restricting the participation of others as anything else. This
tells us that focusing on numbers (i.e. form) rather than the nature of engagement
between states and, increasingly, myriad other actors (i.e. content) is problem-
atic. Consequently, there is something in the essence or spirit of multilateralism
that is about more than just determining whether given institutions or bodies are,
or are not, multilateral according to some pre-defined (numerical) benchmarks.
We favour a considerably more expansive definition: international institutions of
all kinds are not fixed, but rather continually evolving political arrangements,
and (trade) multilateralism represents, in this regard, a dynamic arena of conflict
and contest, rather than the orderly and cooperative arrangement it is often made
to appear (see Muzaka, 2010). In the remainder of this section of the chapter we
explore this by looking at the contested nature of the practice of multilateralism
and the claims made about it over time.
According to John Ruggie (1992, p. 571), multilateralism is an institutional
form that coordinates actors’ behaviour on the basis of certain generalised prin-
ciples of conduct, regardless of either their selfish, particularistic interests or spe-
cific exigencies. In the case of trade multilateralism specifically, he contends that
non-discrimination represents the overarching generalised principle of state
conduct. This famously entails both ‘indivisibility’ amongst the members of the
group (it applies to all), and generates expectations of ‘diffuse reciprocity’ (a
notion Ruggie borrows from Keohane, 1986) whereby members can reasonably
expect roughly equivalent benefits in the aggregate and over time. What this
means is that – in trade at least – while states cannot expect their interests to be
served by specific elements of specific agreements on every occasion, over years
and decades they should broadly benefit from their participation in multilateral
agreements, such as the WTO, to a similar extent to everyone else (see Wilkin-
son, 2000). Yet while this helps us to understand the nature of multilateralism –
rather than, again, just the form – the ways in which this is understood and
practised differs in different times and places. Moreover, because institutions
such as multilateralism are underpinned by principles and rules that are not
clear-cut but rather ambiguous and contested, their history is necessarily
dynamic, as the principles and rules that constitute them are always subject to
actors’ interpretation and, often, to reinterpretation and contestation (Hall,
2010).
66 Matthew Louis Bishop and Valbona Muzaka
The principle of non-discrimination in multilateral trade contrasts with the
explicitly discriminatory dimensions of bilateral trade agreements and marks out
multilateralism as something that is quite different. Put simply, the principle
implies that countries do not discriminate between their trading partners; this is
the Most-Favoured Nation (MFN) principle. As early as the nineteenth century,
this is what bound together the series of bilateral trade agreements between
European countries and in turn facilitated a reasonably successful, peaceful ad
hoc form of multilateral trade, albeit with Britain playing a hegemonic role (see
Irwin, 2002). After the Second World War, the more institutionalised variant of
trade multilateralism with which we are more familiar – and to which we often
reduce it, even though, again, it represents but one possible form – emerged,
governed by supposedly neutral international organisations. In reality, though,
the GATT was replete with power politics and essentially operated to the logics
and demands of powerful Western countries, with the US then effectively
playing a hegemonic role (Kratochwil, 2006).
When negotiators established the GATT in 1947, the non-discrimination (i.e.
MFN) principle was stated at the outset. The experience of two world wars had
apparently convinced them of two things: that non-discriminatory trade was
desirable for ensuring peace, and that it should be codified and institutionalised
via a system of binding, ongoing, multilateral negotiations (Irwin, 2002). Over
the years, these ideas have often been criticised as representing something of a
myth; for instance, Susan Strange (1985) was keen to point out that interwar pro-
tectionism and nationalism were not the causes, but rather the consequences, of
the Great Depression. Be that as it may, myths frequently play a crucial function
in international politics: in general, they allow us to develop collectively shared
understandings of the world that make sense and facilitate dialogue even if they
are predicated on questionable foundational assumptions (see Carvalho et al.,
2011). In the case of the particular myth regarding protectionism, this has played
a crucial discursive function in maintaining support for open borders and liberal-
ised trade over recent decades, and particularly so during the contemporary crisis
(Siles-Brügge, 2014). Notwithstanding the very real challenges faced by multi-
lateral trade in general, and the WTO in particular at the present juncture –
something we discuss in greater detail in the next section – it is clear that ideas
about the importance of free trade for sustaining peace have helped to buttress
the institutional paraphernalia of international agreements in an enduring way.
However, these kinds of pressures are not new: states have always sought to
evade their multilateral commitments while claiming to do otherwise, and non-
discrimination was both contentious and contested in the post-war period, just as
it is now. Under the GATT, this principle was subject to two major exceptions:
first, certain preferential arrangements and customs unions/free trade areas
(FTAs) were exempt from the MFN clause, as long as they freed ‘substantially
all trade’ between participants, and did not subsequently put in place higher bar-
riers to the rest of the world (Dam, 1970). This permitted the maintenance of
various already-existing systems of preferences, as well as the creation of
numerous new ones: the European Economic Community (EEC) and later the
Multilateralism 67
European Union (EU) and its Single Market being the most obvious and most
deeply institutionalised. Second, countries could withdraw tariff concessions
made previously if they were deemed to have led to ‘serious injury’ to a
domestic industry or in other emergency situations. Unsurprisingly, both the
notion of ‘substantially all trade’ and ‘serious injury’ have been subject to signi-
ficant debate and legal wrangling ever since.
The key point to make is that throughout the life of the GATT, and, subse-
quently, that of the WTO, claims about diffuse reciprocity, and therefore the
extent to which the system’s ‘multilateral’ credentials justifiably stand up, have
masked highly skewed politics in which the benefits have rarely accrued to
poorer countries. In the early days, when most tariff reductions on goods took
place via deals struck first bilaterally and then passed on to the wider member-
ship through the MFN rule, trade liberalisation occurred in specific sectors of
interest to the major players: that is, those that were generally highly technologi-
cally advanced, globally integrated and in which richer countries had the most
significant competitive advantage (Wilkinson, 2006). This further contributed to
the effective exclusion of poorer countries as it facilitated deeper industrial inte-
gration and interdependence amongst the powerful, something that was intensi-
fied by their concomitant protectionism in sectors, such as textiles and
agriculture, in which developing countries may have been able to out-compete
them (Dam, 1970; Wilkinson, 2006). Moreover, despite appeals to non-
discrimination, plenty of other forms of protectionism existed throughout the
system: an array of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) remained possible under the
GATT, either explicitly, or on account of the possibility of flexible interpretation
of often-loosely drafted regulations (see Hudec, 1990).
As the GATT became more deeply institutionalised and trade rounds prolifer-
ated throughout the 1970s and 1980s, more and more waivers, exclusions and
forms of discrimination were implemented, often at the behest of individual
(wealthy) countries to allay their specific concerns (Baldwin, 2000). Moreover,
the introduction of the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) during the
1970s – which was supposed to improve developing countries’ terms of trade –
marked a further departure from reciprocity, as it allowed industrialised coun-
tries to offer, and, when it suited them, unilaterally withdraw, non-reciprocal,
preferential tariffs to groups of developing countries. This ultimately became
highly discriminatory: a small group of larger and wealthier developing coun-
tries were generally seen to have benefitted the most, and the threat of GSP with-
drawal became a useful tool through which donor states could discipline their
recipients, particularly those with a high level of ‘political trade dependence’
(Manger and Shadlen, 2014). More can be said about the myriad departures from
indivisibility and diffused reciprocity that characterised the GATT, which is
today widely – but mistakenly – held up as the emblem of a smoothly operating
trade multilateralism. We do not have sufficient space to delve into this detail
here, but have written about it – and offer a more complete account of the
broader argument regarding the way that the multilateralism of the past is often
idealised and romanticised – elsewhere (see Muzaka and Bishop, 2015).
Trade principles and rules, like all rules, are never created on a clean slate.
Their substance embodies values, relationships, contests and processes
developed over time among a variety of actors. In this complex interaction,
domestic environments play a crucial role in the kind of multilateral arrange-
ments that are set in place among state actors. In the case of the GATT, as John
Ruggie (1982) has argued, trade principles and rules were characterised by a
political commitment to ‘embedded liberalism’. This reflected a compromise
according to which the expansion of open trade relations were to be balanced
with the (then) shared sense of the necessity and legitimacy of governmental
intervention into the market for the purposes of securing domestic stability.
Although the degree to which key Western governments shared this consensus
varied somewhat, overall trade multilateralism and the quest for domestic
stability were ‘coupled and conditioned by one another’ (Ruggie, 1982, p. 398).
What this means is that, before the dawning of the neoliberal era, it was
broadly taken as a given that markets had to be saved from themselves: they
could and should not penetrate into every area of public life, and their deleteri-
ous effects when left unchecked – maldistribution, inequity, rent-seeking, a tend-
ency towards monopoly and oligopoly, wealth extraction instead of wealth
creation, to name a few – had to be policed by governments that were prepared
to intervene aggressively. Domestically, this implied complex and well-funded
systems of social security, public control of ‘natural monopolies’ and key stra-
tegic economic sectors, full employment as an explicit policy objective, high
levels of redistribution through progressive taxation and so on, all the things we
associate with the ‘post-war consensus’ (as it was called in Britain) or Roo-
sevelt’s ‘New Deal’ in the US. Internationally, it meant the purposeful creation
of rules, mechanisms and inter-governmental organisations and regimes that
sought deliberately to institutionalise collective agreements and practices to miti-
gate uncertainty and engender stability. While open trade as a general objective
was seen to be desirable, flows of goods, people, and, especially, money, also
had to be managed if they were not to be destabilising. So, the many departures
from the principle of non-discrimination on the part of the GATT parties can be
interpreted to some degree as measures through which they could ensure
domestic stability and prosperity. Indeed, GATT parties enjoyed considerable
autonomy to interpret and implement trade norms and rules in ways that enabled
them to fulfil the political and social vision of the progressive, interventionist
welfare state of the time, while also respecting the diverse ways in which this
vision could be implemented (Howse, 2002).
Yet this form of embedded liberalism was never as widely shared as we might
suppose. The neoliberal onslaught of the 1980s decisively undermined its
domestic variants, both in terms of the kinds of redistributive Keynesianism
favoured in the North and the developmentalism that had been attempted during
the post-colonial era in much of the South (Girvan, 2006). However, even before
this – and certainly in terms of the GATT and trade – the aggregate benefits
of embedded liberalism did not accrue to all, and certainly not equally. Not
only was it the case that certain powerful states – especially the US – were less
Multilateralism 69
committed to maintaining international stability by essentially social democratic
state-market compromises than others, but southern countries often effectively
bore the costs of securing stability in the North (see Ruggie, 1982; Lang, 2006).
Even the benefits from the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations (1986–1994),
the first in which developing countries appear as near-equals in terms of obliga-
tions undertaken, were highly skewed. The same is true today: even the most
optimistic estimates of the impact of the Doha Round – were it ever to be com-
pleted – disproportionately favour the richest countries in the world, and the
handful of major emerging countries that have begun to catch up with them. It is
this broader, entrenched and more fundamental breach of diffused reciprocity
that still haunts trade multilateralism today, as evidenced in part by the dif-
ficulties of the Doha Round, and it is to this that we now turn.
The Doha Dodo: difficult times for the WTO

In December 2013, almost 20 years since the conclusion of the Uruguay Round
of trade negotiations that brought the WTO into being, and over a decade since
the start of the ill-fated Doha Round, the membership finally agreed the so-called
‘Bali Package’. Despite their continuing inability to transcend the most conten-
tious issues facing them, they were able to do a deal by picking the least conten-
tious – and therefore least meaningful – issues. The incoming Director-General,
Roberto Azevêdo, was moved to claim: ‘For the first time in our history, the
WTO has truly delivered … this package is a not an end – it is a beginning’
(cited in WTO, 2013). Such optimism is, however, somewhat unusual. Most
observers view the contemporary multilateral trading system – as well as the
broader framework of global governance – as under severe pressure. In compari-
son to the relative optimism of the 1990s, even the basic shared acceptance of
the fundamental need for multilateral solutions to international problems appears
to be, at present, decaying.
The well-documented reality is that, far from being a brilliantly conceived
idea with wide-ranging support that has just run into a few recent difficulties, the
Doha Round was actually on life support for much of its history. Indeed, its very
establishment was largely a misconceived sop to the developing world after the
‘Battle in Seattle’ and 9/11 (Payne, 2005). Ever since the collapse of various
ministerial meetings throughout the 2000s, there has been widespread opposition
from larger developing countries to a trade agreement they suspect will never
offer the kind of ‘development’ that was supposed to be its hallmark. Bali itself
very nearly collapsed due to, in particular, Indian resistance, and almost two
decades now since the establishment of Doha in 2001 it is as far away from com-
pletion as ever. Most serious observers now expect that this will never happen,
and have in turn pointed to a profound crisis of trade multilateralism. In the
remainder of this section we explain the challenges facing the WTO and – in line
with our broader argument that ‘trade multilateralism’ has never been perfect
even though it is frequently idealised as such – we caution that it does not inher-
ently imply the decline of the broader edifice of multilateral trade (although nor
do we discount this possibility). The conventional account of multilateral decline
has four main dimensions (and for a considerably more detailed version of the
argument outlined here, see, again, Muzaka and Bishop, 2015).
The first is the Doha stalemate itself, which collapsed spectacularly in Geneva
in 2008 and, despite the Bali Package, remains mired in uncertainty. The longer
this state of affairs continues, the less and less likely it becomes that new impetus
will be discovered, and the more the round seems effectively moribund (Scott
and Wilkinson, 2010; 2011). The dénouement of Doha is primarily a product of
shifting relations of power and the increased resistance of major developing
countries who believe that any agreement will be heavily skewed in favour of
their richer counterparts. This has only intensified as power has shifted dramatic-
ally over the past 15 years: for example, in 2001 few realised that the Chinese
economy would effectively treble in size such that it has become the second
largest – and on some measures the largest – economy in the world (see Bishop,
2016). China’s unprecedented expansion and the attendant ‘rise’ of the other
emerging powers, and their greater collective trade activism, has sharpened the
competitive pressure felt by Western countries, and limited their willingness to
give concessions to others that have quite startlingly closed a development gap
that was considerably larger just a decade ago.
Moreover, a number of studies over this period have emphasised the ‘shrink-
ing gains’ from trade liberalisation anyway, and the likelihood of the relative
benefits accruing to the most powerful developing countries, like China, Brazil
and India (Ackerman and Gallagher, 2008; Gallagher and Wise, 2010). Develop-
ing countries as a whole are therefore understandably reticent about acquiescing
to a multilateral accord that, in its present form, is of dubious value: the major
emerging powers are unhappy about the extent of concessions required on their
part to encourage movement by developed countries on agriculture, something
which is unlikely to ever be forthcoming anyway; and their less-powerful coun-
terparts are worried about their exclusion from a process that is often conducted
behind closed doors, and does not truly take their interests into account (Khor,
2012). As Ben Richardson (2010, p. 3) has put it, ‘the benefits of multilateral
liberalisation are not big enough, not certain enough, and not targeted enough to
make significant difference to the world’s poor’. If history is any guide, then,
developing countries are wise to remain circumspect.
The second challenge can be found in the astronomical rise in the number of
bilateral and plurilateral free-trade agreements, of which many hundreds have
been signed in recent years. A special mention is owed to ‘mega’ WTO-plus
deals currently in various stages, the best known of which are the Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
These agreements frequently envisage liberalisation that goes well beyond that
agreed at the multilateral level – and which has also been explicitly rejected, par-
ticularly by developing countries in WTO negotiations – and reaches well inside
state borders, inhibiting and influencing the regulatory competence of domestic
governments. These have aroused much controversy, raising important questions
about their impact on the democratic abilities of states to regulate their own
Multilateralism 71
economies, along with the asymmetrical power relations that have conditioned
reciprocal agreements. One example of the latter is the Economic Partnership
Agreements (EPAs) negotiated between the European Union (EU) and the
African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of developing countries to bring
their post-preference relationship into so-called ‘WTO-compliance’ (see, inter
alia, Heron, 2013; Bishop et al., 2013; Heron and Siles-Brugge, 2012; Heron
and Murray-Evans, 2016). These kinds of agreements, and especially the ‘mega’
accords like TTIP and TPP are often characterised by outlandish claims about
their putative benefits which are made by proponents as a discursive strategy to
justify their necessity (De Ville and Siles-Brügge, 2015a; 2015b).
More pertinently for our agenda here, these sorts of agreements carry serious
implications for the WTO, whether in terms of the challenge they may pose to
existing multilaterally agreed rules, or the way trade policy is increasingly being
negotiated exclusively by the powerful outside of an inclusive setting with which
they have become frustrated. But such frustration stems in part from their own
unwillingness to concede ground to developing countries in the Doha negoti-
ations, thus contributing to the undermining of the WTO’s importance as the key
site of trade politics, as well as its ability to subsequently play its enforcement
role and ensure the wider stability of the rules-based multilateral system (see
Meunier and Morin, 2015). Put differently: we may well be seeing, as Silke
Trommer (2017) puts it, a ‘return to à la carte forms of trade governance [that]
benefits those with the technical and political capacity to successfully navigate
the fragmented governance architecture’. This may change, of course, as many
of these agreements run into sustained opposition from both civil society and
antagonistic governments (see below, for more on this).
The third challenge relates to problems intrinsic to the WTO itself. For
example, its raison d’être – the on-going liberalisation of substantially all trade
– is increasingly difficult to realise as ever-more countries negotiate ever-more
sensitive issues within a member-driven architecture that precludes the secretar-
iat staking out new (potentially heterodox) intellectual ground. As Daniel Drache
(2011, p. 1) has put it, the body is ‘trapped by its existing architecture’. The
Doha Round has remained in stasis not only because there are wide divergences
of interests – which is true of policy debate in most international institutions –
but because of the expectation that an accord can and should be achieved on the
basis of the ‘single undertaking’. Many developing countries are uncomfortable
with signing up to multilateral liberalisation that reaches deep into areas of
national regulatory competence, and the richer countries that have traditionally
pushed such agendas increasingly lack the capacity or leverage to compel them
to do so.
Part of the problem is that developing countries are suspicious of the liberal-
ising credentials of the powerful: as suggested earlier, the latter have often
pushed market opening in areas where they are dominant, while resisting it in
areas where they might be at a competitive disadvantage. But even were they to
be reconciled, many developing countries fear that trading away protections in,
say, public procurement or services for greater market access in agriculture
would actually lead to a relative loss overall. To overcome such resistance, the
approach taken by the US and EU, in particular, has been to seek to corral others
into WTO-plus bilateral agreements. It is quite likely that this approach will
have the effect of undermining rather than supporting multilateralism, whatever
the ultimate destiny of specific agreements themselves. The real danger is that
the kind of WTO-plus arrangements agreed elsewhere will in time become the
de facto international standard, while the WTO is downgraded to a forum where
legal dispute settlement, rather than deliberation and legislation, takes place
(Evenett, 2009).
The final issue is that the global panorama in which all of this is occurring is
changing rapidly. Before 2016, many were worried simply that progress at the
multilateral level had stagnated amid a deep, enduring global economic crisis.
While it is certainly true that forward momentum in achieving across-the-board
agreement on an ambitious Doha accord (beyond the Bali Package) has been
limited, it is also the case that a return of the kind of protectionism that haunted
the 1930s has not – or at least not yet – manifested itself (Siles-Brügge, 2014).
Some have gone as far as claiming that the broad system of liberal global gov-
ernance that had been painstakingly constructed since 1945 coped reasonably
well with the crisis and its subsequent fallout, even to the extent that it may have
effectively prevented another Great Depression (Drezner, 2016).
However, at the time of writing (early 2018), with Donald Trump in the White
House and advocating a highly illiberal, reactionary agenda, fears have rapidly
emerged that global liberalism is on the retreat. One of Trump’s first acts on
coming to office was to sign an executive order withdrawing from the TPP.
However, rather than cheering, the myriad opponents who had campaigned vocif-
erously against what, like TTIP, is seen to be a hyper neoliberal, exclusionary, anti-
democratic, environmentally destructive trade deal, this has only engendered a
sense of beleaguerment. This is because denouncing a WTO-plus bilateral agree-
ment does not necessarily represent a defence of multilateralism or a return to the
values of managed globalisation and embedded liberalism. Indeed, quite the con-
trary: the unravelling of mega-deals could actually imply even harsher forms of
self-interested, egotistical trade policy on the part of powerful countries going
forward, rather than any general revitalisation of the multilateral process. Indeed,
the evidence from the Trump administration’s first two years is of even greater
antagonism towards international cooperation and multilateralism, as these con-
duits are perceived not only to have done nothing to maintain American power, but
to have seriously restricted it. One could, of course, see this as little more than
bombastic rhetoric. But if we consider Trump’s hostile posture towards China, the
imposition of tariffs on major US trade partners, the destruction of the Iran nuclear
deal, the histrionics at the G7 meeting in Canada in June 2018 where his team
appeared to delight in the terrifying possibility of a trade war (see Bishop, 2018),
his apparent embrace of an ever-more authoritarian Putin regime in Russia, and the
wider retreat from liberal values that is evident in the rise of xenophobic populism
in parts of Europe – not to mention Brexit – then such fears are, at the very least,
not entirely misplaced.
Multilateralism 73
In sum, not only has trade multilateralism – and multilateralism in general –
never been as tidy and coherent as is often presented in retrospect, it has always
been fraught with tensions, vicious ongoing battles to define key objectives and
win concessions, and characterised by messy and frequently strained comprom-
ises. Such a state of affairs is intrinsically more likely today due to the fact that
far greater numbers of countries with far more diverse interests operating in a
context of drastically shifting relations of power are negotiating over the most
sensitive areas of domestic regulatory competence. The relatively easy gains
from trade liberalisation – tariff reductions on goods – were completed, for the
most part, many years ago, by fewer key members who dominated proceedings,
yet this still took inordinate numbers of negotiators decades of burning the mid-
night oil to achieve. It is therefore unsurprising that progress is more difficult
today. Moreover, simply because the WTO itself is in stasis, it does not automat-
ically follow that this is a permanent state, nor that it could not be resolved with
some decisive leadership, especially from China (Bishop and Zhang, 2016). The
travails of the WTO as a body need also to be separated out analytically from the
prospects for trade multilateralism: they are undeniably intimately related, but
also not reducible to each other. Still, despite all of this, we do live in troubled
times. It may well be that the illiberalism of the late 2010s is something of an
aberration, a trough in the otherwise contested but ultimately upward trajectory
of a global multilateralism that has always waxed and waned. Yet it may equally
be that we are living through the beginning of a significant realignment of the
global political economy away from multilateralism and towards something
more nationalistic. It is too soon to tell. What we do know is that, regardless of
the future that is slowly hovering into view, there has been an insidious and
troubling – but broadly unidentified – set of challenges to trade multilateralism
that are considerably longer in genesis. This is our focus for the remainder of the
chapter.
The WTO’s missing social purpose

In so far as multilateralism is seen as a changeable but durable institutional form
underpinned by certain generalised principles of conduct – which, to reiterate, in
the case of trade would be non-discrimination, ‘indivisibility’ (applying to all)
and ‘diffuse reciprocity’ (members expect roughly equivalent benefits in
aggregate and over time) – it would be difficult to argue that the trade arrange-
ments of the post-war period entirely deserved the multilateral label, even if they
are often painted and recognised as such. In reality, there existed significant
departures in letter and spirit from the principle of non-discrimination and the
same rules definitively did not apply to all members. Moreover, if ‘indivisibility’
implies, minimally, that members were ‘in it together’, this does not square with
the hierarchical, exclusionary, club nature of the post-1945 trade system. Nor did
it generate true ‘diffuse reciprocity’, because most benefits visibly accrued to
key developed countries. In short, pre-Doha trade multilateralism often scored
poorly on the key principles.
The ‘success’ achieved in this period came about largely because core
members shared, to some degree, a commitment to couple the liberalisation of
trade rules with the quest for domestic – and, in theory, international – stability
as captured in Ruggie’s ‘embedded liberalism’. This not only matters in and of
itself: crucially, it gave a measure of what we call ‘social purpose’ to the exist-
ence and continuous functioning of trade ‘multilateralism’, such as it was.
Recent historiographical work by, for example, Eric Helleiner (2014) has shown
how the builders of the Bretton Woods institutions in 1944–1945 were consider-
ably more ambitious in terms of creating international solidarity between rich
and poor than is often recognised. This only compounds the sense of concern
that has accompanied the narrowing of ambition on the part of international
actors regarding the possibilities of global economic coordination for public
benefit. An obvious example can be found in the G20: in 2009 it was briefly
hoped – and claimed by the committed multilateralists in power at the time like
Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, Lula da Silva, Kevin Rudd and Angela Merkel
– that it would represent the central institution in a new, post-crisis response to
global governance potentially deserving of nothing less than the term ‘Bretton
Woods II’ (Helleiner, 2010). That the grandest aspirations – an entirely reinvig-
orated global governance architecture fit for the distinctive challenges of the
twenty-first century – were not realised is, perhaps, unsurprising. Nonetheless,
the effective deterioration of the G20 as a meaningful site of global politicking
certainly is both surprising and disappointing, and it bodes ill for even the most
cautious recasting of multilateral forms of governance in the great many areas
where it is desperately required (Payne, 2016). In short, the social purpose of
trade multilateralism – and multilateralism in general – has frayed significantly
and may well be hanging by a troublingly thin thread.
Still, even during the post-war period, it remained the case that the majority
of the collectivity – the developing countries – either did not share in the social
purpose of trade multilateralism, or bore the cost associated with ensuring
domestic stability within the core, or were disadvantaged on both fronts. This
was the result of a contradictory multilateral arrangement that was normatively
built on the recognition of ‘equal’ state sovereignty, but in practice assigned
leading roles to a nucleus of powerful states. Such contradictions have been –
and remain – the source of many political conflicts within global trade politics.
They have visibly manifested themselves in previous trade rounds and, without
question, in the current Doha Round, within which even this emaciated version
of a ‘shared social purpose’ is at risk of disappearing altogether. Not only is
there a decaying belief in the importance of multilateral trade, but even were this
not the case, there is little shared agreement between the principal western states,
the emerging powers, and the wider developing world, on what the outcomes of
global trade politics should be. Put differently: everyone has retreated into
narrow forms of self-interest in the pursuit of immediate gains rather than
seeking a suite of solutions that will benefit all broadly equally over a much
longer timeframe. This is not a novel problem. For years now, the emphasis
within global trade politics has been for the powerful to see liberalisation and the
Multilateralism 75
aggressive opening of developing country markets as an end in itself, rather than
a means to engendering development, equity, and, on that basis, shared stability.
What is different now, in an era of pronounced crisis – both within the trade
arena and outside it – is that the missing social purpose has crystallised at just
the point where, on the one hand, it may be too difficult to rediscover it, yet, on
the other, it is more desperately needed than ever.
So, what might characterise a meaningful social purpose that underpins trade
multilateralism? For global trade politics, non-discrimination (the MFN prin-
ciple) should not be the social purpose of trade multilateralism alone. It is not an
end in itself, and only matters insofar as it helps to achieve the kind of diffuse
reciprocity expected in any multilateralism worthy of the name. Moreover, a dis-
tinction needs to be drawn, once again, between discrimination and differential
treatment. The two have tended to be conflated over the years, with intense
battles pitched over either eliminating or narrowing the scope for deploying
forms of the latter which are, in our view, perfectly justifiable and legitimate.
Differential treatment is often necessary – perhaps even intrinsically so – to
ensure that countries at lower levels of development are not disadvantaged as
they construct infant industries. Indeed, on this reading, one could even argue
that casting all forms of preferences and differential treatment as discriminatory
is in itself a form of discrimination, characterised as it is by the powerful effect-
ively working to restrict the policy space that they themselves enjoyed in the
past for the ‘late developers’ that are seeking to follow them. Ha-Joon Chang
(2002) put this best when he talked of the rich ‘kicking away the ladder’ for poor
countries to climb up, a trend that is in desperate need of reversal.
Again, if we see trade negotiations as a means to an end, with the end being
the development of the poorer members of the collectivity, then it necessarily
follows that greater forms of differentiated treatment should be tolerated. Yet
relatively few – primarily only the ‘Least Developed Countries’ (LDCs) – today
have access to preferences, and the powerful have continually and aggressively
sought to circumscribe them. This is so despite many countries – highly vulner-
able small island developing states (SIDS) being an obvious example – exhibit-
ing distinctive development challenges that require distinctive responses. This is
not a tension that can ever be fully resolved, but despite the liberalisation of
global trade rules, there is still a role for preferences and differential treatment
and it could be managed and guided by the overall social purpose of the trade
regime, if it has one and it is deployed imaginatively. Accepting ‘development
for all’ as a shared social purpose would only be a starting point, which must be
followed by a critical questioning of what this entails and how it can be achieved
through trade multilateralism. This, in turn, may necessitate not only devising
rules embedding the diffuse reciprocity and the non-discrimination principles in
ways which recognise that different countries require differentiated policy space
but also opening up and safeguarding the necessary political space for demo-
cratic participation, questioning and accountability to ensure that differential
treatment and policy space truly result in sustainable and human development
everywhere.
Conclusion
Multilateralism has long been a key concept in the world trading system. Is it a
crucial part of our lexicon, and a term that is utilised continually by academics
and practitioners working in trade. However, as we have suggested in this
chapter, the language of multilateralism is rarely problematised, with its meaning
frequently taken at face value. This is a huge problem: conventional ways of
understanding it are limited by perspectives that view it – whether explicitly or
implicitly – as somewhat static, and even conflate it with the WTO itself. By
thinking more expansively about the diverse forms it has taken over time, and
shedding light on a multilateralism of the past that was considerably more messy
than is often assumed to be the case, we can avoid the pitfalls of reifying the
WTO, naturalising contemporary expressions as somehow definitive or perfect,
and, perhaps most importantly get a sense of the extent to which those expres-
sions are now faced with an array of quite serious challenges. This matters: the
WTO is in a deep crisis today, but this is not simply – or even – the result of
poor choices or misguided policy, but rather reflects deep-seated structural con-
tradictions in the composition of modern trade multilateralism.
In 2012, at a specially convened public forum at the WTO under the rubric ‘Is
Multilateralism in Crisis?’, erstwhile Director-General Pascal Lamy noted that
‘multilateralism is struggling in almost all spheres of global co-operation’, and the
lack of progress in the Doha Round ‘demonstrates that the WTO is not immune to
the geo-economic and geo-political transformations of our time’ (Lamy, 2012).
That the Round has limped on, from setback to setback, and despite, at times,
myriad pronouncements that its dénouement implies the inevitable demise of the
WTO in particular, and trade multilateralism in general, suggests that such doom-
mongering is to some extent misplaced. We do not pretend that the challenges
ranged against multilateral trade are not significant. But we outlined above what
might characterise a meaningful social purpose, and in the remainder of this con-
clusion we reflect on what the prospects are for achieving it. If the former was
perhaps an excessively optimistic account, the latter is certainly a bleaker one.
It is, in all honesty, difficult to see where the purposeful leadership of the
global political economy is coming from at this point in time. Multilateralism is
not new; its form and nature are dynamic, depending on the distribution of power
between and within states and the purpose it is meant to achieve. It is also a
demanding institutional form (Ruggie, 1992). As long as members participate
only to defend and promote their national interest (however that position may
have been reached), trade multilateralism will always be precarious. Paradoxic-
ally, though, the very crisis in which we appear to find ourselves may well
provide the impetus for some kind of meaningful questioning, and, ultimately,
change. Put differently: if trade multilateralism cannot, following our argument
here, get going again without discovering its social purpose, that in itself may
well provoke a search for such a purpose.
Far from foretelling the end of trade multilateralism, the present juncture
might offer states an opportunity to move closer towards (a better version of ) it.
Multilateralism 77
This could – and we say this tentatively – be an unexpected outcome of Trump-
ist economic nationalism in the US and its counterparts in Europe. The kinds of
mercantilism that so worry liberals and which have found their most glib expres-
sion in the rhetoric of Trump, Le Pen, Putin, the Brexiteers in the UK and so
forth, are not inherently incompatible with a broadly liberal trading order. As
Dani Rodrik (2016) has argued, too many mainstream economists spent much of
the neoliberal era decrying perfectly legitimate forms of state (and, by implica-
tion, international) intervention and downplayed the distributional costs of free
trade. On this reading, then, we contend that the entirely predictable backlash
represented by the most strident forms of economic nationalism could have been
averted if the kinds of embedded liberal compromises that characterised the
post-war era had been implemented to manage the market failures and inequal-
ities that necessarily emerge from greater liberalisation and interdependence, and
which have grotesquely disfigured both the global economy as a whole and indi-
vidual societies. At last the sacred cows of liberalisation at all costs are being
slaughtered. This may well lead to great instability, and we do not discount such
a possibility. But equally, it might also ultimately lead to a substantial question-
ing and recasting of globalisation along more managed, democratic lines.
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6 Democracy
Klaus Dingwerth
Introduction
At the protests that accompanied the 1999 Ministerial Conference of the World
Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, demonstrators carried an oversized banner
that was to become a representative symbol for the alter-globalisation move-
ment. It comprised two bold arrows pointing in opposite directions. One arrow
had written ‘WTO’ on it, the other ‘democracy’. The message was simple but
powerful: the WTO and democracy were antagonistic. You could not have both
at the same time.
That people could evaluate the world trade regime in terms of its ‘democratic’
credentials will have seemed odd to many trade policy practitioners back in the
early 1990s. Was not the success or failure of trade policy to be measured in
terms of its success in taming governments’ appetite for protectionist measures?
In the institution’s contribution to growth, employment and welfare? Or, if
appeal to a more abstract ideal had to be made, in the extent to which it helped to
realise ‘freedom’? Yet popular demands that the world trade regime ought not to
undermine democracy remained strong, leaving the trade policy community with
few other options than to face the challenge. The arrows painted on the Seattle
banner could thus still be seen at public protest events for some years. Cartoons,
themselves a powerful tool of the alter-globalisation movement, spelled out the
suspicion behind the message on the banner, for example when they showed a
bulldozer blazing a trail through the letters that form the word ‘democracy’, fol-
lowed by trucks carrying the logos of well-known multinational corporations
and paving the road that, a nearby road sign informs the viewer, leads to ‘corpo-
rate rule’.1 And last, but not least, the more recent opposition to the Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has brought the argument that free
trade and democracy do not go together back on the front pages.
Set in this broader context, I use this chapter to develop three broad argu-
ments. First, I argue that democratic legitimation claims have entered the GATT
and WTO discourse only relatively recently and under very specific circum-
stances. Yet when they became part of the legitimation discourse, democratic
frames could build on discursive links with normative frames that had been
around for a while, notably the notion of ‘consensus’ and developing countries’
Democracy 81
calls for ‘full participation’ in multilateral trade negotiations. In important ways,
the seeds for democratic frames had thus already been planted in earlier decades,
and the mind map for public evaluations of the world trade regime changed
gradually rather than abruptly.
Second, I show that once the democratic frame had gained prominence in the
highly visible Seattle protests, the WTO consciously adopted it and – in many
ways successfully – re-defined its core content so that what counted as ‘demo-
cratic’ came to match the organisation’s practices. Arguing that its voting rules,
its consensus-based decision-making culture, and its practice of making a wealth
of documents available to the public made it the ‘most democratic’ of all inter-
national economic organizations, WTO officials thus became important meaning
makers in the discursive contest for legitimacy.
Third, I maintain that the role of democratic legitimation claims not only
increased with protests against the GATT and WTO, but that its relevance also
decreased – at least in official WTO communications and media debates – once
public opposition against the WTO weakened. Nonetheless, the addition of the
democratic frame after Seattle proved consequential. It has led the WTO to
explicitly link its democratic quality to the consensus norm, thereby strengthen-
ing a growing WTO – now with 162 members – against pressures to weaken the
consensus norm in the face of the current deadlock of the Doha Round.
A changing mind map and the WTO as a meaning maker:

the rise and fall of democratic legitimation frames
A brief look at the reports of GATT Contracting Parties meetings during the
Tokyo and Uruguay rounds of multilateral trade negotiations as well as the WTO
Ministerial Conferences during the Doha Round is insightful. During the Tokyo
Round (1973–1979), member states use the term ‘democratic’ only once, namely
when, in a 1974 meeting of GATT members, the Romanian delegate, a certain
Mr. Petrescou, demands that
the multilateral trade negotiations … and more generally the conduct of

governments in their trade relations should aim at a democratic renewal of
international trade, assuring the elimination of obstacles to free and non-
discriminatory exchange of goods and the granting of preferential treatment
for developing countries.
(GATT, 1974, p. 30)
Referring to the need to put world trade on a more equal footing, the Roma-
nian delegate invokes the phrase of a ‘democratic renewal of international trade’
only six months after the UN General Assembly adopted its landmark Declara-
tion on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO). Like
the declaration, however, it failed to make a sustained impression. In the
Uruguay Round (1986–1994), the democratic legitimation frame thus does
not play a major role either. It appears in statements by delegates from Romania
82 Klaus Dingwerth
– again – and Paraguay. Now, however, these countries no longer call for a
‘democratic renewal’ of the GATT but seek to inform other members about the
sincerity of their own efforts to consolidate democracy, and with it economic
freedom, at the domestic level (GATT, 1991a; 1994). Only two (of a total of
207) statements apply the term to the GATT itself. The first of these criticises
‘attempts to transform the contractual character of the GATT and to undermine
the democratic nature of its functioning through proposals submitted to the
Group on Functioning of the GATT System’ (GATT, 1988). The second, made
by the Venezuelan delegate, draws a closer link between democratisation at
home and abroad:
Major changes have taken place recently. Democracy and freedom, funda-
mental aspirations for our peoples, are spreading relentlessly. Authoritarian
political systems are giving way to governments legitimized by the will of
the people. In this context, it is utopian to think that negotiations on the
scale of the Uruguay Round can be conducted in closed circles and that its
results can be made known to the vast majority of participants once agree-
ments have already been achieved.
(GATT, 1991b)
As the more recent Doha Round illustrates, this particular version of the demo-
cratic frame proved to be more lasting. In the 618 statements made at the bien-
nial Ministerial Conferences between 2001 to 2013, we thus find over 40
references to democracy, many of which express their hope for an ‘open and
democratic process’ that will lead to a ‘genuine consensus’ (WTO, 2001a).
We arrive at a similar picture when we look at annual reports published by
the GATT and WTO. While few of them contain explicit references to the demo-
cratic legitimation frame before 1994, the term regularly appears in reports since
the WTO has been established. These numbers underline the assumption that the
language of democracy has entered the GATT and WTO discourse at a relatively
recent stage in its organizational history (see also Grigorescu, 2015).
Yet when we examine political discourses, we are not so much interested in
the frequency with which a specific term appears, but rather in the ‘webs of
meaning’ that are constructed by the ways in which different terms are used and
related in a field of social interaction. Seen in this way, the democratic legitima-
tion frame comprises a broader semantic field in which notions of ‘inclusive-
ness’, ‘participation’ or ‘representation’ are just as relevant as notions of
‘access’, ‘openness’ or ‘transparency’, and in which additional attributes used in
combination with these terms – as in ‘equal participation’, ‘effective participa-
tion’ or ‘full participation’ – can convey different messages.
In the end, what the democratic legitimation frame consists of is an empiri-
cally open question that can only be answered by examining a discursive field
itself. In the following sections, I discuss how the democratic frame – broadly
understood – has become a new element of the normative ground on which the
GATT and WTO are justified. My discussion is based on four kinds of sources:
Democracy 83
on the annual reports published by the GATT and WTO since the 1970s; on
member state statements at GATT Contracting Parties and WTO Ministerial
Conferences; on external comments from NGOs, business associations or jour-
nalists that appeared in the media; and on secondary literature about the legiti-
macy and legitimation of the GATT and WTO.2
The rise of democracy as a ‘non-trade value’

