The Doha round of WTO trade talks has been performing a drawn-out death scene of the sort that would put a B-list movie actor to shame. The round was launched as the Doha Development Agenda in late 2001. By the fall of 2003, at its Cancún Ministerial conference, it was already clearly in trouble. That was followed by a whole series of failed ‘last chances’ to set the round aright. Since its last thrashing about in the summer of 2008, the corpse has remained relatively still. These are the ‘Doha blues’ addressed by Kent Jones in his new book.
They are more than a little troubling. The inability of the new World Trade Organization to conclude its first trade agreement casts doubt on the viability and merit of the organization. Consider the perspective of a developing country that wishes to lock in reforms through a trade agreement: in the last 42 years, only two global trade agreements have been concluded. This hardly looks like a readily available option.
So how can we explain the failure to reach the first agreement since the Uruguay Round concluded in 1994? Here are six different explanations to consider:
1. The negotiators have just not been up to the task. Perhaps they have gotten under each others' skin, or they were just not capable enough to seize opportunities that were before them.
2. It's not the negotiators' fault. There have been shifts in domestic politics, in countries like the United States and India, such that agreements that might have been politically feasible at the launch of the round now no longer are.
3. It's not domestic politics. Instead, the eight preceding rounds of GATT talks took on the relatively easy task of reducing border measures like tariffs. It is significantly more difficult to tackle questions like agricultural subsidies and sanitary and phytosanitary measures and services regulation that intrude on traditionally domestic domains.
4. It's all international relations. A global system that was workable under a hegemonic power (the United States) and a handful of major players (the European Union, Canada, Japan) has become unworkable now that countries such as Brazil, India, and China have emerged as prominent actors.
5. The problem lies with institutional structure. Either the negotiations are too narrow and thereby preclude the sort of cross-cutting bargains that might allow for a deal; the actual procedures of negotiation (e.g. small-group breakouts to craft proposals) are flawed; or the WTO is perceived as unfair or unworthy and therefore its negotiations draw insufficient ardor and effort.
6. None of the above. We are panicking too soon. The Uruguay Round looked dead in Brussels in 1990 and countries pulled everything together a few years later in Marrakesh. Doha's obituaries are premature.
Jones makes passing mention of many of these, but largely focuses on #5, institutional structure. In so doing, he sets himself a difficult task. The WTO and its predecessor the GATT are inherently tough to analyze. Even in comparison to other international organizations, the trade bodies have relatively little life beyond their membership. In the case of the Doha talks, the negotiators need to reach a consensus. Thus, if any major player decides a proposal is unsatisfactory, there is no consensus. The WTO secretariat is left to propose, to inform, to cajole, to urge. But there is nothing it can do to compel. In fact, even if we were persuaded that institutional flaws are at the heart of the failure to reach an agreement, the remedy would lie with the very same participants reaching an agreement to reform the institution.
Jones focuses the bulk of his attention on the everyday functioning of the WTO rather than on the ups and downs of Doha. He addresses the problems that aspiring new members face in joining the WTO; the difficulties developing countries have in making use of the WTO's dispute settlement procedures; and the challenge of achieving coherence in efforts to provide those developing countries with ‘aid for trade’. In each case, Jones offers a broad well-informed survey of the relevant issues, along with tentative suggestions about policy change. He makes his arguments in a non-technical way, which means there is less precision than in a technical argument, but also means that the discussion is accessible to a much broader audience.
There is certainly an argument to be made about the centrality of developing country issues to Doha discontent. As Jones describes, the Uruguay Round of the 1990s left a bitter taste in the mouths of many developing country participants who felt they had been left with too many costs and too few benefits. It was this sentiment that prompted the development focus of the Doha round. Yet it is more difficult to argue that the problems of accession, dispute settlement access, and aid coherence have played a major part in stymieing the Doha negotiations. These are largely afflictions of outsiders (in the case of accession) or of relatively poor countries. The most significant Doha conflicts have occurred between the big insiders, notably the major developed powers and the large emerging developing nations. While it would certainly be possible to find poorer country participants who are dissatisfied with the progress of the Doha talks, the case that this has been a critical obstacle goes unmade.
The obstacles to a Doha agreement are tackled more directly in a chapter on the so-called ‘Green Room’ approach to negotiations. The ‘Green Room’ is the term for informal negotiations held by a subset of the WTO membership. As Jones recounts, it is a practice that dates back to the Tokyo Round talks in the 1970s. The difficulty is that the WTO currently has 153 members. The attempt to deal with issues in a smaller group ‘is based on the experience of many trade negotiators that once the number of active participants in a debate reaches 25–30, progress becomes increasingly difficult’ (p. 88). Of course, any country that does not make the cut feels slighted. To establish the significance of the Green Room as a problem, Jones writes: ‘While there were many contributing factors that led to the failure of the Cancún Ministerial, it appeared that Green Room procedures … had become ineffective as a process of identifying and achieving compromise on the many critical negotiating “resistance points” among various participants’ (p. 98). It is true that the Green Room approach was part of a failed overall effort, but that is quite different from establishing that it was an important factor.
Nevertheless, Jones proposes a solution. He provides tables of data suggesting which countries might reasonably be grouped in negotiations (while noting that the countries themselves might not assent to representation by a fellow group member). He also briefly sketches the idea of issue platforms. Countries left outside the Green Room could give their proxies in support of the champions of a particular issue platform. The idea is creative and intriguing, but it raises a host of questions about practicability. To Jones' credit, he raises some of these questions himself. That bolsters the credibility of his analysis, but it can also leave the solutions looking tentative and partially developed.
The same effect occurs at the conclusion of the book when Jones offers his cures for the Doha blues. Some of them seem to be at odds with his earlier analysis. As an example, he calls for a broadening of the scope of negotiations. That raises two objections. First, there is the practical question of how to expand the carefully wrought negotiating mandate for the Round. Second, Jones earlier laments the difficulties of developing countries in dealing with the scope and complexity of the round; an expansion of the agenda would exacerbate that problem. Other cures, such as Jones' endorsement of domestic economic reforms and of an ‘early harvest’ to trade negotiations, deserve a more thorough discussion than would fit in a conclusion.
Early in the book, Jones describes how negotiations have reached their current sad state, but he does not attempt an insider, blow-by-blow account of the negotiations. For that, the reader might seek out Paul Blustein's (Reference Blustein2009)Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations. Instead, Jones offers broad, thoughtful discussions of some of the principal problems plaguing the world trading system. Whether or not one finds his prescriptions persuasive, Jones' questions are good ones and his analysis is a welcome addition to the literature.
