A Glass Quite Empty: Issue Groups' Influence in the Global Trade Regime
| Published date | 01 May 2014 |
| Author | Dirk De Bièvre |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12109 |
| Date | 01 May 2014 |
A Glass Quite Empty: Issue Groups’
Influence in the Global Trade Regime
Dirk De Bi
evre
University of Antwerp
Abstract
Nongovernmental actors with a focus on environmental, social and development concerns have been credited with
influence over the global trade regime. Referring to such issue groups as ‘social movements’or ‘global civil society’,
some have considered the influence of civil-society organizations (CSOs) over outcomes to be a glass half full. A more
sober assessment is that inclusion and self-proclaimed success should not be confused with increased influence.
Issue groups have had little to no influence on the day-to-day grind of trade policy in the WTO and in bilateral
agreements. Moreover, activism against any WTO agreement has foreclosed a multilateral disarmament agreement
on agricultural subsidies, causing these to continue to undercut producer power in developing countries. Rather
than organizing flash fires at global negotiations, issue groups would exert more influence if they redirected their
expertise and advice to their parliamentary representatives, facilitating these actors’control and sway over trade
policy making.
Policy Implications
•Compared to producers, CSOs have limited influence over trade policy outcomes.
•The slogans ‘Stop subsidies’and ‘No agriculture in the WTO’are contradictory.
•NGOs would gain more influence by providing their expertise and advice to parliamentarians in democratic WTO
members.
The roles and relative influence of different civil-society
actors on international trade policy would seem to be an
assessment about a glass half full or half empty. Nongov-
ernmental organizations with a focus on environmental,
social and development concerns have become more
present in the domestic policy processes in advanced
industrialized states as well as at ministerial conferences
of the WTO, and have influenced the agenda of policy
makers (De Bi
evre and Hanegraaff, 2011). At the same
time, firms and their trade associations have continued
to monitor and influence day-to-day domestic trade pol-
icy making and have increased their institutional em-
beddedness in many WTO member states and at WTO
negotiation venues.
A glass half full or half empty?
This has presented practitioners and observers with a
puzzle. Has NGO mobilization changed international
trade policy making? Or have the institutions of the
existing multilateral trade regime designed after the
image of the Quad –EU, US, Japan, Canada –remained
largely stable, driving process and policy outcomes
towards the interests of those that created them? In
particular, was the failure of several WTO ministerial
conferences in the run-up and during the Doha Round
of multilateral trade negotiations the result of NGO
activism? Or was the incompatibility of interests and
strategic positions between the governmental represen-
tatives of the major trading partners in the WTO the
cause of the failures of talks and later the deadlock in
the Doha Round?
The same question can be asked about the failure of
the Seattle meeting. The ‘Battle of Seattle’came to epit-
omize the rise of social movements up the ladder of
levels of governance, having now arrived onto the inter-
national level of the global trade regime. Equally, the
launch of the ‘Doha Development Agenda’, instead of a
‘Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations’could
be, and has been, constructed as a victory for NGOs,
while the formulation of the Doha Declaration on
Health is often construed as proof of the demise of a
pharma-multinationals-dominated global trade regime
(Odell and Sell, 2006). Also, the failure of the ministerial
©2014 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2014) 5:2 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12109
Global Policy Volume 5 . Issue 2 . May 2014
222
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