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Review of International Political Economy
ISSN: 0969-2290 (Print) 1466-4526 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrip20
Different paths to power: The rise of Brazil, India
and China at the World Trade Organization
Kristen Hopewell
To cite this article: Kristen Hopewell (2015) Different paths to power: The rise of Brazil, India and
China at the World Trade Organization, Review of International Political Economy, 22:2, 311-338,
DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.927387
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2014.927387
Published online: 16 Jun 2014.
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Different paths to power: The rise of Brazil,
India and China at the World Trade
Organization
Kristen Hopewell
University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Canada
ABSTRACT
New powers, such as China, India and Brazil, are challenging the
traditional dominance of the US in the governance of the global economy. It
is generally taken for granted that the rise of new powers is simply a
reﬂection of their growing economic might. In this article, however, I
challenge this assumption by drawing on the case of the World Trade
Organization (WTO) to show that the forces driving the rise of new powers
are more heterogeneous and complex than suggested by a simple economic
determinism. I argue that these countries have in fact taken different paths
to power: while China’s rise has been more closely tied to its growing
economic might, the rise of Brazil and India has been driven primarily by
their mobilization and leadership of developing country coalitions, which
enabled them to exercise inﬂuence above their economic weight. One
important result is that Brazil and India have assumed a more aggressive
and activist position in WTO negotiations than China and played a greater
role in shaping the agenda of the Doha Round. Thus, although the new
powers are frequently grouped together (as the ‘BRICs’, for example), this
masks considerable variation in their sources of power and behaviour in
global economic governance.
KEYWORDS
BRICs; emerging powers; leadership; alliances; World Trade Organization
(WTO); global governance.
INTRODUCTION
The existing international economic architecture was created during the
era of American hegemony that followed World War II and heavily
shaped by US power (Gilpin, 1987; Ruggie, 1996). For over half a century,
Ó 2015 Taylor & Francis
Review of International Political Economy, 2015
Vol. 22, No. 2, 311À338, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2014.927387
the institutions charged with governing the global economy À including
the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and World Bank À were dominated by the US and other
advanced-industrialized states (Babb, 2009; Chorev, 2008). Developing
countries were largely excluded from global economic decision-making
and their interests severely marginalized. However, the dynamics of
global economic governance are currently being transformed, as developing
countries such as China, India and Brazil become increasingly
important actors and challenge the dominance of the Global North. The
growing centrality of these actors is evident across a range of institutions.
In the midst of the 2008 global ﬁnancial crisis, for instance, the Group of
8 (G8) rich countries was replaced by the G20 Leaders Summit (G20), a
mixed group of developed and developing countries, as the primary
forum for coordinating the management of the global economy and the
response to the crisis. The Financial Stability Board À responsible for
overseeing coordination of global ﬁnancial regulation À was subsequently
expanded to include the developing country members of the
G20. The voting structures of the IMF and World Bank are in the process
of being reformed to increase the weight of major developing countries.1
China, India and Brazil have played a prominent role in the international
climate change negotiations. At the WTO, these three countries have
entered the inner circle of power and emerged as important actors in the
Doha Round of trade negotiations.
This shift in global power relations has been identiﬁed as one of the
most important transformations in modern history and fuelled a large and
growing literature (Beeson and Bell, 2009; Hurrell, 2006; Margulis and Porter,
2013; Mittelman, 2013; Stephen, 2012; Young, 2010). Much of this scholarship
has focused on seeking to assess the agendas of the new powers
and the implications of their rise, such as whether they are likely to be
supporters or challengers of the existing international economic order. Yet,
the forces driving the rise of these new powers have received comparatively
little attention. Few studies have sought to analyze in detail why
and how such countries have come to play a more central role within speciﬁc
governance institutions. Instead, it is widely assumed that the rise of
new powers in global economic governance is simply a reﬂection of their
growing economic might (Arrighi, 2007; Cooper and Schwanen, 2009;
Emmott, 2008; Hung, 2009; Jacques, 2009; Wade, 2011; Zakaria, 2008). Discussions
of the emerging powers emphasize their economic capabilities, as
the following example from John Ikenberry (2008: 25) illustrates:
China is well on its way to becoming a formidable global power.
The size of its economy has quadrupled since the launch of market
reforms in the late 1970s and, by some estimates, will double again
over the next decade. It has become one of the world’s major
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manufacturing centers and consumes roughly a third of the global
supply of iron, steel, and coal. It has accumulated massive foreign
reserves, worth more than $1 trillion at the end of 2006. . . . Indeed,
whereas the Soviet Union rivaled the United States as a military
competitor only, China is emerging as both a military and an economic
rival À heralding a profound shift in the distribution of
global power.
He later continues (35):
The United States and Europe must ﬁnd room at the table not only
for China but also for countries such as Brazil, India, and South
Africa. A Goldman Sachs report on the so-called BRICs (Brazil,
Russia, India, and China) noted that by 2050 these countries’ economies
could together be larger than those of the original G-6 countries
(Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the
United States) combined.
