African agency in global trade governance

Abstract

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is one of the key multilateral arenas for African agency.1 Throughout the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) negoti­ ations of the last decade or so, African countries have been politically active and, as a result, prominent players in the multilateral discussions around proposed new trade rules for the twenty-first century global economy. In this chapter, I highlight the contours of African agency in the WTO and the role that African delegations have played as key protagonists in the DDA talks. I take agency to mean the ability to change the processes of global trade governance and the rules governing world trade. Using a constructivist approach, I concentrate on the role of discourse, as well as the various capacity enhancing strategies employed by African members states, so that they are better able to influence the DDA negoti­ ations. I argue that the relationship between the political action of Africans and their strategic context (the DDA) is mutually constitutive.2 Consequently, the strategic action of African negotiators is formulated by, and also impacts on, the negotiating and decision-making processes within the WTO. In the case study which follows, the relational interaction of African agency and the DDA negoti­ ations produces deadlock, while also constituting Africans as influential in the WTO. By 2012, after more than a decade of on­ and­off talks between the WTO member states, the DDA negotiations were deadlocked. Analysis of the deadlock tends to focus on the spoiling impact of the so­ called ‘rising powers’ Brazil, India and China (Hurrell and Narlikar 2006; Narlikar 2010; Stephen 2012). This chapter, however, adds to the mounting body of work focusing on the spoiling influence of least developed countries and highlights their role as increasingly significant participants in the WTO negotiating processes (Jensen and Gibbon 2007; Lee 2009; Lee and Smith 2008; Mshomba 2009). In particular, this chapter explores how African states, concerned at the increasingly unequal distribution of the benefits of market opening, can shape the processes and outcomes of global trade governance and, in so doing, compose themselves as influential. My analysis of African agency highlights their imitative use of discourse in global trade governance as a means of influencing the negotiations in general and defying dominant players, such as the United States of America (USA), in the WTO, in particular.