A New Politics of Confrontation? Brazil and India in Multilateral Trade Negotiations∗

Abstract

Particularly in the North–South confrontation at the Cancun Ministerial Conference in 2003, developing countries seemed to be presenting a unified stance of resistance against the developed world. These developments were greeted with considerable surprise in the scholarly as well as policy communities, not least because many theorists of International Relations had predicted increasing homogenisation and policy convergence by developing countries around liberal solidarist norms. In this paper, we analyse the apparent revitalisation of the Third World, and evaluate the policies of developing countries at and around Cancun to assess the claims that this heralds a more activist and less accommodating period in North/South relations. We buttress this general analysis by probing further into the policies of two of the major players, namely Brazil and India. We argue that recent policy changes can be explained by learning and adaptation by developing countries within the specific institution of the World Trade Organisation. We examine this adaptation along four planes: coalitions, insider activism, negotiation strategies, and transnational coalitions. Domestic politics in both our country cases play, at best, a supportive role. We also investigate the extent to which these shifts in trade politics might be seen as broader shifts in foreign policy.

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