This depiction is echoed in the popular media, with The Economist (2010)
for example stating: ‘The BRICs matter because of their economic
weight’. The World Bank (2010) offers a similar assessment of the rise
of new powers: ‘Increased income and growth . . . means increasing
inﬂuence’. The dominant interpretation is thus that power shifts in global
economic governance are being driven by changes in the relative economic
power of states.2
One result of the emphasis on economic might is that attention has
overwhelmingly focused on China (Arrighi, 2007; Babones, 2011; Beeson,
2009; Breslin, 2010; Emmott, 2008; Hung, 2009; Jacques, 2009; Subramanian,
2011). As the previous quote from Ikenberry exempliﬁes, China is
widely seen as the key rising new power and challenger to the US, based
on its large economy, rapid growth rates, major role in world trade, and
considerable ﬁnancial power. Where India and Brazil are brought into
discussions of contemporary power shifts, they are typically positioned
as secondary, since they possess considerably fewer of the capabilities
that are seen as making China powerful. China is now the world’s second
largest economy, after the US, and the world’s largest exporter of goods.
Yet Brazil and India’s economies are only a fraction of the size of China’s
(with Brazil’s GDP $2.4 trillion and India’s $1.9 trillion compared to
China’s $8.3 trillion); they play a much smaller role in world trade (while
China’s exports represent 10 per cent of world trade, Brazil and India’s
constitute only 1 and 2 per cent, respectively); and their economic growth
has been far slower (particularly in the case of Brazil, whose growth
rates over the past 15 years have averaged only 3 per cent compared to
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HOPEWELL: THE RISE OF BRAZIL, INDIA AND CHINA AT THE WTO
10 per cent in China and 7 per cent in India).3
In economic terms, Brazil
and India are lightweights compared to China.
In contrast to the predominant emphasis on their economic capabilities,
however, this article seeks to provide a richer and more nuanced
account of the rise to power and behaviour of Brazil, India and China in
global economic governance by examining the case of the WTO. The
WTO is a core multilateral economic institution, responsible for setting
and enforcing the rules of the international trading system. It has been a
key site of struggle over global power relations and was one of the ﬁrst
sites where Brazil, India and China emerged as major players in global
economic governance. The analysis presented here is based on 15 months
of ﬁeld research conducted from 2007À2010 at the WTO in Geneva, as
well as in Beijing, New Delhi, Sao Paulo, Brasilia and Washington,
including 157 interviews with negotiators and other senior ofﬁcials,
industry representatives and non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
ethnographic observation, and analysis of negotiating texts, proposals
and other documents.4
As the focus of the paper is on interactions among
states within the WTO, an analysis of trade policymaking in the emerging
powers is beyond its scope, but has been extensively documented
elsewhere.5
Drawing on the case of the WTO, I show that although the new developing
country powers are frequently grouped together (as part of the
‘BRICs’, for example), this masks important variation in their sources of
power and behaviour in global economic governance.6
I argue that the
forces driving the rise of new powers are more diverse and complex than
suggested by a simple economic determinism and that these countries
have in fact taken different paths to power. While China’s rise has been
more closely tied to its growing economic might, the rise of Brazil and
India has been driven primarily by their mobilization and leadership of
developing country coalitions, which has enabled them to exercise inﬂuence
far above their economic weight. My intent is not to deny the importance
of economic factors, but to suggest that focusing solely on the
economic provides an overly simplistic reading of contemporary power
shifts.
Indeed, an account centred exclusively on the economic capabilities of
states would be unable to explain much of what has occurred at the WTO
in the last decade. In contrast to expectations of a dyadic shift in power
from the US to China, I show that Brazil and India were the ﬁrst developing
countries to successfully challenge the US and they emerged as major
players at the WTO several years before China. Moreover, it was in fact
Brazil and India who overturned the traditional power structure at the
WTO, rather than China. I demonstrate that not only do the rising powers
have different sources of power but, as a result, they have also exercised
different forms of inﬂuence. Despite their relatively small economies and
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REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
limited roles in world trade, Brazil and India assumed a more aggressive
and activist position in WTO trade negotiations than China and, for
much of the Doha Round, were far more inﬂuential in shaping the
dynamics and agenda of the negotiations. Towards the endgame stage of
negotiations, China ultimately came to have signiﬁcant impact, but its
impact was primarily as a reactive veto-power in contrast to the proactive
agenda-setting role played by Brazil and India.7
CONCEPTUALIZING CONTEMPORARY POWER SHIFTS
IN GLOBAL ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE
Drawing on the case of the WTO, this article seeks to problematize and
unpack the origins and nature of contemporary power shifts and the
increased power of Brazil, India and China in global economic governance.
