Emerging Powers in WTO Negotiations: The Domestic Sources of Trade Policy Preferences

Abstract

In the current round of multilateral trade liberalization, emerging powers such as Brazil and India created the G-20 coalition and refused to accept further tariff rate reductions for industrial products before the United States and the European Union made reciprocal concessions in agriculture. This article examines how and why Brazil and India have taken a more offensive and proactive position at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Following Putnam's two-level games approach, I focus on domestic factors and specifically on interest groups to explain actors' policy preferences in WTO negotiations. From a theoretical perspective, the case studies Brazil and India lend credit to the literature discussing the impact of powerful, sector-specific interest groups on governments' trade policy preferences. From an empirical perspective, the findings show how these two countries translated these demands into government positions and influenced WTO outcomes as agenda-setters and coalition builders.

Keywords:

• WTO negotiations
• coalition building
• Brazil
• India
• Doha Round
• multilateral trade cooperation
• domestic sources
• G-20

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge funding from the European Research Council, Starting Grant No. 312368, which made this research possible. I would also like to thank Laura Mahrenbach for her comments and editing support on an earlier version of this article. Thanks are also due to Tony Müller for research assistance.

Notes

¹Whereas the G-20 defends the interests of developing countries' exporters of agricultural products, the G-33 represents the interests of developing countries' importers of agricultural products (Conceição-Heldt 2011). India is a member of this coalition group as well because it is more concerned with the food security of its large rural subsistence communities.