GDAE Working Paper No. 09-01 Resources, Rules and International Political Economy
de facto (if not explicit) effort to leave the WTO and create a new WTO-plus world that
those developing countries on the outside will feel compelled to join - just as developed
countries left GATT 1947 and created a new GATT-plus world that resisters to the
Uruguay Round found compelled to join. There are sound reasons to question the
viability of regional and bilateral strategy, but just raising it as a possibility speaks to the
fragility of rule-based power and the undying importance of the distribution of resources
in the shaping of the international economic order.
Kenneth C. Shadlen is a Senior Research Fellow with GDAE's Globalization &
Sustainable Development Program and a senior lecturer of Development Studies at the
London School of Economics and Political Science. Inquiries can be directed to
k.shadlen@,lse.ac.uk
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