As James Mittelman (2013) observes, accounts of contemporary
power shifts have been heavily shaped by the traditional realist conception
of international relations, which deﬁnes a state’s power in terms of
its economic and military capabilities (Kennedy, 1987; Waltz, 1979).
These are viewed as the essential sources of ‘raw’ or ‘hard’ power that
determine the position of states within an overarching global power hierarchy
(Organski, 1968). Although more complex conceptualizations of
power have emerged within international relations, including the growth
of a rich constructivist literature (Barnett and Duvall, 2005; EagletonPierce
2012; Mattern 2008), the narrow realist conception of power as
material resources has been highly inﬂuential in shaping how contemporary
power shifts are understood.
The prevailing view is that current changes taking place in the global
economic governance institutions are a reﬂection of structural changes in
the distribution of economic power among states. According to realism,
international organizations mirror the distribution of power in the international
system and act as vehicles for the interests of the most economically
and militarily powerful states. Yet, institutionalist scholars have
long argued that international organizations not only reproduce but can
also reconﬁgure power relations among states (Conti, 2011). Notably,
institutions create spaces for alliance-building and leadership that
can enhance the inﬂuence of economically or militarily weaker states
(Drahos, 2003; Hampson, 1990; Higgott and Cooper, 1990; Narlikar,
2003). The ability of a state to attract followers and mobilize other states
into effective coalitions can serve as an important form of power in global
governance.
Although largely overlooked in discussions of contemporary power
shifts, an extensive literature has documented a surge of developing
country coalition-building at the WTO (Clapp, 2006; Eagleton-Pierce,
2012; Grant, 2007; Hurrell and Narlikar 2006; Narlikar and Tussie 2004;
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HOPEWELL: THE RISE OF BRAZIL, INDIA AND CHINA AT THE WTO
Taylor 2007). It is no coincidence that the rise of new powers from the
Global South took place amid a rising tide of developing country activism
and unrest at the WTO. Coming out of the previous Uruguay Round
of trade negotiations (1986À94), there was growing dissatisfaction among
developing countries about their exclusion from decision-making and the
profoundly unbalanced results of that round. The protests of developing
countries, combined with those of civil society (such as the massive street
protests at the 1999 Seattle Ministerial intended to launch the new
round), created a legitimacy crisis for the WTO and pressure for greater
inclusion of developing countries in the organization’s decision-making.
Developing countries channelled their frustrations into coalition-building
in an attempt to redress power imbalances and assert their interests.
These coalitions greatly heightened the power of developing countries in
the Doha Round and created a new politics of NorthÀSouth confrontation
at the WTO (Hurrell and Narlikar, 2006; Taylor, 2007).
The scholarship on developing country coalitions offers an important
contribution to our understanding of the transformation that occurred at
the WTO. Yet within this literature, there has been little explicit comparison
of the role that developing country coalitions played in the rise of
Brazil and India in contrast to China. Most accounts tend to group the
emerging powers together and treat their relationships to developing
country coalitions as similar. The three new powers are often, for example,
identiﬁed collectively as leaders of the Group of 20 (G20-T) coalition
at the WTO (Clapp, 2006; Grant, 2007; Hurrell and Narlikar, 2006;
Narlikar and Tussie, 2004).8
In the analysis that follows, however, I show
that while Brazil and India were activist and entrepreneurial leaders of
developing country coalitions, China was decidedly not. On the contrary,
China À despite (or more accurately because of) its economic might À was
a follower rather than a leader in these coalitions. The relationships of
the new powers to developing country coalitions differed fundamentally,
and I will argue that this difference was not incidental but highly signiﬁcant.
It is connected to critical differences in their behaviour, their sources
of power, and the types of inﬂuence they have exercised at the WTO. The
analysis presented here builds on and extends the existing literature on
WTO coalitions; however, it is distinct in its comparison of the role that
coalitions played in the rise of the new powers and its emphasis on the
different paths to power taken by Brazil and India, on the one hand, and
China, on the other.
Despite a burgeoning literature on the emerging powers, comparison
of their role in global economic governance has been limited. Research
on emerging powers in world politics has been conducted mainly in the
form of case studies on individual countries (Armijo and Burges, 2010;
Dauvergne and Farias, 2012; Hopewell, 2013; Lima and Hirst, 2006; Scott
and Wilkinson, 2013). Only rarely have emerging powers been analyzed
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REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
in a comparative perspective (Ban and Blyth, 2013; Narlikar, 2013;
Schirm, 2010). A comparative analysis of Brazil, India and China at the
WTO highlights important distinctions among the emerging powers and
in their behaviour in global economic governance.
Some critics have questioned whether apparent power shifts in global
economic governance are more symbolic or superﬁcial than real. Sceptics
contend that the traditional powers retain their dominance in governance
institutions and the emerging powers have yet to exercise signiﬁcant
voice and inﬂuence or become a source of initiative and agenda-setting
(Beeson and Bell, 2009; Pinto, Macdonald and Marshall, 2011; Subacchi,
2008; Wade, 2011). In the analysis that follows, I show that there has
indeed been a real shift in power at the WTO. Brazil, India and China
have not only gained seats at the high table, but also come to play pivotal
roles in the Doha Round, though the nature of their inﬂuence has
differed.