The key argument I present in this section has two parts: first, ‘democracy’ has
become firmly established in the justificatory discourse around the WTO in the
late 1990s and early 2000s. Second, despite the absence of ‘democratic’ lan-
guage in earlier decades, those who introduced the term to the world trade dis-
course in the 1990s could tie their idea of a ‘democratic’ world trade regime to
concepts that had gained recognition in the world trade discourse before.
The first part of my argument is revealed in speeches by the WTO Directors
General, in annual reports issued by the WTO as well as in member state state-
ments. In the latter, those invoking democracy as a legitimacy standard include
developed as well as developing countries, and democratic as well as non-
democratic governments. The French delegation, for instance, declares that
‘France favours a strong, legitimate and democratic WTO’ (WTO, 2001d, p. 1),
and it applauds Director-General Pascal Lamy for ‘making our organization
more open and more democratic’ (WTO, 2013b, p. 1). The Pakistani delegation
expresses its trust that delegations ‘will succeed through an open and democratic
process, in evolving a genuine consensus at Doha’ (WTO, 2001a, p. 3). And
China announces its readiness ‘to work together with other members towards
building a more democratic, more efficient, more just and more balanced multi-
lateral trading system’ (WTO, 2009a, p. 2).
Conventional accounts stress the relevance of the Seattle protests for intro-
ducing the democracy frame (Strange, 2013). Yet while the protests have added
to the strength of this frame within the legitimation discourse – notable also in
the explicit acceptance of the frame by those speaking on behalf of the WTO
itself – they did not invent it. Instead, the frame builds on two historical legacies
that refer to the two different ways in which ‘democracy’ has been used to chal-
lenge and defend the legitimacy of the WTO throughout its politicisation period.
The first of these two ways gained relevance in Uruguay Round. It sees the
GATT and WTO as undermining the national democratic process. Towards the
end of the Uruguay Round, this understanding is at the centre of domestic pro-
tests against the creation of the WTO in the US and elsewhere.
Historically, however, such concerns are not new. When the US Congress
failed to put forward post-Second World War plans to create the International
Trade Organization, the concern that this new organisation would ‘infringe on
national sovereignty’ formed part of the justification (Reis, 2009, p. 44). As the
GATT was less formalised, member states retained leeway in interpreting the
agreements in the light of their own national preferences and laws. Moreover,
disputes about national interpretations that were considered too expansive could
84 Klaus Dingwerth
be dealt with in consultations involving the affected parties or, where such con-
sultations failed, in a formal yet diplomatic rather than judicialised dispute set-
tlement process. Informally, the GATT was thus based on a recognition of the
need for ‘policy space’, a formula invented by trade diplomats, much like
‘embedded liberalism’, to allow for flexible solutions in the general trade-off
between international coordination and national sovereignty. In the Uruguay
Round, it was negotiations on trade in services which led several developing
countries to frame their concerns in terms of national sovereignty. The Peruvian
delegation, for example, stressed that it would ‘follow closely the negotiations
on trade in services, to ensure that … the general policy objectives of national
legislation and regulations on services are observed’ (GATT, 1986a, p. 4).
Other delegations joined the call by asking for negotiations in all areas or on
trade in services specifically to observe ‘a maximum of transparency’ (GATT,
1986b, p. 1) or be ‘carried out in a most transparent manner’ (GATT, 1986c,
p. 2). They thereby introduced the call for transparency as a further element of
the democracy frame that was to become central in subsequent years. The
Chilean delegation was most critical in this regard, and its critique pre-figures
elements of the ‘Green Room’ argument that became central to the legitimacy
crisis after Seattle:
The intensive consultations which have been taking place in Geneva have
been characterized by a trend that is unfortunately becoming a habit,
namely, our references to the lack of transparency. There has not been a
single open and formal discussion in which the contracting parties could
express their views concerning general matters relating to the organization,
plan and procedures of the negotiations.
(GATT, 1986d, p. 1)
This use of a specific democratic value, however, differs from the ‘national
sovereignty’ frame. It does not argue that the GATT undermines domestic demo-
cracy, but rather that its operation does not itself meet a standard of democratic
governance. Like the first way in which ‘democracy’ is used to challenge the
legitimacy of the GATT – and later the WTO – this second way of understanding
‘democracy’ in its international dimension gained prominence in the Uruguay
Round, but builds on long-standing arguments in the GATT discourse.
While the call for transparency may indeed be novel in this regard, calls for
adequate representation of developing countries are found in member states’
statements for most years of the Tokyo Round (1973–1979). Similarly, the claim
that developing countries should become ‘effective participants’, ‘full particip-
ants’ or ‘full partners’ in negotiations is frequently articulated, and it also lies at
the heart of the GATT’s technical assistance programme.
In sum, the seeds for the steep rise of democratic normative pressures on the
GATT and WTO in the 1990s and 2000s were already planted in the earlier
period. At the very least, the presence of frames to which democratic values
could be linked provided a fertile ground for protestors to build discursive
Democracy 85
coalitions with actors within the GATT and WTO (see also Budzugan and
Payne, 2016). But this fertile ground notwithstanding, few will have expected
that the WTO would, at any point of its history, emphatically present itself as
‘the most democratic international body in existence today’ (Moore, 2002).
Civil society vs the WTO: contested meaning makers

Unsurprisingly, the meaning of ‘democracy’ became contested as soon as it
became a widely accepted standard to determine the legitimacy of the world
trade regime. In essence, two groups of actors confronted each other in a sequen-
tial encounter. Initially, social movements claimed that the WTO suffered from a
‘democratic deficit’; they thereby introduced the democratic frame in the first
place. Subsequently, WTO officials made their own efforts to show that, if
understood properly, the WTO was indeed a very ‘democratic’ international
organisation. In the legitimation contest that ensued, both groups sought to build
coalitions with like-minded WTO members, leading the debate to gradually
become an ‘internal’ affair.
The democratic deficit claim

What exactly was the label of ‘democracy’ which social movements so visibly
painted on their banners meant to entail? In fact, those protesting against turning
the GATT into a stronger and more formal international organisation ‘with
teeth’, an organisation many groups thought ‘would not be democratically
accountable’ (IPS, 1992), convey at least two very different positions. While the
first was focused on global inequality, the second emphasised the right of
national communities to determine their own laws.
In an open letter published in the Financial Times in August 1991, Clive Rob-
inson, representing the Liaison Committee of Development NGOs to the EC,
identified what he termed a ‘democratic deficit’ of the GATT system. More pre-
cisely, he saw an ‘urgent need … to democratize’ the GATT ‘by affirming its
role as a referee to ensure that the poorest producers and consumers are not over-
powered by the heavyweights of international trade’. Democratisation, his claim
held, thus involved an effort to balance unequal power relations at the inter-
national level. Accordingly, the organisations Robinson represented called for an
organisation to be ‘established in the UN’s one-state one-vote rule’ as this would
‘be a step towards the democratic regulation of trade which the present system
has failed to provide’ (Robinson, 1991; see also IPS, 1994a).
Other critics, however, sent quite a different message. They viewed GATT
‘as a conspiracy where “unelected, unknown international bureaucrats, heavily
lobbied by big business, establish world health, safety and environmental
policy” ’ and in which decisions were made ‘in secret and without the input of
non-governmental organizations’ (Dunne, 1991, citing the NGO Public Citizen;
see also Friedman, 1994). Here, the WTO was conceived as undemocratic not so
much because it was a tool of powerful nations, but rather because it undermined
86 Klaus Dingwerth
the popular sovereignty of even the most powerful national community of all, the
United States of America. ‘A nation’s sovereignty to set and enforce health,
safety and environmental laws is compromised’, Public Citizen thus further
argued in the same statement. Other groups like Oxfam and the World Wildlife
Fund seconded and called for the WTO to ‘respect a nation’s right to set social
and environmental standards above the agreed minimum standards’ (Shan, 1994).
Somewhere in between these two poles, organisations like Greenpeace saw
the ‘generally undemocratic approach’ of the GATT in its domination of – or
‘subservience to’ – multinational corporations (Dunne, 1992a). This third and
very popular critique of corporate power in the GATT fitted the notion of the
GATT as an instrument of the powerful as well as the critique that corporate
influence undermined democracy at home. An example of the former under-
standing would be the charge that ‘the Uruguay Round has been largely dictated
by powerful corporate interests in the US and EC, and the bargains are all struck
between the major powers and their corporate advisers’, hence at the cost of
developing country interests (Vidal, 1992). An example of the latter would be
Ralph Nader’s use of rather drastic language to argue that the GATT was char-
acterised by a ‘trade uber alles’ approach (Nader, 1994b). In both cases, the fact
that environmentalists were ‘shut out of the decision-making process’ while
‘their business opponents are heavily represented on advisory groups’ were
called upon as evidence of the ‘undemocratic GATT practice of behind-doors
negotiation’ (Dunne, 1992b, citing Lori Wallach from Public Citizen; see also
Reuters, 1992 and IPS, 1993).
Finally, a fourth critique lamented the lack of public debate. Martin Griffith,
Director of ActionAid, was amongst those who feared that ‘the [Multilateral
Trade Organization] will simply come into being on completion of the Uruguay
Round’ even though he believed ‘that such critical issues merit wide public
debate’. In a letter published in the Financial Times, he asked the government
‘to give full publicity to the text of the proposed MTO, and urge parliament to
undertake a full debate on the setting up of the MTO before the completion of
the GATT negotiations’ (Griffith, 1992; see also Global Warming Network,
1994). Frequently, this critique also drew on the ‘corporate secrecy’ charge, for
instance when U.S. activist Ralph Nader argued that:
There is something about foreign trade agreements, such as the Uruguay

Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, that removes them
from broad public discourse and examination. This phenomenon is pro-
nounced when the business/government axis that drafts these agreements in
exclusionary surroundings connects the thought-stopping label ‘free trade’
with a congressional fast-track, no-amendment procedure that makes inquiry
into details futile.
(Nader, 1994a)
In the same piece, Nader also challenges journalists for their failure to see the
implications the Uruguay Round trade deal would have for American democracy
Democracy 87
and to report adequately about what was being negotiated. Looking at more
recent debates over the TTIP agreement, we can see that the challenge of secrecy
remains while critique of the media has largely silenced as the latter has learned
its lessons and adopted a stronger watchdog role in the meantime.
In sum, the ‘democratic deficit’ slogan served as a broad umbrella under
which fitted a variety of fundamental critiques of the existing world trade regime
as well as of the envisaged reforms of that regime. To be considered ‘demo-
cratic’, the GATT or WTO had to level the playing field among industrialised
and developing countries, provide sufficient policy space for its members, limit
corporate power and base decisions on comprehensive public debates in member
states. Yet if that was what social movements associated with the ‘democratic’
label, how was it possible for WTO officials to adopt and ultimately appropriate
that discourse?
The WTO’s response: reframing the democracy discourse

They could do this by adopting a relatively simple strategy, namely to accept the
‘democratic’ label while amending the content for which the label stood. In the
wake of the protests, the 2000 and 2001 annual reports thus seek to ‘[demon-
strate] the truth that the WTO is firmly based in democratic legitimacy’ (WTO,
2000, p. 4). To underline this claim, the WTO generally stressed ‘the importance
of conducting public debates on trade policy – essential in any democratic
process – on the basis of an accurate understanding of the policies being con-
sidered by the negotiators’ (WTO, 2001c, p. 2). More precisely, however, it built
its own ‘democratic’ claim on four broad pillars:
First, the organisation emphasised that its consensus-based decision-making,
‘gives negotiating agendas a solid basis in democratic legitimacy and account-
ability’ (WTO, 2001c, p. 3). In a similar way, Director-General Mike Moore
(2002) directly addressed the critics when he argued that ‘opponents of the
World Trade Organization who sometimes claim that the system is “undemo-
cratic” start from a basic fallacy’ because the consensus rule ‘embodies … the
right to sovereignty, free choice, self-government – in other words “democracy”
in its most basic sense’. In the wake of the Seattle protests, industrialised
member states concurred that ‘what sets the World Trade Organization apart
from other multilateral organizations is that consensus alone produces results’,
thereby ‘[ensuring] the equality of the 142 Members’ (WTO, 2001b).
Formulating the democratic frame in this way, the WTO primarily referred
to the formal rules and largely ignored the critique that informal structures
served to undermine formal equality. This critique was explicitly countered
only when WTO officials stressed the role of capacity-building and technical
assistance programmes in reducing the gaps in technical know-how and hence
negotiating power between the richer and poorer member states. In contrast,
WTO officials remained silent on the more fundamental problem of vast dispar-
ities in negotiating power that resulted from the different sizes of national
economies.
88 Klaus Dingwerth
Second, legitimacy claims issued by the WTO stressed the one state, one vote
rule as another facet of equality among its member states. Those speaking on behalf
of the organisation did not invoke a comparison to other organisations. But implic-
itly, their audiences understood that such statements drew a comparison with the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF ) as the other big players in
global economic governance confronted with public protest. Since decision-making
in the latter was based on the principle of one dollar, one vote, the WTO stood out
as the ‘most democratic’ among the major international economic organisations.
Third, a number of actors within the WTO concluded that ‘the reply to the
social criticism of our organization must be to enhance its transparency’ (WTO,
2001b). The policies WTO members enacted did not fail to impress. In 2003, the
independent NGO One World Trust thus ranked the WTO third among 18 inter-
governmental organisations in terms of its access to online information and
applauded the organisation for making access to its legal agreements easy, pro-
viding excellent and accessible information on its trade activities and publishing
its website in three languages (WTO, 2003).
This result was welcomed by WTO officials as it further legitimised the
organisation in relation to an increasingly relevant standard that protesters and
small developing countries had invoked (WTO, 2003). That the rating focused
on ‘access to online information’ rather than on ‘access to information from
Green Room negotiations’ – of which both sides had been very critical – went
unnoticed in the WTO’s own press release. It also did not figure prominently in
the 2004 assessment on ‘The Future of the World Trade Organization’ which the
WTO had commissioned a group of eminent persons led by Peter Sutherland to
author. The group equally applauded the WTO for its ‘significant progress’ in
external communication, and it argued that the availability of relevant docu-
ments, the speed with which information was made accessible, and the ‘excellent
explanatory material now available on the WTO website’ had made WTO nego-
tiations ‘remarkably transparent’ (Consultative Board, 2004, p. 42).
Finally, the WTO used its consultation with civil society, notably in the form
of its annual Public Forum, to demonstrate its increasing engagement with civil
society activists. The 2004 Annual Report for example states that:
2003 was also a notable year in terms of WTO relations with civil society,
parliamentarians and parliamentary groupings, and international organiza-
tions. This year saw the highest level of civil society representation in the
WTO’s eight-year history. The WTO Public Symposium held in June was
the most popular ever, attracting some 700 participants. The Symposium is
now an important fixture on the yearly calendar of trade-related international
events. Similarly, a record 795 NGOs and almost 1,600 of their representa-
tives attended the Cancún Ministerial Conference in September.
(WTO, 2004, p. 7)
Again, individual member states concurred with this perspective when they
stated that they had, ‘in the interests of transparency and participation …
Democracy 89
included for the first time representatives of the NGOs, employers and trade
unions in [their] official delegation’ (WTO, 2005a). In the end, the Sutherland
Report gets it right in stating that ‘as a result of [the WTO’s] much improved
outreach, the perception that the WTO is a rather closed organization has been
relieved’ (Consultative Board, 2004, p. 42; emphasis added).
While much work went into making the WTO appear more open to non-state
actors and while informal access to the Secretariat may have increased signifi-
cantly (Pérez-Esteve, 2012), the comparison with other international organisa-
tions suggests that formal access to the WTO remains more limited than
elsewhere (see Strange, this volume; see also Tallberg et al., 2013). For reasons
that are easy to grasp, the WTO does not actively comment on its relatively low
level of formal NGO access in its communications; however, the emphasis put
on its identity as an ‘institution founded on negotiated contractual commitments
among governments’ provides a ready justification for the argument that ‘the
primary responsibility for engaging civil society in trade policy matters rests
with the Members themselves’ (Consultative Board, 2004, pp. 46–47).
In sum, the WTO accepted the ‘democratic’ frame but interpreted it in a way
that left its more radical implications out of the picture. It did not address the
challenge of ‘corporate rule’ – which also referred to privileged access for some
non-state actors, namely lobbyists – at all, and it only minimally responded to
the challenge of factual rather than formal inequality among members. Instead, it
framed the ‘democratic’ label in a way that emphasised its own strengths: formal
voting rules, the practice of consensual decision-making, the accessibility of a
broad range of relevant documents, and regular exchange with the more ‘reason-
able’ and less ‘radical’ members of global civil society. This view was not com-
pletely out of touch with what the critics had demanded; in fact, it resonated with
calls to ‘consult local communities and non-governmental organizations’ and
conduct trade negotiations ‘in a more open and publicly accountable manner’
(Shan, 1994). But it focused on the general norms and values underlying the cri-
tique rather than on the specific arguments put forth by the critics. It interpreted
these norms and values in a different way. And it effectively silenced those
aspects of the democratic frame from which the rules and practices of the WTO
deviated most strongly.
The long legacy of Seattle

Over the course of the 1990s and early 2000s, ‘democracy’ became a major ref-
erence point in the legitimation contest. The emerging consensus held that only a
‘democratic’ WTO could be a legitimate WTO. Strikingly, however, references
to democracy became less frequent from around 2005 onwards when public pro-
tests against the WTO declined and when the inability of the WTO to conclude
the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks became more and more evident
instead.
One reason for this decline in frequency is that the WTO has come to face a
different challenge in the meantime. Major public challenges to the legitimacy of
90 Klaus Dingwerth
the WTO now focus less on the ‘democratic deficit’, but rather on its inability to
conclude the Doha Round. In his opening remarks to the 2011 Annual Report of
the organisation, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy thus aimed to convince
his audience that ‘the World Trade Organization is about much more than just
the Doha Round’ (WTO, 2011, p. 10). Member state statements at the WTO
Ministerial Conferences add to the normative pressure when they express their
fear of a ‘total disintegration of the multilateral system’ (WTO, 2005b, p. 1), call
upon other delegations to ‘show that the WTO is alive and relevant’ (WTO,
2009b, p. 2) and ‘to prove to a sceptical world that the WTO is a vital, vibrant
institution, capable of producing important results for trade and development,
worthy of our future confidence, attention and resources’ (WTO, 2013a, p. 2).
Beyond government statements, media comments provide a similar sense of
urgency, with metaphors frequently revolving around life and death. They hold
that incoming WTO Director-General Azevêdo faces a need to ‘reanimate’ an
organisation that has entered the state of ‘death struggle’. They quote WTO
spokesperson Keith Rockwell as expecting a ‘dangerous situation for the organ-
isation’ should the 2015 Ministerial Conference in Nairobi fail to produce mean-
ingful outcomes, and Swiss federal councillor Johann Schneider-Ammann as
declaring 2015 the ‘year of credibility’ for the WTO. And they see the WTO as
a ‘phase-out model’ stuck in a ‘blind-alley’, a ‘construction site with no end’ or
a ‘pile of broken glass’, with more factually minded observers noting an ‘erosion
of confidence’, a ‘loss of credibility’ or simply a ‘crisis’.3
Taken together, the widespread sense of crisis is easy to spot. But what is the
standard in light of which the WTO is failing? In a sense, one could speak of the
end of liberalisation challenge: the legitimacy of the WTO is in jeopardy because
its promise to liberalise international trade no longer seems to hold. In general,
the idea that ‘if the institution … fails in concluding a Round, its overall legiti-
macy is at stake’ (Elsig and Dupont, 2012, p. 624) is not itself new. It derives
from the notion of ‘progressive liberalisation’ that has been a central motive in
the legitimation of the GATT ever since: the GATT is good if – and only if – it
moves on (see e.g. GATT, 1994, p. 1). Standstill, in turn, implies breakdown in
the common imagination of the world trade community. The impression that the
WTO may have reached the end of multilateral liberalisation therefore consti-
tutes a major challenge for an organisation with a mandate formulated in
dynamic terms.
In contrast to the 1990s, the contemporary crisis thus does not build on the
impression that the ‘GATT gospel’ we have described in the introduction to
this volume is too narrow, but rather that it is no longer viable. The WTO is
perceived to be unable to pursue the three core norms of multilateralism, liberali-
sation and consensus-based decision-making at the same time. But if multi
lateralism, liberalisation and consensus no longer go together well, which one
should be dropped or made to fit? Could the WTO relinquish its legislative func-
tion – and hence the promise of liberalisation – and focus on monitoring com-
pliance with existing agreements and helping states to settle trade disputes
instead? Could it leave the consensus principle that has been said to ‘blockade
Democracy 91
the WTO’ behind? Or should the WTO recalibrate its multilateral identity and
4
make room for plurilateral agreements? In answering these questions, the demo-
cratic legitimation narrative on which the WTO embarked in the late 1990s
remains central. As it significantly increases the costs of weakening the consen-
sus norm, the democratic legitimation narrative also makes a solution to the
standstill more difficult.
In response to the option of dropping liberalisation, earlier situations have
thus seen GATT officials make strong efforts to convey the relevance of the
organisation’s day-to-day work for the world trade system. In their opening
remarks to the 42nd session of the Contracting Parties, the chairman thus
stressed that ‘the regular work of GATT must, and will, proceed alongside the
Uruguay Round’ (GATT, 1986e, p. 4), and member states underlined ‘the
importance that we shall continue to attach to the day-to-day functioning of
GATT and to observance of GATT obligations’ (GATT, 1986f, p. 3; see also
GATT, 1986g, p. 2). These statements might suggest that those seeking to
defend the WTO ‘at the end of liberalisation’ could draw on an existing discur-
sive repertoire focused on the importance of the day-to-day activities that help to
guarantee the liberalisation levels that have already been reached. On the other
hand, the statements also make the limitation of such a strategy apparent, as
speakers consistently present monitoring, surveillance and dispute settlement as
relevant for the negotiations. In line with this interpretation, Director-General
Roberto Azevêdo has made clear from the very onset of his term of office that he
does not see a viable alternative to further liberalization for the WTO:
Our negotiating arm is struggling. We all know that this is just one part of
the work that we do here. We all know that. But the WTO, as we know, has
been defined by what we have been doing in the negotiating front. This is
how the world sees us. There is no escaping that. It doesn’t matter how
much we say that we do more than negotiate, that we have a number of
other things going on here, which are extremely important to the world even
though the world doesn’t know it. People only see us as good as our pro-
gress on Doha. That is the reality. And the perception in the world is that we
have forgotten how to negotiate. The perception is ineffectiveness. The per-
ception is paralysis. Our failure to address this paralysis casts a shadow
which goes well beyond the negotiating arm, and it covers every other part
of our work. It is essential that we breathe new life into negotiations. We
must send a clear and unequivocal message to the world that the WTO can
deliver multilateral trade deals.
(Azevêdo, 2013a, pp. 3–4)
But while liberalisation as the sine qua non of the WTO cannot be compromised,
much the same seems to hold for a consensus norm which, after the Seattle pro-
tests, has become the main pillar of the WTO’s claim to be a ‘democratic’ organ-
isation. Because the mantra at the time stated that ‘the WTO functions on the
basis of consensus’ and that, ‘along with being essential for the acceptance and
92 Klaus Dingwerth
enforcement of its rules, [consensus] also gives negotiating agendas a solid basis
in democratic legitimacy and accountability’ (WTO, 2001, p. 5), tinkering with
the consensus norm would make the WTO vulnerable to the democratic deficit
challenge again.
The traumatic experience of the Seattle protests suffices for WTO members
as well as officials wanting to avoid that challenge. Moreover, the observation
that recent protests against regional trade agreements like the Comprehensive
Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the EU or the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the
US strongly rely on democratic frames is likely to further strengthen the desire
not to become vulnerable on the democratic front. Consequently, WTO officials
and members seek not to give the impression that the consensus norm is up for
negotiation.
Instead, they interpret even small steps – among them the limited agreements
reached at the 2013 and 2015 Ministerial Conferences in Bali and Nairobi – as a
proof of a regained ability to deliver on the promise of multilateral consensus-
based liberalisation. When 54 WTO members reached agreement on reductions
for trade in IT goods in July 2015, Azevêdo saw ‘the first major tariff-cutting
deal at the WTO in 18 years’ as a proof ‘that the multilateral trading system can
deliver’. What is interesting in this statement is that the agreement itself is multi-
lateral in the sense that 54 WTO members signed up to it. In contrast to plurilat-
eral agreements, signatories also extend the benefits of the agreement to
non-signatory WTO members. Yet the agreement is not multilateral in the sense
the term is most commonly used in GATT speak, namely to designate an agree-
ment to which all WTO members subscribe. So Azevêdo’s statement in fact
seeks to solve the trilemma by re-defining the meaning of multilateralism in the
legitimation contest around the WTO.
In sum, our discussion reveals two important legacies of Seattle. First, it
might be true that the decline of public protests against the WTO has driven
down the organisation’s need to explicitly refer to democratic norms in its legiti-
macy claims. Yet the implicit threat that social movements could be re-mobilised
once trade negotiations regain momentum means that the organisation will be
very wary of weakening the basis on which it could defend itself against the
‘democratic deficit’ charges that have proven to be powerful in past episodes of
conflict. But fear of mobilisation is only one aspect that makes the democratic
legitimation frame sticky. The second part is a kind of normative path
dependence that stems from the fact that the WTO has tied its claim to be a
‘democratic’ organisation closely to the consensus norm. This implies a re-
interpretation of the latter – a traditional cornerstone in the legitimation of the
GATT – in a way that ultimately turns democratic standards, via the re-
interpreted consensus norm, into a part of the ‘GATT gospel’. As we have seen
in this section, this gospel is hardly sacrosanct, but tinkering with gospel norms
is likely to stir unrest among some players in the world trade regime.
Democracy 93
Conclusion
In sum, ‘democracy’ has become a term of trade. Democratic legitimation norms
entered the GATT/WTO legitimation discourse around 1994, gained strength
after Seattle and remained topical for just over a decade. As in other areas of
global governance, they emerged under specific circumstances, among them a
major transfer of authority to the WTO and panel decisions that provided a
window of opportunity for environmental and labour rights campaigns at a time
in world history in which transnational social movements were relatively strong.
More recently, democratic normative pressures may have lost some of their
visible strength. The WTO managed to adopt and re-direct the ‘democratic
deficit’ discourse, and the specific conditions that gave rise to that discourse
have gradually weakened. Despite their lower visibility, however, democratic
standards remain relevant as a normative resource developing country members
use to advance their cases in the WTO, but also as a legacy of Seattle that activ-
ists may be able to re-activate any time. The latter possibility is not only under-
lined by the more recent contestation of the efforts to negotiate a Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) outside the WTO, but it is also a
possibility against which WTO officials are keen to guard themselves in their
efforts to prevent yet another legitimacy crisis.
Ultimately, the WTO thus finds itself caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, the
rise of democratic norms is yet another element that, along with the rise of emerg-
ing markets and the legalisation of multilateral trade relations, makes the task of
concluding further multilateral trade negotiations more challenging. On the other
hand, weakening its democratic claims implies the risk of protest once negotiations
progress. The success the WTO achieved when it adopted and appropriated the
democratic deficit discourse may well thus turn out to have been a Pyrrhic victory.
Notes
1 Cartoon ‘Road to Nowhere’, URL: www.polyp.org.uk/cartoons/democracy/polyp_
cartoon_WTO_democracy.jpg (last accessed 16 June 2016).
2 Member state statements are limited to the years of the Tokyo, Uruguay and Doha
Rounds; in addition, media comments are limited to sources included in the Factiva
database (https://global.factiva.com/).
3 Business Times, 28 July 2015; Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 26 January 2015; 2 August 2014;
26 June 2014, 10 September 2013, 11 May 2013, 4 August 2012, 20 December 2011,
11 June 2011.
4 Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2 August 2014 and 5 December 2013.
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7 Civil society
Michael Strange
Introduction
In December 1999, international news headlines announced the arrival of ‘civil
society’ as a term at the heart of global trade governance (Brown, 1999). Protest
marches consisting primarily of trade unionists and environmentalists were
credited with the collapse of the World Trade Organization’s Seattle Ministerial
Conference and, subsequently, attempts to launch the so-called ‘Millennium
Round’ of trade negotiations. Whilst that often-mythologised narrative over-
looks other key explanatory factors, what remains evident is the way in which
both critics and protagonists of the current shape of global trade governance
came to see civil society as important to its legitimacy. The response of the
WTO Secretariat to the events of Seattle, which included creating new avenues
by which civil society could more formally engage with the organisation, gave
‘NGOs’ – non-governmental organisations – a growing role in the system.
Similar stories of ‘NGO emergence’ – a new category of actorness (that is, who
or what can be an actor in this field) – can be seen in, for example, how the
European Commission manages civil society during current negotiations
towards the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) as well as
global trade governance more generally (Scholte, 2011; on TTIP see De Ville
and Siles-Brügge, 2015).
Many observers might therefore conclude that within the field of global trade
governance it is well understood what is meant by the term ‘civil society’. Yet,
that is far from the case. Indeed, as this chapter shows, not only is there signi-
ficant ambiguity, but the term ‘civil society’ sits at the centre of an ongoing
political struggle over both: (a) to whom or what it applies; and, (b) its respec-
tive role within the governance of global trade.
The chapter is structured as follows. The first part begins with a mind map,
tracing out the competing ideas at stake within how ‘civil society’ is used as a
term in global trade governance. In particular, there is a need to consider how
‘civil society’ can be used to refer to both NGOs and social movements. For
example, institutional actors have been more willing to recognise civil society
where this is defined as ‘NGOs’; more informal forms of activism tend to be
largely excluded. Struggles over the meaning of ‘civil society’ are part of a
98 Michael Strange
broader contestation over who or what should be recognised as an actor in global
trade governance, as the chapter will argue.
Some might see the story of ‘civil society’ in global trade governance as just
an account of how the WTO Secretariat, and other institutional actors, gives
recognition to certain individuals and groups. For example, what kinds of meet-
ings can they attend, and will their views be acknowledged? Whilst asking who
is recognised and how are important questions, there is another side of this
puzzle that needs to be considered. That is, why is it that the actors described as
‘civil society’ are at all interested in global trade governance? Whether attending
meetings, writing campaign pamphlets, or joining street protests, all these
actions require substantial investment. That process is one of politicisation in
which actors not previously interested in trade politics have, however, come to
view this particular sphere of human interaction as relevant to their own political
identities. That side of the puzzle forms the core of the chapter’s second part.
First, however, the chapter looks at what is meant by the term ‘civil society’ in
global trade governance.
Civil society in global trade governance
Mind mapping
What is ‘civil society’ in global trade governance? An activist campaigning
against a particular trade agreement, when told he was part of ‘civil society’,
objected on the grounds that, for him, it was important to be seen as ‘uncivil’.1
For that activist, the term ‘civil’ denoted conformity and the threat of co-
optation. For him, being a political activist required that he resist the civil norms
of mainstream political-economic society. That response is far from uncommon
amongst many activists critical of mainstream global trade governance. Today,
the term ‘civil society’ is used to broadly identify a group of actors who have in
common the status of being non-state actors, though as the Italian political the-
orist Antonio Gramsci understood back in the early twentieth century, the dis-
tinction between the state and civil society is far from clear.
Civil society is often treated as a voice of political dissent, from varying ends
of the political spectrum, that through being outside state institutions is better
equipped to represent the plurality of interests and issues present in society. Yet,
for Gramsci, civil society is key to ensuring the state’s survival where it provides
the means to maintain consent. Gramsci’s reading of civil society was reflected
in the above-mentioned activist’s rejection of the label. What both approaches
share, however, is the understanding that civil society exists as a realm concep-
tually distinct to the political society of politicians and civil servants. The term
‘civil society’ does not in itself denote whether an actor is likely to contest or
support the state. The political identity of any group or individual is therefore
not given by the term ‘civil society’ alone.
In the context of this book, civil society becomes relevant wherever those
actors it covers impact global trade governance. As distinct to the political
Civil society 99
society of that global trade governance, ‘civil society’ refers to actors outside
both the nation-states and the legal institutions coordinating their joint enter-
prise. Though certainly trying to influence that political society, companies and
persons actively engaged in global trade are treated as distinct from ‘civil
society’, falling into what can be thought of as ‘economic society’. However, the
lines between these different categories – political, economic, and civil – are not
impermeable. Civil society is commonly viewed as consisting of not-for-profit
groups, focused on campaigning for a particular cause. For this reason, business
actors are not civil society. However, this definition becomes harder to maintain
if we consider three actors in particular: trade unions; business associations; and
lobbying firms.
Trade unions are often seen as part of civil society in their role as advocacy
organisations, their priority being to protect the economic interests of their
members. Many trade unions have also taken on a series of non-interest-based
issues within their campaigning portfolios, such as on the environment, gender,
racism, and so on, such that they claim a role that goes beyond just trying to
protect their members’ salaries.
Business associations are more clearly part of economic society, created to
aggregate a series of common demands representing particular industrial sectors.
However, business associations overlap with political society to the extent that
many at the transnational level were originally created via assistance from inter-
national organisations. For example, the European Commission has taken an
active role in helping to instigate several European-level business associations as
a means of forming a common European position on certain economic issues,
e.g. trade-in-services. Where international organisations later turn to these busi-
ness associations for information on how a particular industry views a trade
negotiation, they are treated as if part of civil society.
The extensive role of lobbying firms within global trade governance further
complicates how we mind map the concept of ‘civil society’ where advocacy
becomes a for-profit activity. Lobbying firms represent the professionalisation of
advocacy and have created much controversy over the fear that moneyed groups
able to purchase the services of these firms may be able to exert undue pressure
on the politicians and civil servants of political society. However, at the same
time, the level of technical complexity involved in global trade – a policy field
encompassing an almost limitless array of economic activities – necessitates the
collection and dissemination of information from a broad range of economic
interests if that field is to be optimally governed. This is why, at least in the eyes
of many politicians and civil servants involved in global trade governance, busi-
ness associations operating at the transnational level are so important.
Lobbying firms fit into these relations through providing additional resources
individual business associations or companies can purchase on an ad hoc basis to
represent their interests. As advocates, lobbying firms appear as part of civil
society. For many groups that campaign on issues tied to wider societal concerns
like the environment, and who rely extensively on public donations for their
work, however, describing for-profit groups as civil society undermines what
100 Michael Strange
they see as its key role – to represent society to politicians and civil servants.
According to this understanding, where advocacy is dependent upon which inter-
ests or issues are most able to afford the services of a lobbying firm, this distorts
that process of representation and undermines the legitimacy of any resulting
policies. Whether lobbying firms are inside or outside civil society is therefore
more of a normative, than an empirical, question.
Indeed, this last point opens up an even bigger question, which is: Is ‘civil
society’ an empirical concept, or do we also need to understand it as a normative
concept? That is, to what extent does it go beyond stating what is, to argue for
what should be? The above mind map has so far focused on defining ‘civil
society’ in respect to what empirical phenomena it is most typically used to
describe. Yet, and this is certainly true within global trade governance, as a label
‘civil society’ is closely associated with calls for deliberative democracy in
policy decisions (Dryzek, 2006).
There are two aspects that are worth mentioning. First, it is what civil society
brings to the input and output stages of decision-making. That is, in a nutshell, to
provide a political community able to both provide a plurality of perspectives
relevant to informing policy decisions, and also critically monitor the impact of
those decisions. That civil society should have the right to play such a role is
based on the second aspect, relating to the above-mentioned idea that civil
society is somehow representative of societal concerns. Civil society cannot
claim authority in the same way enjoyed by elected politicians. On questioning a
then-prominent UK government minister on trade policy, an activist was chal-
lenged on the grounds that they were, unlike the MP, unelected by the public.2 In
response, the activist argued that his democratic mandate rested on, at least for
him, something stronger – a regular financial donation, as opposed to just a tick
on a ballot paper. Whilst arguably this assumes too much as to how people view
their charitable donation, as a normative project civil society is often presented
as a supplement to support democratic deliberation – both through potentially
giving voice to a broader range of stakeholders affected by policy decisions but
who are normally excluded in majoritarian decision-making, and through includ-
ing many issues that go beyond narrow interests.
Civil society is often seen to include groups that frame their demands (e.g.
preventing fishing practices harmful to turtle populations) in terms of broader
social goals (e.g. protecting the environment). An issue such as foreign owner-
ship of national healthcare services, for example, might be framed in terms of
‘the market vs the people’. Campaigners draw upon a list of social issues by
which to argue their demands, including, for example: labour rights; ending
racism; gender equality; and, social justice. Presenting much narrower political
demands in terms of these broader social goals not only marks out a special
role for civil society as a type of ‘social conscience’, it also serves to help
build bridges between campaign groups. Without such linkages it becomes
impossible for a movement critical of a particular trade negotiation to attract
interest from groups focused on wider social concerns (e.g. environment,
gender).
Civil society 101
Mentioning ‘movements’ leads to the final point to be discussed within this
mind-mapping exercise – that is, the extent to which civil society is organised.
When discussing civil society, a series of inter-related analytical terms come into
play. These include, but are not limited to the following list: CSO; NGO; SMO;
and, just plainly, SM. The first three acronyms within that alphabet spaghetti all
end with the letter ‘O’, which in all these cases designates the word ‘organisa-
tion’. That is: ‘civil society organisation’, ‘non-governmental organisation’, and
‘social movement organisation’.
In general usage, ‘CSO’ and ‘NGO’ are interchangeable. They may refer to a
large multinational group such as Amnesty International, or a group staffed by
one paid-individual – the owner-manager – aided by a string of regularly alter-
nating interns. That owner-manager may well have a similar role within several
other groups too, meaning that no two CSOs/NGOs are alike. It should be said
that the main distinction between the two terms is the relative emphasis on the
phrase ‘non-governmental’, though as argued above this is also implied within
the concept of ‘civil society’. The term ‘social movement organisation’ is much
more distinct to CSO/NGO through its focus on social movements (abbreviated
earlier on its own as ‘SM’).
Social movements are highly diffuse, formed through a series of largely
informal relations between individuals and made visible in a variety of means
(i.e. public meetings, street protests, petitions) (Strange, 2011). They may be
limited to one campaign, but to the extent that professional activist groups
orchestrate campaigns, the movement may well encompass a long series of over-
lapping campaigns. This means that it is never possible to clearly mark out the
origins and ends of social movements.
However, for the movement to be visible – to manage the logistics of printing
political material, analysing complex trade deals, attending meetings with prom-
inent officials – organisations become paramount (see Eagleton-Pierce, 2013).
This often means particular individuals become paramount where they are the
ones to first write a critical report on a trade deal that can then be cited by other
groups and activists within the movement. This leads to certain analytical prob-
lems, since the term ‘social movement’ implies a much more horizontal political
structure than one in which individuals – who are often employed by compara-
tively well-resourced groups – are central.
Yet, equally, speaking of ‘social movements’ as opposed to just organisations
allows focus on the more diffuse and non-professional relations at play within
civil society. The term ‘social movement’ refers to the harder-to-define parts of
civil society. As will be discussed next, this creates a problem for any attempt to
categorise who should and should not be recognised as part of civil society,
given that any given social movement will always exceed that part which is
organised and tied to specific groups or individuals.
102 Michael Strange
Meaning makers
Given that ‘civil society’ is not just a descriptive term but carries with it a signi-
ficant normative baggage, it should come as no surprise that in the often highly
political field of global trade governance we see a history of battles between
meaning makers over who or what can be classed as ‘civil society’. This is
evident in the example of the World Trade Organization (WTO), where
acknowledgement of civil society by the WTO Secretariat has been filtered
through the ‘NGO’ category. There, a struggle has taken place over who or what
is an ‘NGO’ eligible for this recognition. In discussing contestation over this
particular actor-identity through which civil society has been made visible in
global trade governance, in this section the chapter shows how competing defini-
tions over these categories have distributional consequences with respect to who/
what gets included or excluded. Where the normative value of civil society is
based on its supposed claim to represent societal concerns to political society,
any exclusion means limiting which societal concerns need be considered when
undertaking global trade governance. This section first provides a brief history of
civil society and global trade governance, before considering attempts by the
WTO Secretariat to manage civil society under the ‘NGO’ label, and concluding
with a comparison to the role of civil society within another aspect of global
trade governance – the ongoing TTIP negotiations.
A brief history of civil society in global trade governance

