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The Language of World Trade
Politics
The RIPE Series in Global Political Economy aims to address the needs of stu-
dents and teachers.
2 Trade 22
M att h ew E a g leton - P ierce
3 Protectionism 32
Gary W inslett
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
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
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.
4 Klaus Dingwerth and Clara Weinhardt
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,
Terms of trade: introduction 5
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.
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)