Writing Global Trade Governance: Discourse And The WTO

Description

Writing Global Trade Governance operationalises a key post-structuralist methodology in order to expand understanding on the institution at the heart of the global political economy. Despite the WTO’s centrality and the growing popularity of methods utilizing discourse theory, no other text has yet demonstrated how these two fields of learning can be productively combined. The book seeks to move beyond existing literatures that assume the WTO to be a structure, institution or normative framework, in order to enquire into the discursive processes of identity formation that make the WTO both possible and contested. The book criticises conventional approaches that treat critical civil society as distinct to the WTO, arguing instead that it is only through including such social practices within the field of relations making the WTO that we can properly understand what makes the WTO work. The book presents an empirical analysis of the discursive character of the present-day WTO (including its formation and operation) and then moves on to evaluate how it is subject to change within a broader social context. The final stage of the book seeks to discuss the impact of the findings on future research, both on the WTO and other institutions. This work is a significant intervention in the literature on the World Trade Organization and the politics of global trade and social movements, and will be of great interest to students and scholars of global governance, discourse theory and international organizations. Cover Writing Global Trade Governance Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements List of abbreviations 1 | Introduction: Embedding the World Trade Organization The WTO as the ‘rule of law’ or as ‘power politics’ The problem of defining agency in the WTO Problematizing the WTO as Member-led The social construction of the Member state identity The WTO as a sedimented discursive formation A new research strategy: the WTO in this book What is the ‘WTO’? 2 | Contesting global trade governance: A genealogy of the WTO Introduction Genealogy Multiple articulations of global trade governance National security Peaceful cooperation Weapon of the free world Development Multilateralism Radically rearticulating global trade governance Articulating the need for an organization Emergence of new identities Conclusion 3 | The WTO as an uncertain political project Introduction The WTO as formal rules and informal norms An uncertain identity Conclusion 4 | The emergence of new actors in the WTO: The NGO identity Introduction The question of the ‘actor’: a problematization of the primacy of the Member state identity Formalization of NGOs in the WTO Beyond the formal NGO identity Contesting NGOs in the WTO Politicization of global trade governance Conclusion 5 | The formation of new actors contesting the WTO: The example of anti-GATS campaigning Introduction Case study Emergence of a collective identity A very brief introduction to the GATS Articulating the critique of GATS The sedimentation of an anti-GATS equivalential chain Unequal mobilization Campaigning as multi-pronged The end of political mobilization critical of the GATS? Conclusion: the elasticity of equivalential chains 6 | Conclusion: The discursivity of global trade governance Introduction Summary So what if the WTO is understood discursively? The WTO reconsidered Bibliography Index