POWER SHIFTS AT THE WTO
The WTO, and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT), work through successive rounds of negotiations to progressively
liberalize trade. Formally, agreements are reached on the basis of
consensus and each member is afforded an equal vote (‘one-member, onevote’).
Initially, the consensus-based decision-making of the GATT/WTO
appears remarkably democratic compared to the IMF and World Bank,
with their weighted voting systems and veto power accorded to the US.
The institutional design of the GATT/WTO would appear to afford more
scope for developing countries to use coalition-building to inﬂuence decision-making
outcomes. Despite this, however, for nearly its entire history,
the GATT/WTO has been dominated by the US and other rich countries.
In practice, the most signiﬁcant negotiations take place in informal meetings
of small groups of states (called ‘Green Room’ meetings). Once an
agreement is reached within this core group, it is then extended out to the
rest of the organization’s membership. This group constitutes the elite
inner circle of the WTO À those states that are recognized as key players
and exercise the most inﬂuence over the negotiations. Until recently,
agreements were negotiated among ‘the Quad’ À the US, EU, Canada and
Japan À and imposed upon the rest of the organization’s membership
effectively as a fait accompli (Kapoor, 2006). The US and EU were the primary
states to advance initiatives and they constructed a trading order
that suited their own interests (Porter, 2005). Historically, developing countries
were highly disadvantaged within the institution, largely excluded
from decision-making and ignored; they rarely tabled proposals and were
often blocked when they sought to advance initiatives (Raghavan, 2000;
Steinberg, 2002).
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HOPEWELL: THE RISE OF BRAZIL, INDIA AND CHINA AT THE WTO
However, over the course of the Doha Round, which began in 2001, a
signiﬁcant transformation has taken place at the WTO. After 2003, the
old ‘Quad’ was replaced by a series of core negotiating groups centred
on the US, EU, Brazil, and India. These four states have been at the heart
of the negotiations since then. Beginning in 2008, they were joined by
China. Brazil, India and China have become key players whose assent is
considered essential to securing a Doha agreement: in the words of one
negotiator, ‘now, you can’t conclude any deal at the WTO without
them’.9
As the following sections will show, far from merely symbolic,
these power shifts have had a profound impact on the WTO and the
Doha Round.
THE RISE OF BRAZIL AND INDIA
The factors that propelled Brazil and India into the inner circle of power
at the WTO differed from China. Unlike China, discussed in the next section,
Brazil and India could not rely on their economic might and had to
strategically manoeuvre to increase their status and inﬂuence. The emergence
of Brazil and India as major players at the WTO was intertwined
with a broader revolt on the part of developing countries. Brazil and
India were key ﬁgures in fostering and channelling this uprising and it
played a major role in fuelling their rise to power.
Emergence and impact of the G20-T
At the start of the Doha Round, the US and EU remained ﬁrmly in the
driver’s seat: they played the central role in formulating the negotiating
mandate and the negotiations continued to centre on the old ‘Quad’.
However, the emergence of the G20-T À a coalition of developing countries
led by Brazil and India À at the Cancun Ministerial in 2003 marked
a critical turning point. The Ministerial was intended to be an important
milestone in the progress of the Doha Round, with negotiations shifting
to determining the more concrete and speciﬁc terms of the deal. In
advance of Cancun, the US and EU reached an agreement among themselves
and put forward a joint proposal on agriculture. This proposal
prompted a strong reaction from developing countries, who saw it as an
effort to force them to lower their trade barriers, while allowing the US
and EU to maintain their trade distorting subsidies. For many, this presaged
a repeat of the Uruguay Round when a private compromise
between the US and EU (the Blair House Accord) served as the basis for
the ultimate agreement and obliterated the hopes of developing countries
for making gains in the round. Once again, it looked like developing
countries were going to get a highly unbalanced agreement. Prompted
by the US-EU proposal, Brazil approached India with a plan for forming
REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
318
an alliance to oppose that initiative. The two countries joined forces and
together succeeded in assembling a coalition of developing countries that
represented over half the world’s population and two-thirds of its farmers.
The G20-T united not only to block the US-EU proposal but, driven
primarily by Brazil, also arrived at Cancun with its own technically
sophisticated counter-proposal that speciﬁcally targeted US and EU agriculture
subsidies. Several other developing country coalitions emerged
in the process leading up to Cancun (including the Core Group, the Cotton-4,
and the G33), joining existing groupings (such as the African
Group, the African Caribbean and Paciﬁc (ACP) Group, the LDC Group,
and the Small and Vulnerable Economies (SVEs)), and there was signiﬁcant
consultation and cooperation among them (Narlikar and Tussie,
2004). Amid the proliferation of developing country coalitions in the
Doha Round, the G20-T played a central and pivotal role because of its
proactive agenda that turned the tables on the traditional powers by
going after their agriculture and trade policies, backed by a technically
substantive and astute proposal. As a result, the Cancun Ministerial took
shape as a dramatic battle between developed and developing countries
and ultimately ended in collapse, with the G20-T’s block of the US-EU
proposal a central factor in the breakdown.
Under the leadership of Brazil and India, the emergence of the G20-T
produced a tectonic shift at the WTO, bringing an end to the US and EU
‘cartel over agenda setting and compromise brokering’(Evenett, 2007).
From that point, it became impossible for the US and EU to secure a Doha
agreement without the assent of Brazil and India as representatives of the
G20-T and the developing world more broadly. Their leadership of developing
countries in opposing the US and EU launched Brazil and India
into the inner circle of negotiations, as key players who were considered
essential to breaking the stalemate and securing a deal. In the words of
one WTO Secretariat ofﬁcial, the ‘creation of the G20-T completely
imploded the Quad’.10
Despite the fact that several other states (including
Japan and Canada, as well as China, Mexico and South Korea) had larger
economies and more signiﬁcant roles in world trade, Brazil and India
displaced Japan and Canada from the inner circle.
In addition to upending the traditional power structure of the WTO,
Brazil and India’s leadership of the G20-T fundamentally altered the
dynamic and agenda of the Doha Round. The agenda-setting process
that takes place between the launch and conclusion of a round is critical
to determining its ﬁnal outcome and the time when powerful countries
ﬂex their muscles (Steinberg, 2002). Agriculture has been a central issue
since the start of the round, as one of the least liberalized sectors of global
trade. When the negotiations began, they centred on demands from the
US and the Cairns Group of agricultural exporters that the EU and Japan
eliminate their trade distorting policies; however, over the course of the
HOPEWELL: THE RISE OF BRAZIL, INDIA AND CHINA AT THE WTO
319
round, the negotiations were transformed into a struggle between developed
and developing countries focused on US and EU subsidies (Clapp,
2006). As a negotiator stated, ‘at the start of this round, the US saw itself
in an offensive position. It had no idea it would be a target on agriculture.
But now it has become the key focus of the negotiations’.11
There has
been a dramatic shift in roles: for the ﬁrst time, the US À historically the
key aggressor in the GATT/WTO À found itself isolated and on the
defensive, while developing countries assumed the role of demandeurs.
The coalitions led by Brazil and India had a major impact on the
negotiating agenda, successfully putting issues like rich country agricultural
subsidies and market access, as well as special safeguards and
ﬂexibilities for developing countries (provisions advanced by another
coalition, the G33, discussed below), at the heart of the negotiations.
Furthermore, the negotiating texts since Cancun have substantively
reﬂected many of their proposals. The G20-T, for example, secured: a
tiered formula for reducing subsidies (‘domestic support’), ensuring
that countries that provide the most support are required to make the
biggest reductions, and stiffer criteria for cutting domestic support,
such as product-speciﬁc caps; substantial reductions in domestic support
(compared to historical bound levels), with the EU cutting overall
trade distorting support (OTDS) by 80 per cent and the US by 70 per
cent; the elimination of export subsidies and parallel disciplines on
export credit and food aid; non-extension of the Peace Clause (protecting
developed countries from WTO challenges), countering the longstanding
position of the US and EU; and a ‘tiered’ formula for reducing
tariffs, rather than the ‘blended’ formula sought by the US and
EU. Although, as discussed below, the future of the Doha Round is
now in doubt, these coalitions signiﬁcantly shaped the content of any
prospective agreement. This represents a dramatic departure from the
past, when developing countries had little or no inﬂuence over the
shape of GATT/WTO agreements.
Brazil-India partnership
The alliance between Brazil and India that forms the basis for the G20-T is
surprising given their opposing negotiating positions. Brazil À which
over the last two decades has emerged as one of the world’s leading agricultural
exporters À has deﬁned its primary interest in the Doha Round
as seeking to expand markets for its agricultural exports.12
It is widely
viewed as being among the biggest potential winners from the round
and has been one of its strongest supporters (Polaski, 2006). Brazil has
actively worked to construct an image of itself as a leader of developing
countries, ﬁghting to hold rich countries accountable to WTO rules and
pushing them to liberalize their markets. Beyond the G20-T, Brazil
REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
320
successfully waged two landmark disputes against US cotton subsidies
and EU sugar export subsidies. Brazil’s victories revealed major inconsistencies
between US and EU agriculture policies and WTO rules and
raised the prospect that those countries could be subject to a wave of
future WTO challenges. Despite Brazil’s major agro-industrial interests,
it succeeded in portraying the G20-T and these disputes as a shared
struggle of poor, developing country farmers against the rich countries,
fostering an image of Brazil as a hero of the developing world taking on
the traditional powers in a David-and-Goliath-like struggle (Hopewell,
2013).
