of the negotiating modalities. I address each factor in turn. In the subsequent section I
discuss what all these groups do.
4.1 Whose power is determinative?
The familiar story about how the USA as the new hegemon rescued the world
trading system from autarchy after the Second World War is not wrong, but was its role
predicated on its military strength, the size of its market, or its ability to alter the terms of
debate? That is, did its power depend on coercion, interests, or ideas? The answer is
obviously, some combination thereof, but it is easy enough to see the GATT of 1948 as
a public good supplied by the USA alone. By the 1960s the GATT could be seen as a
bilateral agreement between Europe and the United States. That model was still a good
approximation in the Tokyo Round of the 1970s. It was clear by the start of the Uruguay
Round in the 1980s, however, that things had begun to change, not least because of
the creation of the Cairns Group of agricultural exporters to create enough weight to be
able to participate as equals in the agricultural negotiations (Higgott and Cooper 1990).
Whatever the relative weight of the factors, the key deal making the round possible was
nevertheless the Blair House accord between the U.S. and the EU. But now old ideas of
power are losing their ability to illuminate negotiations.
Power is a problematic concept in international relations. Traditional definitions
and the hierarchical classifications of actors associated with them are not always
analytically helpful in the context of the WTO. For present purposes, I accept the
definition proposed by Barnett and Duvall (2005: 3): “Power is the production, in and
through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine their
circumstances and fate.” Two types of power are especially salient for the WTO.
Compulsory power, they argue, “can be based on material resources, and on symbolic
or normative resources.” (Barnett and Duvall 2005: 14-15) In addition to states,
international organizations, firms, and civil society organizations have the means to get
others to change their actions in a favoured direction. The concept of institutional
power is a reminder that the diffuse social relations shaped by institutions can also
constrain behavior: the fact of the WTO’s normative framework is not easily changed
now, and it has powerful effects on any country that accepts the terms of debate (Adler
and Bernstein 2005).
In the standard approach, WTO rounds are said to be launched by crafting a
package big enough to entice everyone to join the consensus, but are concluded on the
basis of the power of the major countries (Steinberg 2002). It would be foolhardy to
pretend that the Doha Round will end before the USA and the European Union are
ready, but their agreement will be far from sufficient. The power to coerce, which many
take as the ordinary meaning of the term, was used effectively by the United States and
European Union in the final days of the Tokyo and Uruguay Rounds to convince less
powerful member states to assent to their bilateral bargains. But even the USA now
finds that it lacks coercive power. The Doha timetable is apparently driven by the
approaching end in 2007 of U.S. President Bush’s trade promotion authority. A deal
without the USA would not be worth having, but this powerful country cannot force a