Going back to the failed attempts to create an International Trade Organisation
(ITO) in the late 1940s, the history of contemporary global trade governance has
seen very mixed approaches towards civil society. Where civil society has been
recognised as somehow relevant, it has been under the ‘NGO’ label. Article 87
of the ITO’s Havana Charter included a provision enabling the organisation to
establish working relations with NGOs, a note stating: ‘it is clearly desirable that
the ITO should be able to take full advantage of the knowledge and expertise
of the non-governmental organizations in … various fields’. When efforts to
ratify the ITO within the US Senate were abandoned and the proposed body
faded away, what remained were the set of rules it was meant to have hosted –
the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The GATT, of course,
survived to become a significant regime that would be expanded and eventually
find a home when the WTO was created in 1995. The ITO’s acknowledgement
of NGOs was not included in the GATT, meaning that up until the WTO’s
inception there were no formal channels by which civil society could be made
visible in global trade governance. Whilst GATT documents sometimes made
reference to ‘non-governmental parties’, this referred to the selection of panel-
lists for the GATT’s dispute settlement mechanism. Traditionally, civil society
was seen as relevant only at the national level, where political demands could be
expressed but it was up to the national governments whether to include them
within their negotiating position as Contracting Parties to the GATT.
Civil society 103
WTO Secretariat attempts to manage civil society
The Marrakesh Agreement establishing the WTO does acknowledge NGOs,
though what this means in practice is highly ambiguous – Article 5 paragraph 2
stating: ‘The General Council may make appropriate arrangements for consulta-
tion and cooperation with non-governmental organizations concerned with
matters related to those of the WTO’. This was significant as at the Ministerial
meeting where the Marrakesh Agreement was formally signed, groups not affili-
ated with the Secretariat or one of the GATT Contracting Parties could only be
present if able to show press credentials. What type of role NGOs were to be
given at the WTO, and who might be able to call themselves an ‘NGO’, became
clearer at the WTO’s first Ministerial Conference, hosted by Singapore at the
end of 1996. The WTO Secretariat took a lead in shaping what was meant by the
term ‘non-governmental organisation’ with a set of guidelines on ‘arrangements
on relations with NGOs’ that limited their role to ‘increas[ing] the awareness of
the public in respect of WTO activities’. Significantly, the guidelines concluded
that: ‘Closer consultation and cooperation with NGOs can … be met construc-
tively through appropriate processes at the national level where lies primary
responsibility for taking into account the different elements of public interest
which are brought to bear on trade policy-making’ (WTO Secretariat, 1996). The
WTO Secretariat tried to largely avoid treating civil society as an international
actor, limiting it to the confines of national politics over which governments are
the gatekeepers.
Where it came to drawing up the procedures for accrediting civil society for
attendance at the first Ministerial Conference, hosted by Singapore in 1996,
meetings held amongst member state delegates in the General Council concluded
that an eligible NGO needed to be a ‘non-profit’ group. This led to the Secretar-
iat declining requests from law firms, as well as private companies, who were
asked to re-apply via their industry association. Business associations were
therefore allowed under the ‘NGO’ banner, constituting between 44 to 65 per
cent of those carrying the ‘NGO’ badge (Marceau and Pedersen, 1999, p. 46;
O’Brien et al., 2000, p. 94). Another key criterion used by the Secretariat when
selecting groups for attendance was their relevance to the work of the WTO.
This was used, for example, to deny access to Education International (EI) – an
international trade union body that arguably has an interest through the extent to
which education is included under the General Agreement on Trade in Services
(GATS) hosted by the WTO (see O’Brien et al., 2000, p. 93).
Even where groups were granted access, this did not equate to observer status
at any decision-making meetings; they were left instead to use the NGO facili-
ties on the outskirts of the main event. Whether this enabled meetings with
member state delegations or WTO Secretariat officials depended on what rela-
tions groups already possessed, rather than necessarily facilitating any new chan-
nels for advocacy. Given the venue of Singapore, the potential for contestatory
action was already limited. Overall, the choice of venue for Ministerial Confer-
ences has had a significant impact upon which groups can access meetings – and
104 Michael Strange
thus be visible as ‘civil society’ – due to both geographical proximity but, more
importantly, the extent to which the local political regime allowed open political
dissent (Piewitt, 2010; Steffek, 2012).
Hosting the second Ministerial Conference in Geneva, in 1998, saw a quite
different political context, with visible public protests outside the gates of the
meeting venue. There it was harder to narrow down civil society to the ‘NGO’
label, particularly as the Secretariat tried to frame it. The strategy adopted by the
Secretariat at Geneva was, however, to try and claim recognition of the ‘chal-
lenges’ – i.e. social, environmental, cultural – people face in different societies,
with the suggestion that the WTO–NGO relationship might be a solution
(Wilkinson, 2005). No substantive information was given, however, as to how
this relationship might be developed to resolve these challenges. Protests at the
gate – seen in the media as sometimes violent – evidence a counter-move in
defining civil society, so that it exceeded the narrow category authored by the
WTO Secretariat. Protesters were largely treated as out of touch, and therefore
irrelevant, compared to the more ‘civil’ individuals wearing ‘NGO’ badges
within the Conference venue. That method of managing voices of dissent con-
tinued at the WTO’s next Ministerial Conference, hosted in Seattle in December
1999. Since 1996, civil society had become much more visible in contesting, in
particular, the impact of economic globalisation on labour rights and environ-
mental protections. The reasons for this politicisation are discussed in the chap-
ter’s second half.
The Seattle Ministerial was a turning point for many, both for the WTO and
its critics within civil society. It saw mass street protests, made all the more
visible through the media’s focus on a poorly planned and sudden response from
the police that led to several violent confrontations and acts of vandalism in a
city normally known for its sedate character. The protests were blamed – or, in
the eyes of some, celebrated – when the delegates failed to reach a compromise
that would have launched a new round of trade negotiations (the Millennium
Round) and the conference effectively collapsed. The protests made the WTO a
household name as front-page news, in stark contrast to the relative obscurity of
the GATT. For civil society groups, the organisation leading up to Seattle and
the myth that developed in its aftermath gave a sense that their collective endeav-
ours might impact on the shape of global trade governance. Some suggested that
despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world was still in a state of bi-
polarity but now between a USA espousing neoliberal economics (i.e. deregula-
tion, the shift of power over to multinational corporations, and a lack of
sensitivity to social and environmental issues) countered by a so-called ‘Global
Justice Movement’ – a ‘rainbow coalition’ of different groups with differing
agendas but sharing a common critique of ‘social and environmental injustice’.
What part civil society played in the collapse of the Seattle Ministerial is
debatable. Whilst the protests created additional logistical hurdles for delegates,
overall the critical issue was a major disagreement between member states along
a ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ country divide over to what extent the promises
of the Uruguay Round had been evenly delivered with many developing-countries
Civil society 105
claiming foul. Civil society did have more influence at Seattle than in previous
Ministerials, however, as it came as then-US Vice-President Al Gore was
seeking nomination as the Democratic candidate. This enabled the unions to put
pressure so that President Clinton made a vague but significant suggestion that
the WTO consider labour standards within future trade agreements (O’Brien et
al., 2000, p. 140). This only helped further disagreement amongst the member
states. The collapse of the Seattle ministerial was hugely significant for those
activists involved, but also campaigners elsewhere, as it made visible an image
of ‘civil society’ as an effective political movement that exceeded attempts to
limit civil society to being a relatively passive provider of societal information
for states and international organisations.
Since Seattle, the WTO Secretariat has taken an increasingly active role in
formally recognising ‘NGOs’ and, in the process, determining which aspects of
civil society are seen as relevant within global trade governance. For example,
since 2000, the WTO annual reports have included a section on relations with
‘NGOs’ (Scholte, 2004, pp. 153–155; see also Sutherland, 2005). The most
obvious display of WTO–NGO relations comes with the annual public forum
hosted at the WTO’s headquarters in Geneva, which began initially in 1994 as a
‘symposia’ in which delegates, parliamentarians, journalists, academics, and the
staff of NGOs could meet and discuss relevant issues. To attend one must apply
via the WTO Secretariat, and entering the WTO headquarters requires passing
through a security check similar to that in airports. Once in, however, there is a
surprising degree of freedom given that beyond the opening plenaries given by
the Director-General and various Heads of State, many of the panels are organ-
ised and chaired by persons not associated with the WTO itself. The organisers
of past panels have included groups otherwise often very critical of the WTO’s
governance, such as Friends of the Earth International and the Third World
Network. These groups have, however, become increasingly less active within
the WTO’s Public Forum, suggesting they may not see these events as particu-
larly helpful to their work. Indeed, this has been confirmed by at least some
activists in interviews.
In addition to appearing as speakers or even panel organisers in the WTO
Public Forum, civil society groups can author ‘NGO Position Papers’. The WTO
Secretariat has an open invitation for external actors to provide these papers as
an information resource to the member states. The WTO Secretariat selects
which papers are relevant prior to disseminating a list of these papers via a news
bulletin sent to the WTO Member-state delegations (Marceau and Pedersen,
1999, p. 20).
In some cases, civil society groups manage the WTO–NGO relationship. One
example is the Geneva-based International Centre for Trade and Sustainable
Development (ICTSD) (Hannah, 2014). ICTSD produces research and organises
events often focused on helping to enhance the negotiating capacity of develop-
ing states belonging to the WTO, and the WTO Secretariat and delegates have
often been present at its events. Where these events are organised in various
capitals in Africa and Asia, the ICTSD takes an important role in adding to the
106 Michael Strange
WTO Secretariat’s task to build the technical-capacity of its developing country
Member states. Here civil society clearly serves as an important resource for
the WTO.
Pascal Lamy’s long tenure as Director-General of the WTO, from 2005 to
2013, saw two important developments: first, a more systematic strategy to
monitor the concerns of civil society organisations; and, second, increased parti-
cipation within workshops for civil society in developing countries (Perez-
Esteve, 2012). At the same time, though, during the slow and often stalling Doha
Round negotiations the WTO’s role in global trade governance has become less
certain as whilst both China and Russia have joined and so brought the vast
majority of all trade within its remit, Member states have increasingly turned to
bilateral and regional regimes with the WTO seemingly down-prioritised. This
has been mirrored in the activity of civil society groups, including those active at
Seattle. Despite the more parochial character of these regimes, when critiquing
these negotiations activists typically maintain a ‘global’ frame to their cam-
paigns – presenting the deal as a threat not just to their national context, but in
terms of dangers they see as global. Typically, the chief danger for campaigners
is what they term as ‘corporate power’ – that is, the growing role of private
capital in global trade governance.
Civil society and the TTIP negotiations

Many of those groups and individuals involved in civil society contesting WTO
policies have been active in campaigns around other parts of global trade gov-
ernance, including negotiations towards the US–EU Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP) (for TTIP, see De Ville and Siles-Brügge, 2015).
Alliances built via earlier campaigns mean groups on both sides of the ‘pond’
regularly share information and strategy proposals. European groups have,
however, been more active due to a number of factors. First, US groups have
been focused on a range of other trade deals they see as more threatening, such
as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Second, one reason they see the TTIP as
less disturbing is that for trade unions the possibility of harmonisation between
US and EU labour rights could be a significant gain. European groups have,
however, extensively cited those US groups that have criticised TTIP. That cri-
tique has largely focused on the inclusion of an investor-state dispute (ISD)
mechanism in which corporations would be able to sue the US or EU if new reg-
ulations were seen to damage their investments.
Two further points of critique seen from both US and European groups have
been on consumer and environmental safety and the fear that TTIP threatens to
undermine regulations in these two areas. This apparent unity is largely limited
to the sharing of ideas and cross-citations, rather than sharing more material
resources. However, in the context of social movement activity ideas are them-
selves a valuable resource. There have also been several meetings framed as
‘transatlantic dialogues’ with representatives from different issue sectors attend-
ing as speakers. It is worth noting that whilst the ‘transatlantic’ frame is often
Civil society 107
stated, in campaign leaflets and public events there is an equally vocal assertion
that TTIP is a ‘global’ threat, framing it in terms of harm to developing countries
as well as the principle parties represented in negotiations. Much of the Euro-
pean activity has taken place via a coalition of groups formed originally as a
means to build upon Seattle and contest the EU’s position at the WTO – aptly
named as the ‘Seattle to Brussels’ (S2B) network. The exception to this has been
in Germany where campaigners against TTIP managed to create a mass move-
ment critical of the negotiations unparalleled elsewhere, and subsequently down-
played the ‘global’ frame in favour of focusing on TTIP as a ‘national’ threat to,
for example, consumer safety.
The European Commission has a long history of working with, and even
funding, many groups that make up European civil society. Having civil society
at the European level has been seen as important to fostering European integra-
tion, providing it with the semblance of a nation-state. Civil society has had a
mixed relationship with the European Commission’s Directorate General for
Trade (DG Trade). DG Trade was active in helping to establish many of the
business associations now lobbying it, as mentioned above. And, as said, the
budgets of some of the groups most vocally criticising DG Trade for ignoring
societal concerns include significant contributions from the Commission. Yet,
DG Trade has largely excluded those vocal critics from the decision-making
process. This is in contrast to the US where there is a tradition of non-state actors
being invited as ‘experts’ within advisory groups to the United States Trade Rep-
resentative (USTR), though there is criticism that business interests dominate the
groups.
In creating a series of special advisory groups to which civil society was
invited to attend, DG Trade tried to strictly manage who might be included
(Strange, 2015). First, the meetings included representatives from business
associations that had been lobbying for the TTIP. Second, those who attended
were instructed that they could not report back to their organisations, maintain-
ing strict confidentially. Lacking the enforcement powers of a nation-state,
however, meant that this instruction was easily ignored. Third, despite promises
to the contrary, attendees were for a long time not given access to the negotiating
text meaning that their comments could only be made in the abstract. The special
advisory groups both opened up new opportunities for civil society to be visible
within EU trade policy but, also, provided DG Trade an opportunity to influence
the definition of who counts as ‘civil society’ and the behaviour of actors
accepted within that term.
The meaning of ‘civil society’ in global trade governance is inherently
unfixed, due to the political significance of any definition. There remains an
ongoing struggle to define which groups and individuals may be included in this
category of actor, because the claim to include civil society in policy processes
carries with it a significant normative value. However, why is it that civil society
has become interested in global trade governance? Next, the chapter looks at
how activists have become politicised to be ‘active’ in global trade such that
civil society has become visible.
108 Michael Strange
Politicised to be ‘active’ in global trade governance
Who or what is recognised as ‘civil society’ matters in global trade governance
because it forms part of a broader struggle over what societal influences feed
into its design and implementation. Yet, as the above section shows, institutional
actors do not control this filtering process alone even if they are formally in
charge of admittance to institutional venues. The discursive dynamics of global
trade governance are not limited to formal actors designated by institutional
actors but include the various ways in which actors emerge as politicised within
its context. This concerns ongoing discursive conflicts over both what constitutes
‘good’ global governance (i.e. legitimacy), as well as the changing parameters of
how we define ‘trade’ (i.e. its shift from ‘goods’ to include a much wider array
of social activities).
Civil society has become increasingly visible in global trade governance since
at least the late 1980s when, during the Uruguay Round, French farmers protested
against what they saw as threats to agricultural markets. Although less visible in
the media, it should be noted that in the early 1990s a number of European devel-
opment groups engaged in strategy meetings as well as lobbying of developing
countries to contest what they saw as the threat any expansion of GATT posed to
those economies (Wilkinson, 1996). In 1991, Mexico successfully used the
GATT’s dispute settlement mechanisms to challenge US legislation banning the
import of tuna harvested with nets lethal to dolphin populations. The GATT
ruling politicised US environmental groups, which had up to that point operated
as nation-focused organisations. Experiencing the GATT’s reversal of a hard-
fought victory, many groups now shifted their agenda to include ‘trade’ within
their campaign portfolios. This included some public campaigns, but most activ-
ity was spent in rapidly developing trade-specialist units equipped with personnel
able to not only read trade agreements, but also publicly address politicians and
civil servants in the media on these issues. This process needs to be understood as
one of both politicisation, in which new political demands and alliances were
formed, as well as socialisation, in which new codes of behaviour and language
were adopted. At this point, much happened in North America.
In Canada, proposals to create a new trade agreement with the US – the Cana-
dian–United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) – sparked public contro-
versy during the mid-1980s, despite exciting little contestation in the US. The
Pro-Canada Network was created, framing CUSFTA as a US takeover – a threat
to Canadian cultural and political sovereignty – as well as harming its social and
environmental policy. The campaign was unsuccessful in that CUSFTA was
signed, but it did achieve a broad network that tapped into the union movement
and the church. However, environmentalists and feminists felt largely excluded,
used in name but rarely able to influence the campaign (see Huyer, 2004). Cer-
tainly, civil society has its own filters, limiting which voices can influence joint
campaign statements.
Politicisation through CUSFTA meant that Canadian groups were often at the
forefront of advocacy critical of negotiations towards the North American Free
Civil society 109
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the early 1990s. NAFTA witnessed trilateral net-
working between activists in all three of the countries involved, though cam-
paigning was largely targeted at US legislators for strategic reasons since it was
in Washington that the agreement would either succeed or fail. Trilateral net-
working allowed groups to enhance their capacity for advocacy, with US groups
able to draw upon testimony from Canadian and Mexican groups, who through
being seen as important to the US debate, were empowered within their domestic
contexts. Where the Mexican government was unwilling to provide information,
Mexican groups could turn to their counterparts in the comparatively more open
political contexts of the US and Canada to obtain key documents (see Stillerman,
2003; and Hogenboom, 1996). Although the US had a relatively large environ-
mental movement, in the case of NAFTA it was seriously undermined by an
internal disagreement – with some leading groups supportive of NAFTA in the
hope that any policy harmonisation it facilitated would force new environmental
regulations onto Mexico (Dreiling and Wolf, 2001). Again, whilst the campaign-
ers eventually failed to prevent NAFTA, the campaign attracted mass public
attention, helped politicise many more types of groups around global trade gov-
ernance, and left an infrastructure of relations through which further civil society
activity might be possible.
The first ‘success’ story for civil society came when they took credit for the
collapse of OECD negotiations for a Multilateral Agreement on Investment
(MAI) in the late 1990s. The head of the Malaysian ‘Third World Network’
(TWN) addressed an event in North America attended by veterans from the two
campaigns mentioned above, presenting information that he had been given
announcing these negotiations (Johnston and Laxer, 2003). The MAI was seen
as a threat because it included the right for corporations to sue governments if
new regulations were seen as harmful to their investments. Activists were helped
when a Canadian group, with experience from both CUSFTA and NAFTA, was
passed a draft of the negotiating text by a Member of the Canadian Parliament.
The Canadian group first analysed the report, producing a critical commentary,
before distributing both via its network already formed with other North Ameri-
can groups, as well as more globally through relations it was developing through
preparations for the WTO’s then forthcoming Seattle meeting. Activists based in
national contexts were able to use the texts in their own campaigns, targeted on
those issues that made the MAI most politically sensitive within their country.
This strategy was particularly successful in France, where the release of the
document and a critical analysis that framed the MAI as a threat to cultural
sovereignty led to the government withdrawing and, therefore, the negotiations
collapsing (Egan, 2001, pp. 88–89; Johnston and Laxer, 2003, pp. 58–59).
Whilst as with any such process it remains unclear as to whether civil society
was chiefly responsible for the MAI’s collapse, certainly the series of relations
developed by the anti-campaign and the perception of ‘success’ greatly enhanced
the politicisation of groups around global trade governance. Through politicisa-
tion, a growing array of civil society actors emerged within this policy field, as
became clear at Seattle.
110 Michael Strange
Seattle was a turning point for the WTO Secretariat, and also for activists.
Initially the then-WTO Director-General, Mike Moore, tried to distance the
WTO from any suggestion that it should do more to ensure economic globalisa-
tion could not harm labour rights or environmental protections, by stating, ‘It
does not force countries to kill turtles or lower wages or employ children in fac-
tories. Put simply, the WTO is not a supranational government – and no one has
any intention of making it one’ (WTO Secretariat, 1999). For many environmen-
talists and activists in the trade union movement, such speeches were patronising
and failed to recognise their political demands critical of the WTO beyond a
series of simplistic caricatures. Mike Moore’s reference to ‘turtles’ referred to
criticism by environmental groups that the WTO threatened US legislation
intended to ban shrimp imports fished with nets harmful to turtle populations.
Several shrimp-exporting WTO Member states had filed a complaint against the
US and the WTO’s dispute settlement panel ruled that the ban violated WTO
rules. There has been much debate on the extent to which the ruling actually
undermined environmental legislation, the case won primarily on the grounds
that the ban did not apply to the US fishing fleet. However, the WTO ruling did
threaten national environmental protections, and as such became a symbolic
rallying point for environmentalists to critique the WTO as ‘undemocratic’ (see
Dingwerth, this volume). At the same time, a number of cases of child labour
abuses and falling labour standards saw trade unions stand side-by-side with
environmentalists – nicknamed ‘turtles and teamsters’ – on the streets of Seattle.
National-level campaigns critical of the WTO were also empowered through
having developed increasingly effective relations such that civil society contest-
ing global trade governance had become transnational. Whilst most groups
remained wedded to their domestic contexts, their newly developed transnational
alliances meant they were able to share critical reports to be used in their own
campaigns, as well as sometimes even coordinate strategies so as to target
whichever were the most politically sensitive issues within their immediate con-
texts, but as part of a broader campaign critical of the WTO. Seattle was
important for two reasons. First, it made civil society visible as an actor –
however disunited – apparently capable of affecting global politics despite
lacking any of the conventional (i.e. military, economic) means by which power
is understood. Second, civil society was shown to be transnational in scope, in
respect to its abilities to organise and act, but also in terms of its political
demands. This contradicted the attempts discussed above by the WTO Secretar-
iat to treat civil society – and societal concerns, more generally – as something
that could be just managed at the national level with member states guarding
political access to the WTO itself.
Where these relations led to further networks, such as ‘Seattle to Brussels’,
this has enabled a series of later campaigns on, for example, attempts to expand
the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) (Strange, 2013a)
as well as the more recent case of the US-EU TTIP. None of these campaigns
would have been possible in isolation, being dependent as they are on both pre-
existing alliances between groups and individuals, but also a common frame of
Civil society 111
meaning in which global trade governance is understood as politicised rather
than something closed and technocratic.
Likewise, civil society groups should not be treated as a homogenous entity
but rather a diverse series of conflicting interests. Even where groups share a
common critique of, for example, the EU’s Economic Partnership Agreement
(EPA) initiative, there has been significant struggle between groups along North-
South lines (e.g. Del Felice, 2012). Although by far the most visible civil society
groups contesting global trade governance are based in the Global North, groups
in the Global South have become increasingly active (Del Felice, 2014; see also
Trommer, 2011).
Conclusion
Civil society has become increasingly relevant to global trade governance. It
exists as both a field of interests relevant to the input stage of policy formation,
but also as a normative concept by which to legitimate that form of governance
as ‘democratic’ – that is, as responsive to societal concerns. The fact that institu-
tional actors see civil society as important, even where the definition of ‘civil
society’ is limited to the constrained ‘NGO’ identity, shows also the extent to
which the scope of global trade governance has grown. To cover a growing array
of social relations requires legitimacy as well as information. Business associ-
ations and lobbying firms can provide much-needed data but to achieve legiti-
macy it is necessary to be linked to actors visibly representing societal concerns.
The dynamics of discourse at play here, though, mean that civil society is not a
pre-existing actor ready and waiting for consultation when designing policies.
Instead, civil society exists in global trade governance as an emergent actor,
formed and re-formed through processes of politicisation in which often diverse
political demands become linked through a shared critique of current trade gov-
ernance. Existing as such, it also means we need to think of civil society and
global trade governance not as two separate spheres – an actor interested in a
particular policy field, and a series of legal-political institutions – but as inextric-
ably linked through the social practices in which they are both constituted
(Strange, 2013b; Hopewell, 2015 and 2017). Civil society engaged in global
trade governance is therefore symptomatic of the broader social construction of
how trade is governed in the global context.
The example of civil society, as argued here, shows us that the terms we use
both to study and also to conduct global trade governance are not neutral or
passive. Rather, we see the term ‘civil society’ as inextricably linked within a
political struggle over the shape and form of this political domain. Its descriptive
function cannot be isolated from its normative connotations because there is no
apolitical consensus as to what the term describes (Ní Mhurchú and Shindo,
2016).
As seen with TTIP, the struggle over who or what can act as civil society in
global trade governance is far from over. Not only do we see active attempts by,
in this case, DG Trade to limit access to this political identity; there is another
112 Michael Strange
type of exclusion when the WTO Secretariat has been criticised for allowing
business associations to be classed as ‘NGOs’. For those activists to whom the
term ‘civil society’ is most commonly applied, their political identity depends on
being able to mark out practices and demands to which they are opposed. Con-
testation around the ‘NGO’ label points to not only a struggle for formal access
to the WTO, but also how such debates play as sites for broader contestation
over the shape of global trade governance. The question of who or what is ‘civil
society’ speaks to a much bigger question about which society is represented
within contemporary global trade governance, its legitimacy, as well as what
alternatives exist to the present order. Through taking time to consider terms like
‘civil society’, we are better able to understand that politics, as well as rethink its
future.
Notes
1 Personal observation made at a trade debate between activists and business
representatives.
2 Personal interview with a UK trade activist.
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8 Coherence
Felix Anderl
Introduction
A number of international organisations are concerned with regulating the world
economy. The most prominent ones are the International Monetary Fund (IMF ),
the World Bank Group and, since it evolved from the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the World Trade Organization (WTO).1 This multi-
plicity can be problematic. Although they were assigned separate fields of
policy, the IMF guarding exchange rates, the World Bank promoting post-war
development and reconstruction, and the WTO promoting and regulating trade,
these fields overlap significantly in practice. Hence, the policy of one organisa-
tion can affect the effectiveness of the others. Developing countries have often
complained, for instance, that their trade performance is severely hampered by
their debt and that, therefore, the WTO and the IMF should cohere around a
single policy to make domestic trade policies work.
The three organisations have a broadly shared conviction, however, namely
that the liberalisation of the global economy will lead to advantages for the
world’s population and that poverty can be overcome by an interlocking capi-
talist economic project with increasingly free trade, amplified investment and
free movement of labour and exchange rates (see also Auboin, 2007; Sampson,
1998, p. 259; Curtis, 2007, p. 208). It thus might seem ‘natural’ that they work
together and aspire towards coherence of their work. This ‘natural’ tendency
notwithstanding, the founders of the respective organisations found it neces-
sary to remind future staff members about the importance of coherence: the
GATT stipulated that the ‘contracting parties shall seek co-operation with
the International Monetary Fund to the end that the contracting parties and the
Fund may pursue a co-ordinated policy with regard to exchange questions’
(GATT, 1947, Article XV). Coherence also became a formal WTO objective
when the organisation was founded. The special relationship with the Bretton
Woods institutions was part of its founding impetus: in the final act of the
Uruguay Round (see GATT, 1994), the ‘decision on achieving greater coher-
ence in global economic policy-making’ directly called upon the future
Director-General of the WTO to coordinate policies with the World Bank and
the IMF.
116 Felix Anderl
But what does coherence do? This chapter shows that the term coherence
does more than simply describe the effect of cooperation. It has a productive
function, too. In line with Nicholas Onuf ’s (2003, p. xv) observation that lan-
guage is a means of world making and thus of power (see Dingwerth and Wein-
hardt, this volume), the concept of coherence serves specific purposes and
interests within the global trade regime. It is, additionally, functional as a rhetor-
ical device. First, coherence seemingly does not hurt anyone because its vague-
ness allows most actors to subscribe to it. Second, coherence silently excludes
possibilities of a different economic system by integrating already existing pol-
icies across international organisations as I show empirically in an analysis of
the WTO Secretariat’s practices aiming at coherence. Based on this evidence, I
therefore argue in this chapter that, in principle, the term has had a stabilising
effect on the status quo.
Despite that, coherence is also used as a concept by poor states and advocacy
organisations in their attempts to criticise existing trade rules. What does coher-
ence do for them? In an analysis of statements at GATT and WTO Ministerial
Meetings, I find a surprisingly robust trend: while OECD countries tend to use
coherence as a conservative rhetorical tool by using it in a self-explanatory and
unspecified way (coherence of the status quo), developing countries tend to
attach specific, and potentially challenging, policy goals to the term (coherence
of trade with other policy goals).
In order to understand these different usages of the term, I map the critical
potential of coherence and develop a four-field matrix of how coherence can
(and cannot) be used by critics of current economic governance. I argue that,
despite its conservative tendency, coherence can function as a weapon for less
powerful states to hold the WTO accountable to its prior promises (internal cri-
tique). Such criticism usually refers to already existing policies and cannot
suggest outside norms or refer to other values (external critique). The concept of
coherence is therefore likely to be used by moderate critics. Yet, there is still the
more progressive possibility to highlight the WTO’s commitment to coherence
with issues outside of trade such as development or environmental protection. I
call this coherence between trade and non-trade issues comprehensive in contrast
to narrow coherence focused on the absence of conflicts or contradictions among
different aspects of trade regulation. The chapter thus makes sense of different
meanings of coherence and thereby shows how language makes and reaffirms
world trade politics: poor states can buy into a specific language by using the
term in order to criticise existing policies. They make progressive claims by
employing ‘comprehensive coherence’. More powerful states as well as the
WTO bureaucracy, in contrast, refer to ‘narrow coherence’, thereby reaffirming
the conservative tendency the term has acquired in the broader world trade
discourse.
Coherence 117
Mind mapping coherence in global trade governance
In the following, I map the major ways in which coherence has come to be
understood in the discourse about world trade politics. Examining the rhetorical
function of coherence, I distinguish two possible functions of the term, relate
them to the WTO mandate and argue that only one form has been applied sys-
tematically by the WTO Secretariat. Against the backdrop of this dominant
understanding, I discuss and systematise the potential for alternative usages of
coherence.
Coherence as a conservative rhetorical tool

Andrew Lang (2011, p. 130) convincingly shows that the language of coherence
in neoliberal economic governance has led the logic of free trade to dominate
other concerns such as the environment under its frame. This framing has been
running smoothly because, inter alia, it is hard to oppose the positively conno-
tated idea of coherence, a term that largely functions as an empty signifier. This
term stems from language theory, broadly claiming that there is a signifier that
represents (carries the meaning), and the signified, that which is being repres-
ented (de Saussure, 1959).
Coherence qualifies as an ‘empty’ signifier for it often remains unclear what
the signified should actually be. Furthermore, the term is particular, while simul-
taneously claiming to represent a whole, or something general, which is the more
complex definition of an empty signifier (see Nonhoff, 2007, p. 13). My purpose
here, however, is not to defend the claim that coherence is an empty signifier.
Rather, I want to illustrate that it can function as such and, more broadly, has
been used as a rhetorical tool in governance. Thus, the concept of coherence is
illustrative for how hegemonic constellations can actualise themselves through
reference to a specific language. It looks like an external concept, as something
that can empower criticism of the status quo, but actually re-inscribes that which
the hegemonic order already represents. Boltanski (2011: 118) has even argued
that ‘what should prompt identification of a situation as pathological is therefore
… the maniacal quest for coherence, as if it were possible for human beings to
live in a single world and, all together, always in the same one’.
Demanding coherence fundamentally builds on a prior consensus, since
without a consensus on what to cohere, the concept is dysfunctional. This is also
where Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (2001, p. xviii) allocate the political
function of empty signifiers: ‘any form of consensus is the result of a hegemonic
articulation, and … always has an “outside” that impedes its full realization’.
Referencing coherence without further explication appears to be the textbook
example of a rhetorical tool that implies consensus on an issue and temporarily
includes potentially disruptive voices (‘the outside’) by hinting at an allegedly
common project.
In that vein, Alan Winters (2004; 2007), an economist in charge of negoti-
ating coherence with the WTO and the IMF when working for the World Bank,
118 Felix Anderl
argues that coherence is used at random. When coherence is defined as ‘a situ-
ation in which different policies pull in the same direction, or at least, do not pull
in different directions’ (Winters, 2004, p. 331), it is easy to agree that this would
be a desirable situation. However, the concept hides that the real matter is in the
question in which direction to pull. As long as this question is answered equivo-
cally, ‘[it] is basically non-operational because it defines no joint issues or posi-
tions around which to cohere. Rather, it is a rhetorical device’ (Winters, 2004,
p. 329). From his experience, he recalls that he ‘spent a lot of time, as did my
friends and colleagues in all three organisations, wondering what coherence was
all about’ (Winters, 2004, p. 330). Under this condition, the WTO Secretariat
instead focuses on ‘low-level, ad hoc cooperation [which] has helped the institu-
tions present a coherent public face’ (Bernstein and Hannah, 2011, p. 14).
Coherence thus works as a rhetorical tool because it can sell different kinds of
policies under its frame to which, in principle, even sceptics subscribe. For envi-
ronmentalists and development NGOs who are told that the Bretton Woods insti-
tutions and the WTO seek coherence, for instance, it seems promising to support
this course of action. They could hope for the possibility of the World Bank
having a more development-oriented focus and thereby being more vigorous
than the WTO Secretariat in abolishing some perverse side-effects of prior pro-
market policies in conflict with goals like human development or sustainability
(see e.g. Oxfam, 2010). Their temporary inclusion into the hegemonic discourse
is the effect of this rhetorical tool.
Narrow and comprehensive coherence

