ministerial level since 1999. Efforts to craft a compromise take place as always in
bilateral EU-USA meetings, but also in new cross-coalition groups such as the G-4, the
FIPs, the G-4 plus Japan, the G-6, and the FIPs Plus.
Multilateral economic negotiations are often explained by such exogenous
factors as the identifiable economic interests of participants, or their domestic industries,
and the general political and economic context. I ask about endogenous factors: does
the institutional design of the organization and the negotiating process affect the
outcome? In common with utilitarian approaches, I think that negotiations contribute to
transparency about actor intentions, but I also expect international organizations to
provide a forum for the legitimation of the regime, and help in developing new
consensual knowledge about how the system works (Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986). To
the extent WTO institutional design reflects these three factors, do they make a
difference to the outcome?
The focus of this paper is the agriculture negotiations. I first establish the context
by describing the evolution of the WTO negotiating process before describing the
proliferation of small groups in the Doha round. The core of the paper is a consideration
of factors that might explain the evolving institutional design of the negotiations. The
penultimate section discusses the changing role of Canada. In the conclusion I
speculate on the implications for the round, and for global governance.
2.0 Process in the World Talk Organization4
The general perception of WTO negotiations is of episodic ministerials at which
all the work is done. Agriculture negotiations at these meetings are often reported as a
standoff between subsidizing Europeans and free-trading North Americans with long-
suffering developing country farmers on the sidelines. Close observers know that
ministerials are the tip of an iceberg of diplomatic activity in and out of Geneva, and that
the developing countries have been increasingly insistent on having a voice in that
activity (Wolfe 2004).
The WTO is a forum not an “actor” in itself, and it is Member-driven. Unlike the
IMF and the World Bank, it has a tiny professional staff whose role is to serve as a
secretariat to the dozens of WTO bodies. Background papers can be commissioned
from the secretariat, but negotiating proposals come from members. The WTO is a
place to talk, and the talking is done by representatives of Members, both diplomats
based in Geneva and officials from capitals, including ministers. They talk at the
Ministerial Conference every two years and in the Council for Trade in Services. They
talk in regular committees that meet two or three times a year, in the negotiating groups
that meet every 4-6 weeks, and in the Dispute Settlement Body. They talk in hundreds
of formal on-the-record meetings every year, and they talk in many hundreds more
informal meetings (Wolfe 2004), which is not unusual in international organizations
4 The WTO is a successor to what The Economist once called the General Agreement to Talk and Talk, a
good assessment of the GATT.