In contrast to Brazil’s export interests, India’s negotiating position
more closely resembles that of most developing countries at the WTO,
with major defensive interests in agriculture: it has a weak agricultural
sector consisting primarily of peasant farmers, who are highly vulnerable
to trade liberalization. India has historically been a leading voice
among developing countries at the GATT/WTO, ﬁercely resistant to
efforts by the US and other developed countries to force developing
countries to open their markets. In the Uruguay Round, for example,
India was a strident (though ultimately unsuccessful) opponent of an
aggressive push by the US and EU to expand trade rules into the new
areas of services, investment and intellectual property, which it correctly
forecast would impose signiﬁcant costs on developing countries
(Shadlen, 2005; Wade, 2003). India strongly opposed the launch of the
Doha Round, arguing instead that implementation issues and other
lingering problems for developing countries from the Uruguay Round
needed to be dealt with ﬁrst. Like Brazil, India is also widely seen as a
leader of developing countries at the WTO, but in its case of their
defensive concerns in seeking to resist trade liberalization. To quote
one close NGO observer regarding the Doha Round: ‘If India wasn’t
there, we’d have had this deal long ago and with no protections for
developing countries’.13
Despite considerable differences in their interests, both Brazil and
India recognized the strategic value of an alliance. Motivated by the
expansion of its agribusiness sector, Brazil came to the Doha Round seeking
to make signiﬁcant gains in agriculture (Hopewell, 2013). Yet, it saw
that it lacked sufﬁcient power operating alone and needed allies. As one
Brazilian negotiator stated, ‘we needed a credible blocking coalition to
start playing the game at the WTO’.14
Prior to Cancun, Brazil had begun
looking for ways to construct a coalition to advance its interests, but was
awaiting the right opportunity, which the US-EU agriculture proposal
provided. Given its major export interests, however, Brazil risked being
perceived as a threat by most developing countries. An alliance with
India À the leading champion of the defensive interests of developing
countries À was therefore of considerable tactical importance to Brazil: in
HOPEWELL: THE RISE OF BRAZIL, INDIA AND CHINA AT THE WTO
321
the words of one of its negotiators, ‘we realized that we needed to reach
out to India in order for us to have any credibility with developing countries.
For us it was a clear strategic move’.15
The alliance was equally vital for India. In the past, India had repeatedly
been left isolated in its opposition to the US and other dominant
powers, painted as the lone ‘troublemaker’ objecting to and blocking
agreement. Such pressure previously forced India to cave in and consent
to agreements it was profoundly dissatisﬁed with. Given its sensitivities
in agriculture and other areas, combined with its experience of previous
trade rounds, India knew that it needed a strong coalition of allies to
effectively defend its interests in the Doha Round. Consequently, for
India, to quote one of its former negotiators, ‘the G20-T was a compulsion.
They knew they had to do something but they knew they couldn’t
do it alone’.16
Although the initial impetus behind the G20-T and its subsidy
reduction agenda came from Brazil, India embraced and became
equally aggressive in pursuing this agenda as a means of advancing its
own strategic interests. The G20-T would not have been feasible without
India, whose active participation and leadership was essential to securing
the support of developing countries.
It was the underlying partnership between Brazil and India that made
the G20-T possible, but the two countries are forthright in acknowledging
the tensions in their relationship. As a Brazilian negotiator acknowledged:
It was sheer personal interests forcing Brazil and India to get into a
coalition. We knew there were difﬁculties in trying to form a longterm
coalition with the Indians given their difﬁculties in agriculture.
Our relationship with India is like a kind of very delicate embrace
where you cannot leave each other.17
An Indian negotiator concurred:
It’s a coalition of the unwilling, let me admit. But at the same time,
we know we can’t have any kind of illusion of our status being
equivalent to the G2 [the US and EU]. Even China has greater status
than us. But we know between the two of us [India and Brazil]
there’s a formidable force that the G2 can’t ignore.18
Given their lesser economic weight, compared to either the traditional
powers or China, neither Brazil nor India could rely on economic might
alone. Instead, they needed to ally together and secure the backing of the
developing world more broadly to enhance their power and effectively
counter the US and EU.
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322
Beyond the G20-T
At the same time, concerns about the durability of its alliance with Brazil
led India to diversify its strategy beyond the G20-T. India is acutely
aware of the differences in their interests and far from conﬁdent about
the long-term loyalty or reliability of Brazil. During the Uruguay Round,
India and Brazil created and led a coalition À the G10 À to oppose the
inclusion of services, investment and intellectual property in the round.