To assess whether coherence serves as a conservative rhetorical tool, I will in the
following examine the concept’s function in the global trade regime. For this, we
need to distinguish several possible functions. In the Oxford Dictionaries, two
definitions are given for the term.2 First, coherence is defined as ‘the quality of
being logical and consistent’. Second, coherence is understood as ‘the quality of
forming a unified whole’.
To start with, there are different scales of coherence within international
trade. I suggest a broad distinction between narrow and comprehensive coher-
ence, the former standing for coherent rules, procedures and implementation
within trade, the latter encompassing other policy fields which trade should be
coherent with. Narrow coherence makes a concept that aspires to integrate
various policy fields to make trade itself work. Even if this goal were to be
reached, however, policies could still be incoherent from a broader perspective,
for example if an integrated trade framework ‘works’ with respect to trade but
leads to negative side-effects (externalities) in other areas which contradict the
Bretton Woods institutions’ position, such as in the environment. In the pre-
amble to the WTO Agreement, free trade was not set up as an end in itself, but a
means to achieve sustainable development, and ‘seeking both to protect and pre-
serve the environment’ (WTO, 1994a). Therefore, cross-issue coherence would
have to start with a multidimensional analysis and seek the coherence of trade
Coherence 119
with issues outside the trade field, explicitly targeting externalities from trade
that undermine the performance of neighbouring international regimes. This is
what I call comprehensive coherence.
The WTO’s coherence mandate corresponds with both these definitions. In
practice, however, the rhetoric of the WTO has almost exclusively emphasised
narrow coherence. This can be exemplified with the problems that occur when
narrowly coherent trade policies collide with other issues such as the environ-
ment (see Lydgate, this volume). The classical example for such a collision is
the Tuna–dolphin case in the early 1990s, when Mexico (a major tuna exporter)
brought the US to the GATT dispute settlement body. The US had banned the
import of tuna from the Eastern Pacific that was caught without devices to save
dolphins. The panel found that the US violated GATT rules because it discrimi-
nated against goods with a specific method of production (see Steffek, 2012,
p. 336). The decision did not only infuriate environmentalists, but also hinted at
a major problem of a trade policy’s coherence with other desirable public goods,
in this case the protection of endangered species and animal wellbeing. As I
outline in the following, although the WTO’s work is mainly concerned with a
narrow conceptualisation of the term, both narrow and comprehensive coherence
have a grounding in the WTO’s coherence mandate.
The coherence mandate

On a rather technical level, the WTO’s internal coherence is meant to promote
policies that do not contradict existing policies, and thus send clear signals to the
implementing member states. More holistically, the mandate is fundamentally
about integrating trade, finance and aid policies, thus it integrates the work of the
multilateral trade regime and the Bretton Woods institutions into a unified whole.
Not only does the WTO aspire to cooperate with the World Bank and the IMF,
the aim to achieve greater coherence is an essential part of the organisation’s
objective (Bernstein and Hannah, 2012). Therefore, Article III.5 of the WTO
Agreement lists coherence as one of the five core functions of the WTO.
This coherence function of the WTO was formally explicated in the Declara-
tion on the Contribution of the World Trade Organization to achieving greater
Coherence in Global Economic Policymaking (WTO, 1994b, p. 387),3 in which
the member states have agreed on five cornerstones of coherent global economic
policymaking. First, they reiterate the positive role of liberal trading policies for
growth and development. For this, they, second, invoke a classical neo-
functionalist image of spill-over effects when arguing that ‘successful
cooperation in each area of economic policy contributes to progress in other
areas’ (WTO, 1994b, point 2). Third, the member states specify that the contri-
butions towards coherence in the Uruguay Round will lead to market expansion,
more transparency, effective surveillance and an increasingly open trading
system. The empirical fact of overlapping regimes, combined with the alleged
improvements that have already been achieved with regard to coherence are held
as a foundation for trade policy ‘to play a more substantial role in ensuring the
120 Felix Anderl
coherence of global economic policymaking’ (WTO, 1994b, point 3). The WTO
is thus not only responsible for doing its part while the World Bank and the IMF
do theirs. Much more, trade is described as the overarching theme for integrating
the world economy. This shall mainly be achieved by more surveillance and a
stricter observance of multilateral rules. Fourth, however, it is acknowledged
that trade alone cannot solve every problem outside the field of trade, which
again requires effective cooperation with the Bretton Woods institutions. There-
fore, point five requires the institutions to ‘follow consistent and mutually sup-
portive policies’ (WTO, 1994b, point 5). The Director-General is asked to
coordinate with the Managing Director of the IMF and the President of the
World Bank to settle on a common understanding of responsibilities and forms
of cooperation.
The Secretariat’s narrow understanding of coherence

What development has the term coherence undertaken since the outlined
mandate was agreed on? While the WTO constantly guards and monitors its own
member states and has strong institutional proceedings to do so (‘the quality of
being logical and consistent’), it looks rather haphazard when it comes to coher-
ence with other regimes (‘the quality of forming a unified whole’). The mandate,
however, makes explicit that both forms are required for achieving the objective
of coherence. Regarding the former quality, for instance, the Committee on Spe-
cific Commitments was set up in 1996. It has the mandate to ‘oversee the imple-
mentation of WTO members’ services commitments and, in particular, to ensure
their technical accuracy and coherence through regular examination of classifi-
cation and scheduling issues’ (WTO, 1996, p. 68). These technical procedures
are comparably easy to implement because there are common rules that the
bureaucracy can refer to.
In contrast, the comprehensive conceptualisation of coherence which is
equally rooted in the mandate has not been alluded to systematically. Since it
was founded, the WTO has approached the goal of a liberalised economy by
trying to integrate policy approaches with other international organisations to
make trade work. Since 1995, cooperation has widened and institutional prior-
ities have shifted towards this issue (see Bernstein and Hannah, 2012, p. 782).
The WTO Director-General produces annual reports on the progress in coher-
ence (WTO, 1997) and a number of forms of cooperation between the economic
institutions have been organised since then. For instance, the WTO exchanges
data with the IMF, the World Bank, some United Nations agencies and the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Further-
more, there is some cooperation with regard to overarching international pro-
grams such as the Millennium Development Goals. Beyond data exchange,
however, such initiatives are rather ad hoc and, as the WTO reports, ‘more dis-
aggregated and focusing on specific … commitments’ (WTO, 2011, p. 8).
In 2001 in Doha, the WTO ministers further decided to establish a Working
Group on Trade, Debt and Finance. Its purpose is to find ways for the WTO to
Coherence 121
contribute to solving external debt problems of developing countries and insta-
bilities in the financial sector. The meetings of this working group currently con-
stitute the main WTO activity of seeking institutional coherence with other
international organisations (WTO, 2015b, p. 85). Apart from these meetings,
there are some running programs and initiatives which cut across organisations,
for example the trade finance facilitation programs which are implemented with
multilateral development banks and are supposed to increase trade finance. For
the African continent, the WTO for example cooperates with the African Devel-
opment Bank (AfDB) to provide credit guarantees for traders who could other-
wise not access international markets. Within these programmes, AfDB and
other multilateral development banks have spent approximately US$20 billion of
trade transactions in poor countries, ‘which would not have received support
from private markets’ (WTO, 2015b, p. 85). According to the minutes of the
working group, these programmes were ‘not designed to eliminate all market
gaps’, but instead ‘to [allow] SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] and
banks locally to engage into international trade, thereby building capacity and
experience’ (WTO, 2016). This limitation is also a matter of debate within the
working group. Brazil, for instance, criticised in a 2014 meeting that ‘there was
a need for the WTO to “dig” deeper about its own role, based on the coherence
mandate’ (WTO, 2014).
To further grasp the logic in which the WTO has been approaching coher-
ence, the ‘Aid for Trade’ initiative serves as good example. According to some
observers (see Hoekman, 2012, p. 767), the initiative sets up a case of fulfilling
the coherence mandate, whereas others are more sceptical (Langan and Scott,
2014). The idea of ‘Aid for Trade’ is to assist developing countries, especially
Least Developed Countries, so that these can ‘build the trade capacity and infra-
structure they need to benefit from trade opening’ (WTO, 2015c).
The initiative is based on the belief that poor countries could strongly profit
from trade and lift a big number of people out of poverty through new trade
opportunities. However, these countries have in the past not profited as much as
WTO officials had hoped for. One of the reasons is the reluctance of indus-
trialised countries to open their markets. As the WTO argues, there are also
problems on the ‘supply-side’: internal barriers to trade that are spotted in ‘lack
of knowledge, excessive red tape, inadequate financing, poor infrastructure’
(WTO, 2015a). The ‘Aid for Trade’ programme, financed through official devel-
opment assistance, is therefore geared at tackling these issues. The WTO encour-
ages donors to fund trade-related capacity building and works directly with
developing countries to make sure trade will be assigned a more prominent place
in national development plans.
The mechanism to access ‘Aid for Trade’ is the Enhanced Integrated Frame-
work (EIF ). This mechanism assists developing countries in prioritising key
needs for trade-related assistance and capacity building, and submits these needs
to donors to generate additional funding. The EIF is thus an access mechanism
which identifies specific activities and approaches for economic integration. The
resources for these undertakings have to be tapped from other sources. Although
122 Felix Anderl
it takes issues other than trade into account, the aim of the initiative thus is to
make trade itself more efficient.
Overall, while the coherence mandate asks for a more holistic view on eco-
nomic problems, its implementation remains sporadic and limited to ‘narrow
coherence’. In the following section, I examine why the WTO has not gone
beyond this ‘limited success of promoting macroeconomic consistency in the
global economy’ (Bernstein and Hannah, 2012, p. 777).
Coherence as a weapon? Internal and external critique

To understand why the term coherence has a conservative tendency in global
economic governance, especially when applied in such a narrow fashion, it is
useful to see what avenues of critique are opened up by different potential usages
of the term. I do this by introducing the distinction between internal and external
critique.4
Internal critique is a mode of arguing that remains within the margins of the
criticised order. The critic is part of – or acts as if she was part of – the thought
structure that she grapples with. Therefore, she does not need external theoretical
or ethical yardsticks. Rather, the yardsticks are found in the norms that the criti-
cised actors themselves represent. Most often, internal critique hints at contra-
dictions between theory and practice: practice A of a specific actor does not
correspond with the norms previously endorsed by this actor.5 Internal critique
thus commonly takes the form: ‘hey, before you said B and now you do A!’
External critique on the contrary receives its norms not from the criticised
actors but either from third actors or from supposedly universal norms. The
external critic challenges an actor because she thinks the actor should be oriented
around this or that norm. We find this, for example, in the human rights dis-
course when actors are criticised for violating human rights to which they might
not even subscribe. In this case, external critique takes the generic form: ‘hey,
you do A, but according to B this is wrong!’
Internal critique has the merit of getting the criticised actors on board. In con-
trast to external critique, it does not hold universal norms against a specific prac-
tice and thus does not tell an actor what she should be doing. Rather, it measures
actors’ practices against their own previous commitments. In contrast to external
positions, however, it is very difficult to create innovation with this mode of cri-
tique, for in practice an actor can only be held accountable to something to
which she has already subscribed.
Arguing with the concept of coherence in trade is usually the application of
internal critique. The WTO has officially subscribed to coherence and therefore
critics can make use of this norm and remind WTO officials of their prior prom-
ises. What the critics really want might be much more radical, but they sense
that any external critique like ‘You should make sure trade liberalisation does
not interfere with efforts to mitigate global warming, because it would be the
ethical thing to do’ will fall on deaf ears at the WTO. Wilkinson (2014) therefore
emphasises the question: coherence with what? In his opinion, the calls for more
Coherence 123
coherence by civil society have no decisive effect on the WTO, because making
an unfair system more coherent would ‘certainly fail to address the issue of bar-
gaining among unequals’ (Wilkinson, 2014, p. 150), a situation that he sees as
the major obstacle to fair trading rules. This is the cost of internal critique: critics
buy into a certain logic to make arguments ‘from within’, but arguing based on
norms that are external to that logic does not work from such a speaker position.
Internal critique has the advantage of enabling a constructive discussion between
the WTO bureaucracy and its critics (or between member states), but has little
transformative potential. This trade-off lies at the heart of many civil society
strategy dilemmas (see Strange, this volume).
The potential of coherence

Referring to coherence within global trade governance can support different
forms of statements (see Table 8.1). Since complete coherence is never fulfilled,
alluding to it usually entails a demand. The most straightforward one is to ask
for narrow coherence. This means demanding a trade policy that is internally
coherent, which means logical and consistent. The WTO is already guarding
internal coherence by monitoring member states and by cooperating with other
international organisations on trade-related matters. One could argue that it is the
minimum function of the WTO to establish coherence within trade.
Seen comprehensively, the WTO would not only have to work on ‘trade-
related’ issues with other agencies, but also make sure that the other (‘non-trade’)
goals will not be negatively affected by trade rules and practices. A more challeng-
ing critique to trade governance thus requires at least some elements external to
trade. Directed at countries’ policies, this is a common move for critical actors
from civil society. With regard to development policies, for instance, Oxfam has
demanded that ‘[d]onors need to quickly provide adequate resources … and should
ensure greater coherence between their development assistance and trade policies’
(Oxfam, 2010, p. 1). The structure of this critique is more comprehensive, because
it asks the criticised actor to create coherence between the trade policy and other
policies, which may, in effect, lead to less or different kinds of trade compared to a
situation in which such cross-policy coordination were not undertaken.
In contrast to the WTO’s application of the term, the width of the coherence
mandate theoretically allows for a demanding approach. Critique can be framed
with reference to the coherence mandate, the logic of which almost all affected
actors and audiences will endorse. The call for cooperation with the IMF and the
Table 8.1 Forms of coherence
Internal critique External critique
Within trade Narrow coherence –
Trade with other issues Comprehensive coherence Beyond coherence

124 Felix Anderl
World Bank can be an access point for references to public goods that these
organisations stand for, such as human development. Additionally, Point four of
the declaration could be a reference point for critique, as it acknowledges that
trade alone cannot solve every problem outside the trade field. Part five of the
declaration adds a further gateway for demanding comprehensive coherence; it
requires the WTO to follow consistent and mutually supportive policies with
other institutions whose policy goals can therefore be drawn upon in order to
make claims.
Yet, even though the demand for comprehensive coherence is a more progres-
sive challenge than the demand for narrow coherence, challenges that ask the
WTO to take environmental concerns (or the like) into consideration remain
within the logic of internal critique because they measure the WTO against its
own norms, not against norms that were derived from outside. Whether demand-
ing narrow or comprehensive coherence, both are moves of critique that aspire
to make the WTO fulfil its own mandate.
Can coherence also be an access point for external critique? This would imply
taking the broadened conception of comprehensive coherence as a starting point
and making progressive claims that refer to norms outside the world of trade.
This is in principle less promising for reaching the approval of actors within the
WTO, since it implies a different logic of argument, one that takes its reasoning
from fields other than trade. Moreover, arguments from outside the trade regime
and its logic, such as human rights claims, have frequently mobilised against
trade policies (see e.g. Claeys, 2013, p. 4), thus making it unlikely to find much
support among the trade policy community. To persuade at least a significant
share of that community, an argumentative chain would thus need to go beyond
coherence and convincingly demand that trade policies cohere with something
the WTO does not stand for. Ultimately, the strength of coherence thus remains
with internal critique. This also means that for radical positions, coherence is
probably the wrong argumentative instrument. Nevertheless, charges of ‘hypo-
crisy’, ‘inconsistency’ and ‘incoherence’ can be potent tools for a critique that
does not come across as overly radical. For such a criticism to have trans-
formative potential, the objective of comprehensive coherence is most promis-
ing, since it goes beyond the logic of trade alone and yet has grounding in
WTO’s mandate and rhetoric.
Meaning makers: how coherence is used as a rhetorical device

From the discussion in the previous section, we get the impression that coher-
ence works as an empty phrase in the world trade discourse that serves to legiti-
mate the status quo by dispersing critique. Nevertheless, I outlined that it is
conceptually possible to bring forward substantiated and progressive arguments
with reference to the term. But how do the proponents of coherence actually
refer to the term when they draw on it?
To answer this question, this second part of the chapter evaluates the con-
texts in which member states refer to coherence in their statements in GATT
Coherence 125
or WTO meetings between 1973 and 2013. The coding encompasses state-
ments using the signal words ‘coherence’, ‘coordination’ and ‘cooperation’, as
well as statements that refer to ‘relations with other international organiza-
tions’.6 It is illuminating to have the other phrases in the coding, since this also
shows whether parties make reference to the Declaration on Coherence without
using the term (which may tell us something about the term). I use a selection
of statements which were coded as ‘coherence’ for another project.7 Within
this sample of 70 statements – 29 by OECD countries and 41 by non-OECD
countries – I sub-coded alongside two main categories: ‘with what?’ and ‘with
whom?’.8 This helps to identify, first, what issues the member states have in
mind when they want the trade policy to be coherent with something else.
Second, it illustrates with which other organisations member states want the
GATT/WTO to attain coherence. In the following, I outline the main trends,
highlighting the significance of development, social policy and environmental
policies, and the role of other international organisations, especially the IMF,
the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Bank. In general,
the analysis illustrates that coherence is a broadly shared and virtually uncon-
tested goal. However, looking at who demands what, we can also see that
OECD countries tend to use coherence as a conservative rhetorical tool while
developing countries tend to attach very specific, and potentially challenging,
policy goals to the term.
Coherent with what?
What policies do GATT Contracting Parties and WTO members want trade pol-
icies to be coherent with? The coding of their statements suggests that the issue
that they by far care most about is ‘development’ (23 mentions, see Figure 8.1).
The category that comes closest is ‘coherence terms’ which encloses all men-
tions of ‘coherence’ and ‘coordination’ without explicating what this should
mean. Further frequent issues are social policy (13 mentions), debt/indebtedness,
the environment, and fiscal and monetary policy (all 11 mentions).
Remarkably, it is especially the poor countries that connect their demands for
coherence with concrete and issue-related problems. They make clear that trade
Coherence with what? No. of statements

Agriculture 4
Coherence terms 16
Debt/Indebtedness 11
Development 23
Environment 11
Export/Commodities 2
Fiscal/Monetary policy 11
Free trade/more trade/more discipline 4
Social policy 13
Figure 8.1 Coherent with what?

126 Felix Anderl
alone will not help their economies: ‘[t]he debt problems of developing countries
call for more and effective co-operation between GATT and financial and devel-
opment institutions’ (GATT, 1989a). Coherence comes in as a policy answer to
the interconnectedness of problems that the developing countries face. An ana-
lysis of the coded passages reveals the centrality of development concerns in
these calls. As was stated by a Singapore representative (WTO, 2001), at the
beginning of the Doha Round, ‘negotiations must have a strong development
focus and require, as a precondition, the building up of capacity in developing
countries. Sweet words are not enough. There must be binding commitments to
such efforts’. The representative also stated that ‘[t]o be practical, the WTO
should make use of existing international facilities like the World Bank and not
seek to replicate them’.
Coherent with whom?
When it comes to the practice of coordination, several organisations are named
by the GATT Contracting Parties and later WTO member states. The IMF is
mentioned most frequently by far. As a second category, although the World
Bank somewhat surprisingly is only mentioned seven times, there are numerous
references to ‘international development banks’ (see code ‘unspecified’ in Figure
8.2). Furthermore, the ILO receives some attention (seven mentions), as do the
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The focus on these organisations fits well with the specific issues mentioned,
although the environment seems not to have a natural institution which the WTO
could cohere with in the eyes of the member states. While development is
matched with the World Bank and other unspecified development banks, social
policy with the ILO, debt/indebtedness, and fiscal/monetary policy with the IMF,
the longing for coherence with environmental concerns is not matched – as could
have been expected – by a high number of mentions for the United Nations
Environmental Program (UNEP).
Coherence with whom? No. of statements

Commodity Councils 1
FAO 3
ILO 9
IMF 20
OECD 1
UN 1
UNCTAD 4
UNEP 2
World Bank 7
World Food Council 2
Regional trade agreements 3
Unspecified 19
Figure 8.2 Coherent with whom?

Coherence 127
Disaggregating the results
When disaggregating these findings, one can see more clearly that calls for
coherence with a specific policy field such as the environment, or with a specific
problem such as external debt, come almost exclusively from ‘developing coun-
tries’, while OECD countries tend to remain with a broader frame of ‘more
coherence’, without specifying what this would mean in practice. I interpret this
observation as support for my assumption that rhetoric on coherence can func-
tion as a governing tool. On this reading, powerful states cement their relative
position by constructing discourses around an empty concept which obscures the
differences within the WTO membership. However, I refine this argument by the
empirical observation that some, mostly poor, countries use the concept as a
means to change existing trade policies.
Take the code ‘debt/indebtedness’ as an example of a specific usage, and
‘coherence terms’ as an example of the most abstract, least specified use. While
debt/indebtedness comes entirely from low-income countries, the code ‘coher-
ence terms’ – which demands coherence without attaching it to a specific actor
or issue – is mostly OECD-driven. OECD countries feed into this code by
acknowledging that ‘[i]n today’s globalized and interlinked world we need more
coherence’ (WTO, 2009). Developing countries, on the other hand, make up the
more specific codes like ‘debt’, or ‘development’. In the Uruguay Round (1986),
for instance, Cuba (GATT, 1986a) complains that ‘the huge external debt of the
developing countries has become an insurmountable barrier to the economic
development of those peoples which listen to the fairy tales of trade liberaliza-
tion with justified indignation’. Bangladesh (GATT, 1986b) hints at the ‘prob-
lems of a large number of indebted developing countries, negative effects of
prolonged financial and monetary instability in the world economy and linkage
between trade, money and finance, and development’. Similar statements were
made by representatives from Peru (GATT, 1986c), Jamaica (GATT, 1989b),
Egypt (GATT, 1989a), Tanzania (GATT, 1992) and Argentina (GATT, 1975).
Developing countries often either use additional specifications when referring to
the term coherence or apply other terms that were coded here within the broad
category of coherence (for example ‘linkages’ above) to make a more specific
point.
In general, a closer look at the coded segments therefore shows three things.
First, as expected, the promotion of coherence has been virtually uncontested in
the world trade regime. No state ever suggested creating a less coherent trade
regime, and no state ever received negative feedback in response to arguing in
favour of more coherence. Second, powerful states apply the term in very
general ways, without explicating what it means or connecting it to specific
issues or actors. Third, poor countries tie the call for coherence to more specific
claims or use different terms that do not explicitly invoke, but support the idea
of comprehensive coherence.
128 Felix Anderl
Conclusion
Coherence is a fundamental part of the WTO’s mandate. The Declaration on
Coherence explicitly asks the organisation’s Director-General to work closely
with the IMF and the World Bank, and Article III.5 of the WTO Agreement lists
coherence as one of the five core functions of the WTO. In institutional practice,
however, I have argued in this chapter, coherence mainly works as a rhetorical
tool which supports the stabilisation and integration of prevailing discourses
around trade. Looking at the WTO’s practices in the field of coherence, we can
see that the coherence mandate is interpreted in narrow terms. The example of
trade finance, which is the core item around which the WTO organises its coher-
ence efforts, further shows that WTO members are currently not willing to
cohere around a common policy with other organisations, but rather use others
for championing their own agenda. I call this ‘narrow coherence’ (coherence
within trade). Applying coherence in such a way has a conservative tendency
since it only reinforces what is already there. In contrast, I have argued that a
comprehensive understanding of coherence – trade’s coherence with other public
goods – has a progressive potential. Applying coherence in this more compre-
hensive way is, furthermore, also covered by the WTO’s coherence mandate.
Drawing on an analysis of how the GATT Contracting Parties and WTO
member states utilise coherence, I showed that OECD countries tend to use the
concept narrowly and hence in accordance with my reading of coherence as a
conservative rhetorical tool. Developing countries, on the other hand, connect
the concept to concrete criticism of actual policies and make specific references:
to criticize their external debt, for example, or the counter-productiveness of free
trade policies under such circumstances. I argue that an external critique which
builds on norms outside the trade regime has less chance of being understood by
the trade politics community ‘on its terms’. For demanding coherence with
issues outside trade, critics must produce more complex argumentative chains.
The distinction between narrow and comprehensive coherence I developed in
this chapter may therefore help future advocacy efforts to frame their demands
for coherence of trade with other issues in creative ways that resonate within, but
ultimately go beyond, common conceptions in the trade regime: in terms of a
system-wide coherence that does not subordinate development, human rights or
the environment to trade expansion, but instead gives consideration to a broad
range of policy goals.
Notes
1 I would like to thank Johannes Haaf, Regina Hack and Katrin Mauch as well as the
editors, Klaus Dingwerth and Clara Weinhardt, for their valuable comments on earlier
versions of this chapter, and Philip Wallmeier for our discussions on critique as a social
practice.
2 See online at: www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/coherence [last accessed
7 December 2015].
3 In the following: Declaration on Coherence.
Coherence 129
4 This section profited from collaborative work on an article with Philip Wallmeier (see
Anderl and Wallmeier, 2018).
5 The most prominent proponent of internal critique is probably Walzer (1987).
6 The coding is based on the summary records from 1973 to 1979, the Member State
Statements of 1986, 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1994, as well as the first 50 statements of
the Ministerial Conferences 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011 und 2013.
7 This coding was undertaken by Klaus Dingwerth and Ellen Reichel at the University of
St. Gallen, Switzerland within the research project ‘Changing Norms of Global Gov-
ernance’. I am grateful for their kindness in sharing the material.
8 I executed the coding with MAXQDA, generating an overall of 108 coded segments
among which 87 relate to specific agencies (‘who?’) and 95 refer to specific issues
(‘what?’) (a double coding of segments was possible). The OECD-membership (or
non-membership) always refers to the time of the statement.
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9 Development
Clara Weinhardt and Angela Geck
Introduction
At the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) annual Public Forum in 2016, the Nige-
rian Trade and Investment Minister Okechukwu E. Enelamah1 commented that
[c]ountries do not engage in trading relationships for the sake of trade per
se.… The immediate and ultimate goal of trade is growth and development.
This is why the WTO and its membership must make trade and the rules of
trade count for development.
(Buhari, 2016)2
Since the negotiations on the doomed International Trade Organization (ITO) in

the post-war era and the conclusion of the General Agreement on Trade and
Tariffs (GATT) in 1947, the international trade regime has been confronted with
calls to address the concerns of developing countries (Alessandrini, 2010). These
calls have, over time, led to the incorporation of a number of development-
related provisions into the legal architecture of the GATT and the creation of the
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). After the
birth of the WTO in 1995, its first negotiating round – launched in 2001 – was
named the ‘Doha Development Round’. Despite the prominence of the term,
developing countries continue to lament their marginalisation in the world
trading system. To understand this apparent contradiction, this chapter traces the
evolution of the discourse on development in the world trading system, and how
it has affected the institutionalisation of ‘development-friendly’ trade rules along
the way. In doing so, we present two main arguments.
First, a key to understanding the emergence and the changing meanings of
development in the world trade regime lies in the waxing and waning of different
theories of economic development (Alessandrini, 2010; Lang, 2011). The turn in
economic development theory from dependency theory to neoliberalism in the
1980s shifted the focus of the discourse from demands to change unfavourable
world market structures to the need to liberalise the economic policies of devel-
oping countries. We argue that – despite rising criticism of neoliberal approaches
to economic development from the 1990s onwards – these ideas continue to
Development 133
shape the discourse on development in the WTO era. As a result, developing
countries have increasingly become subject to the same rules as developed coun-
tries because the central concept of Special and Differential Treatment (S&D)
for developing countries has been re-defined in narrower terms. Initially, the
focus of S&D measures lay on preferential market access and substantive
exemptions from new rules on trade liberalisation. Over time, support for grant-
ing these kinds of measures to all developing countries has declined and S&D
has come to primarily imply longer transition periods and capacity building
measures.
Second, we demonstrate that in the most recent WTO era, the debate on
differentiation within the developing country bloc has come to dominate the dis-
course on development. Developed countries increasingly contest that emerging
countries, such as Brazil, India and China, continue to belong to the group of
developing countries entitled to S&D. We argue that this shift in discourse not
only reflects greater heterogeneity among the group of developing countries, but
also a greater emphasis on specific economic criteria as a basis for determining
developing country status in the WTO. While differentiation is not necessarily
detrimental to developing countries, the unresolved stand-off between emerging
and developed countries over classifications increasingly delegitimises the calls
of other developing countries for special rules regarding developing countries as
a group.
The evolution of meanings associated with the concept of development in the
world trade regime, which a constructivist analysis of language reveals, helps us
to better understand why many developing countries continue to be frustrated by
WTO rules on development despite the great attention the issue receives. Greater
strength in numbers, and in the case of emerging countries in market size, alone
does not guarantee that development concerns are addressed in a more compre-
hensive manner in the world trade regime. It matters not only that the develop-
ment term has entered the ‘vocabulary’ of the world trade regime, but also what
it means to introduce development-friendly trade rules, who they apply to – and
who is excluded. The new ‘social reality’ (Adler, 2013, p. 125) created by the
rise of neoliberalism has limited the range of legitimate demands for S&D, a
move to which some developing countries strongly object. This perspective
stands in contrast to those scholars who assess the value of different forms of
S&D on the grounds of presumably objective economic theory (Hoekman,
2006), without paying attention to the influence of particular meaning makers,
whether from developed or developing countries, that shaped the rise and fall of
different economic theories in the first place.
In addition, the evolution of new socially constructed actor positions
(Foucault, 1972, pp. 50–55) within the group of developing countries, including
emerging economies, restricts many countries’ perceived eligibility for S&D. As
a result, the rise in power of emerging countries does not necessarily mean that
the concerns of developing countries have greater weight in the world trade
regime, as some scholars have suggested (Narlikar, 2010, p. 720; Nel, 2010,
p. 969). Instead, unresolved struggles over where to draw the boundary of the
134 Clara Weinhardt and Angela Geck
developing country status, and whether to include or exclude emerging coun-
tries, have restricted the ability of emerging countries to play the role of advo-
cates for more ‘development-friendly’ rules.
To trace the changing meaning of development, we analyse official documents
and political debates within the world trade regime (Bukovansky, 2010, p. 28).
We combine secondary sources with the analysis of primary sources, including a
sample of 851 statements made by country representatives and other speakers
during the negotiations of the Tokyo (1973–1979), Uruguay (1986–1994) and
Doha (2001–2013) Rounds.3 Moreover, we draw on selected qualitative inter-
views conducted with trade policy officials in Geneva in 2010 and 2016.
From dependency theory to neoliberalism: the redefinition of

special and differential treatment for developing countries
The salience of the development issue within official statements from the trade
regime has grown constantly: ‘development’ was mentioned 1.2 times per state-
ment during the Tokyo Round, 2.2 times per statement during the Uruguay
Round and 5.1 times per statement during the Doha Development Round. The
meaning of the term development in the trade regime, however, is not fixed, but
closely linked to particular sets of historically contingent ideas, ideologies and
beliefs. In particular, economic theories of development have played a crucial
role in shaping the language of development in the trade regime. While in the
1960s and 1970s the prevalence of dependency theory facilitated and shaped
the introduction of S&D for developing countries into the GATT rules, from the
1980s onward the predominance of neoliberalism has led to a redefinition of this
concept in narrower terms. Over time, these changing meanings have shaped
what kinds of ‘development-friendly’ rules are conceivable and desired in the
world trade regime. We argue that neoliberal ideas continue to define the kinds
of demands that developing countries can make in the trade regime.
The notion of ‘underdeveloped’ nations emerged as part of the restructuring
of the global order after the Second World War between 1945 and 1955.4 In line
with the emerging discourse on development, countries like India, Brazil and
Chile pushed for rules that addressed the particular needs of developing coun-
tries in facilitating economic growth during the negotiations over the ITO charter
between 1946 and 1948.5 They succeeded in including development-related
exceptions from liberalisation commitments like infant industry protection in the
ITO charter; some of which were also integrated in the GATT (Hudec, 2011,
pp. 31–32; Lang, 2011, p. 26). However, these provisions were not restricted to
a particular group of countries. The original GATT text contained no special
treatment for developing country members (Jupille et al., 2013, p. 132).
It was only in the 1960s and 1970s that developing countries succeeded in
introducing a special set of rules for developing country members into the GATT
framework. Because of the wave of decolonisation, by the early-to-mid 1960s,
the number of developing countries had increased from 10 out of the 23 GATT
founding members to a two-third majority (Jupille et al., 2013, p. 142). Yet it
Development 135
was not only the greater number of developing country members, but also the
rise of dependency theory that facilitated the institutionalisation of development-
related rules in the GATT. This school of thought, established by Raúl Prebisch
(1950) and other, mainly Latin American social scientists, argued that under-
development was caused by an exploitative division of labour between develop-
ing countries as exporters of raw materials and developed countries as producers
of manufactured goods and technology. The ideas of these academic meaning
makers were included into the political agenda of the New International Eco-
nomic Order (NIEO) by UNCTAD, founded in 1964, and the Group of 77 devel-
oping countries (G77), which played an important role within the organisation.
Prebisch became the first director of the UNCTAD and thus functioned as a
political as well as academic meaning maker (Margulis, 2017, pp. 3–4). The
Haberler Report (GATT, 1958) also helped to facilitate serious discussions about
development.
The ideas of dependency theory were crucial in tying the legitimacy of the
GATT to its argument for a development-friendly trade system, including a
special set of rules for developing country members that allows for different – in
particular preferential – treatment. As Erin Hannah and James Scott (2017,
p. 121) argue, ‘underlying Prebisch’s analysis of the trade system and the prob-
lems developing countries faced therein was the idea that non-equals should not
be treated equally’. The basic idea was that if developing countries have to liber-
alise trade in the same way as developed countries, not only will they be unable
to decrease the structurally unequal market positions they hold, but inequalities
are likely to increase further. To overcome the unfavourable structures of the
world market, developing countries demanded special treatment in terms of both
exemptions from liberalisation commitments and preferential market access.
This was assumed to require changes to the existing international rules as well as
the trade policies of the developed countries, which were expected to adjust to
the increasing competition from developing countries (see e.g. GATT, 1979,
p. 57; Lamp, 2017, pp. 485–486). The development discourse of the trade regime
was clearly ‘directed against the division of labour and the trade patterns insti-
tuted under colonial rule’ (Lamp, 2017, p. 483) at the beginning.
This particular framing of the link between trade and economic development
facilitated the institutionalisation of a new set of rules that apply specifically to
developing countries. As Robert Hudec claims, at the time there was an ‘almost
axiomatic assumption that trade-policy rules which call for preferential treatment
will make a positive contribution to curing the economic inequality of develop-
ing countries’ (Hudec, 2011, pp. 101). In 1964 a new ‘Part IV’ on ‘Trade and
Development’ was added to the GATT, which established the principle of non-
reciprocity as well as the central concept of Special and Differential Treatment
(S&D) for developing countries. The ‘Enabling Clause’, adopted in 1979, legal-
ised trade preferences for developing countries under the UNCTAD’s General
System of Preferences (GSP). Both Part IV of the GATT and the Enabling
Clause institutionalised the differential rights and obligations of ‘less developed’
or ‘developing countries’ and ‘developed contracting parties’.
While changes in discourse facilitated the institutionalisation of development-
oriented trade rules, these rules were less successful in addressing structural
inequality than developing countries had hoped for. They helped them to protect
their own markets, but did not get them far in securing better access to developed
countries’ markets (Rodrik, 2001). While preferential market access was only
granted by developed countries on a voluntary basis, developed countries negoti-
ated reciprocal tariff reductions amongst themselves (Hudec, 2011, pp. 68, 78).
The resulting tariff cuts were extended to all GATT members under the principle
of most-favoured nation (MFN) treatment, but sectors in which developing coun-
tries were competitive – in particular, agriculture and textiles – remained highly
protected. Despite these shortcomings, the 1960s and (early) 1970s must be seen
as the ‘high point of the development challenge within the GATT’ (Lang, 2011,
p. 47) and the international trade regime to date.
In the 1980s, the debt crisis, the failure of import-substitution industrialisa-
tion in Latin America and the rise of the South-East Asian tiger economies,
which pursued a state-led but export-oriented development policy, led to a
radical re-orientation of academic as well as political approaches to economic
development (Booth, 1985; Menzel, 1992). With the advent of neoliberal eco-
nomic thought, the mantra of liberalisation replaced the idea of redressing struc-
tural inequalities. While neoliberalism was partly a response to changing
material realities, there was no clear evidence that previous ideas about eco-
nomic development had failed. The change in discourse should be attributed to
the influence of individual meaning makers like Deepak Lal (2000) and institu-
tional meaning makers like the International Monetary Fund (IMF ) and the
World Bank (Alessandrini, 2010, pp. 71–73; Weaver, 2010; Margulis, 2017,
pp. 7–8). Their main goal was to reform countries’ economic policy on fiscal
austerity, privatisation, deregulation and trade liberalisation. World market struc-
tures were no longer problematised. Rather, integration into the world market
came to be seen an important precondition for development.
The rise of neoliberal thought has transformed the language with which
negotiators in the world trade regimes speak about trade and development. This
has led to a redefinition of the concept of S&D. The purpose of S&D is no longer
seen as redressing structural inequalities of the world trade order, but as aiding
developing countries to reform their own economic systems in order to become
more competitive on the world market. Following neoliberal logic, reform efforts
are expected to amplify certain patterns of market-orientation. We can distin-
guish three ways in which these changes in economic ideas have impacted the
meaning of development in the world trade regime. In line with these changes in
the discourse on development it has become more difficult for developing coun-
tries to uphold claims that they need a special set of rules – as represented by the
concept of S&D – that grant substantive exemptions from trade liberalisation
and better market access compared to developed countries.
First, the concept of development in trade has become firmly linked to the
concept of liberalisation. While dependency thinking had implied that trade-offs
between liberalisation and development were sometimes necessary, neoliberalism
Development 137
reconciled the two goals. Developed countries established the linkage during the
Uruguay Round. For instance, at the GATT session of 1986 a German delegate
stated that ‘[e]conomic development and the liberalization of world trade go
hand-in-hand; in other words, they move forward together, or fail together’
(GATT, 1986, p. 1). Because of this association between development and liber-
alisation, it became more difficult for developing countries to uphold claims that
they needed to be exempted from liberalisation commitments under S&D. As a
United States (US) representative explained in 1988:
[e]xperience has shown – as pointed out by several delegations – that trade

