The Role of Southern Intellectuals in Contemporary Trade Governance

Abstract

This paper identifies the emergence of a new set of trade intellectuals from the global South, primarily from the rising powers. It argues that this group of ‘Southern trade intellectuals’ has formed a loose epistemic community, and traces the impact the group is having on global trade governance. The subject examined differs from most other uses of the epistemic community framework in that it analyses a case in which there is no objective, scientific knowledge being promoted by the group. Instead, the group is engaged in promoting one subjective understanding of events over another. However, the emergence of this epistemic community has been important in providing an alternative trade narrative that has weakened the dominance previously enjoyed by the Western powers over trade analysis. This broadening of the range of trade analysis and expert opinion forms an important, though potentially problematic, area of leadership provided by the rising powers to less developed countries.

Keywords:

• WTO
• epistemic communities
• intellectuals
• trade
• Doha Development Agenda

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Erin Hannah, Sophie Harman, Silke Trommer and Rorden Wilkinson, along with the two anonymous reviewers, for their helpful comments on drafts of this paper. The usual caveat applies.

Notes on contributor

Dr James Scott is Lecturer in International Politics in the Department of Political Economy, King's College London. He works primarily on trade governance, particularly with regard to developing countries in the World Trade Organisation. He is co-editor of the recent book ‘Trade, Poverty Development: Getting beyond the WTO's Doha Deadlock’ (Routledge, 2013, with Rorden Wilkinson) and the forthcoming ‘Export Knowledge in Global Trade’ (Routledge, 2015, with Erin Hannah and Silke Trommer).

Notes

1. Zoellick's remarks following the failed Cancun Ministerial Meeting are instructive here. Zoellick lambasted the developing countries for blocking the Cancun agriculture package (that had been agreed bilaterally by the USA and EU), declaring that there are ‘can-do’ and ‘won't-do’ countries. The USA, he declared, would ‘move towards free trade with can-do countries’ (Zoellick 2003). It is worth remembering that the collapse in Cancun was primarily due to the EU and the USA offering too little liberalisation of their agricultural markets, yet it was the developing countries that were portrayed as being unwilling to advance the liberalisation process.

2. This phrase is, of course, highly problematic. Developing countries as a group, if that group makes any analytical sense at all (Payne 2005: 213–33), are highly heterogeneous and do not all share one perspective. Even within narrower definitions such as LDCs, there is a plurality of perspectives and interests.

3. This intellectual movement now has a dedicated website, at www.tenthesesonnewdevelopmentalism.org.

4. The battle over how to frame issues is seen throughout the WTO. For a very useful exploration of this and more broadly of the role played by discourse in exacerbating and ameliorating power asymmetries, see Eagleton-Pierce (2013).