The coalition eventually collapsed, as its members were bought off with
carrots and sticks from the US and other Northern powers; India was left
the last one standing after Brazil conceded and was consequently forced
to consent itself. Contemporary Indian negotiators have a strong sense
that the country was abandoned by Brazil, leaving it isolated and powerless
to defend its interests. To quote one Indian trade ofﬁcial, ‘Brazil can’t
be trusted À they have a history of abandoning developing country posi-
tions’.19
India’s fears that it would not be able to count on Brazil in the
endgame stage of the Doha negotiations motivated it to invest in developing
other alliances.20
India has been a leading force behind the G33, a second coalition that
emerged at Cancun and has had a signiﬁcant impact on the Doha negotiations.
The G33 is a large coalition of developing countries À currently
comprised of 46 states À with defensive concerns in agriculture, whose
objective is to limit the degree of market opening required of developing
countries. It has advocated the creation of a ‘special products’ (SPs)
exemption that would allow developing countries to shield some products
from tariff cuts as well as a ‘special safeguard mechanism’ (SSM) that
would allow them to raise tariffs in response to an import surge. The
stated intent of both instruments is to protect food security, rural livelihoods
and rural development. These were new initiatives, with an innovative
rationale, and of considerable consequence: combined with weaker
tariff reduction formulas, the SPs exemption would signiﬁcantly reduce
the extent of liberalization required of developing countries in the round,
while the SSM design advocated by India would allow developing countries
to breach their pre-Doha commitments thus potentially rolling-back
liberalization undertaken in the last round. Although these measures were
defensively-oriented, this was a proactive agenda involving the creation of
new negotiation issues that generated substantial opposition from the US,
EU, and other developed countries. India and the G33 not only succeeded
in putting special products and the SSM onto the negotiating agenda but
secured the commitment that they will be part of any ﬁnal Doha agreement
(Eagleton-Pierce, 2012; Margulis, 2013). India led the charge for an
expansive deﬁnition and operationalization of these measures and, as discussed
below, conﬂict over the design of the SSM ultimately became a central
issue in the breakdown of the 2008 Ministerial Meeting.
HOPEWELL: THE RISE OF BRAZIL, INDIA AND CHINA AT THE WTO
323
More recently, under the auspices of the G33, India led an initiative to
reform WTO subsidy limits to ensure the ability of developing countries
to engage in public food stockholding for food security purposes. India
sought such changes to protect its landmark new food security programme
from WTO challenges. This became the ‘make or break’ issue at
the 2013 Bali Ministerial (Bridges, 2013). Despite American opposition,
India secured an interim agreement providing the needed exemption
from WTO subsidy rules until a permanent solution can be negotiated.
Brazil and India’s leadership has extended beyond the G20-T and
the G33. Through the Core Group, India mobilized developing country
opposition to the Singapore Issues (investment, competition and government
procurement) À which further contributed to the breakdown
at the Cancun Ministerial À and succeeded in forcing those issues off
the negotiating table, representing a major victory for developing
countries. Brazil and India (along with South Africa) have also led
developing countries to important victories in the area of intellectual
property and access to medicines: despite strong opposition from the
US and EU and their pharmaceutical corporations, they secured an
agreement in 2001 exempting essential medicines (such as HIV/AIDS
drugs) from WTO intellectual property rules (the ‘TRIPs Agreement’)
and declaring that such rules could not be used to prevent governments
from acting to protect public health, as well as a waiver in 2003
allowing the export of generic drugs to developing countries that lack
domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity. In pursuing these
initiatives, India was motivated in part by their commercial signiﬁcance
for its generic pharmaceutical industry, which played an important
role in this ﬁght (Roemer-Mahler, 2012). The intense opposition to
TRIPs also prevented efforts by the US and EU to seek expanded IP
protections (‘TRIPs-Plus’) in the Doha Round. In addition, Brazil and
India have been key ﬁgures in the NAMA-11 coalition of developing
countries in the negotiations on manufactured goods (Non-Agricultural
Market Access, or NAMA). Under their leadership, developing
countries secured major ‘special and differential treatment’ (SDT) provisions,
including weaker tariff-reduction formulas and substantial
ﬂexibilities in both agriculture and manufactured goods. Beyond speciﬁc
coalitions, Brazil and India have engaged in extensive coordination
and alliance-building across the developing world. At the 2005
Hong Kong Ministerial, for example, they led a mass coalition of
developing countries (the G110) to oppose the agenda being pushed
by the advanced-industrialized states. Through a combination of formal
coalitions and more informal leadership, Brazil and India have
organized a signiﬁcant portion of the WTO’s membership behind
them, which they used to play a major agenda-setting role and signiﬁcantly
shape the direction of the Doha Round.
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324
Building effective coalitions
Developing country coalitions are not new to the WTO. With India and
Brazil playing a central role, developing countries began experimenting
more actively with forming coalitions to increase their bargaining power
during the Uruguay Round À the ﬁrst to fully bring developing countries
into the GATT/WTO by requiring them to undertake commitments
(Gallagher, 2008) À and leading up to the Doha Round (including the
Informal Group, G10, and Like Minded Group). However, as Amrita
Narlikar (2003) has documented, these early coalitions were largely ineffective,
hampered by the absence of a strong issue-speciﬁc focus, a
lack of technical capacity, and an inability to maintain unity and resist
collapse in the face of pressures from the dominant powers. The collapse
of their coalitions proved extremely costly for developing countries, who
were left deeply dissatisﬁed with the results of the Uruguay Round
(Wilkinson, 2007).
