What's Wrong With the Wto and How to Fix It

We need a world trade organization. We just don't need the one that we have. By pitching unequally matched states together in chaotic bouts of negotiating the global trade governance of today offers - and has consistently offered - developed countries more of the economic opportunities they already have and developing countries very little of what they desperately need. This is an unsustainable state of affairs to which the blockages in the Doha round provide ample testimony.

So far only piecemeal solutions have been offered to refine this flawed system. Radical proposals that seek to fundamentally alter trade governance or reorient its purposes around more socially progressive and egalitarian goals are thin on the ground. Yet we eschew deeper reform at our peril. In What's Wrong with the World Trade Organization and How to Fix It Rorden Wilkinson argues that without global institutions fit for purpose, we cannot hope for the kind of fine global economic management that can put an end to major crises or promote development-for-all. Charting a different path he shows how the WTO can be transformed into an institution and a form of trade governance that fulfils its real potential and serves the needs of all.

Rorden Wilkinson is Professor of Global Political Economy and Head of the Department of International Relations at the University of Sussex.

About the Author viii

Acknowledgments ix

Tables xiii

Abbreviations xiv

Introduction: Starting from here 1

Part I Problems

1 Why we govern trade in the way that we do 19

2 Bargaining among unequals 45

3 Talking trade 79

Part II Solutions

4 Thinking differently? 107

5 Trade for all 132

6 Getting from here to there 160

Conclusion: Moving beyond the state we are in 181

Notes 188

References 191

Index 211