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The conclusion of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Buenos Aires ministerial conference (10–13 December 2017) was immediately celebrated and derided in equal measure. For its supporters, Buenos Aires opened the way toward negotiations in e‐commerce, investment facilitation for development, and measures designed to help micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs). For its detractors, the meeting underscored the gridlock that continues to blight the WTO's negotiating function and underlined the organisation's declining credibility as a mechanism for governing global trade. In this paper we provide one of the first full length critical evaluations of the Buenos Aires conference and its outcome. In so doing, we offer answers to three questions. What accounts for such dramatically different assessments of the meeting's outcome? How should the outcome be interpreted? What is its significance for the future of the WTO and the multilateral trading system? We argue that the meeting's outcome was indeed significant. It has consolidated the process of reconfiguring the WTO's negotiating function; and it enables members to tackle more effectively a range of pressing economic and social issues as well as to navigate blockers and blockages in the negotiations. However, it also poses challenges for the WTO's poorest constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conclusion of the World Trade Organization's (wto) ninth ministerial meeting – held in Bali 3–7 December 2013 – is at one and the same time momentous, marginal and business-as-usual. It is momentous because it marks the first multilateral agreement reached in the wto since the organisation began operations on 1 January 1995; it is marginal because the deal reached will have only a limited impact on the global trading system; and it is business as usual because the Bali package will be of disproportionally greater value to the industrial states than to their developing and least developed counterparts. We examine what happened in Bali, covering the principal issues at stake and the content of the outcome, what this means for the wto and for the Doha Development Agenda (dda), and why it all matters. We argue that, while the Bali ministerial is significant and the agreements reached important, the conclusion of the meeting and the package agreed represent only a limited movement forward in addressing the fundamental problems and inequities of the wto system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International relations teeters on the edge of an abyss of irrelevance. As an academic pursuit, it has become disparate and fragmented. Those of us in the discipline have ceased to pursue greater clarity in the way that we understand the world around us. Moreover, we have failed as agents of change; that is, as purveyors of opinion and proposals about a better and fairer world order. As such, we no longer serve our students and those practitioners who seek our advice, or, for those of us who take on policy jobs, to push out the envelope of what is considered acceptable. Global governance offers one potentially compelling way of "saving international relations" though it is not without its problems. This article outlines how and why. The argument unfolds in three parts. The first outlines why and how IR teeters on the edge of an abyss. The second offers a proposal for moving beyond the fragmentation and atomization that afflicts international relations. We suggest that one way of encouraging reengagement is to return to debating grand questions that used to be the sustenance of IR. The third part argues that global governance--appropriately and specifically framed to make it fit for purpose--offers an opportunity to return to these questions and, in so doing, reinvigorate our fragmented and atomized field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of China has elicited a voluminous response from scholars, business groups, journalists and beyond. Within this literature, a 'China Threat Theory' has emerged which portrays China as a destabilizing force within global politics and economics. Though originating in Realist accounts, this China Threat Theory has spread across to other approaches, and it increasingly forms the backdrop against which scholarly work positions itself. Our article contributes to this debate by examining China's role within the World Trade Organization (WTO). It assesses the extent to which China has been the disruptive power that it is often claimed to be. In particular, the article examines the change identified in Chinese diplomacy around 2008, and argues that this is attributable to the process of learning and socialization that China had to undergo as a new member, coupled with its elevation to a position of decision-making power. Contrary to the China Threat Theory, we find little to suggest that China has adopted an aggressive system challenging mode of behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the Doha Development Agenda trade negotiation round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as of April 2012, arguing that rhetorical methods used in trade negotiations have the potential to undermine those negotiations. According to the author, metaphors in trade commentary can inhibit the development of solutions to economic problems. Topics include trade liberalisation, the potential detachment of the WTO from the Doha negotiations, and the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Two distinct literatures have emerged on the World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda (DDA) and its likely benefits for developing countries. One is built on the use of computable general and partial equilibrium simulations, while another explores the political economy of the negotiation process to explore the opportunities a concluded round will bring for developing countries. Both literatures generate important insights into the DDA, and both highlight that the deal on offer to developing countries is very weak. However, there has been little engagement between these two bodies of thought. This paper seeks to begin to redress this, fusing a review of the simulations of likely DDA gains with an examination of the passage of the Doha negotiations. It argues that through this process we can arrive at a fuller understanding of how limited, and problematic, the results of the DDA are likely to be for the less developed countries. If the DDA is to deliver on its mandate, a qualitative shift in the negotiations is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the World Trade Organization's ministerial conference in Hong Kong in mid December 2005. The aim of the meeting was to inject energy into an increasingly delayed and periodically fractious round of trade negotiations, the so-called Doha Development Agenda. The Hong Kong meeting was the first time trade ministers had gathered for a full conference since the collapse of the meeting in Cancun, Mexico.