liberalization promotes, rather than hinders, economic growth and develop-
ment. Trade liberalization is in fact sound economic policy for countries at
all levels of development. Why then should we be encouraging exemptions
from GATT obligations?
(GATT, 1988, p. 3)
With the advent of neoliberal ideas, developing countries were thus increasingly
expected to open their markets – including in the realm of new non-tariff and
behind-the-border issues, which intrude deeply on the domestic realm of regula-
tion (Winslett, 2016). The Uruguay Round was the first negotiating round in
which – under the single undertaking approach – all members had to subscribe
to all rules and submit a schedule of tariff reduction concessions (Hoekman and
Kostecki, 2009, p. 540). This shift was also reflected in new S&D measures that
were introduced, namely longer transition periods for developing countries –
which ultimately, however, had to comply with the same rules – and technical
assistance (Michalopoulos, 2000, p. 14).
Second, the neoliberal rejection of market intervention has also discredited
Special and Differential Treatment of developing countries in the realm of
market access. Developing countries must now frame their demands in terms of
the neoliberal ideal of open markets, which implies reciprocity in liberalisation
commitments. Third, because neoliberalism explains development with endo-
genous factors, it is now primarily the developing countries which are expected
to change their policies, which changed the purpose of S&D. New aid programs
addressing capacity and supply side constraints as part of S&D measures consti-
tute a vehicle with which the WTO can interfere in the internal affairs of devel-
oping countries and promote liberalisation. In contrast to dependency theory,
which inspired demands to change the international rules governing global trade
and the policies of the developed world, neoliberalism assumes that poor coun-
tries need to change their own policies in order to develop.
While neoliberal approaches to economic development increasingly became
subject to criticism from the 1990s onwards (Chomsky, 1999; Stiglitz, 2002;
Chorev and Babb, 2009), we argue that its ideas have proven to be highly resil-
ient (Crouch, 2011; Ban and Blyth, 2013, p. 244; Freyberg-Inan and Scholl,
2014) and continue to shape the discourse on trade and development in the WTO
era. The meagre outcomes of the negotiations so far make it difficult to assess
how the discourse on development influences what counts as ‘development-
friendly’ rules under S&D. But we are now seeing that many developing coun-
tries are either framing their demands in neoliberal terms or becoming
increasingly sidelined on global trade platforms. This suggests that the narrower
definition of S&D remains central.
The Doha Development Round, which is based on the very idea that a trade
liberalisation round can promote development, has reinforced an understanding
of development that is based on neoliberal ideas. The words ‘liberalisation’ and
‘development’ are used in the same sentence once in every fifth statement during
the Doha Round compared to once in every 13th statement during the Uruguay
Round and once in every 34th statement during the Tokyo Round.6 This linkage
of concepts has been largely uncontested, even among developing countries.
Nigeria for instance, whose trade policy is ‘mostly unfree’ according to the Heri-
tage Foundation Economic Freedom Index (Miller et al., 2018), in principle
‘acknowledges that trade liberalization can and does contribute to economic
growth and development’ (WTO, 2009, p. 2). While challenging the dominance
of the established powers, the emerging countries did not really depart from the
Washington Consensus (Ban and Blyth, 2013), but adopted the neoliberal rhet-
oric of the established powers in the WTO context (Hopewell, 2016) and
developed a ‘global developmental liberalism’ instead (Cammack, 2012).
Developed countries increasingly expect developing countries to comply with
the same standards as themselves, because liberalisation is considered the best
policy for countries at all levels of development. A developed country official
underlined this expectation when stating,
[o]ne thing that I think is not going to work anymore in the future is to say,
this is the set of rules for developed countries in some kind of modalities,
and this is the set of rules for developing countries.7
Countries that continue to demand exemptions from liberalisation commit-

ments for developing countries under S&D – now often in the form of calls for
more policy space (Hannah and Scott, 2017) – are increasingly sidelined in
WTO negotiations. India, which has championed the defensive developing
country demands like the Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) in agriculture
and the exemption of food stockholding programs from subsidy disciplines, has
received much criticism for its nonconformist stance (Efstathopoulos and Kelly,
2014; Wilkinson et al., 2014). Similarly, neoliberal antipathy against market
interventions continues to inhibit preferential market access arrangements for
developing countries. In the Doha Round, exceptions from this rule are only
made for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) which are directly covered by the
Duty-Free Quota-Free (DFQF ) market access which members agreed to improve
at the Bali Ministerial Conference in 2013. Other developing countries can still
demand market access, but only in the form of general market liberalisation, not
in the form of preferential access which would give them an edge over developed
country competitors. Brazil, which is very competitive in agriculture, has taken
Development 139
this route, pushing for the liberalisation of agriculture as a leader of the G20 in
the Doha Round (Hopewell, 2013). ‘Our platform is about “levelling the playing
field”, through the full integration of agriculture into the multilateral rules-based
trading system’, Brazil’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Celso Amorim (2003)
declared after the Cancún Ministerial.
To legitimise their initiative for the abolition of cotton subsidies, even the
Cotton Four, consisting of four LDCs, framed their demands in neoliberal terms
(Eagleton-Pierce, 2012). When President Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso
introduced the cotton initiative to the Trade Negotiations Committee, he emphas-
ised, ‘our countries are not asking for charity, neither are we requesting prefer-
ential treatment or additional aid. We solely demand that, in conformity with
WTO basic principles, the free market rule be applied’ (WTO, 2003). Framing
offensive demands in terms of the neoliberal liberalisation credo reifies a nar-
rower re-definition of S&D and limits the kinds of development-friendly rules
that developing countries can call for. It makes sense only for those countries
which are already competitive in at least certain sectors and it implies a general
commitment to market opening which makes it more difficult to protect one’s
own markets. For instance, developed countries have been quick to ask develop-
ing countries pushing for liberalisation in agriculture to reciprocate in industrial
goods – where most of them are much less competitive.
Finally, the endogenous explanation of ‘underdevelopment’ contained within
neoliberal thinking continues to define who is seen as responsible for addressing
the inequality between developed and developing countries. By fusing the dis-
course on development in the world trade regime with neoliberal ideas, a much
greater emphasis was placed on the individual – rather than structural – obstacles
to economic growth. While in the Tokyo Round structural adjustment was expected
from the developed countries, in the Uruguay and Doha Round most statements
about structural adjustment concerned developing countries – usually in the context
of the IMF Structural Adjustment Programmes for debtor countries. Developing
countries are seen as responsible for integrating themselves into the global trading
system, while developed countries are merely expected to provide financial or tech-
nical assistance. The responsibility of developed countries to address structural
imbalances in the world economic system – as earlier interpretations of S&D
emphasised – recedes into the background. In his statement at the WTO Ministerial
Conference, Horst Köhler, then Managing Director of the IMF, stated:
failure [on the part of poor countries] to integrate into the global trading
system has been all too common.… In order to succeed, they need to
strengthen their own policies and institutional capacity, alongside greater
assistance from the international community and renewed growth in the
global economy.
(WTO, 2001b, p. 2)
This discourse has also been taken up by developing countries themselves.

A representative of Paraguay for instance argued along similar lines in 2005:
‘[i]t goes without saying that we recognize the primary responsibility of each
individual State for its own development’ (WTO, 2005, p. 2).
The responsibility of the developed countries and the international com-
munity lies in providing aid and advice – rather than in providing improved
market access and addressing existing imbalances in the global economic
system. This idea is reflected in the greater prominence of S&D that relates to
technical or financial assistance such as the ‘Technical Cooperation for Capacity-
Building, Growth and Integration’ (WTO, 2001a, p. 1) and ‘Aid for Trade’
(WTO, 2017a) initiatives. In the name of development, these aid programs inter-
fere with economic policy decisions in developing countries and ultimately
promote liberalisation in developing countries – while market distortions in
developed countries remain unaddressed. Similarly, the S&D measures included
in the Trade Facilitation Agreement, concluded in 2013 as part of the Doha
Development Round negotiations, amount merely to longer implementation
periods and capacity-building support for developing countries. Other decisions
made during the ongoing negotiation round show that special measures in favour
of improving market access for LDCs are framed primarily in terms of unbind-
ing best-endeavour clauses (Narlikar and Tussie, 2016, p. 218).
From political to economic definitions of developing country

status: toxic discussions about differentiation and emerging
powers
While for much of the GATT era the trade and development debate focused on
the question of what development friendly rules are, in the Doha Round the
question of who counts as a developing country to start with has come to domi-
nate discussions. In particular, emerging countries such as Brazil, India and
China as well as established powers such as the US and the European Union
have begun to act as meaning makers when it comes to defining the boundaries
of developing country status in the world trade regime. We argue that this shift
in discourse towards differentiation among developing countries does not only
reflect greater heterogeneity in terms of economic development among them, but
also a closer association of the developing country status with specific economic
criteria – and thus a change in the ‘mind map’ used to discuss development in
the world trade regime.
The GATT’s legal framework did not clarify who counts as a developing
country. Even though GATT Part IV and the Enabling Clause provided legal
grounds for preferential treatment of developing countries, the question of who
could claim to be a ‘developing’ country remained unspecified (Heron, 2013,
p. 22). Instead, countries could simply designate themselves as developing coun-
tries (Rolland, 2012, p. 80). UNCTAD was instrumental in institutionalising this
practice of self-declaration as a means of strengthening solidarity across devel-
oping countries (Heron, 2013, p. 22). The definition of a developing country was
understood primarily in relation to a common ‘history rooted in the inequalities
of a colonial or imperialist past’ (Alden et al., 2010, p. 3; see also Dirlik, 2004).
Development 141
The group of 77 developing countries for instance explicitly sought to redress
‘injustice and neglect of centuries’ (UNCTAD, 1964). More generally, develop-
ing country status was influenced by the ideologically informed notions of three
worlds that emerged during the Cold War: the ‘First World’ of free industrialised
countries, the ‘Second World’ of communist industrialised countries and the
‘Third World’ of underdeveloped, non-industrialised countries (Escobar, 1995,
p. 31).8
This highly political understanding of developing country status was
important because it implied that there was no need to resort to clear-cut eco-
nomic criteria for defining who could claim benefits under the Enabling Clause.
Only the legally defined sub-category of ‘least-developed’ among the develop-
ing countries (that was imported from the UN system into the GATT) was less
rooted in the notion of solidarity among developing countries. The category
reflected a combination of economic and socio-economic criteria, including a per
capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US$100 or less, a share of manufac-
turing in total GDP of 10 per cent or less, and an adult literacy rate of 20 per cent
or less (UN ECOSOC, 1971, p. 16; Hawthorne, 2013, pp. 18–19).
Developed countries first began to contest the established practice of ‘self-
declaration’ in the GATT in the early 1970s and the 1980s. The United States
attempted to introduce the concept of graduation in order to exclude newly
industrialising countries from developing country status, initially with limited
success. By the early 1980s, however, the greater economic differentiation of the
developing country bloc became more apparent, in particular as Brazil and South
Korea and other East-Asian countries continued to grow rapidly (Alessandrini,
2010, pp. 119–121; Preeg, 2012, p. 125). As a result, developed countries began
to demand greater differentiation between LDCs and other developing countries.
During the GATT’s Uruguay round, developed countries succeeded in restrict-
ing a range of development-oriented concessions to the limited sub-group of
LDCs. But the right of countries to designate themselves as developing countries
within the world trading system remained untouched.
The practice of self-declaration continued into the 1990s when the WTO was
founded after the end of the Uruguay round negotiations. The WTO states on its
website that
[t]here are no WTO definitions of ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries.

Members announce for themselves whether they are ‘developed’ or ‘devel-
oping’ countries. However, other members can challenge the decision of a
member to make use of provisions available to developing countries.
(WTO, 2017b)
During the Doha Development Round, however, developed countries began to

contest the practice of self-designation more fiercely than ever before. In
response to the rapid economic growth in some parts of the developing world,
developed countries – most prominently among them the US – challenged
the classification of countries such as Brazil, India and China as developing
countries. Given the greater economic weight of these countries, the question of
classification became highly entangled with the political dynamics of the much-
proclaimed power shift from the West towards so-called ‘rising powers’. The
reluctance of the US and the European Union to accept their claims to develop-
ing country status is a reflection of the unwillingness to grant special treatment
to countries that were more and more seen as competitors. They feared that S&D
would give Brazil, India and China a significant commercial advantage over
developed countries (see Hopewell, 2016, p. 141).
To support their calls that Brazil, India and China should graduate from
developing country status, and therefore their right to S&D, developed countries
acted as meaning makers who tried to refocus the definition of the developing
country status on economic criteria. The US Ambassador to the WTO, Michael
Punke, asked whether ‘advanced developing economies like India, China, and
Brazil, [are] ready to accept the responsibility and leadership that goes along
with their new position in the global economy’ (ICTSD, 2010). The emphasis on
their current ‘position in the global economy’ contrasts earlier and more inclu-
sive understandings of the developing country category rooted primarily in a
shared history. By defining their status as ‘developing economies’ rather than
‘developing countries’ he shifts the framing of the definition of the developing
country group from political towards economic criteria. Brazil, India and China
are now commonly referred to as ‘emerging economies’ in the WTO.
The concerned countries strongly object to this new practice of categorisation,
including the term ‘emerging economies’ or the notion of ‘emerging countries’
as a new category of WTO members. A trade official from one of these countries
for instance complained that ‘there is no word called emerging countries or
emerging developing countries in the WTO terminology, but it is a word which
is largely used by the US and its think tanks’.9 Their attempts to counter new
discourses on classification mirror both the attempt to correct historical imbal-
ances and injustices (Narlikar and Tussie, 2016, p. 213) as well as the strategic
incentive not to graduate from the developing country status to maintain access
to S&D (Lamp, 2017, p. 492).
While there has been a ‘tacit acknowledgement of diversity among develop-
ing countries’ (Hannah and Scott, 2017, p. 127) the question of how to classify
emerging countries remains unresolved. As the former WTO Director-General
Pascal Lamy lamented:
[w]e know the rule of the game for rich countries, we know the rule of the
game for poor countries. But WTO members have not made up their mind
whether China is a rich country with many poor, or a poor country with
many rich.
(Pascal Lamy, quoted in Anyangwe, 2013)
Crucially, which economic criteria are relevant to the delimitation of the bound-
aries of developing country status remains contested, with some arguing in
favour of GDP, and others in favour of per capita GDP as an indicator. US
Development 143
officials, for instance, frequently refer to China as ‘the world’s second largest
economy’ (US press release, 2016) to delegitimise China’s claims to be acknow-
ledged as a developing country. China, on the contrary, claims that the country
continues to hold a comparatively low per capita gross domestic product, even if
its overall economic performance is impressive. In its 2011 White Paper on
‘China’s Peaceful Development’, the government stated that:
China’s per capita GDP in 2010 was about USD4,400, ranking around the
100th place in the world. Unbalanced development still exists between the
urban and rural areas and among different regions; the structural problems
in economic and social development remain acute.
(PRC, 2011)
Therefore, the definition of an emerging economy as opposed to a developing

country remains contested. The term emerging economies, however, has gained
traction in ‘WTO speak’ and – whether rightly or wrongly– makes it easier to
exclude economically advanced developing countries from the special rights
originally associated with the developing country status.
The way in which the definition of the developing country status changed
over time has facilitated the ‘capture’ of the development discourse through
questions of differentiation. There is a tendency to differentiate among an
increasing number of sub-within the developing country category. As a
result, S&D measures target particular sub-groups of developing countries, most
prominently the group of Least Developed Countries.
While it is too early to tell how the greater focus on differentiation – facilit-
ated by an emphasis of specific economic criteria for defining the group of devel-
oping countries – will affect the position of developing countries in the WTO in
the end, two unintended side-effects have already become apparent.
First, developing countries that are neither ‘emerging’ nor part of the most
relevant sub-group, the LDC group, find it increasingly difficult to benefit from
their status as a way to access S&D measures in WTO negotiations. Developed
countries have been hesitant to grant Special and Differential Treatment to
developing countries, given that emerging countries continue to self-designate
themselves as members of that group. As a result, many developed country
members focus their attention more and more on LDCs rather than on ‘develop-
ing countries’ as legitimate right-holders of S&D. The growing importance of
this more limited sub-category manifests itself in the decreasing number of ref-
erences to developing countries compared to LDCs (see Table 9.1). During the
Tokyo round, references made to the entire group of developing countries were
around 35 times more frequent than those to the narrower sub-group of LDCs.
By the time of the Doha round, WTO members referred to both terms with
almost equal frequency.
This shift in language has not been without consequences. The only decisions
made so far under the WTO, the Bali package (2013) and the Nairobi package
(2015), for instance included a number of new S&D provisions that only apply
Table 9.1 Developing country categories in statements at GATT sessions of contracting
parties and WTO ministerial conferences
Tokyo round Uruguay round Doha round
LDC term1 27 105 1,432

Developing country (DC) term2 963 485 1,807
Ratio DC/LDC term per statement 35.7 4.6 1.3
Notes
1 Search terms were: LDC/least developed/least-developed.
2 Search terms were: developing country/developing econom/developing member/developing world/
developing and emerging/developing and least developed/developing and least-developed/
developing and LDC.
to LDCs: preferential rules of origin (WTO, 2013a, 2015a), preferential

treatment in services (WTO, 2013b, 2015b) and a best-endeavour decision on
DFQF (WTO, 2013c). A developing country official from a non-LDC country
lamented this trend, arguing that:
we have a problem with countries that are developing but are not LDCs.…
Most of the time we end up losing a lot. Since 2005, the LDCs have been
harvesting the duty-free-quota-free market access from Hong-Kong.…
However, the countries that are not LDCs are the losers.11
As a result, many developing countries, especially middle-income countries, are

very sensitive and defensive to any discussions about differentiation. It is feared
that differentiation could ‘be used to undermine the delivery of S&D in its
totality’.12
Second, increasing contestation of the emerging countries’ self-declaration as
developing countries was detrimental to other developing countries that claim
special rights under S&D. The unresolved stand-off over classifications has ulti-
mately diverted attention away from the development agenda of the round, as
the conflict between emerging and established powers has become more
entrenched.13 As Nicholas Lamp (2017, p. 496) has argued, ‘[t]he developed
countries are ever less willing to accept that the emerging economies take refuge
in a discourse of development that emerged at a very different historical
juncture’. Yet, emerging countries are equally unwilling to back down, which as
a developing country representative summarised, reinforces the deadlock
situation:
so it is now a battle amongst the developed countries and the so-called

emerging economies.… So the round has now become hostage to that
struggle between the developed and the emerging economies.14
This, in turn, meant that the fate of the WTO has been linked to a lesser extent to
the concept of development in recent years – despite the continuing prominence
of the term. When the Doha Development Round was launched in 2001, there
Development 145
was clear agreement among developed and developing countries that develop-
ment needs to be central for the WTO to succeed. The Doha Ministerial Declara-
tion (WTO, 2001c) stated that ‘[t]he majority of WTO members are developing
countries. We seek to place their needs and interests at the heart of the Work
Programme adopted in this Declaration’. But as a result of the unresolved dead-
lock situation, politicians have increasingly turned to negotiations of free trade
agreements outside of the WTO (Muzaka and Bishop, 2015, pp. 390–292). Many
officials and observers began to question the efficiency of the WTO (Narlikar,
2010, p. 724).
These partly external developments gave rise to narratives that portray Doha
as a ‘life and death struggle’ for the world trading system rather than primarily a
development-oriented negotiation round. They suggest that it is more important
to focus on short-term measures that safeguard the multilateral system (Wilkin-
son, 2012, p. 397) than to resolve the core issues of the Doha mandate. The
recent calls of developed countries – the US in particular – to close the Doha
Development Round, even if no agreement is reached, exemplify the fact that
the ongoing deadlock situation has reduced the discursive space to demand more
development-friendly rules based on S&D. Given that ‘international trade policy
is developing in a more aggressive way’,15 many developing country representa-
tives seem to have accepted the fact that it has become almost inevitable that
they will have to give up some of their aspirations. In particular, the promise to
conclude the Doha Development Round only when agreement on all issues –
including on S&D for all developing countries – can be reached, seems difficult
to push through. As a developing country representative said: it is ‘not really
good for developing countries, but the most realistic way; otherwise the cred-
ibility of the WTO seems to be threatened’.16 Another representative added that
‘the pragmatic way is to avoid the toxic discussions of definitions’.17
Paying attention to language has thus brought the important role of contesta-
tion over where to draw the boundaries between – and within – the groups of
developing and developed countries to the forefront. These boundaries, created
through language, affect not only who can claim to legitimately have access to
S&D as a developing country, but the role of contestation also helps us to under-
stand how the negotiation round has been taken hostage by a stand-off between
emerging and developed countries over classifications.
Conclusion
Notwithstanding the fact that the WTO is holding a Development Round, devel-
oping countries continue to lament the growing marginalisation of their interests.
Changes in discourse alone cannot account for the lack of success that develop-
ing countries have in asserting their interests in the WTO. Even during the
golden era of dependency-theory-inspired special treatment in the GATT in the
1960s and 1970s, developing countries were unable to secure access to sensitive
sectors of developed country markets. However, we have demonstrated how
paying attention to changes in the language of development in the world trading
system since the 1980s helps us to understand why many developing countries
claim that their concerns remain unheard – despite the increasing prominence of
the term in the Doha Development Round. The kind of S&D they ask for may
have been discredited or has become marginalised in debates about who can
claim developing country status in the first place.
The manner in which the discourse on development evolved in the world
trading system was closely linked to the prominence of different theories of eco-
nomic development. While the failure of import-substitution development in
Latin America and the economic growth in South East Asian countries – that
was perceived to be the result of trade liberalisation policies – discredited
dependency theory, there was and is nothing inevitable in the waxing and
waning of different economic theories. Meaning makers, such as the economist
Raúl Prebisch or UNCTAD regarding dependency theory or the economist Lal
and the World Bank or the IMF regarding neoliberalism, were crucial in pushing
for discursive shifts which ultimately resulted in narrower (re)interpretations of
S&D. The continued prominence of neoliberalism in the WTO era means that
the language of neoliberalism present in the minds of negotiators from developed
as well as many developing countries continues to bind development to liberali-
sation. It defines the kinds of demands that developing countries can make in the
trade regime, as it makes market intervention seem like a taboo word.
Similarly, with the economic rise of countries such as Brazil, India and China,
questions of differentiation among the developing country bloc have gained new
prominence. But the categorisation of countries into the camps of developed and
developing countries is by no means unambiguous. The question of where to
draw the boundary between developed and developing countries is political as
well as analytical. It depends on whether the central criterion is political alliance
or economic performance and on whether economic performance is measured in
terms of trade capacity or the number of people living in poverty.
To some extent, these struggles over where to draw the boundary of the cat-
egory of developing country have undermined the ability of emerging countries
to serve as advocates for a development agenda in the world trade regime. This
finding stands in contrast with the assumption that it is primarily economic
power that determines whether or not the concerns of developing countries are
heard (see Baldwin, 2016). It uncovered that contestation over who counted as
‘developing country’ in the first place mitigated the bargaining power of devel-
oping countries as a bloc, and led to unintended outcomes. The unresolved
stand-off over how to classify emerging countries has not only had profound
consequences for other developing countries that seek access to S&D, but has
also weakened the political will of developed countries to provide development-
friendly rules in the first place. The rise of economic populism, including Presi-
dent Trump’s recent attempts to discredit the WTO’s Dispute Settlement
procedure, will strengthen discourses that call for saving the WTO in its ‘life and
death struggle’ – even at the cost of abandoning the Doha Development Round.
Development 147
Notes
1 Enemalah delivered the speech on behalf of the Nigerian President Muhammadu
Buhari.
2 We would like to thank Klaus Dingwerth, Stefan Rother and Stefan Wallaschek for
comments on earlier versions of the chapter.
3 The sample includes 26 statements from the Tokyo Round, 207 statements from the
Uruguay Round and 618 statements from the Doha Round. For the Uruguay and Doha
Round written statements exist (usually one per actor and negotiating session). For
the Uruguay Round the sample includes all statements made at the annual sessions of
the GATT Contracting Parties between 1986 and 1994 (42nd to 50th session). For the
Doha Round, it contains all statements made at the WTO Ministerial Conferences
2001, 2005, 2009 and 2013 (the 4th, 6th, 7th and 9th Ministerial Conference). For the
Tokyo Round only summary records of the negotiating sessions are available. In order
to arrive at a comparable measure of statements, we counted the number of actors
(Contracting Parties, observers and GATT functionaries) who made interventions
during the meetings of a particular annual session. All interventions made by the same
actor during one annual session were counted as one statement. The sample for the
Tokyo Round includes the summary records of all annual sessions of the GATT Con-
tracting Parties between 1973 and 1979 (29th to 35th session).
4 The discourse on development creates a system of power that regulates its practice
and fosters particular forms of subjectivity (Escobar, 1995, p. 9), constructing the
developing world as different, inferior and poor (Escobar, 1995, p. 23, pp. 53–54; see
also Doty, 1996, p. 16).
5 In the context of trade, development is commonly equated with economic growth.
Alternative discourses on development emerged primarily outside of the world trading
system. They go beyond an exclusively economic understanding of development and
instead focus for instance on human development or the concept of ‘buen vivir’ –
good living (Thérien, 2014).
6 0.22 times per statement in the Doha Round, 0.08 times per statement in the Uruguay
Round and 0.03 times per statement in the Tokyo Round.
7 Interview with developed country official, Geneva, 16 September 2016.
8 Moreover, developing countries defined themselves by the occurrence of poverty as
opposed to the ‘areas of affluence’ in the developed world (UNCTAD, 1964).
9 Interview with developing country official, Geneva, 15 September 2010.
10 These groups range from geographically defined groups such as the African group or
the group of African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, to issue-based coalitions such
as the G20 and G33 bargaining coalitions that focus on agriculture to coalitions that
rely on clear economic indicators such as the LDC group or the group of small and
vulnerable economies.
13 Interview with developed country official, Geneva, 15 September 2016. For other
reasons behind the Doha round deadlock, see Baldwin (2016, pp. 106–111).
15 Interview with former developing country official, phone-to-capital, 27 September
2016.
17 Interview with official from International Organisation, Geneva, 30 September 2016.
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10 Environment
Emily Lydgate
Introduction
In the almost 90 years since the first modern multilateral trade treaty was rati-
fied,1 over 400 Regional Trade Agreements (‘RTAs’) have been concluded,2
with the World Trade Organization (‘WTO’) providing legal principles and an
institutional foundation for the world trading system. Meanwhile, human-made
environmental problems, and domestic and international laws responding to
these problems, have also multiplied. These laws include restrictions on imports
of products identified as environmentally harmful, as well as the introduction of
national environmental standards and regulatory requirements that complicate
the free movement of goods and services. In various capacities and circum-
stances, the WTO has evaluated the compatibility of environmental trade restric-
tions with key WTO principles. A recurring question has been whether
regulation that restricts trade in imported goods on environmental grounds can
be reconciled with the core WTO principle of non-discrimination based upon
origin. Further, countries have made treaty commitments under a wide range of
multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs); in some cases these clash with
WTO obligations. Finally, the trade liberalisation that the WTO and RTAs have
facilitated has contributed to macroscopic trends of economic globalisation.
These include increased international transit of goods, increased resource
exploitation and CO2 emissions resulting from economies of scale, and the
‘export’ of environmental regulation and standards (or lack thereof ) to foreign
firms seeking market access.
These many intersections have led to vigorous debate about what is often
described as the trade and environment relationship. In this chapter I focus on
how environmental protection has been understood and addressed within the
WTO and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
I also take account of the contributions of external meaning makers, notably civil
society, academics and corporate lobbies, who helped shape these discourses.
At the core of the WTO’s understanding of the environment is a consensus
enshrined in the texts of WTO treaties: that trade and environment are ‘mutually
supportive’. Treaties proscribe legal obligations, often characterised as ‘soft’ or
‘hard’ depending on how precise and binding they are (Abbott and Snidal, 2000).
Environment 153
These obligations are agreed by consensus among WTO Members, who com-
prise virtually all the world’s governments; thus they bridge a vast array of
national positions. When considering the extent to which the WTO should take
account of, and respond to, the demands of environmental protection, there is a
large degree of divergence, making hard obligations difficult to achieve. The
concept of ‘mutual supportiveness’ entails no binding action or duty. The term
can be described as positively ambiguous: positive because the presumption is
one of harmony; ambiguous because this positivity can be interpreted as asser-
tion or aspiration.
Section 2 develops a mind map of varying discourses on ‘environment’ in the
context of the concept of mutual supportiveness. Section 3 traces discursive
change regarding the term through the history of the world trading system.
Section 4 reflects on an emerging dichotomy that complicates existing discourses
identified herein, separating those who advocate multilateral approaches to trade
liberalisation and environmental protection from those who discredit multilateral
approaches as well as their goals. Section 5 concludes.
Mind map
The existence of ‘mutual supportiveness’ between trade and environmental pol-
icies comprises a normative understanding that economic development, through
trade liberalisation, will lead to better environmental protection. This is made
clear in the WTO’s current negotiating framework and its founding treaty; many
major international environmental treaties contain similar or identical language
affirming that an open multilateral trade system will benefit the environment.
This understanding resolves perceived conflicts between ‘environment’ and
‘development’, examined further below, through an emphasis on ecological
modernisation.
Yet WTO negotiations and reports of the WTO and GATT Secretariats make
clear that many Members have expressed competing conceptions of the trade
and environment relationship. One is that trade liberalisation and environmental
protection are mutually antagonistic: growing environmental regulation
described as ‘green protectionism’ which undermines free trade and the broader
goal with which it is often conflated, economic development. Developing coun-
tries often complain that developed countries impose complex environmental
regulatory requirements as trade barriers (Sampson, 2005; see also Jackson,
1992, p. 1230). At times developed countries, notably the US, have also criti-
cised environmental regulation that impedes important export markets, such as
Genetically Modified crops (Eckersley, 2004, p. 44). This underscores that coun-
tries’ positions vis-à-vis particular environmental regulations are shaped by their
export interests and the corporate lobbies that represent them, the latter thus
forming another environmental ‘meaning maker’.
Another important discourse that has run through the WTO and the GATT
before it is that of mutual exclusion: environmental protection is sometimes
described as a ‘non-trade’ issue, falling outside the WTO mandate. Even while
154 Emily Lydgate
the WTO’s founding treaty sets out its objective of securing sustainable develop-
ment, WTO Members have also circumscribed its mandate as consisting of
‘trade issues’. As the argument goes, the WTO does not have the capacity or
expertise to respond adequately to environmental problems. In practice this pro-
hibition serves to delimit the WTO’s environmental responsibilities. It led, for
example, to the selection of the WTO’s Committee on Trade and Environment
(CTE) negotiating items in which trade liberalisation will benefit the environ-
ment (such as trade in Environmental Goods and Services).
Mutual supportiveness provides a pragmatic formulation to span these con-
tentious discourses. It provides a basis for consensus by avoiding the establish-
ment of any formal hierarchy, which would threaten the interests of many
stakeholders. Indeed, the concept treads a somewhat contradictory line: it pur-
ports to address, but also to negate the possibility of, conflict. As multilateral
treaty language, its non-binding nature and the positive ambiguity surrounding
its interpretation contribute to its success. Additionally, while the negotiations
make clear that mutual supportiveness implies an obligation to seek good faith
solutions in the event of conflict, the concept does not proscribe any precise legal
obligation. In sidestepping this challenge, Members circumscribe the WTO’s
environmental ambition.
A final discourse, most evident in academic literature, presents the WTO’s
approach to the environment in evolutionary terms as an arc of progress from the
GATT to the WTO. There has been progress, but deep divisions between WTO
Members mean that the hallmark of the WTO approach to the environment has
been caution. WTO negotiators and the Appellate Body have maintained ambi-
guity regarding the ‘tough questions’ that arise when there are actual or potential
clashes. The result is to preserve, passively, the primacy of WTO obligations.
Discursive change
Origins of the multilateral trade system

The WTO website states that the awareness of the relationship between trade
and the environment of its predecessor, the GATT, dates back to 1970 (WTO
website, 2018a). Trade scholars often echo this message, asserting that the
environment was not on the agenda of GATT negotiators in the late 1940s as it
was simply not a recognised international concern.3 Sympathetic academics, the
WTO Secretariat and trade negotiators often portray the WTO’s support for, and
understanding of, environmental protection in an evolutionary light. While some
GATT rulings were problematic, later disputes, notably the so-called ‘Shrimp–
Turtle’ WTO dispute of 1998, marked the emergence of adequate ‘policy space’
(Andersen, 2015; Charnovitz, 2007; see also note 7) for environmental regulation.
However, while there was an explosion of MEAs and domestic environmental
regulation starting in the 1970s, which drove these issues higher up the GATT
agenda, ‘trade’ and ‘environment’ treaties have been coordinated and intercon-
nected. International efforts to manage wildlife trade and conservation arose
Environment 155
contiguously with early trade treaties. Negotiators recognised that trade restric-
tion played an important role in enabling wildlife conservation treaties to achieve
their goals. In 1900, European colonial powers signed the Convention for the
Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds and Fish (London Convention); in the same
year the US passed its first federal law protecting wildlife, the Lacey Act, which
prohibited trade in animals hunted illegally.4 During the years leading up to the
Second World War further multilateral treaties were concluded for conserving
natural and living resources.5 In 1929, the Convention for the Abolition of
Import and Export Prohibitions and Restrictions (Prohibitions Convention) was
also concluded. Its original 29 signatories included the same trade powers behind
the London Convention and the Lacey Act. Aware that promoting free move-
ment of goods could undermine these efforts, they excluded from coverage
‘measures taken to prevent them [animals or plants] from degradation or
extinction’.6
Soon after the end of the Second World War the United Nations launched
negotiations for an International Trade Organization. The proposed Havana
Charter founding the International Trade Organization (ITO) incorporated similar
language on measures to protect animals and plants. The ITO also acknowledged
that existing treaties on wildlife conservation should take precedence in the event
of a conflict. It contained an exception for measures ‘taken in pursuance of any
inter-governmental agreement which relates solely to the conservation of fisheries
resources, migratory birds or wild animals’ (United Nations, 1948). In this respect
it was more deferential to environmental treaties than the current WTO, which
contains no such exception. Indeed, incorporating such an exception into the
WTO, which declares that MEAs should prevail in a conflict, is a proposal often
made by environmental advocates (Eckersley, 2004, p. 44).
The ITO formed part of the UN and its larger aims to achieve peace and pros-
perity, economic and social development (United Nations, 1948, n. 12, Chapter
1, Purpose and Objectives, Article 1). As well as giving employment equal
billing to trade as a treaty objective (the Havana Charter on Trade and Employ-
ment), it also safeguarded labour standards, an issue which has continued to
elude formal recognition by WTO Members. Doomed by its deep ambition to
regulate the global economy, which included management of countries’ trade
balances, it was never ratified, but remains an alternative vision for an inter-
national trade organisation with more broadly-conceived aims and objectives.
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947 became the de facto
governing instrument for international trade. The GATT included a General
Exception, Article XX. Its negotiators neglected to include a specific exception
for ‘conservation of fisheries resources, migratory birds or wild animals’ dis-
cussed in the preparatory work for the Havana Treaty (see WTO, 1991, para.
3.30). It does, however, permit trade-restrictive measures that fall into certain
categories with antecedents in the Prohibitions Convention, Articles XX(b) and
(g), which apply to measures protecting human, animal or plant life or health,
and conserving exhaustible natural resources, respectively. The chapeau to
Article XX applies an additional non-discrimination test, requiring that the
156 Emily Lydgate
measure should not constitute ‘arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination’ or ‘dis-
guised restriction on international trade’ in ‘countries where the same conditions
prevail’. GATT 1947, including Article XX, was incorporated into the WTO
Agreements in the form of GATT 1994, still often invoked by WTO Members in
disputes. Thus GATT Article XX(b) and (g) remain important in disputes on
environmental regulation; many such disputes in the GATT and later the WTO
have turned on the interpretation of these phrases.7
The 1970s: pollution, regulation, development

In the 1970s two parallel narratives about the trade and environment relationship
developed. First, the GATT was positioned as a body with competence to
address negative impacts of environmental regulation on trade, feeding its
expertise and priorities into international environmental negotiations. Second, as
a settlement of the North-South divide, the UN Conference on the Human
Environment (UNCHE) arrived at a positive construction of the relationship
between environmental and development. This laid the groundwork for sub-
sequent treaties to position trade – a driver of economic development – as a
support for environmental protection.
By the 1970s the GATT was a heterogeneous global organisation including
newly independent former colonies (Milner, 2005). As the GATT proved its
utility in facilitating tariff reduction, the final two rounds of GATT negotiations
in the 1970s and 80s increasingly focused on reducing non-tariff barriers to trade
(WTO website, 2018d). The GATT obligates countries to treat the products from
all WTO Members equally vis-à-vis one another (the Most Favoured Nation
Principle set out in Article I:1) and vis-à-vis domestic products (the National
Treatment Principle set out in Article III). As opposed to tariffs that are collected
at the border, these non-discrimination provisions focus primarily on internal
domestic regulation. They apply not only to laws that specify different treatment
of products based on their origin (de jure discrimination) but also to de facto dis-
crimination from origin-neutral laws. Determining whether a domestic regula-
tion contravenes these provisions requires intensive judicial review.
This emphasis on non-discrimination was significant, as the 1970s also
marked the beginning of the global environmental movement and an explosion
of domestic environmental regulation worldwide. The 1972 UNCHE was the
first to focus on environmental issues. In negotiations, developing countries
threatened to boycott on the basis that they were being asked to take responsib-
ility for problems they did not create. There was concern among countries
long upon sovereign use of natural resources (Mickelson, 2015). This resulted
in a broad yet shallow treaty that focused on linking the environment to the
imperative of encouraging development and global equality. In the words of
Indira Gandhi, who represented India: ‘Are not poverty and need the greatest
polluters? […] The environment cannot be improved in conditions of poverty.
Nor can poverty be eradicated without the use of science and technology’
(Gandhi, 1972, p. 35).
Environment 157
Gandhi’s statements illustrate the premise that provided a basis for inter-
national consensus on the need to protect the environment. It is summarised
neatly by the motto of the UN Environment Programme, founded at the UNCHE:
‘environment for development’. This justification for environmental protection
draws from ecological modernisation, a school of thought that focuses on the
contributions of environmental protection to economic development, and the
environmental Kuznet’s curve, which posits that increasing GDP leads to better
domestic environmental outcomes (see Stern, 2004).
The idea of ‘mutual supportiveness’ between trade and environment had not
yet been adopted. By linking trade with economic development and prosperity, it
extends the same premise that was so useful in achieving consensus in the
UNCHE context. Yet when the GATT Secretariat was invited to contribute to
UNCHE it raised concerns about regulation for environmental protection. It pro-
duced a report on ‘Industrial Pollution Control and International Trade’ (GATT,
1971), which examined ways in which the proliferation of environmental regula-
tion might distort free trade. It analysed different forms of regulation or trade
restriction that countries might impose in order to compensate domestic indus-
tries for the costs of increased anti-pollution regulation, ranking them in terms of
their trade-distorting effects and likelihood to contravene GATT obligations
(GATT, 1971, pp. 13–19).
1980s and 1990s: treaty harmony, civil society rage

