consensus where one does not exist, and it less able to influence the shape of the deal
than it was in the past.
Multilateral trade reform requires the supply of two collective goods, new rules
and more open markets. No state can supply either of these goods alone, but the
systemic good of an open liberal multilateral trading system does not require collective
supply by all 149 members of the WTO. A great many developing country members can
be free riders, as long as the non-discrimination norms are binding constraints. But how
many Members are needed for “critical mass”? The idea of critical mass implies that the
relevant process is of a sufficient size to be self-sustaining, whether it is a nuclear
reaction or the wide diffusion of a social norm. Many applications in social science
derive from Mancur Olsen’s work on the provision of collective goods. Whereas Olson’s
work is pessimistic on the possibility of cooperation, other scholars explore the
circumstances under which a group of sufficient size can be created to supply public
goods (Oliver and Marwell 2001).
One dimension of critical mass is material. For example, Canada and the USA in
a proposal for sectoral negotiations on Non-agricultural Market Access (NAMA) said
that “critical mass represents a negotiated level of participation based on the share of
world trade that interested Members determine should be covered in order for those
Members to be willing to reduce rates in a given sector (WTO 2005).” But how much is
enough? A manifestation of the decline of U.S. coercive power, understood as its share
of the global distribution of power among countries and coalitions, measured as shares
in global or sectoral transaction flows, is the observation in The Economist (2006) that
the output of the 32 largest emerging economies is now equal to that of the rich
countries. China, India and Brazil are especially significant both for their current size but
also for the implications of their growth rates. Nevertheless, as Annex C shows, only
China has entered the ranks of the top traders, with both Brazil and India being far
behind Canada, for now. Both the EU and the USA have double the weight of Canada
in world agricultural trade (Annex D), but Canada’s trade is significantly larger than any
of the other members of the FIPs. Yet neither China nor Canada is a member of the G-
6, which in early 2006 was emerging as the central coordinating group for the Doha
round. If material power determined the relative hierarchy of members of the WTO, this
situation would be anomalous. So why are China and Canada excluded while Australia,
Brazil and India play leading roles?
In the negotiations as a whole, critical mass implies that emerging markets that
represent a significant share of global production and consumption should help to
supply the systemic public good by improving access to their own market. The leading
emerging markets have a broader role. A study of the systemic role of four emerging
powers (China, India, Brazil and a non-WTO member, Russia) argues that these
countries may not be powers on a scale with the USA, but they have the strength and
desire to challenge the established order. (The four country papers are introduced in
Hurrell 2006). Unlike other second tier states, they were on the margins of the Atlantic
order that dominated the international organization of the second half of the twentieth
century, and they do not necessarily accept its premises. They now have the material