commercial scale oriented to world markets. As Members began thinking about how to
frame the Doha negotiations, many developing countries argued that “food security”
should be a legitimate reason to undertake lesser liberalization obligations in any new
deal. The concepts became more sophisticated when with NGO help many developing
countries began to promote a “development box” as an alternative to the Green Box in
the Uruguay Round agriculture agreement that was said to only benefit rich countries.
By Cancùn, the idea of “special products” had taken hold.
At the same time, some of the rich countries whose small-scale highly protected
farmers feared further liberalization began to promote the idea that some products are
too “sensitive” for real reform. And then producers of cotton and bananas realized that a
simple formula approach to tariff reduction would not necessarily advance their
interests. Sugar producers dependent on preferential access to the EU market worried
that they could be wiped out by real liberalization of the EU subsidy regime. Countries
that are net food importers were not at all in favour of an end to subsidized exports from
rich countries, which has given them food at below market prices. As Members became
aware of this growing complexity, in part through discussion in existing groups, they
reconsidered their allies, which led to the formation of new groups, and to the
participation of many countries in more than one group.6
4.3 The effect of modalities on institutional design
The proliferation of small groups is also due to change in how the negotiations
are conducted. Tools of public action structure relations among actors (Salamon 2002).
It follows that negotiating modalities have institutional design implications.
During the Kennedy Round of the 1960s, GATT Contracting Parties developed a
number of informal negotiating devices. One was the practice of negotiating market
access bilaterally on a “request and offer” basis among “principal suppliers” and then
extending the results to all participants through the “most favoured nation” principle
(MFN). This process limits the interest of Members with large markets in negotiations
with small market Members. Deals negotiated with "principal suppliers" do benefit small
Members, who can act as free riders, but the practice also hurts them by limiting their
ability to negotiate on subjects of greatest interest to them. Given the large difference in
economic weights of participants, some major deals began life in small meetings of the
most significant participants—the so-called “bridge club” of the US, the EEC, the United
Kingdom, Japan, and Canada. Even then, delegates from smaller Contracting Parties
felt excluded (Winham 1986). Trade rules and domestic policies began to come to the
fore in the Tokyo Round, but the decision-making structure was still “pyramidal”
(Winham 1992), with the largest players still negotiating agreements among
themselves, then discussing the results with others. This “minilateral” process
6 Two factors not addressed in this paper are also salient. First, over the past 25 years, developing
countries have learned that trade and their participation in the trading system matter for them. Second,
they have learned that the rules of the trading system matter for them, although officials and analysts are
often misled by the apparent strengthening of the WTO’s dispute settlement system (Wolfe 2005b).