As these contrasting narratives of harmony and conflict between economic
development and environmental protection were further developed, their poten-
tial for incongruence became clearer. During the late 1980s and early 1990s a
number of major environmental treaties proclaimed the contribution of trade lib-
eralisation to environmental protection; simultaneously, there was increasing
protest against the GATT’s environmental record.
In 1989, the World Commission on Environment and Development produced
‘Our Common Future’, also known as the Brundtland Report, which established
the term ‘sustainable development’ as a locus for international law. The term
itself frames a resolution of the UNCHE challenge: constructing the relationship
between environmental protection and development in a positive and general
enough manner to create international consensus. Trade was positioned as a
force to support environmental protection. During the 1992 Earth Summit in
Rio, environment ministers suggested that the only contribution GATT should
make to sustainable development was to conclude the Uruguay Round success-
fully (United Nations, 1992b). The non-binding Agenda 21 (an Agenda for the
twenty-first century) concludes that an open multilateral trading system is con-
sistent with sustainable development; improved market access for developing
countries’ exports will have a positive environmental impact (United Nations,
1992c). Agenda 21 includes the first treaty reference to mutual supportiveness:
‘[t]he international community should provide a supportive international climate
for achieving environment and development goals by … making trade and
158 Emily Lydgate
environment mutually supportive’.8 Indeed, both sustainable development and
mutual supportiveness provide the same broad-brush reconciliation of potential
conflict (see also Lydgate, 2012).
In fact, tensions between major export industries and environmental lobbies
were growing. The first GATT dispute on environmental regulations took place
in 1991: United States – Restrictions on Imports of Tuna, often referred to as
Tuna–Dolphin. Mexico complained that the US Marine Mammal Protection Act,
which banned tuna caught by ‘purse seine’ nets that also trapped and killed dol-
phins, was discriminatory. The US aimed to protect dolphins that were not in its
own domestic territory, but rather that of Mexico. The GATT Panel decided a
country taking trade action to attempt to enforce its own laws in another country
could not take recourse to the Article XX exception detailed above.9 It also ruled
that the US could not legally ban tuna because it objected to the way that it was
produced.
The GATT Secretariat published a study underscoring the Panel’s ruling.
After concluding that trade benefits the environment, it warned that protectionist
interests can exploit environmental regulation, stating that:
[i]f the door were opened to use trade policies unilaterally to offset the com-
petitiveness effects of different environmental standards, or to attempt to
force other countries to adopt domestically-favoured practices and policies,
the trading system would start down a very slippery slope.
(GATT, 1992, p. 6)
It identified environmental policies as a ‘potentially serious source of new pro-

tectionism’ (GATT, 1992, p. 34). US environmentalists responded by launching
protests against ‘GATTzilla’ trampling over national regulation. The strength of
the public protest contributed to the decision of the US and Mexico that the
ruling should not be implemented.10
But the ruling simply put into practice concerns of GATT Members about
‘unilateral’ trade-restrictive regulation to address transboundary environmental
problems. Regulation based upon processes and production methods, or PPMs in
WTO parlance, are split into the categories of product-related and non-product-
related (NPR). The former, while physically invisible, have to do with quality or
functionality. This dispute concerned the latter: invisible distinctions based on
NPR PPMs, in this case a ban applied to fish caught following a particular
fishing process. Basing trade distinctions on such distinctions intrudes deeply
into the production process in order to impose foreign values; many GATT
members rejected the legitimacy of basing trade restrictions on such distinc-
tions.11 The earlier chapter in this volume, on Protectionism, provides a useful
companion analysis here (Winslett, this volume).
The ruling and report clarified that countries could not utilise trade restriction
to achieve environmental objectives if it required exporting countries to modify
their production practices. This undermined national environmental regulation,
and threw into doubt the GATT-legality of national trade restrictions responding
Environment 159
to multilateral obligations. A sub-set of MEAs utilise trade restrictions, such as
import or export bans, requirements for packaging or shipping, requirements
receive consent from importing countries, or simply reporting requirements.
These restrict trade in environmentally-harmful goods,12 and encourage MEA
participation and compliance.13
In describing the negotiations of the Montreal Protocol, Brack stated:
trade provisions of the Protocol … were a vital component in (a) building

the wide international coverage the treaty has achieved and (b) preventing
industrial migration to non-parties to escape the controls on ODS [ozone
depleting substances].
(Brack, 1996, p. xvii)
Parker (1999–2000, p. 3) summarised well the utility of trade restrictions in

achieving stronger outcomes for MEAs with a rhetorical question: ‘Can a world
of over 150 nation-states effectively preserve what is left of its global commons
by consensus only, without any use of trade leverage?’ As described above, early
trade negotiators were mindful that trade restrictions were necessary to curb
species extinction, and deferred to relevant MEAs. In contrast, the GATT ruling
suggested that national efforts to implement trade-related obligations of MEAs
would be GATT-illegal.
Despite these dismal implications, the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment
and Development incorporated the central premises of the GATT report on
Trade and Environment. Principle 12 states that ‘States should cooperate to
promote a supportive and open international economic system that would lead to
economic growth and sustainable development in all countries, to better address
the problems of environmental degradation.’ It then draws from language of the
chapeau of GATT Article XX, concluding that environmental trade policy meas-
ures should not ‘constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or
a disguised restriction on international trade’. It finally states that countries
should avoid attempting to regulate environmental challenges in other countries
through trade measures on a unilateral basis, urging international cooperation
(United Nations, 1992a).
In 1992 European countries convened the Group on Environmental Measures
and International Trade (EMIT group). The group had not been convened since
its founding in 1971, but GATT Members faced unprecedented countervailing
environmental pressures. On the one hand, many Members, in particular devel-
oping countries, were concerned about the proliferation of environmental regula-
tion. On the other, the GATT’s poor environmental record formed a significant
focus of protest. Though clearly these stakeholders had opposing goals, both
prompted greater environmental responsiveness from GATT Members.
The remarks of the Chairperson summarising Members’ positions after the
first meeting encapsulate the core discourses prevalent among GATT Members
and illustrate how they attempt to reconcile countervailing objectives. The Chair-
person affirmed that the GATT’s competence was limited to trade policies and
160 Emily Lydgate
aspects of environmental policies that would affect trade. He underlined the eco-
logical modernisation view that the multilateral trade system could help address
environmental degradation and over-exploitation in developing countries.
Finally, he concluded that the trade system and sustainable development do not
need to contradict; but trade rules should not be undermined by environmental
measures (WTO, 1992). These statements reveal the utility to negotiators of
positive ambiguity in steering a route through the opposing goals of relevant
meaning makers, a theme further examined in the sections below.
Founding of the WTO: progress?

These same pressures that motivated the EMIT group shaped the decision to
place more emphasis on the environment in the WTO, which was founded two
years later (in 1994), replacing the GATT as the multilateral institution govern-
ing trade. As well as incorporating the original GATT, it contained additional
Agreements on areas such as services, subsidies, technical regulation, sanitary
and health regulation, and intellectual property rights. Elements of some of
these Agreements pertained to the environment, and arguably the most signi-
ficant developments were the enshrining of sustainable development as a WTO
objective in the Preamble to the founding Marrakesh Agreement, and the estab-
lishment of the Committee on Trade and Environment. The latter formalised
and expanded the work of the EMIT group as a standing Committee of the
WTO. ‘Making international trade and environmental policies mutually sup-
portive’ (WTO, 1994a) is its aim: this is the first mention in WTO treaty texts
of the phrase, echoing its use in Agenda 21. In a 1996 report, the CTE expanded
on this, stating that the aims of the WTO and that of environmental protection
‘are both important and they should be mutually supportive in order to
promote sustainable development’. It also reiterated that the WTO’s compet-
ence was limited to trade-related aspects of environmental protection (WTO,
1996, paras. 167–168).
The CTE responded to concerns about trade impacts on the environment
fomented by Tuna–Dolphin. Yet it also provided for greater scrutiny of domestic
trade-restrictive environmental regulation. As stated by Eckersley, ‘These twin,
and somewhat contradictory, objectives had already surfaced in the EMIT and
they reflect persistent differences among the members – particularly between
developed and developing countries’ (Eckersley, 2004, p. 30, footnote omitted).
The CTE embraced, but also circumscribed, the WTO’s environmental
responsibilities. The Decision on Trade and Environment, founding the CTE,
states the need to coordinate trade and environment policies, but:
… without exceeding the competence of the multilateral trading system,

which is limited to trade policies and those trade-related aspects of environ-
mental policies which may result in significant trade effects for its
members …
(WTO, 1994b)
Environment 161
Thus, despite the WTO’s expansion of thematic coverage, it did not re-capture
the breadth and ambition of the abandoned ITO. Indeed, as noted by Lang, not
only trade negotiators but also academic trade lawyers have reinforced this divi-
sion: in both contexts, the environment is often described as a ‘non-trade’ issue
(Lang, 2007, p. 537). In becoming reflexive, this rhetorical separation circum-
scribes the way that we understand the responsibility of the international trade
system to examine its environmental impacts. Lang further stated that:
[i]t is not self-evident, of course, that the major international institution

presiding over the global trade system has no business addressing the social
and environmental impacts of that system, and that such impacts are not
‘trade issues’.
(Lang, 2007, p. 537)
The narrowness of the GATT and then WTO, in focusing only on ‘trade issues’,
was attributed by some commentators to its success in achieving its aims (Horn
and Mavroidis, 2014). In practical terms, the division between ‘trade’ and ‘non-
trade’ has shaped the issues that the CTE has negotiated, addressed further
below.
The Decision on Trade and Environment also avoided key questions such as
the WTO-compatibility of the NPR PPMs that gave rise to such controversy in
the Tuna–Dolphin GATT dispute, as well as the use of trade sanctions for
environmental outcomes, either in the context of MEAs or by individual govern-
ments. As stated by Parker, ‘The … Committee on Trade and Environment …
has declined even to discuss a possible role for unilateral trade measures in
obtaining conservation agreements: the Committee’s mandate was deliberately
drafted to exclude it’ (Parker, 1999–2000, p. 5).
In so doing, the CTE de facto empowered the Appellate Body to develop an
institutional position on these issues; it was soon required to rise to the chal-
lenge. The 1998 US–Shrimp dispute focused on the US requirement that shrimp
fishing operations include a ‘Turtle Excluder Device’ on nets so that endangered
sea turtles would not end up as bycatch. Unlike in the GATT Tuna–Dolphin, the
WTO’s powerful dispute settlement mechanism bound the US and the complain-
ants, who included Thailand and Malaysia.
This ruling is a cornerstone of the narrative that the WTO has made significant
environmental progress.14 The Appellate Body departed from Tuna–Dolphin. It
concluded that the US regulation failed to meet the non-discrimination test
imposed by the Article XX chapeau, as the US had not made sufficient efforts to
negotiate with, and provide information and technical support to, the complaining
countries (WTO, 1998; WTO, 2001a, paras. 163, 166, 172). Thus it critiqued the
manner in which the US imposed its regulation, rather than the fact that it had such
a regulation at all. In so doing it implicitly accepted the legitimacy of regulatory
distinctions based upon NPR PPMs.
When establishing that endangered sea turtles were an ‘exhaustible natural
resource’, the Appellate Body also made reference to various MEAs and the
162 Emily Lydgate
WTO Preamble’s reference to ‘sustainable development’ to justify including
living resources in this category (WTO, 2001a, paras. 152, 153, 155). This pro-
gressive interpretation15 implicitly deferred to MEA obligations, in particular the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and
Flora’s (CITES) endangered species classifications. Also, in the context of
Article XX(g), the Appellate Body wondered whether it was necessary for a
natural resource being protected, in this case sea turtles, to exist within the ter-
ritory of the United States, the country defending its measure. Crucially it
acknowledged that a degree of unilateralism is a common aspect of regulations
that fall under the subparagraphs of Article XX (WTO, 2001a, at para. 121). But
it avoided establishing in principle that unilateral regulation with extraterritorial
impacts could be WTO-legal, stating that there was a territorial ‘nexus’, as sea
turtles passed through the waters of the US (WTO, 2001a, at para. 133). Thus
the gains of the ruling were presented subtly; environmental activists certainly
did not interpret it as an end to the struggle.
2001–present: the Doha Development Agenda

Countries undertook final negotiations on the Doha Ministerial Declaration
(DMD) against the backdrop of the Battle in Seattle. The ferocity of the protest
was unprecedented, and much of it focused on environmental impacts of globali-
sation.16 There was tremendous pressure on the WTO to respond to this ‘legiti-
macy crisis’ (Esty, 2002). The successful conclusion of the DMD in 2001 moved
forward negotiations on environmental issues by providing the CTE with a spe-
cific mandate. Yet, in keeping with the Decision on Trade and Environment, it
responds to countervailing goals. The text is organised around the concept
of mutual supportiveness, demonstrating its distinct interpretations: first as
assertion, second as selection criterion and finally as aspiration. Paragraph 6
states that:
[i]t is the potential impact of economic growth and poverty alleviation that
makes trade a powerful ally of sustainable development. The multilateral
trading system is an important tool to carry forward international efforts
aimed at achieving this goal. The purpose of trade liberalisation and the
WTO’s key principle of non-discrimination is a more efficient allocation of
resources, which should be positive for the environment.
(WTO, 2001b)
The CTE focuses on ‘triple wins’, sectors in which it is possible simultaneously

to liberalise trade, improve economic development and protect the environment.
Paragraph 31(iii) calls for ‘the reduction or, as appropriate, elimination of tariff
and non-tariff barriers to environmental goods and services (EGS)’, as the
removal of trade barriers to EGS will increase environmentally-preferable
practices (WTO website, 2018b). Paragraph 31 also calls attention to fisheries
subsidies (though this negotiation is taking place under the Committee on Rules
Environment 163
(see WTO website, 2012a). The WTO website identifies the removal of fisheries
subsidies as a triple-win (see WTO website, 2012b): they lead to overfishing and
benefit largely developed countries, such that liberalisation would have positive
environment and development results. In 2014, a sub-set of largely developed
countries who account for the majority of trade in EGS agreed to pursue a
plurilateral Environmental Goods Agreement. Given that different countries
have different export interests, there has been disagreement about which goods
should be on that list. Despite concerns from China in particular, negotiators are
optimistic for progress (ICTSD, 2016).
Paragraphs 31(i) and (ii) address institutional linkages between the WTO and
other Multilateral Environmental Agreements, calling for examination of the rela-
tionship between the Multilateral Environmental Agreements and the WTO, with
‘a view toward enhancing mutual supportiveness …’ [emphasis added]. Thus the
CTE confronts only one area of potential conflict between environmental and
trade obligations: the WTO–MEA relationship. Aside from facilitating
information-sharing, they have made little progress on settling the relationship
between WTO obligations and the trade obligations imposed in MEAs. Various
countries have made proposals for clarifying the relationship between them.17
Barring consensus, the CTE has simply affirmed that cooperation is better than
unilateral action, and that both regimes are worthy of respect. Further, negoti-
ations do not address disputes between MEA Parties and non-Parties, thus avoid-
ing the most difficult questions arising from clashes of obligations.18
Members have made reference to MEAs in disputes. In the 2004 EC–Biotech
dispute between the EU and the US, the EU invoked the Cartagena Protocol on
Biosafety (CPB) to justify its precautionary approach to genetically modified
organisms. The Panel concluded that the obligations of the CPB did not apply in
the dispute because the complainant, the US, was not a party.19 In 2016 India–
Solar Cells, in the context of Article XX(d),20 India argued that local content
requirements were integral to fulfilling its obligations under the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Appellate Body
construed the language of Article XX(d) narrowly in order to conclude that the
UNFCCC obligations were not ‘laws and regulations’ as defined by the Article,
as they had not been transposed into Indian domestic law (WTO, 2016, at paras.
5.142–5.149).
The Dispute Settlement Understanding calls upon Members to clarify WTO
provisions in the light of customary rules of interpretation of public international
law.21 In reference to this requirement, the Appellate Body famously declared
that the GATT ‘is not to be read in clinical isolation from public international
law’ (WTO, 1997, p. 17). Further, as discussed above, the Appellate Body called
upon CITES to justify an evolutionary interpretation of ‘living’ natural
resources. Yet, while there has not been a resolved dispute that dealt with direct
conflict,22 the Appellate Body has ruled on treaty conflicts with Regional Trade
Agreements, consistently affirming that WTO jurisdiction and obligations
prevail over those set out in RTAs.23 Paragraph 32 of the DMD affirms the basis
for this pre-eminence:
164 Emily Lydgate
[t]he outcome of the negotiations carried out under paragraph 31(i) and (ii)
… shall not add to or diminish the rights and obligations of Members under
existing WTO agreements … nor alter the balance of these rights and
obligations …
(Doha Ministerial Declaration, para. 32)
The Appellate Body has referenced similar language set out in the Dispute Set-
tlement Understanding to avoid interpreting or applying treaty commitments
external to the WTO.
Vidigal argues that the Appellate Body’s approach involves attempting to
establish the ‘common understanding’ of WTO Members vis-à-vis the external
international legal rule at stake; evolving norms and subsequent practice inform
its interpretation (Vidigal, 2013). This suggests a mixed picture: in the event of a
dispute, the Appellate Body would be very cautious about elevating MEA
obligations above those of the WTO, but also would attempt to ascertain any
‘common understanding’ of the importance of the objectives it pursued.
Formally, there is no hierarchy between MEAs and the WTO, but institution-
ally the WTO has stronger enforcement mechanisms. As Eckersley has poeti-
cally concluded:
[j]udged in terms of size and teeth, we might regard the WTO as a large
tiger and MEAs as a ragged collection of small cats. The irony is that in the
one area where certain MEAs do possess effective sanctions, … they remain
vulnerable to legal challenge in the WTO.
(Eckersley, 2004, p. 24)
Eckersley further argues that simply the existence of the WTO and its dispute
settlement system has a chilling effect on MEAs: it dissuades countries from
strong adoption of trade restrictions as they know that these can be effectively
challenged (Ibid.).
In fact, head-on collision in a dispute is undesirable for both sides. While
asserting the pre-eminence of WTO obligations would contribute to more
‘Battles in Seattle’, deferring to MEA trade obligations in principle would prove
controversial among WTO Members. This remains the key area to watch in
terms of the WTO’s ability to deliver ‘mutual supportiveness’.
In considering specific instances in which environmental regulation comes
into conflict with WTO obligations, the Appellate Body inevitably plays a key
role in establishing whether mutual supportiveness can be achieved in specific
regulatory scenarios. Indeed, Sampson sets out a potential resolution of contra-
dictory assertions that trade liberalisation and environmental protection are
mutually supportive, but also threaten one another. He writes:
[t]hose promoting the virtues of trade liberalisation would not deny

that trade liberalisation and growth can be harmful to the environment, or
that trade liberalisation per se will not necessarily achieve sustainable
Environment 165
development.… The WTO response is that, for benefits to be realised and
for trade-induced growth to be sustainable, national environmental, income
distribution and social policies should be put in place.
(Sampson, 2005, p. 55)
In other words, national environmental regulation is essential to bring about

mutual supportiveness. Formally, the WTO supports Members in setting such
policies. As the Preamble to the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT
Agreement) states:
[n]o country should be prevented from taking measures necessary … for the
protection of human, animal or plant life or health, of the environment, or
for the prevention of deceptive practices, at the levels it considers
appropriate.
(WTO, 1995, Article 12)
In the context of Article XX, the Appellate Body has made clear that the level of
protection a Member desires will be respected.24
If desired environmental protection is compatible with WTO obligations, this
suggests that less trade-restrictive means are normally available to achieve the
goal. However, as Brack asserted with reference to the Montreal Protocol, trade-
restriction can be a useful strategy in achieving environmental aims (Brack,
1996). In fact, the existence of direct conflict can be deduced by the Appellate
Body’s own approach: under GATT Article XX and loosely analogous provi-
sions elsewhere, notably the TBT Agreement, it undertakes a kind of limited
proportionality reasoning (see Lydgate, 2016). This includes examining whether
a measure’s structure and application are designed to discriminate against
imported products, determining the appropriateness of the means–ends relation-
ship between the regulation and the goal, and assessing the reasonable avail-
ability of other measures to achieve that goal.
Examining the importance of the regulatory goal at stake implies that more
important goals justify more trade restriction. Elsewhere the Appellate Body has
utilised the concept of balancing between competing objectives. The Appellate
Body Report of US–Clove Cigarettes, a 2012 dispute under the TBT Agreement,
concluded that:
… the object and purpose of the TBT Agreement is to strike a balance

between, on the one hand, the objective of trade liberalization and, on the
other hand, Members’ right to regulate …
(WTO, 2012a, para. 174, emphasis added)
Thus the approach of the Appellate Body mirrors the ambiguity of the CTE
regarding the mutual supportiveness of trade liberalisation and environmental
regulation. It simultaneously affirms the compatibility of domestic environ-
mental regulation with WTO obligations and recognises that there can be
166 Emily Lydgate
trade-offs between them. Note that the Appellate Body also maintained this mir-
roring through its careful agnosticism in US–Shrimp on the WTO-legality of
extraterritorially applied domestic regulation.
The WTO Secretariat has also continued to feed into ongoing international
environmental developments. In 2009 the WTO Secretariat co-authored a long,
detailed report on climate change with the UN Environment Programme
(UNEP), which examines ‘linkages’ between trade and climate (Tamiotti et al.,
2009). The report does not shrink from controversy: it acknowledges that trade
opening contributes to climate change. It also offers a critical assessment of the
Kuznet’s curve idea underlying the concept of ‘mutual supportiveness’ between
trade and environment; namely, that higher incomes lead to less CO2 emission
(Tamiotti et al., 2009, pp. 53–56).
This stands in contrast to the Report the Secretariat prepared for the Rio+20
Conference of 2012, which encapsulated debates that remain largely unchanged
from the 1970s. One of the main obstacles to concluding an outcome document
was developing countries’ concern that pursuing a green economy, a central
focus of the Conference, meant sanctioning green protectionism to give rich
countries a competitive advantage, and de-emphasising poverty reduction (UN
News, 2012). Recalling the GATT contribution for the UNCED in the early
1970s, the Secretariat’s report provided an outline of what types of environ-
mental regulations countries might adopt, and which WTO provisions were
applicable to each situation (WTO, 2012c). It also proposed language for the
outcome document, ‘The Future We Want’. The Report incorporated many of
these recommendations, stating:
[w]e affirm that green economy policies in the context of sustainable devel-
opment and poverty eradication should:
… h) Not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination

or a disguised restriction on international trade, avoid unilateral actions
to deal with environmental challenges outside the jurisdiction of the
importing country, and ensure that environmental measures addressing
transboundary or global environmental problems, as far as possible, are
based on an international consensus …
(United Nations, 2012, para. 58)
This demonstrates that the core discourses surrounding the ‘trade and environ-
ment’ relationship have not transcended traditional divides.
Finally, the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals reflect a harmonious
conception of the trade and environment relationship, noting that trade, and the
conclusion of the Doha Round of negotiations (see WTO website, 2018e),25 will
contribute to the achievement of a number of the goals.
Environment 167
Current developments
At the time of writing, tectonic shifts are occurring in the global trading system,
which are influencing established narratives, likely including those on ‘trade and
environment’. The Trump administration has abandoned the post war consensus
that trade openness underpinned by a rules-based system leads to peace and
prosperity. Trump has indicated that the US will not follow Appellate Body
rulings with which it does not agree (Reuters, 2017), and has attempted to under-
mine the functioning of the Appellate Body (Elsig et al., 2017). At the time of
writing, one year into Trump’s first term, I speculate on relevant implications.
New alliances between ‘multilateralists’

The US undermining of the WTO demonstrates what Slaughter describes as a
‘transactional’ view of foreign policy: international institutions are abandoned
except when they serve the needs of the moment (Slaughter, 2017). The EU in
contrast has positioned itself as champion of the WTO and multilateral trade lib-
eralisation, as celebrated in recent remarks by WTO Director-General Azevêdo
(WTO website, 2017). The US has also announced that it will withdraw from the
Paris Agreement; in response the EU and China, another champion of the multi-
lateral trade system, have intensified their commitment to upholding it (Boffey
and Neslen, 2017). Thus the WTO and UNFCCC/Paris Agreement are united as
international law instruments made newly vulnerable by US opposition. Trump
has claimed in the past that China invented climate change in order to damage
US manufacturing.26 This rhetoric conflates China’s role as great trade and
manufacturing power with its commitment to climate change prevention.
Further, the EU and Japan have recently concluded the first trade agreement that
commits them to implementing the Paris Agreement (European Commission,
2017a).
The EU has been critiqued for climate change unilateralism: exporting its
regulatory requirements as a condition of market access (Scott and Rajamani,
2012). In the wake of US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, some comment-
ators, including then-French Presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, suggested
that the EU should retaliate by imposing carbon taxes on all US products
(Kentish, 2016). While such an approach encompasses unilateralism and
domestic protectionism, it also responds to concerns that the integrity of the
global commitment to addressing climate change will be undermined by the US
action. Countries who wish to maintain existing structures of international law in
the face of US opposition are united by attempts to shore up these institutions.
In such a situation, MEAs and the WTO find the emphasis on what they have in
common rather than what sets them apart.
168 Emily Lydgate
Trade versus non-trade issues
Trump has depicted trade liberalisation as resulting in US unemployment (see
Time, 2016), a perceived failure echoed by other populist movements.27 This
charge is led from the right of the political spectrum, an outlook not celebrated
by environmental activists. Nonetheless, the attack on traditional assumptions
regarding trade liberalisation’s contribution to prosperity signifies a period of
deep popular scrutiny of the assumptions behind the WTO and regional trade
and investment agreements. For environmentalists, perhaps the best-case scen-
ario for a period in many ways destructive to their aims would be to prompt con-
structive re-imagining of the international trade project by its remaining
advocates. There is a settled narrative that WTO law must reconcile trade and
‘non-trade’ issues, with environment constituting the latter. This division is per-
vasive in scholarship of international trade lawyers, yet underscores the very
dichotomy it seeks to address. Perversely, it narrows the understanding of what
trade liberalisation should be ‘about’ by situating environmental protection as an
auxiliary concern (Lang, 2007). As documented herein, a more expansive vision
of the remit and responsibilities of an international trade organisation is evident
in the never-ratified ITO, which placed employment on equal footing with trade
and explicitly deferred to existing MEAs.
With both the WTO and MEAs under unprecedented attack, it is a fertile
moment to revisit, and shore up, assumptions underlying the ‘trade and environ-
ment’ relationship.
Ultimately, an attempt to understand these discourses requires reckoning with
ideological assumptions polarised among some meaning makers. We must ask:
how can we move beyond the limits of ‘mutual supportiveness’?
Conclusion
The WTO and major international environmental law treaties, in order to achieve
consensus, have found language that simultaneously encourages environmental
protection, promotes poverty reduction and enshrines trade opening. I have
argued that the concept of ‘mutual supportiveness’ has been useful in this
respect, but has underpinned limited environmental ambitions. This raises the
question: what would a more ambitious approach to foregrounding environ-
mental protection in the world trading system entail? While a full examination is
beyond the scope of these concluding remarks, I outline briefly three potential
approaches. The first does not have to do with the WTO at all: a similar aim
would be achieved if the system of treaties and international organisations
responsible for protecting the environment were strengthened. This would
correct the ‘chilling’ effect on MEAs identified by Eckersley (2004): if MEAs
possessed equally strong enforcement mechanisms, countries would not priori-
tise their WTO obligations.
Another strategy would be for the WTO to incorporate MEAs with trade
obligations as part of the WTO-covered agreements. This would prevent treaty
Environment 169
conflict and put MEAs on a level playing field. While this approach has obvious
appeal, in that relevant MEAs would receive the benefits of the WTO’s strong
dispute settlement system, Horn and Mavroidis provide a compelling analysis of
some of the administrative and negotiating challenges that would result from an
attempt to address trade and environmental goals through a single multilateral
organisation (Horn and Mavroidis, 2014).
Finally, within easiest reach, the WTO could simply increase the ambitions of
its existing agenda. For example, CTE negotiations should be expanded to include
fossil fuel subsidies, surely the most environmentally-meaningful trade liberalisa-
tion ‘triple win’ (see Trachtman, 2017). Negotiations on the MEA–WTO relation-
ship should have the goal of deferring appropriately to MEA trade obligations,
and should expand to include disputes involving non-Parties. The WTO should
establish stronger institutional partnerships with UNEP and relevant MEAs of the
type that led to the 2009 joint report on climate change.
In the end, the feasibility of reform comes back to political will. In a WTO-
sponsored debate, Mark Halle of the International Institute for Sustainable
Development stated:
… the Preamble [of the Marrakesh Agreement] calls for an approach to trade
that is supportive of sustainable development. For a long time this was dis-
missed as, well sure that is our aspirational goal, but we have business to do.
What’s happening is that we are realizing that trade has to serve an ultimate
goal, and that ultimate goal is the kind of world we want our children to live
in. And I think there’s a real opportunity now to get there.
(WTO, 2012b, at 9:08s)
In the context of deep structural reform, the WTO’s multilateral strength is also
its weakness. It suffers in comparison to many Regional Trade Agreements,
which go further in safeguarding domestic environmental laws and MEA com-
mitments.28 On the global stage that the WTO provides, deep divisions remain
about what our world should ideally look like and how the world trading system
can facilitate its realisation.
Notes
1 The 1929 Convention on Abolition of Import and Export Prohibitions and Restric-
tions (Prohibitions Convention).
2 For an overview, see WTO website, 2018c.
3 See, e.g.:
Despite the current recognition, the original GATT agreement.… did not consider
the environmental effects of its trade rules on the production of goods.… This inat-
tention to environmental matters may have been due to the fact that environmental-
ism was a relatively new concern in national and international policy areas …
(Alam, 2005, p. 2)
There is likewise little evidence that any of the GATT’s provisions were drafted
to advance global environmental interests. This is not surprising, since at the time
170 Emily Lydgate
there was little governmental knowledge of, or interest in, domestic or inter-
national environmental issues.
(Dunoff, 1994, p. 1043)
In the immediate postwar period, countries were not concerned with the environ-
ment, because they had not yet recognized their capacity to degrade it irreversibly.
(Weiss, 1992, p. 86)
The latter reference is also drawn from Dunoff (1994).
4 See US Fish and Wildlife Service, ‘The Lacey Act’, available at: www.fws.gov/inter-
national/laws-treaties-agreements/us-conservation-laws/lacey-act.html [accessed 26
February 2018].
5 These included the Convention Relative to the Preservation of Flora and Fauna in
their Natural State (1933) and the Convention on Nature Protection and Wild Life
Preservation in the Western Hemisphere (1940).
6 See Protocol to the Convention, Section III, Ad. Article 4. Available at: www.loc.gov/
law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-ust000002-0651.pdf [accessed 26 February 2018].
7 See, for example, US–Gasoline (1996), US–Shrimp (1998), Brazil–Tyres (2007),
US–Tuna II (2012), and EC–Seal Products (2014).
8 Pavoni argues that mutual supportiveness is the ‘interpretative pillar’ of sustainable
development, see Pavoni (2010, p. 662).
9 A useful summary of the dispute is available on the WTO website: Mexico etc versus
US: ‘Tuna–dolphin’ (WTO website, 1991).
10 For an overview of the dispute and its aftermath, see Parker (1999–2000), pp. 43–47.
11 For a useful overview of the early evolution of this issue please see Charnovitz
(2002).
12 E.g., CITES bans trade in endangered species; the Basel Convention bans export in
hazardous waste without meeting particular procedures for consent.
13 E.g., the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer bans Parties
from importing ozone-depleting substances from non-Parties; the Basel Convention
prohibits import and export of hazardous wastes between Parties and non-Parties.
14 This is apparent from reading the WTO website’s presentation of the dispute, (see
WTO website, 1998).
15 Although the fact that protecting threatened species was a concern of trade negotiators
in the first half of the twentieth century somewhat undermines the Appellate Body’s
celebrated evolutionary interpretation.
16 For an overview see ‘World Trade Organization protests in Seattle’, Archives, seattle.
gov. Available from: www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/exhibits-and-education/digital-
document-libraries/world-trade-organization-protests-in-seattle. [accessed 26 Febru-
ary 2018].
17 While the EU and Switzerland have focused on the possibility of disputes and the
need to provide guidance and clarity, Australia, Argentina, the US and several devel-
oping countries have focused on the lack of existing conflict and the adequacy of
existing rules and principles; for a draft negotiating text that attempts to reconcile
some of these positions, see WTO (2011).
18 Doha Declaration (WTO, 2001b), Paragraph 31(i), ‘The negotiations shall be limited
in scope to the applicability of such existing WTO rules as among parties to the MEA
in question.’
19 See Panel Report, European Communities – Measures Affecting the Approval and
Marketing of Biotech Products (‘EC–Biotech’), WT/DS/291; WT/DS/292; WT/
DS/293, para. 7.75 (WTO, 2006).
20 Article XX(d) applies to measures: ‘necessary to secure compliance with laws or reg-
ulations which are not inconsistent with the provisions of this Agreement …’.
21 Article 3(2), Dispute Settlement Understanding:
Environment 171
… The Members recognise that [the dispute settlement system] serves to preserve
the rights and obligations of Members under the covered agreements, and to
clarify the existing provisions of those agreements in accordance with customary
rules of interpretation of public international law …
22 A longstanding fisheries dispute between Chile and the EU which involved clashing
requirements of the GATT and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea was
resolved at the stage of consultations, see WTO (2007b).
23 See, for example, Mexico–Soft Drinks (2006); Brazil–Tyres (2007); Peru–Agricul-
tural Products (2015).
24 It has affirmed this multiple times, e.g. in Brazil–Tyres, where it stated that
[Brazil’s import ban on re-treaded tyres] illustrates the tensions that may exist
between, on the one hand, international trade and, on the other hand, public health
and environmental concerns arising from the handling of waste generated by a
product at the end of its useful life. In this respect, the fundamental principle is the
right that WTO Members have to determine the level of protection that they con-
sider appropriate in a given context.
(WTO, 2007a)
25 Note also SDG indicator 17.10 at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg17
(United Nations, 2017) [accessed 26 February 2018].
26 See tweet of 6 November 2012, https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292
191248385?lang=en-gb.
27 E.g. concerns about EU citizens taking UK jobs due to free movement of people and
economic integration fuelled the UK vote to leave the EU. ‘Voting to leave the EU
could mean more jobs will go to Britons rather than foreign workers, according to
research’ (Reynolds, 2016).
28 See EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, above. CETA also contains a
chapter on Trade and Environment requiring, among other things, that Parties should
not weaken environmental protection in order to encourage trade and investment
(European Commission, 2017b).
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11 Justice
Clara Brandi
Introduction
The former Director-General (DG) of the World Trade Organization (WTO),
Pascal Lamy, believes that the organisation has surprised critics by showing
itself to be ‘capable of delivering … trade justice’ (Lamy, 2007).1 This raises the
question about how the term justice is conceptualised and how it is made use of
in the context of the global trade system. Debates about just and fair trade often
focus on the concerns of the weakest members of the trade regime. Exploring
questions of justice from that perspective is key in light of the changing global
trade system, in which the rising number of bilateral, regional and mega-regional
trade negotiations around the globe make the future of both the Doha Round and
the WTO’s multilateral negotiating pillar more uncertain than ever.
More than many other terms examined in this volume, justice is an explicitly
normative concept. But while there is lively debate in normative theory and
political philosophy about what makes trade ‘just’, the use of normative argu-
ments and concepts has hardly been explored in practice. To address this gap,
this chapter empirically investigates what statements about procedural and sub-
stantive notions of justice made in the normative literature are made in the world
trade regime. It also assesses who actually makes what kinds of arguments – i.e.
how meaning makers use the term – and how the discursive dynamics regarding
justice are evolving.
This chapter presents two main arguments: first, throughout the evolution of
the world trade regime, trade officials have referred to both substantive and pro-
cedural notions of justice in their statements. In doing so, representatives from
developing countries and rising powers have tended to make considerably more
justice-related statements. Moreover, while negotiators from industrialised coun-
tries have used justice-related terminology to defend the multilateral trading
system as fair, their developing world counterparts have employed the same
terms to challenge the system as well as the effects it generates.
Second, in the WTO era, justice-based demands have become less far-
reaching. Developing country members themselves have focused more on
implementation and trade capacity building rather than on the distributive con-
sequences of trade rules. Moreover, the virtues of multilateralism have come to
Justice 177
dominate debates about procedural dimensions of justice, as opposed to earlier
calls for greater inclusion of developing countries within the multilateral
decision-making process. This recent shift in the justice discourse has been fos-
tered by the WTO having come increasingly under pressure by the growing
number of preferential trade agreements that have begun to undermine the multi-
lateral trade system. The chapter thereby demonstrates how less powerful
members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) or the WTO
use language to voice and reinvent their justice-related demands over time.2
In developing these arguments, this chapter focuses on the justice-based argu-
ments made by state members of the GATT/WTO. This discourse has received
less consideration than the justice discourse of non-state actors (He and Murphy,
2007) such as the ‘Global Justice Movement’ (Murphy and Pfaff, 2005; Della
Porta, 2007) – which includes non-governmental organisations like Our World is
Not for Sale, Oxfam and the Third World Network – or the media (Boykoff,
2006).3 The chapter is based on secondary sources as well as on the analysis of
official statements by GATT/WTO member states during 13 different meetings
of the Contracting Parties and Ministerial Meetings in three rounds of GATT/
WTO negotiations – the Tokyo Round (1973–1979), the Uruguay Round
(1986–1994) and the Doha Round (since 2001).
Normative and empirical perspectives on justice in the world

