Christina Davis's book adds two important insights to our understanding of trade negotiations. First, Davis persuasively argues that complex international institutional factors can alter domestic protection of agriculture. Using the European Union and Japan as cases and marshaling sophisticated statistical evidence, she details historical patterns by which agricultural policy became linked to wider issues and, in the process, allowed trade liberalization to overcome the political advantages that small, well-organized groups, such as farm interests, possess. Second, she documents the contingent character of the politics of trade negotiations. Outcomes emerge not only from negotiating decisions, such as choice in agenda setting and the use of threats, but also from forces external to the negotiations per se, such as budget pressures.

Agriculture subsidies and other trade barriers in industrialized countries have proved the most contentious area within trade liberalization negotiations because of strong domestic political pressure opposing it. Not surprisingly, therefore, beginning with the earliest GATT rounds in the late 1940s, liberalization of agriculture was largely neglected, and later Kennedy and Tokyo Rounds gave it only symbolic attention. In the last decade this has changed. Decline in the power of farm lobbies, the use of international institutions, and the global harm caused by trade barriers in agriculture have made it possible to link progress in agricultural concessions to gains in other areas, thus mobilizing forces to counter agricultural protectionist preferences within key industrial countries.

Davis's study focuses principally on these international moves within agricultural trade discussions, especially those during the Uruguay (or Eighth) GATT Round in 1986–93. The author also examines a wider historical era reaching back to the 1970s and continuing through the early stages of the Doha Round launched in fall 2001. The core questions she pursues are the extent to which and the ways in which negotiations at what Robert Putnam called “Level I” or the interstate level can overcome collective action barriers inside a country that favors agricultural protectionism. Industrial countries protect agriculture, she explains, because farm sector demands are politically stronger than consumer interests, even though this leads to a net welfare loss to a country. This classic political economy problem applies across various commodity areas and national settings. Davis shows how Europe and Japan, either in direct talks with the United States and/or within the larger multilateral arena, agreed to reduce protectionist policies. While acknowledging that budgetary pressures and other domestic changes may have worked in favor of reducing farm subsidies, she suggests that these do not explain the shifts themselves, either the size or timing of them.

So how do international institutions affect bargaining and limit the power of domestic farm lobbies? Davis answers this question by tracing specific agricultural trade-liberalization concessions as they emerged in agreements accepted by both Japan and the EU. Thanks to the institutional framework and laws set up in trade talks, coupled with the ability to link agricultural agreement to other trade gains, liberalization occurred. Sometimes, as with the case of France's reluctance to accept the Blair House deal, threatening to block the entire agreement, linkage leads other European countries to force the agricultural liberalization concessions. This outcome, facilitated by the institutional framework within which negotiations occur, mobilizes domestic pressures for the entire trade package. Thus, these most difficult and central struggles within recent trade negotiations illuminate arguments raised by international politics scholars, providing evidence that institutional settings have an effect. As a whole, the book represents a fine story about the international drama of global regime building in which securing cooperation occurs through the classic means of issue linkage and arena change.

The case Davis presents for the generalizations about international politics lies both in the statistical analyses and the in-depth tracing of patterns within bureaucracies. Measures of each liberalization move allow her to use multivariate statistics to assess the weight of the several factors that soften intractable positions. Success and failure of liberalization turned on more than a single factor; and bargaining has more than a single win-set dimension à la Putnam's essay of two-level bargaining. The book illuminates the role of domestic lobbies and their power in domestic institutional areas, as well as paths by which these are overcome.

The strengths of the book are her careful arguments to support the proposition that institutional context makes a difference in realigning the bargaining arena and enabling cross-issue linkages under GATT and WTO. Weaknesses of the book are its easy dismissal of the view that the agreed reductions were less than what major countries would have done without negotiations, as argued by Robert Paarlberg (noted on p. 41), and the substantial time she dedicates to theoretical arguments. Few readers will welcome the recurring emphasis on “institutionalist” theory in as diverse a field as international trade affairs. Readers will find Chapters 6–8 rich in stories about how decisions work inside the trade bureaucracies of the EU and Japan in their negotiations with the United States. They will be of interest also to those looking for causal paths tracing the inside and outside dynamics for foreign policy choices. The analysis offers an implicit critique of the bilateral tack adopted by the U.S. government since 2003. The succinct conclusion points clearly toward a multilateral path to liberalization.

Food Fights over Free Trade is an original contribution to our knowledge about how domestic politics and international negotiation processes interact. We see, in the domain of agricultural politics, the pull and tug of specialized interests and bureaucracies. Further, we learn how agencies established to overcome collective action problems—both commercial and public ones—can turn to international institutions to make progress.