The Hidden World of WTO Governance: A Rejoinder to Richard H. Steinberg

Professor Steinberg responds to our article by re-asserting a familiar analytical paradigm – a comfortable Newtonian world dominated by large stable pieces known as states which operate on the basis of fixed interests categorically defined in advance. But that traditional paradigm no longer provides a satisfactory account of the operation of today's trade regime, particularly in the context of regulatory supervision. Its tenacious hold over contemporary scholarship needs to be dislodged. Our article attempts to do precisely that, by inviting more sustained analysis of the actual and potential operation of alternative modes of governance within two WTO committees.

Professor Steinberg's model of international trade politics is founded on his notion of ‘intergovernmental bargaining’. Activities in the WTO are carried out by ‘low level representatives of Member governments’ who ‘behave strategically and tactically’ in ways designed to ‘advance the interests of the states they represent’.1 More specifically, they speak for and on behalf of the interests of export- and import-oriented firms based in the countries they represent.2 This analytical framework has been and remains in many respects the starting point for virtually all analyses of the international trade regime.3 There are good reasons for this: intergovernmental bargaining of this sort has always been one important mode of engagement within the trade regime, it has profoundly affected the operation of it over the course of its history, and continues to do so. We do not see ourselves as contesting that claim.

Where we part company with Steinberg is that we do not think that this traditional model is a sufficiently complicated nor complete picture of the contemporary WTO, particularly in light of its ‘new’ (in relative terms) institutional infrastructure, and the new challenges it faces in regulatory areas such as food safety and services liberalization. The new forms of …