The World Trade Organization has changed. It is a much fairer organisation than the organisation that became the target of the Seattle demonstrations in 1999, and is (at least in some important ways) a much nicer and evolved progeny of the GATT?s. Is it not time that this multilateral body gets the commitment it deserves?
A central critique of the WTO today is that the organisation fails to deliver on fair process. This was a valid criticism of the WTO ten years ago. It is an outdated and irresponsible critique to launch against the organisation today.
Improvements in decision-making and negotiation processes in the WTO are dramatic and far-reaching. The GATT, with its opaque and exclusive decision-making procedures, was labelled the ?Rich Man?s Club?. Even after the formation of the WTO, the Seattle ministerial conference of 1999 saw riots outside and also a revolution within the organisation as its own members complained of marginalisation from the invitation-only ?Green Room? meetings. Indeed, as late as the Cancun ministerial conference of 2003, excessive informality and off-the-cuff decision-making had meant that many developing countries with their small delegations found themselves disadvantaged and unable to negotiate effectively.
Changes in process at the WTO in the aftermath of the Seattle ministerial included improvements in the transparency of its small group meetings. Unlike the much more secretive Green Room meetings of earlier days, these meetings (and their participants) came to be announced in advance. Further, they were framed explicitly as consensus-building consultative meetings rather than decision-making ones. Director General Pascal Lamy deserves special credit for having reinforced the strength of institutional reform. Under his leadership of the organisation, the old core group that led the decision-making process?the so-called ?Quad? comprising the EU, US, Canada, and Japan?has come to be replaced by a much more representative grouping that takes the shape of the G4, the ?Five Interested Parties? or the Quintet, the G6, and most recently the G7 in the July 2008 talks. Brazil and India, along with the EU and US, have constituted?with consistency?all permutations of this core group.
Moreover, these improvements in the internal transparency of the organisation have been accompanied by unprecedented external transparency. The WTO?s website is to be commended for the richness of the information that it provides to members of the general public. Lamy?s engagement with the NGOs and other stakeholders through his blog and other e-conferences is unprecedented.
Admittedly the process is not perfect: the naming of the core group as the G7 in the latest July talks was perhaps somewhat unfortunate, given that the actual G7/G8 itself attracts accusations of a democratic deficit by countries that cannot belong to this club. But the WTO process is representative and thereby considerably more democratic than in other international organisations. While the consultations in ?concentric circles? ensures that even the smallest members get a hearing, the transformation of the old Quad into a new core group that includes rising powers of the developing world guarantees a WTO that reflects the reality of changing power balances.
Given precisely the fairness of process that it does facilitate, the WTO is a forum that is today especially well-suited to the needs of developing countries. The substance of its negotiations is more development- friendly than in any other international organisation of consequence, and certainly more so than a regional or bilateral trade agreement would allow. It is also less prone to the vagaries of re-negotiation than regional arrangements . Of course the WTO also comes with its own problems. In particular, its proclivity to deadlock in recent years. But as far as fairness of the process of global governance goes, it doesn?t get much fairer than this.
?The author teaches at the Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge