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This paper peers backwards into the history of the multilateral trading system and its development over the past half century as a means of considering what may lie beyond the horizon for the future of global trade governance. Its purpose is to underscore the necessity and urgency for root-and-branch reform of the multilateral trading system. It achieves this by comparing and contrasting the global trading system of 50 years ago with its modern-day equivalent and its likely future counterpart half-a-century hence. In so doing, the paper throws into sharp relief not only the inadequacies of global trade governance today but also the damaging consequences of not fundamentally reforming the system in the near future, with a particular emphasis on the past, present and future development of the world’s poorest and most marginalised countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on the role crises play in enabling existing systems of global economic governance to evolve and endure while also preserving underlying power dynamics. The article uses global trade governance as its case-study. Its aim is to explore the impact of the negotiating crises that beset the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Doha round of trade negotiations. The article traces how, over the course of the Doha round, periodic crises resulting from divergent pressures for opposing outcomes combined to preclude one set of institutional developments from resulting (those on which the Doha round had been launched and the basis upon which developing countries negotiated) while enabling others (those advanced by the leading industrial states). The result has been to usher in changes that have returned global trade governance to a form of system management more familiar to observers of the multilateral trading system of the 1970s.This 'retro' form of trade governance signals a departure from the more inclusive system that had emerged from the Uruguay round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and evolved during the WTO's early years, replacing it with a lither system of mini-lateralism more fit for industrial country purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This concluding article argues that while the actions of emerging powers have left an indelible mark on the way multilateral trade is governed, they have not been able to disrupt to any significant degree the deeper structures of power that underpin the World Trade Organization (WTO). While emerging powers have proven to be important players in the Doha negotiations, particularly in the closing stages, they have ultimately come up against a glass ceiling that prevents their further rise. This ceiling is the product of a series of institutional factors that combine to facilitate alterations in the general arrangement of members one-to-another but which prevent deeper configurations of power from being disturbed. The result is that while we may have witnessed some changes in the multilateral trading system, these have been more akin to a rearrangement of the multilateral furniture than to a fundamental transformation of the system. [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]

This article offers an account and analysis of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) 7th Ministerial Conference – a meeting that, although ‘successfully’ concluded, failed to address a series of key issues in the increasingly moribund Doha Round of trade negotiations. We begin with an account of the meeting that offers an insight into the ‘colour’ of these biennial gatherings. The article then identifies and explores the primary consequences of pursuing an agenda designed not to focus on the core issues in the Doha Round but instead to ensure that the meeting is a ‘success’. Here we draw attention to the increasingly problematic nature of the Round's ‘development’ content, the thorny issue of agricultural liberalization and the problems posed for developing countries when their industrial counterparts pursue trade objectives through regional and bilateral means. In the concluding section, we consider the way forward for both the Doha Round and the WTO as an institution.Cet essai invité offre un compte-rendu et une analyse de la 7ème conférence ministérielle de l′Organisation mondiale du commerce, une réunion qui, bien qu’ayant été formellement conclue de manière « satisfaisante », n′a pas abordé les questions clés associées aux négociations commerciales du Cycle – de plus en plus moribond – de Doha. Nous commençons avec une description de la réunion même, afin de donner une idée de la tonalité de ces rassemblements bisannuels. Nous identifions et explorons ensuite les conséquences du fait que la conférence ait poursuivi un ordre du jour qui n′avait pas pour but de se pencher sur les questions fondamentales du Cycle de Doha, mais plutôt d′assurer que la réunion serait un « succès ». Nous poursuivons notre analyse en attirant l′attention sur la nature de plus en plus problématique du contenu des négociations du Cycle de Doha, le problème épineux de la libéralisation agricole et les problèmes rencontrés par les pays en voie de développement quand leurs partenaires industriels poursuivent des objectifs commerciaux par des moyens régionaux et bilatéraux. En guise de conclusion, nous considérons le futur du Cycle de Doha ainsi que de l′OMC en tant qu′institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warnings that a breakdown in multilateral trade liberalization would bring about an upsurge in protectionist sentiment, the possible collapse of the multilateral trading system and, in the most doomsday of scenarios, the fragmentation of the global economy have been an intrinsic part of trade negotiations since the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was first negotiated. What is seldom acknowledged, however, is the role that this language of crisis and collapse--what might be called a 'crisis discourse' --has had on framing trade negotiations and in maintaining forward momentum in the liberalization process. This discourse has played a role in facilitating the kind of institutional development that the GATT and the World Trade Organization (WTO) has undergone--helping to push through bargains among GATT contracting parties and WTO members that have been (and remain) deeply asymmetrical--and driving the trade agenda forward at moments when the institution appears deadlocked; and it has continued to play a role in the current round of negotiations. The aims of the paper are twofold. First, the paper explores the content of the crisis discourse. Second, it examines the way in which the discourse has been deployed as a means of reframing trade negotiations in such a way that the likelihood of their continuation and ultimate conclusion increases. The paper does this by focusing on the collapse and resumption of the negotiations in the wake of the WTO's 2005 Hong Kong ministerial meeting, though the crisis discourse and its intensification at moments of intransigence has been a key feature of trade negotiations since the Allies first sat down to develop a trade architecture in the wartime and early post-war years. [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.