Developing Countries Create Momentum for Change in the WTO
| Date | 01 October 2011 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00099.x |
| Published date | 01 October 2011 |
| Author | Faizel Ismail |
Developing Countries Create
Momentum for Change in the WTO
Faizel Ismail
Ambassador Permanent Representative of South Africa to the
World Trade Organization
A response to ‘Measuring the WTO’s Performance: An Alternative Account’
Rorden Wilkinson*
Rorden Wilkinson argues that when seen from the per-
spective of its stated aims and objectives – the exchange
of trade concessions, creation of trade rules and dispute
settlement – the World Trade Organization (WTO) and
before it appear to have performed poorly. However, he
argues that it is more appropriate to analyze the WTO
from the perspective of its underlying purpose, which is
to ‘enable the leading industrial states to open markets
in the areas of economic benefit while protecting and ⁄or
forestalling the liberalization of those that were and are
politically sensitive’ (p. 44). Seen from the latter perspec-
tive Wilkinson argues that the WTO has been quite suc-
cessful. Wilkinson insists on the need to take a historical
view and analyze the WTO over the eight rounds of
negotiations since it was created in 1947. During each
round developed countries in the GATT, he argues, con-
tinued to promise the developing countries gains in
areas of export interest to them. Developed countries
promised to open their markets to the agriculture and
textiles exports of developing countries, but in reality
the developed countries continued to protect these
products even more. The result after eight rounds of
negotiations (the last being the Uruguay Round) has
been the making of an institution that reflects an ‘asym-
metry of opportunity’ against the developing countries,
with the developed countries taking the lion’s share of
the gains of the multilateral trading system. This analysis
leads Wilkinson to conclude that the ‘balance of eco-
nomic opportunity resulting from a conclusion to the
DDA will reside with the industrial states’ (p. 50).
Wilkinson is also very skeptical of the efforts that have
been made to reform the WTO towards a more equita-
ble and balanced institution that could serve the inter-
ests of all its members, particularly the poorer
developing countries that constitute the vast majority.
He observes that most of the recent proposals for
reform, including the Sutherland Report and the Warwick
Commission, put forward a range of proposals that are
‘both narrow and lacking in ambition’ (p. 51). He asserts
that these proposals have been lacking in ambition
because the ‘realm of political possibility is likely to
remain one that concentrates solely on tinkering with
the institution at the margins’ (p. 51).
While Wilkinson has provided us with a very powerful
analytical framework to understand and evaluate the
his final conclusions about the possibility of change may
be too pessimistic. Wilkinson is correct to argue that the
assessment of an international organization’s perfor-
mance must take account of its underlying ideas and
interests rather than merely relying on an institution’s
stated aims as a baseline for analysis. Wilkinson uses a
historical and institutional conceptual framework to
assess the performance of the WTO. This framework also
recognizes that ‘at particular moments in time funda-
mental changes in the nature and direction of an institu-
tion’s evolution have the capacity to occur’ (p. 45) and
that these changes can result from ‘pressure brought to
bear as a critical mass develops from a long process of
incremental adjustment’ (p. 45). Wilkinson should thus
look to the current struggles and processes within the
institution and the changing wider political and eco-
nomic context for signs of incremental processes of
change already occurring which could result in a ‘critical
mass’ at some stage or indeed a decisive break
from past trends of recurring ‘asymmetry of economic
opportunity’.
Characterized by continuous crisis, the current Doha
Round of trade negotiations launched in November 2001
remains at an impasse after nine years. Despite their spe-
cific economic interests, the EU and the US have joined
together at various stages in the current negotiations (at
Cancun in 2003, Potsdam in 2007, etc.) in a common
front to impose an unfair deal on developing countries.
*Wilkinson, R. (2011) ‘Measuring the WTO’s Performance: An
Alternative Account’, Global Policy, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 43–52.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1758-5899.2010.00058.x
Global Policy Volume 2 . Issue 3 . October 2011
Global Policy (2011) 2:3 doi: 10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00099.x ª2011 London School of Economics and Political Science and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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