The papers in this Symposium issue complement two other compilations of research on the multilateral trading system published in Evenett and Hoekman (2006) and Hoekman and Vines (2007) and are a final output of the UK Department for International Development supported Global Trade and Financial Architecture project. The genesis of this Symposium was a CEPR workshop hosted by the OECD in March 2012 with support from DG Research (grant: PEGGED Collaborative Projects under the EU's Seventh Framework Programme, Contract no. SSH-CT-2008-217559). Draft papers were presented at a conference at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, hosted by Michael Moore in April 2013. We are very grateful to Frank van Tongeren at the OECD and Mike Moore at the Elliott School for their support of the meetings, to Michelle Chester and Rebecca Martin at the World Bank for help with logistics, to the participants in both events, especially the discussants, and to Alan Winters and an anonymous referee for comments on the submitted papers.

The commonplace tendency is to blame the difficulties of the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations on the World Trade Organization (WTO) itself. In contrast, I suggest in the first section of this article that exogenous structural factors, especially changing commodity prices and trade flows, fatally undermined the Round. In the second section, I discount the significance of endogenous institutional factors such as the number of participants, the size of the agenda, or the Single Undertaking, although design failures, notably in the ‘modalities’ for negotiation, did hurt. But what hurt even more was the way the WTO, in common with most multilateral organizations, has not caught up with the shifting centre of gravity in global governance. The trading system is no longer a transatlantic bargain. The regulatory issues on the twenty-first century trade policy agenda will inevitably be negotiated in Geneva, but only after a new trans-Pacific accommodation recognizes China's central role.

What are the lessons from the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) from a forward-looking point of view? A decade of negotiations is likely to go nowhere. This paper argues that absence of a landing-zone was in the data. Quantitative tools modelling the detail of the modalities predicted failure but were not taken seriously: the design of the negotiations implied that any achievements of the Round could only be limited. Such a weakness was induced by the way multilateral negotiations were organized – in separate groups, without much consideration for, or understanding of, how the different elements added up to more than the sum of the parts. We put sensible figures on that argument by using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model of the world economy, addressing exceptions, flexibilities, as well as the non-linear design of the liberalization formulas, a reduction in domestic support, the phasing out of export subsidies in agriculture, and trade facilitation. Our conclusion is that negotiators have to go back to simplicity and re-bundle the topics if they wish to revamp multilateral negotiations.

This paper views tariff-cutting formulas as a potential solution to the free-rider problem that arises when market opening is negotiated bilaterally and extended on a most-favored-nation basis. The negotiators in the Doha Agenda chose formulas that are ideal from an economic efficiency viewpoint in that they most sharply reduce the highest – and most economically – costly tariffs. When the political support that gave rise to the original tariffs is considered, however, this approach appears to generate very high political costs per unit of gain in economic efficiency. The political costs associated with the formulas appear to have led to strong pressure for many, complex exceptions, which both lowered and increased uncertainty about members' market access gains. Where tariff cuts focus on applied rates, it seems likely that a proportional cut rule would reduce the political costs of securing agreements. However, detailed examination of the Doha proposals with their product exceptions suggests that negotiators are likely to find cuts with exceptions politically attractive but economically costly when cuts are based on bound tariffs with different degrees of binding overhang.

In this paper, we examine the theoretical rationale for WTO rules on the special and differential treatment (SDT) of developing countries. We describe a model of bilateral trade between a small country and a large trading partner, in which the small country suffers from a domestic commitment problem in trade policy. This problem arises because investors in the import-competing sector lobby the government to enact and maintain protectionist policies. We show that a reciprocal trade agreement, in which the large country lowers its tariffs conditionally on the small country doing the same, creates a ‘carrot and stick’ mechanisms that helps the small country to overcome its commitment problem. If capacity in the import-competing sector can only be reduced gradually, the agreement may need to allow the small country to delay the implementation of its trade liberalization commitments, in line with SDT provisions in the WTO. Our analysis suggests that, if reconciled with the principle of reciprocity, SDT can help developing countries to liberalize and improve their trading prospects.

This paper reviews several key implications of international investment and global supply chain fragmentation for the multilateral trading system. Based on existing economic research, I identify a two-fold challenge for policy makers: first, to leverage the trade-liberalizing potential of global fragmentation at the multilateral level; and, second, to counter the potential for opportunistic manipulation of behind-the-border policy instruments.

Plurilateral agreements in the WTO context allow sub-sets of countries to agree to commitments in specific policy areas that only apply to signatories, and thus allow for ‘variable geometry’ in the WTO. Current WTO rules make it much more difficult to pursue the plurilateral route than to negotiate a preferential trade agreement outside the WTO. We argue that this is inefficient from a global welfare and trading system perspective and that WTO Members should facilitate the negotiation of new plurilateral agreements on regulatory matters.

If WTO Members wish to launch a new round to follow Doha, setting the agenda will require a complex negotiation as in the past, however Doha ends. To reduce the serious information problems they face and prepare the way, advocates should commission an independent research team to produce a comprehensive negotiation analysis before they decide to move further. Reaching an agreement on an agenda will depend on the procedural rules that apply in the agenda negotiation and the subsequent Round. They should consider four rules that seem legitimate today and most likely to help Members find a joint-gain agenda. Reaching an agenda agreement could also depend in part on decisions by WTO chairs during this negotiation. Experience illustrates the potentials and possible pitfalls for them to avoid.

This paper seeks to evaluate the prospects for constitutional reform of the WTO by drawing on the broader literature on constitutionalization. In particular, it argues that constitutionalization implies a coherent civil society, linked to the constitutionalized entity via democratic politics. While there may be an emergent global civil society around international trade, there is no framework for democratic politics. Thus, constitutional reform seems problematic.