or new rules for domestic support provide more opportunities to block consensus than
bilateral modalities such as “request and offer”. But these modalities also require a high
level of engagement and negotiating resources because the agreed formulae or rules
usually require domestic regulatory changes by Members and, once agreed by all, apply
to all. As trade policy moves behind the border, voice becomes more important, and it
becomes all the more important as exit becomes less plausible for any country.
The complex pattern of meetings shown in Annex B is directed to a simple goal,
finding a consensus on a deal to reform global farm trade as part of a Single
Undertaking package for the WTO Doha round as a whole. But that goal is anything but
simple, because the deal must accommodate the interests of large commercial farmers
in Europe and Brazil with those of small rice farmers in the Philippines and dairy farmers
in eastern Canada. The current process has emerged as a means to help everybody
learn about the issues and the technical complexities of the possible solutions. At its
periphery it includes consultations on the issues with farm organizations. At its core are
discussions among a small group of Members on the elements of a compromise. In
Hong Kong, delegations were happy with the so-called “bottom up” process (inputs
coming directly from members rather than from above), but the challenge in 2006 is
moving to a “text-based” process. Will the Members in the small groups, like the Green
Room, be able to explain to those they represent the basis for the text that emerges,
and will it be seen to be a legitimate compromise?
The agriculture process evolved to accommodate changing configurations of
power, more complex issues, and new modalities. The WTO will always face the
institutional design task of providing a forum for all 149 Members to understand the
intentions of all other Members (transparency), and to learn about complex new issues
(new consensual knowledge for the public and officials), a forum where all Members
have a voice (legitimation). The challenge is squaring the circle of the formal equality of
members, and their practical inequality in capacity to participate in negotiations or
contribute to the outcome. The evolving process for farm trade negotiations may provide
a model. If agriculture is able to contribute to a successful Doha outcome, this new
process, however complex and cumbersome, will have proved its worth, and may
suggest new avenues for future research on the contribution of institutional design, in
contrast to the usual political economy approaches to explaining international economic
outcomes. And if the round fails, the evolving process may still prove its worth. The
lessons GATT Contracting Parties learned in the Tokyo Round on how to negotiate
domestic issues only paid off in the Uruguay Round. The lessons now being learned in
the Doha round on how to ensure all Members of the WTO are part of the process may
also pay off only in a subsequent round.8
8 This idea was suggested by Gilbert Winham during a panel at the International Studies Association
meeting in San Diego, March 2006
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