trading system
This section presents a mind map of four different notions of justice discussed in
the literature on normative theory. I discuss both procedural and substantive
notions of justice in the WTO and introduce the concept of exploitation, which
combines both procedural and substantive aspects of justice (see Table 11.1).
These notions present the conceptual frames for empirically investigating how
GATT/WTO members speak about justice in the context of the multilateral trade
system.
Fair treatment
I begin with a procedural approach.4 Trade justice entails fair treatment, which
could be equal treatment or so-called special treatment. While the former
approach posits that the same rules apply to everyone,5 the latter makes some
Table 11.1 Mapping justice-based arguments
Conception of justice in trade Type of justice-based argument
(1) Fair treatment Procedural (equal vs. special treatment; formal vs.
effective market access)
(2) Entitlement Substantive (sufficiency)
(3) Fair exchange Substantive (distributive justice: equality, priority)
(4) Exploitation Procedural and substantive (focus on power)
178 Clara Brandi
allowance for the trading partners’ different starting positions. In contrast to sub-
stantive approaches, special treatment takes account of existing inequalities. But
neither of these variants of the fair treatment approach refer to outcomes of the
trade rules under consideration. Proponents of equal treatment argue that trade
justice entails a commitment to an ideal of formal equality in which all members
of a trade regime receive and offer equal treatment.6 Proponents of special treat-
ment claim that providing special rights helps to ensure ‘genuine equality’
(Kymlicka, 1995) since they can eliminate, rather than create, inequalities. This
view can thus serve as a basis to justify the rules for Special and Differential
Treatment (S&D) for developing countries as formulated in the GATT. From
that perspective, S&D for developing countries (Wolf, 1987) is consistent with –
indeed required for – justice.
With regard to fair treatment, the justice argument can also be linked to the
notion of equal trading opportunities. Trading opportunities regarding market
access can be understood as the absence of formal trade barriers or as effective
trading opportunities. From a justice perspective, focusing only on formal
trading opportunities is insufficient because formal market access is not much
help when, for example, the infrastructure is inadequate. In contrast to introduc-
ing tariff reductions, implementing obligations in the so-called ‘new areas’
requires building institutions and, for instance, creating or improving the infra-
structure needed for increasingly complex certification and testing procedures
(Finger and Nogués, 2002). Numerous WTO members, especially poor coun-
tries, lack infrastructure like proper testing facilities (Hoekman, 2008) and thus
have fewer chances to benefit from market access than other countries. A mutu-
ally beneficial trade regime cannot be established if those who have difficulties
benefiting from it receive no help: in WTO negotiations, assistance in creating or
improving certain types of trade infrastructures should be viewed as a necessary
complement to market access (Brandi, 2014).
Entitlement
Going beyond procedural approaches, justice in trade can also be examined
through the substantive conceptions of entitlement and fair exchange. Entitle-
ment conceptions consider that trade must be structured in ways that do not
violate both partners’ basic human right to a minimally decent standard of living
(Miller, 2010). Entitlement conceptions that include subsistence rights are some-
times considered to be too demanding because such conceptions ‘burden’ trade
that is held to be generally responsible for fulfilling rights with a broad variety of
policies (Risse, 2007). Entitlement conceptions may also be seen as demanding
too little by ignoring the resulting distribution of trade gains and being non-
comparative. For example, a multilateral trade agreement might ensure a WTO
member state enough trade gains for a minimally decent standard of living that
fulfils basic rights (the principle of sufficiency) – yet be unfair to the member
who receives too small a share of the overall value of the trade gains.
Justice 179
Fair exchange
This brings us to fair exchange conceptions of trade justice, which state that
exchanges must generate a specific distribution of resources or benefits between
trading partners. Fair-exchange conceptions might define trade as ‘just’ when the
benefits are distributed among the parties according to specific principles like
equality (e.g. James, 2012). One key argument is that while individual trade
interactions may only have to fulfil minimal moral demands such as the absence
of coercion, social practices subject to collective governance (James, 2012)
should be more demanding: trade gains are a jointly produced surplus that should
be divided fairly among those who generate them.7
Fair-exchange conceptions typically embody a notion of distributive justice,
which usually refers to relative or comparative understandings of justice
expressed in terms of equality. Entitlement conceptions, on the other hand,
usually do not entail a relational or comparative approach. They demand that
WTO members should receive enough gains from trade through multilateral
trade agreements to fulfil the principle of sufficiency (Frankfurt, 1987). While
substantive approaches can entail a concern with non-relational sufficiency
(entitlement) or relational equality (fair exchange), they might also embody a
concern for the worst off, which is in line with a priority view (Parfit, 1997), for
example, which demands that the poorest for the least developed countries
should receive certain specific benefits.
Exploitation
Finally, normative concerns in the WTO can be linked to the notion of power
and the concept of exploitation, i.e. the notion of ‘taking unfair advantage’ (e.g.
of power inequalities), which combines both procedural and substantive dimen-
sions of justice. In the context of the global trade regime, we should focus on
interactions that must be regarded as exploitative although they are mutually
beneficial interactions agreed by both parties. This is highly relevant to the WTO
– both with a view to its objective of fostering mutually beneficial trade agree-
ments and in light of the WTO’s consensus principle. How can apparently volun-
tary and mutually advantageous interactions be exploitative? This happens when
both parties benefit in comparison to the non-agreement baseline but the gains
are unfairly distributed to one party (the substantive dimension) and the process
of the interaction is morally defective (the procedural dimension). The most rel-
evant case in trade negotiations is an agreement reached because the strength of
one party’s bargaining power induces the other to engage in a relatively less
beneficial exchange (Brandi, 2014). The WTO case underscores that free and
fair agreements must offer more than the absence of direct coercion; they must
be concluded under conditions that ensure that both parties have strong enough
bargaining powers to shape the agreement – or reject it (Ronzoni, 2009).
180 Clara Brandi
Discursive dynamics around justice in the GATT/WTO
system
This section analyses how GATT/WTO members themselves speak about
justice. It asks: do GATT/WTO members use these four notions of justice (see
Table 11.1) – and to what extent?8 In the first part, I explore the discursive
dynamics regarding the notion of justice during the GATT era and, in the second
part, since the establishment of the WTO.
My analysis reveals that GATT/WTO members use justice-based arguments
that are relevant in normative discussions on trade justice. GATT/WTO members
refer both to less demanding procedural justice arguments (e.g. regarding fair
treatment and trading opportunities) and more demanding substantive principles
of justice, which typically concern two types of notions: that poor individuals or
countries should benefit from trade gains in order to fight poverty and ensure a
minimally decent standard of living (sufficiency, entitlement conception) and
that trade gains should be fairly, justly, equally or equitably distributed (distribu-
tive justice, fair-exchange conception).
The empirical analysis of concerns about justice voiced by GATT/WTO
member states reveals that their absolute number per summit and the share of
justice-based statements has changed considerably. There were many statements
about justice particularly during the early phase of the Doha Round of multi-
lateral negotiations (see Table 11.2). Moreover, delegates from developing coun-
tries have uttered the most statements about justice, while negotiators from the
rising powers Brazil, India, China and South Africa have made fewer and dele-
gates from industrialised countries have made the least references to justice.9
While the number of justice-based arguments increased rapidly and strongly
at the beginning of the Doha Round, a more prominent justice discourse does not
mean that justice plays an increasingly important role; just talking about justice
does not make the WTO more just. We need to take a closer look at the justice
discourse in the world regime and how the term justice is made use of in that
context.
The GATT period

Before the WTO was created in 1995, international trade was managed in seven
multilateral negotiating rounds under the auspices of the GATT. A closer look at
the statements made during the GATT period reveals that while many statements
refer to more general concepts or arguments about justice, the content of justice
claims evolves over time. It becomes apparent, moreover, that negotiators from
developing countries typically have been more vocal and evaluated the world
trade regime as less just compared to delegates from industrialised countries –
who often praised the system.
At first, multilateral negotiations involved little talk of justice. However, the
discourse evolved as GATT membership changed (Dunoff, 2003) and along with
the intellectual, economic and political context, including the development of
Table 11.2 Discursive dynamics and meaning-makers
Trade round Year Justice-based Justice-based statements Who voiced the justice-based statements?
statements (number) (% of statements during
that year)
Tokyo 1973 5 8 N.A.

(GATT) 1974 6 N.A.
1976 2 N.A.
1977 4 N.A.
1978 6 N.A.
1979 8 N.A.
Uruguay 1986 21 28 15 by developing countries, 6 by rising powers, 1 by OECD country
(GATT) 1989 11 36 5 by developing countries, 3 by rising powers, 3 by OECD countries
1994 19 18 13 by developing countries, 3 by rising powers, 3 by OECD countries
Doha (WTO) 2001 83 60 54 by developing countries, 10 by rising powers, 19 by OECD countries
2005 99 62 86 are by developing countries, 4 by rising powers, 9 by OECD countries
182 Clara Brandi
dependency theory in the 1960s. The 1964 United Nations Conference on Trade
and Development (UNCTAD) promoted the agenda of the New International
Economic Order (NIEO), fostered debates about fair trade rules in the 1970s and
contributed to the principles of non-reciprocity and S&D for developing coun-
tries. The dominant discourse promoted by developing countries focused on the
industrialised countries’ responsibility to establish a new set of fairer trade rules
that would help developing countries to join the global trade system (see Wein-
hardt and Geck, this volume). In 1964 the GATT had been amended to include
Part IV on Trade and Development, which introduced non-reciprocity and S&D.
In 1979, the so-called Enabling Clause legalised UNCTAD’s Generalized System
of Preferences (GSP) for developing countries. However, industrialised countries
continued to negotiate reciprocal tariff cuts among themselves. Although these
cuts were extended to all member states based on the most-favoured nation prin-
ciple, they generally did not include the sectors of greatest concern to developing
countries – especially the heavily protected textile and agricultural sectors.
During the Tokyo Round negotiations from 1973 to 1979, efforts were made
to progressively reduce tariffs but particular concerns of developing countries,
especially agricultural subsidies, remained unaddressed. In terms of procedural
dimensions of justice, fair opportunities for developing countries to participate
in the negotiations were mentioned several times during the Tokyo Round.
In terms of substantive notions of justice, during the Tokyo Round a number
of statements by developing countries emphasised their particular position in the
world trading system. But many statements tended to be general calls for fair
trade relations, such as trade rules that were fair to all countries, and not only to
industrialised ones. Delegates did for instance point out that developing coun-
tries were most strongly affected by protectionism, for example in the textile
sector. Only few references to distributive justice explicitly referred the outcome
of the negotiations and the resulting distribution of trade gains – in line with the
fair-exchange conception.10
The limited number of justice claims made during the Tokyo Round is sur-
prising considering that the NIEO debate reached its peak in the mid-1970s. That
said, fewer developing countries were actively involved in the Tokyo Round
than in later negotiations. Another possible explanation for the lack of justice
claims in WTO negotiations is that such concerns were mainly raised in the
context of UNCTAD, not in the multilateral trade system.
In 1986, the Uruguay Round was launched, the first set of negotiations in
which developing countries played an active role, and the most ambitious nego-
tiations to date. Moving beyond merely reducing tariffs, the Uruguay Round
expanded the GATT’s legal competences to new areas. Increased market access
for textiles and agriculture – of particular concern for developing countries that
wanted to export – was tied to major commitments in new areas such as invest-
ment, competition and intellectual property (Finger and Nogués, 2002).
During the Uruguay Round, there were several references to substantive
notions of justice – more than in the Tokyo Round. Most were made by develop-
ing countries and very frequently expressed justice concerns in terms of fair
Justice 183
exchange and distributive justice, voicing concerns about the distributive impact
of trade rules and the trade regime. For the first time, there were demands that
developing countries should not be disadvantaged by unequal treatment. Espe-
cially in 1986, at the beginning of the Uruguay Round, many statements criti-
cised the lack of equal treatment and demanded a more level playing field.11 For
example, the delegate from Turkey stressed, ‘[n]o new system … will hold
together unless it provides equitable and balanced gains to all concerned. There-
fore, if the Uruguay Round is to succeed, there must be a balanced package’
(GATT, 1989b). In absolute terms, developing country members also made more
demands for S&D during the Uruguay Round than during the Tokyo Round,
reflecting their increased active participation.
The unfair use of bargaining power was also criticised, especially by develop-
ing countries, thereby voicing concerns about exploitation that combines, as
spelled out above, both procedural and substantive aspects of justice. A number
of references were made to whether ‘might is right’ and to terms of trade that
were ‘imposed’ by the powerful. In 1986, one delegate pleaded that international
economic relations should be ‘different from those existing today, in fair inter-
national co-operation, in an equitable order, … in the eradication of political
pressures, in abandonment of the idea that might is right’ (GATT, 1986a).
During the same meeting, the Nigerian delegate stated that
the persistence of the unjust and inequitable international economic system,

constitute[s] a major impediment to the development process of most of the
developing contracting parties.… We have to once again consider seriously
the problem of … unfair trade terms continually imposed by the major
industrialized nations.
(GATT, 1986b)
Members from industrialised countries, to the contrary, tended to use justice-

related statements to emphasise the achievements already made. For example,
the Japanese representative stressed Japan’s ‘growing faith in the utility and
effectiveness of the GATT’ and the ‘fair and just settlement of disputes’ (GATT,
1989a) and at the end of the Uruguay negotiations, the Australian representative
stated that ‘Australia is enthusiastic about the Round outcome, … contributing
to the historic achievement on Agriculture, whereby rational and equitable
GATT rules will apply for the first time to this sector’ (GATT, 1994). In short,
while industrialised countries stated that the GATT system itself stands for
justice, developing countries argued that the GATT system needs to change in
order to take justice and fairness considerations into account.12
Towards the end of the Uruguay Round, many developing country member
states started to make justice-based arguments about the so-called new areas,
including intellectual property rights, arguing against their inclusion in the
final agreement. Many developing countries were concerned that the new
areas would involve special challenges and uncertain benefits for them. They
were concerned that the terms of trade are imposed upon them despite
184 Clara Brandi
consensus-based decision-making, which mirrors normative arguments about
exploitation: free and fair agreements must be about more than the absence of
direct coercion. They have to ensure that both parties have enough bargaining
power to shape the terms of the agreement or reject it without suffering over-
whelming costs.
This was relevant during the Uruguay Round, at the end of which the WTO
was established: when most developing countries stated that they would not sign
the deal that was on the table that included cost-inducing new standards and
rules for intellectual property rights, the US and the EU withdrew from GATT;
in 1995 they joined its successor, the WTO, which they had constructed as a so-
called Single Undertaking in which ‘nothing is agreed until everything is
agreed’. Reluctant member states were forced to sign the whole package of new
WTO obligations or to be left out (Brandi, 2014).
Some developing countries would have preferred the old GATT to the new
WTO but accepted the latter because they would have been even worse off as
members of GATT without the USA and the EU (Steinberg, 2002). Yet, at the
time the notion that trade justice presupposes a fairer set of rules for developing
countries who should be granted S&D began to lose favour, undermined by the
neo-liberal push to open up developing country markets (Lang, 2011) that was
supported by meaning makers from institutions like the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund (Winslett, 2016).13
The WTO Doha Development Round

After GATT negotiations had determined the rules for international trade until
the end of 1994, the WTO’s creation in 1995 marked the biggest reform of inter-
national trade since the Second World War. In 2001, the WTO launched the
ambitious Doha Development Round, which was to make globalisation more
inclusive and help the world’s poor. Doha began with a debate about what a
‘development round’ is, what a fair and just trade system entails, and who should
benefit from the new negotiations in which ways.
The kick-off of the Doha Round raised many expectations, a number of them
specifically linked to norms of justice (see also Table 11.2). Representatives of
institutions like the WTO and delegates from industrialised countries have con-
tinued to typically paint rosy pictures while developing countries have remained
more critical.14 Yet, a number of novel types of justice-related demands arose
during the later phase of the Doha Round. The following three perspectives on
the justice discourse in the WTO summarise how justice-based demands by
developing countries have evolved and have tended to become less far-reaching
over time – both in terms of notions of procedural and substantive justice.
First, since the beginning of the Doha Round, developing countries started to
argue more and more for equal treatment, or at least, treatment that does not
leave them worse off than before.15 They seem to have given up, at least to some
extent, their more ambitious demands for ‘special’ treatment, arguably hoping
that the normatively less demanding arguments for ‘equal’ are more likely to
Justice 185
help them advance their needs and interests. While it is controversial to support
16
a fair distribution of trade gains beyond national borders (see e.g. Risse and
Wollner, 2015), the notion that it is morally wrong to implement trade rules that
work against the poorest and to harm others is not. Instead of advocating for
more ambitious S&D, developing countries underlined a normatively and politi-
cally less controversial and more consensual argument, namely that justice
implies trade rules do not harm poor countries by biasing the playing field
against them. Therefore, fair treatment was reinterpreted and the focus shifted to
the need for ‘not being left worse off ’ rather than special, i.e. preferential, treat-
ment. As the Argentinian delegate indicated in Hong Kong, ‘clearly, in overall
terms, the benefits for developing countries must be greater than their costs,
otherwise this will not be seen as the Development Round’ (WTO, 2005a).
Second, over time, developing and industrialised countries have begun to link
justice to new arguments regarding the implementation of trade agreements.
During the GATT period, the notion that developing countries face special
implementation challenges was not mentioned, although one delegate cited the
problem of ‘the burden of adjustment … being shifted to those least able to bear
it’ (GATT, 1978). Then, after the Uruguay Round, more and more developing
countries became aware that the new areas are not only less certain to benefit
them but also have high implementation costs. Against this background, at the
beginning of the Doha Round, several delegates referred to a justice-based
demand for implementation assistance for new trade rules, above all in the new
areas. There were also calls for ‘resources and technical assistance for trade
capacity building to accompany any agreement on the Bali package’ (WTO,
2013d), including its implementation. In the end, some of these concerns were
taken into account; for example, the Bali outcome (2013) on trade facilitation
includes provisions for technical assistance and capacity-building for developing
countries that are implementing the Trade Facilitation Agreement.
While some developing countries, worrying that implementation costs will be
high and might even outweigh the benefits of new trade rules, have been pushing
for this new notion of justice, the approach has also gained relevance because it
is in line with industrialised countries’ interests. Over the past years, there has
been a trend for delegates from industrialised countries to argue that they are
safeguarding fairness, even if they do not offer substantial concessions such as
exemptions from market opening commitment, by providing developing coun-
tries with so-called ‘Aid for Trade’ that aims to facilitate the implementation of
trade policies.
Third, procedural dimensions of justice have become more central than
before, but have also been toned down. With trade negotiations shifting to the
regional and bilateral realm, developing countries seem to emphasise more and
more that a key function of the WTO is to provide for a just and inclusive nego-
tiation forum that gives each and every member a chance to participate in
shaping the trade rules of the future. In the Doha Round, several statements have
been made about how the multilateral system must be strengthened to help
smaller and poorer member states in order to prevent the rise of less predictable,
186 Clara Brandi
fair and inclusive bilateral and regional trade agreements. In more recent years,
especially during the Bali and Nairobi ministerial meetings in 2013 and 2015,
industrialised and developing countries emphasise that only multilateralism can
lead to fair outcomes. India argued for instance that ‘an open, non-discriminatory
and inclusive multilateral trade system contributes to maximizing gains for all its
Members. [Other] approaches by definition impinge on the multilateral trade
system and cannot be a substitute for it’ (WTO, 2015; for similar statements see
WTO, 2013a; WTO, 2013c).
One important reason for the changing discursive dynamics in the WTO is
that, in the recent past, the multilateral trading system has increasingly been put
under pressure due to the Doha Development Round deadlock and the rise of
more and larger preferential trade agreements. While a focus on the normative
virtues of multilateralism over bilateralism and regionalism is comprehensible,
earlier demands about how to improve procedural justice within the multilateral
trading system recede to the background. The WTO’s decision-making process
is portrayed as relatively just in comparison to other negotiating fora. Con-
sequently, it is already being considered as fair and as promoting trade justice to
merely remain in the WTO rather than discard it in favour of other less inclusive
negotiation fora.
Similarly, more far-reaching demands for distributive justice have recently
tended to fall more and more from the table, despite the prominence of rising
powers that increasingly challenge the dominance of the Quad coalition –
Canada, the EU, Japan and the US. While distributive justice claims continue to
be made,17 the rise of new discourses on justice has limited the ambition of
justice-based demands voiced by developing countries in the WTO in light of
increasingly strong competition for trade negotiations beyond the realm of the
WTO and concerns of ‘realpolitik’ having (re-)emerged. For example, at this
point, many WTO members would be content if the Doha Development Round
were continued at all. More substantive demands for trade rules to contribute to
reducing poverty have thus been become less frequently used. This is not to say
that more far-reaching calls for distributive justice were abandoned altogether,
but they seem to have lost their pull.
This illustrates how bilateral, regional and mega-regional trade negotiations
can be used to pressure less powerful states in multilateral negotiations (Brandi,
2016) and how this is expressed during trade negotiations in imputations about
‘taking unfair advantage’. Given the proliferation of (mega)-regional agree-
ments, many member states at the 2015 WTO Ministerial Conference seem to
have been heavily pressured to agree to the Nairobi outcome because the lack of
any outcome at all would have further undermined the WTO. One commentator
stated that the failure to agree an outcome in Nairobi would have fostered ‘the
end of the consensus-based organisation as a meaningful negotiating forum’ and
that if developing countries are ‘not going to play ball in the WTO, the US and
EU will pick up the ball and go play somewhere else’ (Guida, 2015). Less
powerful countries that are relatively insignificant in terms of economic status
and geopolitical position have the most to fear from mega-regional trade
Justice 187
agreements. Powerful countries are increasingly abandoning the WTO to pursue
their interests outside of the multilateral system – which raises important ques-
tions concerning justice (Brandi, 2017). African countries, for example, do not
belong to any mega-regional trade negotiation, while the rising powers’ eco-
nomic and political weight put them in a better position to compete for regional
trade partnerships.
In sum, many developing countries seem to have given up the fight for more
demanding arguments regarding procedural or distributive justice in the WTO
and are searching for new, potentially more consensual and normatively less
demanding, discursive approaches – and reinventing the content of trade claims
in the process. Similar dynamics can also be observed in climate negotiations,
where developing countries have largely given up their hopes that their call for
taking ‘historic emissions’ into account can be successful. For instance, develop-
ing countries have begun to focus less on demands that are linked to the notion
of ‘historic emissions’ and are taking a more consensual and more forward-
looking stance.
Conclusion
In the global trade system, justice can be a politically powerful term, pointing at
stringent moral duties to evaluate and potentially reform the GATT/WTO
system. It is thus important how we define justice in the context of the global
trade system – and how the term is used. Against this background, this chapter
has provided both a normative mapping of conceptualisations of justice in the
WTO and an empirical mapping of the actual patterns of how justice is referred
to in the global trade system, exploring how GATT/WTO members speak about
justice and demonstrating the discursive dynamics of how conceptualisations
and evaluations of justice vary across time.
My analysis has illustrated that the term justice is used to refer to different
ideas by different meaning makers: while negotiators from industrialised coun-
tries tend to stress that the current global trade system is fair, delegates from
developing countries are more critical. They repeatedly emphasise the import-
ance of justice and discuss what would constitute a truly just system. In compari-
son to developing countries, industrialised countries frequently make the
argument that the WTO in itself is fair, arguably also to prevent discussion about
reform needs and special demands raised by developing countries.
My main argument has been that statements about justice in the WTO have
not remained stable but have changed over time in ways that have not been ade-
quately explored so far. While the number of justice-related statements and their
ambition, often referring to substantive demands of justice, was high at the
beginning of the Doha Round, their quantity reduced and their content became
less far-reaching over time. Moreover, developing countries and industrialised
countries tended to make different claims about justice in the world trade system.
Developing countries resorted to frequently arguing in favour of less demanding
‘equal rather than special’ treatment, and increasingly accepted that they were
188 Clara Brandi
not granted the exemptions they wished for. Instead, they argued in favour of at
least receiving assistance to deal with the special challenges they were facing
due to the newly agreed trade rules. More generally, developing countries have
begun to re-emphasise procedural rather than distributive dimensions of trade
justice, underlining that the WTO offers a more inclusive forum than bilateral
and regional trade negotiations do.
Industrialised countries, to the contrary, tended to argue that the world trade
system has already achieved relatively fair procedures and outcomes for indus-
trialised and developing countries. More recently, there has been a spotlight on
industrialised countries as well, with questions of justice and fairness in trade
having received new attention in light of US President Trump’s complaints about
supposedly unfair trading practices like dumping that China and other countries
allegedly make use of. Trump’s statements in the recent past about unfair wage
dumping, supposedly practiced by developing countries, underlines this point.
The emergence of novel types of arguments about justice and developing
countries’ shifting focus in the justice discourse shows how concepts can change
(see Introduction, this volume). The analysis of the justice discourse also shows
how less dominant meaning makers can reframe issues in normatively less
demanding terms and strategically use language to voice their concerns in ways
that sound less controversial to the more dominant players. This observation pro-
vides food for thought about how we should assess feasibility in the context of
justice discourses: should it be viewed as desirable for pragmatic reasons – or
problematic from a more principled perspective?18
In the context of the global trade system, there are good reasons to be critical.
Whereas a rule-based trade system is indeed likely to be more just than inter-
national trade in the absence of any multilateral trade rules, justice requires the
global trade system to fulfil certain normative demands in order to be truly just.
The recent development towards ever more bilateral and regional trade negoti-
ations further undermines justice in the global trade system, which already
suffers from an institutional fragmentation that enables strong states to dominate
weaker ones (Brandi, 2017). This trend is mirrored in the justice discourse in the
WTO. Removing more and more trade negotiations from the WTO is problem-
atic from a justice perspective: the less powerful, poorer countries especially
need the organisation in order to be heard. They risk losing the most when bilat-
eral and regional negotiations gain momentum at the cost of multilateral negoti-
ations and therefore keep underlining the importance of the multilateral trade
system instead of raising more far-reaching justice-based demands they might
want to voice. This trend is, at least to some extent, a reason for concern. It
embodies an emptying of the way the term justice is used in the context of the
global trade regime – mostly at the expense of the needs and concerns of weakest
members of the system.
Justice 189
Notes
1 I am highly grateful for the very helpful comments from the editors of this volume.
2 I assume that the state actors can use the term justice in strategic ways to ensure that it
retains its ‘normative pull’: justice-based arguments can be ‘unmasked’ as disguising
‘unjustified’ self-interested positions and be revealed as instances of rhetorical ‘tongue
twisting’ (Krebs and Jackson, 2007) that eventually become delegitimised and cease
to work in the interest of their meaning-makers.
3 For a perspective on civil society actors in the world trade regime, see the chapter by
Strange in this volume.
4 For a discussion of certain aspects of procedural notions of justice in the context of
democracy, including participation and decision-making, please consult the chapter
by Dingwerth in this volume.
5 On equality of opportunity in the WTO, see also Brown and Stern (2012).
6 See Christensen (2015) for a critical discussion of this view.
7 For a critical perspective, see for example Risse and Wollner (2015).
8 The empirical analysis is based on the members’ official statements, all of which are
found on the WTO website. The statements were examined through content analysis
and the coding of the segments that refer to the terms ‘justice’, ‘fair/fairness’ and
‘equitable/equity’. I very am grateful to Klaus Dingwerth and his team for providing
the relevant information. Several dimensions of the concept of justice, broadly con-
ceived, are linked to the term development (see Weinhardt and Geck, this volume).
9 The results displayed in Table 11.2 apply to the statements that were coded for
‘justice’, ‘fair/fairness’ and ‘equitable/equity’ based on relevant keyword searches;
statements about ‘fair and equitable’ treatment count as one rather than two justice-
based statements. Other statements refer to the four perspectives set out above, for
example ‘taking unfair advantage’, but do not use these specific terms; they are not
listed in Table 11.2 but are considered in the following investigation of the justice
discourse.
10 In 1974, one delegate emphasised that the aim should be to ‘establish a fair and more
equitable world, in which … the need would be recognized for the granting of addi-
tional benefits to all developing countries’ – expressing special concern for the
worst off.
11 Turkey, for instance, insisted that developing countries ‘need an equitable and just
trade environment free from any obstacles likely to … hinder their economic develop-
ment efforts’ (GATT, 1986c).
12 Note that another difference is that industrialised countries often link the justice dis-
course to fair rules for their businesses, which represent a focus on procedural justice.
To the contrary, developing countries and rising powers use references to justice in
the WTO in terms of more ambitious principles of distributive justice or other more
ambitious substantive justice claims.
13 For a more detailed discussion, see the chapter on development by Weinhardt and
Geck in this volume.
14 For instance, according to former DG Mike Moore, ‘openness, fairness and predict-
ability are at the heart of the multilateral trade system’ (Moore, 2001) – while many
delegates from developing countries expressed doubts about the system’s fairness. A
delegate from Honduras emphasised the need for a rules-based multilateral trade
regime that is fair and equitable, that meets the legitimate aspirations of developing
countries, especially those with small and vulnerable economies (WTO, 2009b; see
also WTO, 2009a).
15 NGOs like Oxfam have also contributed analyses, advocacy and campaigns to this
discourse and warned of the consequences of ‘rigged rules’ by calculating how tariffs
and subsidies of industrialised countries cost poor countries US$100 billion a year –
twice the amount of development aid (Oxfam, 2002).
190 Clara Brandi
16 See also Eagleton-Pierce (2013) who makes a similar point in the case of cotton
negotiations.
17 In Hong Kong, an Indian delegate for instance called for the Uruguay Round’s ‘devel-
opment deficit’ to be corrected, saying, ‘[i]f the content of this Round only perpetu-
ates the inequities of global trade, then it will be no Round’ (India, 2005). Brazil’s
representative pointed to ‘injustices’ in trade and especially how they overlook ‘the
structure of privilege’, notably in agriculture, and compound the existing ‘develop-
ment gap’ (WTO, 2005b). In 2013 in Bali, the South African representative stressed
the need to redress ‘the imbalances and inequities that continue to disadvantage devel-
oping countries’ (WTO, 2013e) while the Indian delegate said that ‘historical imbal-
ances in trade rules must be corrected to ensure a rule-based, fair and equitable order’
(WTO, 2013b).
18 This is linked to the ongoing debate in normative theory (e.g. Stemplowska and Swift,
2012) about dealing with demands of justice under non-ideal (unjust) social and polit-
ical conditions.
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Index
Acalin, Julien 55 agreements 3, 36, 65, 70–72, 82–83, 86,

accounting methodologies 60 92, 109, 145, 160, 179, 184–185, 187;
ACP see African, Caribbean and Pacific bilateral 72; clear 145; collective 68;
group of developing countries conditioned reciprocal 71; economic
activism 97; collective trade 70; partnership 71, 111; existing WTO 90,
environmental 22; research-led 28 164; fair 179, 184; final 155, 183; free-
activists 17, 38, 41–42, 93, 98, 100–101, trade 70; international 66; legal 88;
105, 107, 109–110, 112; campaigning limited 92; multilateral 65, 109, 152,
98; civil society 33, 37–38, 45, 88; 163; plurilateral 91–92
environmental 162, 168; human rights ‘Aid for Trade’ 121, 140, 185
41; labour 37; political 98; and Ralph Alessandrini, D. 132, 136, 141
Nader 86 alter-globalisation movement 80
actors 2–4, 6–7, 9–11, 13–18, 22, 25–27, Amazon Europe Holding Technologies
65, 68, 85, 88, 97–99, 107–108, 55–56
110–111, 122–124, 127; business 16, ambition 74, 161, 169, 186–187; deep 155;
99; civil society 10, 13, 109; criticised and the Doha Development Round 184;
122–123; emerging 111; external 105; environmental 154; underpinned limited
formal 108; groups of 85, 98; environmental 168
institutional 97–98, 108, 111; Anderl, Felix 10, 13–14, 16, 115–128
international 74, 103; legitimate 11; anti-pollution regulations 157
political 32–33, 37, 45; pre-existing anti-protectionism 40
111; social 24; trade policy 18 Appellate Body 154, 161–167; approach
advisory groups 86, 107 involves attempting to establish the
advocacy 99–100, 103, 108–109; efforts to ‘common understanding’ of WTO
frame their demands for coherence of members 88, 125, 164–165, 178, 180;
trade 128; groups 16, 37; organisations Report of US-Clove Cigarettes (2012
99, 116 dispute under the TBT Agreement) 165
AEHT see Amazon Europe Holding Argentinian delegates 185
Technologies arguments 5–6, 14–15, 22–24, 36–37, 39,
AfDB see African Development Bank 67, 69–70, 80, 83, 89, 123–124, 127,
African, Caribbean and Pacific 71 132, 176–177, 187–188; competing 17;
African, Caribbean and Pacific group of consensual 185; demanding 184, 187;
developing countries 71 key 17, 83, 179; long-standing 84; new
African Development Bank 121 185; normative 176, 184; progressive
agendas 1, 3, 15, 17, 22, 27, 29, 64, 71, 104, 124; vocal 27
108, 128, 154, 157, 160; existing 169; Azevêdo, Roberto 69, 91–92
multilateral trade policy 25; negotiating
17, 87, 92; non-binding 157; political Balance of Payments Manual 51–54
135; reactionary 72; regulatory 25, 29 ‘Bali Package’ 69–70, 72, 143, 185
194 Index
banks 7, 121; international development Carver, Terrell 5
126; multilateral development 121; CETA see Comprehensive Economic and
unspecified development 126 Trade Agreement
barriers 12, 35, 66; intentional 33; internal challenges 15, 18, 50, 69, 73, 76, 104, 124;
121; major 15, 33; non-tariff 10, 33–35, distinctive development 75;
37, 45, 67, 137, 156, 162; significant 37 environmental 159, 166
battles 16, 45–46, 73, 102, 144; discursive China 12, 70, 72–73, 83, 106, 133,
16; intense 75 140–143, 146, 163, 167, 180, 188; role
beef (origin labelling) 42–43 as great trade and manufacturing power
benefits 3, 23, 40, 65, 67, 69–71, 73–74, 167; targeting of 17
92, 143, 153–154, 163, 165, 169, civil servants 98–100, 108
178–180, 183–185; aggregate 68; key civil society 14, 16–17, 71, 85, 88–89,
54; presumed 22; public 74; putative 71; 97–112, 123, 152; accrediting 103;
relative 70 activists 33, 37–38, 45, 88; activities
Berenskoetter, Felix 3–4, 12 109; contesting WTO policies 106;
Bernstein, S. 25, 118–120, 122 global 89; groups 37, 104–106, 111;
Bishop, Matthew Louis 12, 15, 64–77, 145 organisations 27–28, 101, 106; part of
Blyth, M. 9, 137–138 99, 101; representation 88; strategy
Boltanski, Luc 2, 6–8, 117 dilemmas 123
book values 59, 61 coherence 10, 13–14, 16–17, 26, 115–128;
boundaries 2–3, 11, 29, 52, 133, 145–146; cross-issue 118; demands 127; efforts
of developing country group 140; 128; function 119; institutional 121;
territorial 23 internal 119, 123; mandate 119,
BPM see Balance of Payments Manual 121–123, 128; negotiating 117; system-
Bradley, Victor 8, 43 wide 128; terms 125, 127; of trade 14,
Braithwaite, J. 35–36, 39
16, 116, 118–119, 128; uses of the term
Brandi, Clara 13, 17, 176–188
16, 116, 120, 122, 127
Brazil 12, 26, 39, 70, 121, 133–134, 138,
Cold War 141
140–142, 146; rising powers of 180; and
Committee on Trade and Environment
South Korea 141
154, 160–163, 165
Bretton Woods institutions 74, 115,
118–120 communities 1, 3, 10, 14, 124;
Brexit 44, 72 international 139–140, 157; powerful
Brown, Gordon 74 national 86
business associations 83, 99, 103, 107, 112 companies 52, 55, 58, 99; foreign 39, 52,
businesses 35–39, 42–43, 45–46, 85, 161, 55; holding 55–56, 58
169; domestic 15, 32–34, 37; exporting comprehensive coherence of trade 14, 116,
32, 34; foreign 36, 43, 45; import- 118–119, 123–124, 127–128
competing 37, 42; internationally Comprehensive Economic and Trade
oriented 39, 44; protection-seeking 42 Agreement 92
conceptions 4, 14, 22–23, 177–178;
campaigns 17, 26, 28, 99, 101, 106, broadening 124; common 128;
108–110; labour rights 93; national- entitlement 178–180; fair-exchange
level 110; professional activist groups 179–180, 182; harmonious 166;
orchestrate 101; public 108 substantive 178
Canada 27, 92, 108–109, 186; meat concessions 11, 36, 40, 70, 73, 185;
suppliers 42–43; and negotiating groups development-oriented 141; tariff
108–109 reduction 137
Canadian–United States Free Trade conferences 16, 81–83, 90, 92, 103–104,
Agreement 108–109 144, 166
capital 6, 50, 53–54, 105 consensus 12, 16, 68, 80, 83, 87, 90–92,
capital flows 52, 58 117, 152–154, 157, 159, 168;
capitalism 22, 24 international 157, 166; norm 81, 91–92;
Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety 163 principles 16, 90
Index 195
contestation 2, 12–13, 15, 25, 33, 41, 65, demands 10, 17, 66, 100, 123–125, 128,
98, 102, 112, 145–146; central 32; 132, 134, 137–139, 141, 145–146, 153,
ideational 44; increasing 17, 144; 179, 183, 186–187; ambitious 184;
political 33, 41, 45; recent heightening common 99; defensive developing
of 22, 93 country 138; far-reaching 186; framing
contracting parties 84, 91, 102, 115, 144 offensive 139; inspired 137; legitimate
Convention for the Abolition of Import and 133; minimal moral 179; normative 188;
Export Prohibitions and Restrictions popular 80; substantive 186–187
(Prohibitions Convention) 155 democracy 4, 12–13, 16, 80–85, 87, 89,
Convention for the Preservation of Wild 91, 93; American 86; consolidate 82;
Animals, Birds and Fish (London deliberative 100; discourse 87; domestic
Convention) 155 84; framing of 83–84; invoking 83;
Convention on International Trade in underming of 86
Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and democratic claims 87, 93
Flora’s 162 democratic credentials 16, 80
Corbyn, Jeremy 45 democratic decision-making procedures 14
countries 41–42, 50, 52–53, 55, 58–60, democratic deficit 85, 90, 92; charges 92;
65–67, 71, 75, 133–134, 137–144, 146, claims 85; discourse 93; slogans 87
152–153, 155–159, 162–163, 167–168; democratic frames 16, 80–82, 85, 87, 89,
complaining 161; dissuaded from strong 92
adoption of trade restrictions 164; democratic legitimation 80–81, 91–92
enemy 52; importing 159, 166; democratic processes 83, 87
impoverished 40; industrialising 121, developing countries 10–13, 25–28, 35–36,
141; low-income 127; non-industrialised 40–41, 67, 69–71, 73–75, 83–84, 86–88,
141; non-LDC 144; non-OECD 125; 106–108, 121, 125–128, 132–146,
poor 75, 121, 125, 137, 139, 142, 178, 176–178, 180–188; advanced 143; bloc
185; powerful 72, 186–187; richest 69, 133, 141, 146; calling for more
142, 166 co-operation between GATT and
CPB see Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety financial and development institutions’
critique 6, 26–27, 84, 86–87, 89, 106, 110, 126; categories 142–143, 146; claim
122–124; common 104, 111; dispersing there concerns are unheard 146;
124; external 16, 116, 122–124, 128; delegitimised 17; emerging 142;
fundamental 87; internal 116, 122–124; emphasise that only multilateralism can
popular 86; process sapping 27; radical lead to fair outcomes 186; groups of 17,
13; shared 111; trade reforms 28 71, 133, 143; indebted 127; members
CSOs see civil society organisations 93, 106, 134–135, 176, 183; powerful
CTE see Committee on Trade and 70; pushing for liberalisation in
Environment agriculture 139; representatives 13, 145;
CUSFTA see Canadian–United States Free status 133–134, 140–143, 146
Trade Agreement developing economies 142
development 11, 14, 16–17, 22, 75,
Daunton, Martin 8 119–120, 125–127, 132–141, 143–146,
debt 115, 120, 127; crisis 136; external 156–157, 159, 165, 167, 180, 182;
125–128; indicators 51; problems 121, agenda 144, 146; changing meanings of
126 in world trade 132, 134; discourse on
debtor countries 139 132–133, 135–136, 138–139, 143–144,
Decision on Trade and Environment 146; economic 137; engendering 75;
160–162 environment for 157; human 75, 118,
delegates 1–2, 81, 104–105, 180, 182–185, 124; import-substitution 146;
187; developing country trade 28; international environmental 166;
member state 103; raising their voices 1 language of 134, 145; levels of
delegations 83–84, 90, 137; member state 137–138; meaning of 136; policies 123;
103; official 89 post-war 115; processes 183; social 143,
delegitimising policies 34–35 155; subordinating 128
196 Index
Devereaux, C. 35–36 economic systems 116, 136, 139; global
DFQF see Duty-Free Quota-Free 140; inequitable international 183; open
differential treatment 3, 40–41, 75, international 159
133–135, 137, 143, 178 economic theories 133–134, 146
Dingwerth, Klaus 1–18, 80–93 economies 6, 9, 54, 70–71, 108, 126, 136,
disagreements 34, 38, 40, 45, 105, 163; 152; developing 142; emerging 133,
internal 109; major 104; political 45 142–144; green 166; host 55; liberalised
discourses 3, 8–9, 11–12, 15–17, 24, 87, 120; national 87; universal 23
93, 128, 132–133, 136–137, 139–140, economists 24, 117
145, 152–153, 177, 180; academic 3; Education International (international trade
constructing 127; contentious 154; core union body) 103
159, 166; dominant 182; emerging 134; EEC see European Economic Community
existing 153; final 154; hegemonic 118; EGS see environmental goods and services
important 153; legitimation 80, 83; new EI see Education International
25, 142, 186; political 17, 51, 82 EIF see Enhanced Integrated Framework
dispute settlements 38, 91; legal 72; elections 28, 44
mechanism for 35–37, 161, 164; system Elkjaer, Thomas 60
169 emerging countries 40, 133–134, 138, 140,
disputes 33, 39, 83, 154, 156, 158, 142–144, 146; ability of 134, 146; large
163–165, 169, 183; bitter 34; first 40; major 69
GATT 158; investor-state 106; resolved emerging economies 133, 142–144
163 emerging markets 93
DMD see Doha Ministerial Declaration employees 56–57
Doha 69–70, 83, 91, 120, 134, 143, 181, employment 68, 80, 155, 168
184; negotiations 71; stalemate 70 ‘Enabling Clause’ 1979 135, 140–141
Doha Development Agenda 162 Enhanced Integrated Framework 121
Doha Development Round 132, 134, 138, entitlement conceptions 178–180
140–141, 144–146, 186 environment 4, 8, 10, 12, 14, 17, 37,
Doha Ministerial Declaration 145, 99–100, 117–119, 125–128, 152–169;
162–164 positive 163; relationships 152–153,
Doha Round 40–41, 45, 69, 71, 74, 76, 156, 166; social 13; world trading 1–2
81–82, 89–90, 126, 138–140, 166, environmental 16–17, 22, 26–27, 37, 41,
176–177, 180, 184–185, 187 85–86, 93, 104, 106, 108–110, 116,
domestic regulations 37, 156; applied 166; 118–119, 124–126, 152–166, 168–169;
internal 156 goods and services 154, 162–163;
Drache, Daniel 71 impacts 27, 157, 161–162; issues 104,
Drahos, Peter 35–36, 39 156, 162; and labour regulations 37;
Drake, William 25 laws 86, 169; measures 159–160, 166;
Dunne, Nancy 85–86 objectives 158; organisations 37;
Duty-Free Quota-Free 138, 144 outcomes 157, 161; policies 85, 108,
125, 153, 158, 160; protection 16, 104,
Eagleton-Pierce, Matthew 4, 8–10, 12–13, 110, 116, 152–154, 156–157, 160,
15, 22, 22–29, 101, 139 164–165, 168
Eckersley, Robyn 153, 155, 160, 164, 168 Environmental Goods Agreement 163
ecological modernisation 153, 157, 160 environmental regulation 152, 154, 156,
economic development 55, 127, 132, 158, 164–165; criticised 153; domestic
135–137, 140, 153, 156–157, 162; real 154, 156, 165; growing 153; national
51, 132, 146; theory 17, 132 158, 165; new 109; particular 153;
economic growth 36, 134, 137–139, 146, proliferation of 157, 159; trade-
159, 162 restrictive 160
economic interests 44, 99 environmental treaties 153, 155, 157
Economic Partnership Agreements 71, 111 EPAs see Economic Partnership
economic policies 119, 132, 136–137 Agreements
economic statistics 51, 61 European Commission 97, 99, 107, 167
Index 197
European Economic Community 66 Uruguay Round 25; and WTO 80–85,
European Union 10, 26, 67, 71, 140, 142 177, 180, 187
export-oriented businesses 32–33, 35, 37, General Agreement on Trade in Services
39, 42, 45–46 25, 103, 110
export-oriented development policies 136 Generalized System of Preferences 36, 67,
135, 182
factories 50, 110 Geneva 1, 70, 84, 104–105, 134
fair exchange conceptions 179–180, 182 global governance 6–7, 15–16, 28, 44, 64,
fair trade 176 69, 72, 74, 88, 93, 108, 122
FAO see Food and Agriculture global trade 4, 16, 40–41, 50, 64, 97, 99,
Organization 107, 137; governance 7, 16, 97–100,
Farage, Nigel 45 102, 104–112, 117, 123; platforms 138;
FDI see Foreign Direct Investment politics 9, 11, 15, 33, 64, 74–75; WTO’s
The Financial Times 85–86 role in 106
Finger, J.M. 178, 182 Global Warming Network 86
First World War 52 goals 17, 59, 118, 120, 123, 136–137, 153,
Food and Agriculture Organization 126 155, 159–160, 162, 165–166, 169;
Foreign Direct Investment 13–15, 50–55, aspirational 169; countervailing 162;
58–61; brownfield 55; datasets 56; development 157; environmental 17,
defining 52; in economic discourses 50; 169; policy 16, 34, 45, 116, 124–125,
investors 52; measurement of 50–51, 60; 128; regulatory 38, 165; social 100
statistical operationalisation of 52, Goodland, Robert 37
54–55; stock 52, 56–57, 59–60; governance 28, 74, 97, 111, 117; collective
179; democratic 84; economic 116–117;
theoretical concept of 51, 54, 60;
global 6–7, 15–16, 28, 44, 64, 69, 72,
transactions 59; unlisted 60
74, 88, 93, 108, 122
foreign investors 53, 55, 60
government officials 32–34, 36, 42–43,
fossil fuel subsidies 169
45–46
France 27, 56–57, 83, 109
government policies 35
free trade 9, 23–24, 36, 44, 66, 77, 80, 86,
government procurement 33, 37, 40
115, 117–118, 153, 157; arguments 24; governments 9, 16–17, 34, 36, 39, 41, 43,
favour of 9, 23; guardian of 2 68, 81–82, 86, 89, 103, 109, 143, 161;
free trade agreements 10, 28, 145; see also antagonistic 71; domestic 70; grants 9;
trade agreements national 52, 102; non-democratic 83;
withdrawing due to threats to cultural
GATS see General Agreement on Trade in sovereignty 109
Services Gray, John 13
GATT see General Agreement on Tariffs Great Depression 33, 66, 72
and Trade green economies 166
‘GATT gospel’ 90, 92 Greenpeace 27, 86
Geck, Angela 13, 17, 40, 132, 132–146, Griffith, Martin 86
182 gross domestic product 141–143
gender 99–100 Grotius, Hugo 23
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade groups 16, 65, 67, 82, 85–86, 88, 98–101,
1–2, 36–37, 41, 66–68, 81–87, 90–92, 103–111, 133, 135, 141, 143, 145, 159;
102, 115, 126–127, 132, 134–137, campaign 100; environmental 108, 110;
140–141, 152–161, 177–178, 180–185; for-profit 99; moneyed 99; non-profit
agenda 154; dispute settlement body 99, 103; selecting 103; well-resourced
119; dispute settlement mechanisms 101; working 121
102, 108; founding members 134; GSP see Generalized System of
framework 134; and the legality of Preferences
national trade restrictions 158; members
2, 81, 136, 158–159, 180, 184; Hannah, Erin 4, 10–11, 27, 105, 118–120,
negotiations 86, 156, 184; and the 122, 135, 138, 142
198 Index
Harrison, C.S. 35–36 ISD see investor-state dispute
Hausmann, Ricardo 59 ITO see International Trade Organisation
health regulations 160
Helleiner, Eric 74 Jackson, Patrick 13, 153
Heron, T. 71, 140 Johnson, M. 2, 5
Hopewell, Kristen 10–11, 111, 138–139, Johnston, J. 109
142 justice 13, 15, 176–180, 183–188;
Horn, H. 161, 169 arguments 178; based arguments 177,
Hudec, Robert 67, 134–136 180, 183; based demands 17, 176,
human rights 8, 10, 16, 122, 124, 128 184–186; based statements 180–181;
discourse on 177, 180, 184, 188;
IBM 35–36 distributive 177, 179–180, 182–183,
ICTSD see International Centre for Trade 186–187; notions of 17, 177, 180;
and Sustainable Development procedural dimensions of 177, 182, 185;
ILO see International Labour Organization related demands 177, 184; related
IMF see International Monetary Fund statements 176, 183, 187; substantive
imports 17, 152, 155, 159 notions of 176–177, 182
Indian 12, 26, 38, 70, 133–134, 138, justice claims 180, 182, 186
140–142, 146, 156, 163, 180, 186;
government 38; resistance 69 Kelsey, Jane 25
industrialised countries 27–28, 67, 141, Keohane, Robert 65
176, 180, 182–185, 187–188 Kornprobst, Markus 6–7
inequalities 77, 135–136, 139–140, 178 Krebs, Ronald 13
inflation 24, 51
injustices 141–142; environmental 104 labelling 12, 15, 17, 33, 41–43, 45;
institutional actors 97–98, 108, 111 demands country-of-origin 43;
intellectual property 25–26, 35–37, 45, 56, regulations 43; requirements 12, 33,
182; intensive businesses 35–36; and 41–43, 45; rules 45; standards 41–43
protectionism 35; regulations 35–37; labour 10, 22, 38, 115, 135; regulations 37;
rights 3, 17, 26, 36, 55, 160, 183–184; rights 100, 104, 106; standards 8, 10, 37,
rules 22, 25; trade policies 36 41, 105, 110
International Centre for Trade and Lacey Act 155
Sustainable Development 105, 142, 163 Laclau, Ernesto 117
International Conference for a Tariff Truce Lamp, Nicholas 135, 142, 144
1930 33 Lamy, Pascal 76, 106, 142, 176
international economic organisations 12, Lang, Andrew 9, 25, 117
88 language 2–11, 46, 82, 86, 88, 116–117,
International Labour Organization 133, 136, 143, 145–146, 155, 159, 163,
125–126 166, 168; assertive 54; democratic 83;
International Monetary Fund 9, 15, 51–54, identical 153; legal 41; multilateral
59–60, 88, 115, 117, 119–120, 123, treaty 154; political 5, 8; and power 7–8;
125–126, 128, 136, 139, 146, 184 role of 5, 8–9, 17; socio-political 4;
international trade policy 27, 145 technical 11
international trade projects 168 laws 25, 35, 42, 58, 83, 85, 152, 156, 158;
investments 27, 36, 40, 50, 54–55, 58–61, domestic 163; first federal 155; natural
98, 106, 109, 182; amplified 115; cross- 23; origin labelling 42; origin-neutral
border 52, 54; foreign 59; greenfield 55; 156; and regulations 163
long-term 51; minority 58; portfolio 53; lawyers 22, 24, 26
round-tripping 58; short-term 52, 58; Laxer, G. 109
tax-motivated round-trip 55 LDCs see least developed countries
investor-state dispute 106 least developed countries 40, 75, 121,
investors 53, 55 138–141, 143–144, 179
IP see intellectual property Leebron, David 26
Ireland 56–57 legitimacy 16, 28, 68, 81, 83–85, 89–90,
Index 199
97, 100, 108, 111–112, 135, 158, 161; Merkel, Angela 74
claims 88, 92; crisis 84, 93, 162; Mexican government 109
democratic 87, 92 Mexican groups 109
liberalisation 71, 74–75, 77, 90–91, 115, Mexico 108–109, 119, 158
136–140, 146, 163; commitments MFN see Most-Favoured Nation
134–135, 137–138; general market 138; Mhurchuú, A.N. 4, 13
multilateral 70–71, 90; multilateral Mill, James 24
consensus-based 92; progressive 2, 90; Millennium Development Goals 120
trade 9, 11, 17, 22, 27–29, 67, 70, 73, Moore, Mike 52, 85, 110
133, 136–138, 152–154, 157, 162, Most-Favoured Nation 66, 136, 182
164–165, 168 movement 70, 100–101; alter-globalisation
Linsi, Lukas 13, 15, 50, 50–61 80; free 115, 152, 155; global
London Convention (Convention for the environmental 156; global justice 104,
Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds and 177; large environmental 109
Fish) 155 Mügge, Daniel 51, 61
Lydgate, Emily 12, 17, 119, 152, 152–169 multilateral environmental agreements
109, 152, 154–155, 159, 161, 163–164,
MAI see Multilateral Agreement on 167–169; commitments 169; existing
Investment 168; obligations 162, 164; relationships
Marceau, Gabrielle 103, 105 163; relevant 159, 169; trade obligations
Margulis, Matias 135–136 164, 169
market access 71, 136–138, 152, 167, 178 multilateral trade negotiations 66, 81, 93,
market interventions 137–138, 146 180, 186, 188
markets 10, 24, 45, 68, 121, 136–137, 139; multilateralism 2, 9, 12, 15, 64–67, 69,
agricultural 108; developed country 145; 71–77, 90, 92, 176, 186; existing 15;
emerging 93; global capital 55; important
global 73; trade 74–75
export 153; international 121; local capital
Murphy, Gregory 4, 27, 177
55, 60; national 42; new 37; private 121
mutual supportiveness 153–154, 157–158,
Marrakesh Agreement 103, 169
162–166, 168
Mavroidis, Petros 161, 169
Muzaka, Valbona 12, 15, 64–77, 145
meaning makers 13–14, 36, 51, 81, 102,
124, 136, 140, 142, 146, 153, 168, 184,
187; academic 135; contested 85; Nader, Ralph 86
dominant 188; effective 35, 43–44; NAFTA see North American Free Trade
external 152; important 81; inclined 27; Agreement
institutional 136; major 24; particular Nairobi 90, 92, 186
25, 133; powerful 44; primary 42; Narlikar, Amrita 9, 133, 140, 142, 145
relevant 160; significant 40 ‘narrow coherence’ 116, 118, 122–124,
MEAs see multilateral environmental 128
agreements nation-states 50, 99, 107, 159
media 83, 87, 104, 108, 177 national development plans 121
member states 11, 17, 83–84, 87–88, 91, national policies 65
104–106, 119–120, 123–126, 182, national sovereignty 32, 46, 84
184–186; guarding 110; implementing national trade restrictions 158
119; industrialised 87; monitoring 123; nations 18, 23–24, 36, 44, 54, 86;
shrimp-exporting WTO 110; statements developed 26–27; powerful 85
83, 90; and statements at GATT negotiations 25–26, 82, 84, 91–92,
Contracting Parties and WTO Ministerial 106–109, 132, 134, 137, 140, 145, 154,
Conferences 83; undermined 10 156, 162–164, 166, 182; ambitious 182;
members 9–10, 65, 73, 75–76, 81–83, 87, behind-doors 86; development-oriented
89, 99, 137–138, 141, 159–160, 163, 145; final 162; inclusive 186; launched
165, 178, 185–186; core 74; key 73; 155; multilateral trade 66, 81, 93, 180,
obligations of 164; powerful 177; 186, 188; new 184; OECD 109; Tokyo
radical 89; weakest 17, 176, 188 Round 182
200 Index
neoliberal 9, 34, 117, 136–137; ideas 9, patents 35–36
134, 137–139; terms 138–139 Peruvian delegation 84
neoliberalism 4, 9–10, 17, 35, 132–134, Pfizer 26, 35–36
136–137, 146 Piketty, Thomas 28
Netherlands 27, 56 policies 3, 32–35, 38–40, 44–45, 60, 87,
New International Economic Order 81, 115, 118–119, 123, 125, 128, 137, 139,
135, 182 158, 165; aid 119; co-ordinated 115;
NGOs see non-government organizations collective 65; common 128; designing
NIEO see New International Economic 111; development 123; environmental
Order 85, 108, 125, 153, 158, 160; explicit
Nigeria 183 68; fiscal/monetary 125–126; foreign
non-discrimination 66–67, 73, 75, 152, 167; government procurement 33–34;
156, 162; principle of 66, 68, 73, 75; procurement 34; protectionist 33,
represents the overarching generalised 40; social 125–126, 165; supportive
principle of state conduct 65 120, 124
non-government organisations 16, 37–38, policy goals 16, 34, 45, 116, 124–125,
83, 85, 88–89, 97, 101–105, 111–112, 128; non-economic 46; plausible public
177; actors 10; relationships 104–105 32; valued public 37
non-product-related 158 political demands 102, 110; diverse 111;
non-tariff barriers 10, 33–35, 37, 45, 67, narrower 100; new 108
137, 156, 162 politics 5, 9, 42, 44, 46, 112
non-trade 26, 123, 161; issues 116, 153, power 2–5, 7–10, 38–39, 44–45, 70,
161, 168; values 9–10, 26, 83 73–74, 76, 104, 110, 133, 138, 140, 144,
non-transparency of transnational company 177, 179; corporate 86–87, 106;
ownership structures 58 discursive 15; economic 146;
norms 13, 26, 89, 116, 122–124, 128, 164, enforcement 107; major 27, 86;
184; of anti-protectionism 40; negotiating 87; new 12; productive 8;
democratic legitimation 92–93; significant 8; social 24; structuring 5;
universal 122 voting 54
North American Free Trade Agreement Prakash, Aseem 35–36
27–28, 109 Pratt, Edmund 36
NPR see non-product-related preferences 32, 35, 59, 66–67, 75, 135;
NTBs see non-tariff barriers definitional 40; legalised trade 135;
national 83
OECD see Organization for Economic preferential market access 17, 133,
Cooperation and Development 135–136
OIE see World Organization for Animal presidential elections 28
Health principles 54, 65–66, 88, 116, 118, 124,
Onuf, Nicholas 4–5, 116 135–136, 138, 159, 162, 164, 178–179,
Opel, John 36 182; basic 139; core WTO 152;
organisations 16–17, 64, 85–88, 90–92, 97, demanding substantive 180; legal 152;
101–102, 104, 107, 115, 118–119, 121, universal 23
124, 126, 128, 135; advocacy 99, 116; Pro-Canada Network 108
consensus-based 186; democratic 92; problems 16, 50, 56, 58, 61, 71, 76,
global 156; of member states 125; nation- 119–121, 124, 126–127, 152, 156, 159,
focused 108; new 83; practices 16, 81 183, 185; analytical 101; collective 6;
Organization for Economic Cooperation conceptual 54; economic 122;
and Development 25, 28, 52, 59, 120, fundamental 87; international 69; issue-
126; member countries 59, 116, 125, related 125; major 119; renewed 27;
127–128, 181; negotiations 109 resolving coordination 39; structural
Oxfam 27, 86, 118, 123, 177 143; technical measurement 58
procurement policies 34
Paris Agreement 167 producers 42, 135; advantaged domestic
Parker, R.W. 159, 161 40; agricultural 43
Index 201
products 26, 35–36, 41–43, 45, 70, 152, customary 163; development-friendly
156; constructed 61; domestic 156; 134–135, 138; external international
foreign 43; imported 165 legal 164; fair trading 123; formal 87;
protectionism 4, 12, 14–15, 24, 27, 32–45, free market 139; international 35, 137;
67, 72, 158, 182; concomitant 67; mechanical 54; one-state one-vote 85;
constituted 33, 35, 37, 40, 45; definition phytosanitary 43; preferential 144;
of 35, 38, 45; disguised 34, 39, 42; special 133
domestic 167; ‘green’ 153, 166; Russia 56–58, 72, 106
illegitimate 43; and intellectual property
35; interwar 66; legitimate 34; meaning Samuelson, Paul 24
of 15, 32–33, 37, 40–41; new 158; Sanders, Bernie 44–45
social 34; veiled 38–39, 42 sausages, issues concerning labelling of
protectionist 32–40, 42–43, 45; impact 39; 42–43
intent 32, 38–39, 43; interests 158; scholars 13, 28, 133; constructivist-leaning
labelled 15, 32, 34, 38; measures 80; 7, 10–11; trade 154
ploy 38; policies 33, 40; pressures 2, 11 Scott, James 4, 11, 70, 121, 135, 138, 142,
protests 27, 80–81, 83, 87, 93, 104, 159, 167
162; domestic 83; public 88–89, 92, S&D 133–140, 142–146, 178, 182–184;
158; Seattle 15, 83, 87, 91–92; street 98, ambitious 185; central concept of 133,
101, 104 135; for developing countries 137, 178,
public protests 88–89, 92, 158 182; interpretations of 139, 146;
Punke, Michael 142 measures 133, 137, 140, 143; purpose of
136–137
racism 99–100 Seattle protests 15, 83, 87, 91–92
references 7, 22–23, 82, 84, 89, 102, 117, Second World of communist industrialised
123–126, 128, 143, 161, 163, 165, countries 141
182–183; explicit 82; first treaty 157; to Second World War 33, 52, 66, 134, 155, 184
justice 180 Secretariat of GATT 1, 27, 89, 103–104,
regulations 2, 37–41, 43, 84, 106, 137, 120, 166
152, 156–158, 161–162, 165; anti- Sell, Susan 25
pollution 157; national 158; new 106, Seng, Philip 42
109; technical 160; unilateral 162 services 22, 25, 34–35, 71, 84, 99–100,
relations 4, 12, 14, 25, 27, 88, 99, 103, 110, 144, 152, 154, 160, 162; classifying
105, 109–110, 125, 140; asymmetrical 25; commitments 120; incorporated 25;
power 71; groups 103; maintaining national healthcare 100; trade 25
power 8; shifting power 12; unequal Shindo, R. 4, 13, 111
power 85; working 102 Shrimp dispute 161
relationships 6, 10, 15, 22, 28, 68, 104, SIDS see small island developing states
154, 156–157, 163, 165; economic 56; Siles-Brügge, G. 11, 66, 71–72, 97, 106
environment 152–153, 156, 166; Singapore 103, 126
evaluating causal 28; mixed 107; post- small island developing states 75
preference 71; special 115; trade and Smith, Adam 22, 24, 27
environment 166; trading 132 social construction 6, 33, 41, 111
Ricardo, David 24 social movements 85, 87, 92–93, 97, 101
‘rising powers’ 142, 176, 181, 186–187 societies 11, 36, 77, 98–100, 104, 112;
Rockwell, Keith 90 economic 99; political 98–99, 102
Rodri, Francisco 28 Special and Differential Treatment see
Rodrik, Dani 28, 77, 136 S&D 184
Rudd, Kevin 74 special purpose entities 50, 55–56, 58
Ruggie, John 9, 65, 68–69, 74, 76 Special Safeguard Mechanism 138
rules 4, 35, 38–40, 53–54, 65, 68, 71, 73, special treatment 17, 134, 142, 177–178,
75, 89, 132–139, 142, 145–146, 184; claim that providing special rights
177–178, 184; clear 59; coherent 118; helps to ensure ‘genuine equality’ 178;
colonial 135; corporate 80, 89; demanded 135
202 Index
SPEs see special purpose entities trade and environment 8, 12, 26, 90, 132,
SSM see Special Safeguard Mechanism 135–137, 140, 152, 154, 159–162,
states 4, 6, 23, 33–34, 36–39, 41, 44, 166–167, 182; and the idea of ‘mutual
65–66, 76–77, 88, 90, 98, 104–105, 127, supportiveness’ 157; relationships 166
159–160; centripetal force pushing 38; trade barriers 32–34, 38–40, 153, 162;
developing 35, 40, 105; donor 67; establishing 43; formal 178; primary 33;
helping 90; industrialised 16; unfair 45
interventionist welfare 68; permanent trade capacity 121, 146, 176, 185
73; poor 116; powerful 68, 74, 116, 127, trade curtailment 34, 44–45
186; regulations 38; social welfare 9 trade disputes 90
Stern, Robert 8, 157 trade facilitation 40, 185
Strange, Susan 66 Trade Facilitation Agreement 2013 140
street protests 98, 101, 104 trade flows 32, 40, 50
Sturzenegger, Federico 59 trade gains 178–180, 185
subsidies 11, 33–34, 37, 39, 160; domestic trade governance 9, 71, 111, 123; civil
trade-distorting 10; fisheries 162–163 society in global 98, 111; contemporary
sustainable development 12, 17, 26, 118, global 102, 112; multilateral 64
154, 157–160, 162, 166, 169 ‘trade in services’ 25, 84, 99, 103
Sutherland, Peter 88, 105 trade issues 3, 154, 161
Switzerland 56 trade justice 176–180, 184, 186, 188
systems 13, 17, 27, 66–67, 72, 85, 87, 97, trade lawyers 26; academic 161;
141, 146, 161, 168, 176, 180, 187–188; international 168
conceptual 5; integrated 50; new 183; as trade liberalisation 9, 11, 17, 22, 27–29,
a pre-eminent symbolic 8; rules-based 67, 70, 73, 133, 136–138, 152–154, 157,
44, 167; unfair 123 162, 164–165, 168; depicted by
President Trump as resulting in US
Tamiotti, Ludivine 166 unemployment 168; environmentally
tariffs 12, 17, 23, 33–34, 43, 45, 102, 132, meaningful 169; multilateral 167;
136, 155–156, 162, 182; barriers 45; policies 146
concessions 67; levels 28; preferential trade multilateralism 64–66, 68–69, 73–76;
67; reciprocal 182; reducing 67, 73, 136, and the Doha Round 69; modern 76;
156, 178, 182; schedules 24 operating 67; pre-Doha 73
Third World Network 105, 109, 177 trade negotiations 34, 50, 69, 75, 97, 99,
Tokyo Round 1, 33–34, 37, 81, 84, 134, 104, 179, 186, 188; free 10; mega-
138–139, 177, 182–183 regional 176, 186–187; particular 100;
TPP see Trans-Pacific Partnership regional 188; shifting 185
trade 1–5, 7–18, 22–29, 32–33, 36–37, trade obligations 163, 168
42–45, 64–65, 106–108, 118–125, trade officials 38, 176
127–128, 132, 152–157, 159–163, trade policies 11, 15, 22, 27–28, 32, 34–35,
165–169, 178–179; agenda 27, 37; 37, 39, 41, 44, 119, 123–125, 135, 138,
blocking 33; category of 22, 24; 159–160; domestic 29; existing 127;
complex 101; comprehensive free 128; national 26; sustainable 10
coherence of 14, 116, 118–119, trade politics 2, 4, 10, 14, 25–26, 28,
123–124, 127–128; coordinating 160; 32–33, 37, 40–41, 44, 46, 71, 98;
curtailed 34; inhibited 34, 37, 41; international 14; multilateral 65; sense
liberalising 66, 135, 162; mega- of world 2–4
regional 186; multilateral 3, 66, 69, 74, trade regimes 3, 10–11, 17, 75, 124, 128,
76, 89, 91; non-discriminatory 66; 134–135, 146, 176, 178, 183; coherent
regulating 115; terms of 3, 9, 18 127; global 116, 118, 179, 188;
trade agreements 69, 105, 108–109, 179, international 132, 136; multilateral 119;
185; bilateral 66; first 167; foreign 86; world 4, 11, 13–18, 80–81, 85, 92, 127,
multilateral 178–179; new 28, 108; 132–134, 136, 139–140, 146, 176, 180
particular 98; preferential 177, 186; trade regulations 27, 116
regional 92, 152, 163, 169, 186 trade restrictions 155, 157–159, 164–165
Index 203
trade rules 25, 32, 74, 123, 133, 160, 176, Bureau of Economic Affairs 56;
178, 182–183, 185–186, 188; business communities 36; consumer
development-friendly 132; groups 43; Consumer Product Safety
development-oriented 136; fair 182; Commission 38; Department of State
global 75; international 32; multilateral 33; economy 25, 59–60; Environmental
188; new 185 Protection Agency 41;
trade systems 73, 135, 160, 184; global environmentalists 158; Government 17;
161, 176, 182, 187–188; international opposition 167; products 167;
161; multilateral 153–154, 160, 167, regulations 161; strategy of linking
177, 182, 186, 188; rule-based 188 trade policy to intellectual property
trade unionists 26, 97 standards 26; trade diplomats 3; trade
trade unions 89, 99, 106, 110 negotiators 36, 107
trade wars 17, 72 Uruguay Round 33, 35–38, 40, 69,
traders 8, 23, 121; free 44; multilateral 10 81–84, 86, 91, 104, 108, 115, 119, 134,
trading system 27, 158; multilateral 11, 69, 137–138, 177, 182–185; and attempts
83, 92, 160, 162, 176, 186; open 119, by trade officials to split the differences
157; rules-based 139 between the two sides 38; of
Trans-Pacific Partnership 28, 70–72, 106 multilateral trade negotiations 81;
Transatlantic Trade and Investment negotiations 38
Partnership 70–72, 80, 92–93, 97, US see United States
106–107, 111
transparency 82, 84, 88, 119 values 8, 13, 50, 59–60, 68, 70, 72, 76, 89,
treaties 155–156, 159, 168; early trade 116, 133, 178; democratic 16, 84;
155; environmental 153, 155, 157; first environmental 27; market 59, 61
modern multilateral trade 152 Venezuelan delegates 82
Trommer, Silke 4, 11, 71, 111 Vidigal, G. 164
Trump, Donald 28, 44–45, 72, 77, voting rules 16, 81, 89
167–168, 188
TTIP see Transatlantic Trade and Wallach, Lori 86
Investment Partnership war 5, 23
tuna 108, 119, 158, 160–161 Weinhardt, Clara 1–2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14,
turtles 110, 154 16–18, 132–146
Tussie, Diana 27, 140, 142 Western countries 28, 66, 70
Western governments 36, 68
UN see United Nations Wilkins, M. 52
UNCHE see United Nations Conference Wilkinson, Rorden 4, 11, 65, 67, 70, 104,
on the Human Environment 108, 122–123, 138, 145
UNCTAD see United Nations Conference Winslett, Gary 15, 24, 32, 32–46, 137,
on Trade and Development 158, 184
UNEP see United Nations Environmental Winters, Alan 117–118
Program WIPO see World Intellectual Property
United Nations 120, 155, 157, 159, 166 Organization
United Nations Conference on the Human Working Group on Trade, Debt and
Environment 156–157 Finance (Doha) 120
United Nations Conference on Trade and World Bank 9, 28, 88, 115, 117–120,
Development 126, 132, 135, 140–141, 124–126, 128, 136, 146, 184
146, 182 World Commission on Environment and
United Nations Environmental Program Development 1989 157
126, 166, 169 World Customs Organization 11
United Nations Sustainable Development world economy 2, 51, 115, 120, 127
Goals 2015 166 world health 85
United States 25–28, 34, 55–56, 59–60, World Intellectual Property Organization
68, 72, 86, 106–110, 119, 137, 35–36
140–142, 158, 161–163, 165–167, 186; World Organization for Animal Health 38
204 Index
world trade 2, 14, 33, 81, 137; community 137, 146, 176; and GATT 80–85, 177,
90; discourses 3, 83, 116, 124; order 180, 187; and major international
136; system 17, 91, 187–188 environmental law treaties 168; mandate
World Trade Organization see WTO 117, 153; Ministerial Conference 81, 83,
world trade politics 2–4, 8–11, 14, 18, 90, 139, 144, 186; and multilateral trade
116–117 liberalisation 167; negotiations 10, 70,
world trade regimes 4, 11, 13–18, 80–81, 88, 138, 143, 153, 177–178, 182;
85, 92, 127, 132–134, 136, 139–140, obligations 152, 154, 163–165, 168;
146, 176, 180 official communications 81; officials 16,
world trading system 9, 12–17, 76, 132, 81, 85, 87–88, 93, 121; provisions 163,
141, 145–146, 152–153, 168–169, 177, 166; and regional trade and investment
182 agreements 168; rules on development
World Wide Fund for Nature 27, 37, 86 133; Secretariat 12, 16, 97–98, 102–105,
WTO 13–18, 38–39, 64–67, 71–73, 76, 110, 112, 117–118, 166; Secretariat and
80–93, 102–107, 109–110, 115–124, trade negotiators 154; website 88, 154,
126–128, 137–146, 152–156, 160–169, 156, 162–163, 166–167
179–181, 184–188; activities 103, 121; WTO members 17, 88, 92, 120, 125–128,
Agreement 118–119, 128, 156; 142–143, 145, 153–156, 164–165,
bureaucracy 116, 123; coherence 178–180, 186; in disputes 156; like-
mandate 119, 128; and the Committee minded 85; non-signatory 92; and
on Trade and Environment 154, officials 92; and state delegations 105
160–163, 165; compliant 38–39; WTO Ministerial Conference 16, 80, 82, 92,
Contracting Parties and WTO member 103–104; Bali 2013 138; Bali 2013 138;
states 103, 126, 128; dispute settlement Geneva 1998 104; Nairobi 2015 90;
mechanism 37; disputes 39, 154; Doha Seattle 1999 80–81, 84, 89, 92–93, 97,
Development Round 28, 184; era 133, 104–107, 109–110; Singapore 1996 103

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The Language of World Trade

Outcomes in major multilateral trade negotiations are conventionally explained

Klaus Dingwerth is Professor in Political Science with a Focus on the Political

Clara Weinhardt is a Lecturer in International Relations at the Hertie School of

The RIPE Series published by Routledge is an essential forum for cutting-­edge

• Field-­defining theoretical advances in International Political Economy

Transnational Capital and Class Fractions

The Language of World Trade Politics

Power in North-­South Trade Negotiations

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/RIPE-

Edited by Klaus Dingwerth and

ISBN: 978-1-138-47983-8 (hbk)

List of illustrations vii

1 Terms of trade: introduction 1

4 Foreign direct investment 50

Felix Anderl is a Research Associate in International Relations at Goethe

Matthew Louis Bishop has been Senior Lecturer in International Politics at

ACP group African, Caribbean and Pacific group of countries

Language and world making for us

Language and world making for everyone

Or, he imagines, social constructivist researchers could unmask the idea of a

The role of language in world trade politics

Early conceptions of international trade

The conceptual inflation of trade

The contemporary political contestability of trade

The meaning of protectionism

Protectionism in the GATT (1947–1979)

Intellectual property and protectionism

New actors start caring about the meaning of protectionism

The WTO’s three-­fold test

The meaning of protectionism and the Doha Round deadlock

New fronts of debates about protectionism and labelling

Product versus process

Trump, Sanders, and Brexit: is ‘what’ giving way to ‘for

Due to the growing transnationalisation of production and wealth chains, trade

Drawing boundaries: discovering and defining FDI

Similarly, it was explicitly acknowledged in BPM4 (IMF, 1977) that ‘[t]he

As the difference basically depends on the motives of the investor, objective

a direct investment enterprise is defined … as an incorporated or unincorpo-

Of apples and oranges: conceptual problems

Netherlands 740,740 Netherlands 147,047 United Kingdom 1,482,300 Ireland 940,579

The devil is in the details: technical measurement problems

Trade multilateralism: past and present

The Doha Dodo: difficult times for the WTO

The WTO’s missing social purpose

A changing mind map and the WTO as a meaning maker:

the multilateral trade negotiations … and more generally the conduct of

The rise of democracy as a ‘non-­trade value’

Civil society vs the WTO: contested meaning makers

The democratic deficit claim

There is something about foreign trade agreements, such as the Uruguay

The WTO’s response: reframing the democracy discourse

The long legacy of Seattle

Civil society in global trade governance

A brief history of civil society in global trade governance

Civil society and the TTIP negotiations

Coherence as a conservative rhetorical tool

Narrow and comprehensive coherence

The RIPE Series published by Routledge is an essential forum for cutting-edge

• Field-defining theoretical advances in International Political Economy

Power in North-South Trade Negotiations

List of illustrations vii

1 Terms of trade: introduction 1

4 Foreign direct investment 50

The WTO’s three-fold test

The rise of democracy as a ‘non-trade value’

As a result, many developing countries, especially middle-income countries, are

so it is now a battle amongst the developed countries and the so-called

[i]t is not self-evident, of course, that the major international institution

Members from industrialised countries, to the contrary, tended to use justice-