An important question is thus why Brazil and India’s coalition-building
efforts in the Doha Round were successful when previous such
efforts had failed. As Narlikar and co-authors (Hurrell and Narlikar,
2006; Narlikar and Tussie, 2004) convincingly argue, these new coalitions
were the product of almost two decades of experimentation, learning
and adaptation by developing countries. Led by Brazil and India, they
were able to learn from their previous mistakes in order to build stronger
and more effective coalitions in this round. Perhaps most importantly,
coming out of their experiences in the Uruguay Round and the lead up to
Doha, developing countries were keenly aware of the danger of political
isolation and the costs of failing to maintain unity (Lima and Hirst, 2006).
Developing countries had a renewed and strengthened commitment
to coalitions but needed effective leadership, which Brazil and India
provided.
The G20-T alliance forged by Brazil and India was the real game
changer at the WTO and marked a break with previous coalitions in several
important ways. First, given the diverse (and potentially conﬂicting)
interests of developing countries, building and maintaining coalitions at
the WTO is no easy feat. By constructing the agenda of the G20-T around
the issue of rich country agricultural subsidies, Brazil and India found a
means to overcome differences and unite developing countries. Second,
making the argument that subsidies artiﬁcially depress global prices and
undermine the competitiveness and livelihoods of farmers in the Global
South, the issue provided a compelling narrative that accorded with the
liberalization mandate of the WTO and increased the legitimacy of the
G20-T’s claims (Eagleton-Pierce, 2012; Hopewell, 2013). Third, and perhaps
most importantly, while developing countries have repeatedly been
on the defensive in WTO negotiations, the subsidies issue provided an
HOPEWELL: THE RISE OF BRAZIL, INDIA AND CHINA AT THE WTO
325
opportunity to turn the tables and go on the offensive against the developed
countries. The G20-T turned the rhetoric of free trade and liberalization
back on the major powers and highlighted their hypocrisy
(Bukovansky, 2010; Taylor, 2007). In the process, this signiﬁcantly
strengthened the position of developing countries vis-a-vis the US and
EU across the negotiations, including their ability to defend protections
in their own markets.
Diplomatic and technical capacity were critical to the ability of Brazil
and India to create and manage the G20-T and other coalitions that could
provide a credible challenge to the US and EU. In the lead-up to the
Doha Round, Brazil and India both invested heavily in staff and resources
dedicated to the WTO (Shaffer, Sanchez and Rosenberg, 2008; Sinha,
2007). They now have among the largest delegations in Geneva, supported
by highly trained ofﬁcials in their capitals, and their negotiating
teams are among the most skilled, active and knowledgeable at the
WTO. Brazil and India used their considerable diplomatic skill to coordinate
the positions of developing countries; provide strategy, talking
points and messaging; and produce compelling negotiating proposals
backed by research and analysis. Most developing countries are
extremely limited in their technical capacity, and to quote one negotiator,
‘in this game, either you have the technical capacity or people will take
your wallet’.21
Brazil and India were able to provide the highly sophisticated
expertise and technical capacity (i.e., the ability to run econometric
analysis, assess the impacts of speciﬁc commitments, and generate negotiating
proposals) that most developing countries lacked. This marked a
major change from previous developing country coalitions and made it
possible for them to respond to and counter the US and EU. Brazil and
India’s success in securing important gains for developing countries in
the negotiations À including on the agriculture and industrial tariff
reduction formulas and ﬂexibilities, agriculture subsidies, SPs, the SSM,
TRIPs and public health, and the Singapore Issues À consolidated support
for their leadership and further enhanced their clout.
The vital importance of coalitions for Brazil and India is apparent in
the considerable work they have invested in creating and maintaining
them, including the costs they have been willingly to incur. Although
developing countries represent signiﬁcant markets for Brazil’s agricultural
exports, for example, it held back from seeking improved access to
their markets, because that would jeopardize the unity of the G20-T and
support for its leadership.22
Instead, Brazil supported efforts by developing
countries to secure ﬂexibilities that would limit the extent of their
market opening, despite the negative commercial implications for its
own exporters. The importance of these coalitions is further evidenced
by the concerted efforts of the traditional powers to break them. Following
the Cancun Ministerial, for instance, the US went on the attack
REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
326
against the G20-T, using strong-arm tactics À including threating to withdraw
from bilateral and regional free trade negotiations À to force ﬁve
countries to leave the coalition. The G20-T, however, ultimately withstood
these pressures and remained intact, even replacing its lost members
and increasing its numbers.
Given the diverse interests of developing countries, Brazil and India’s
leadership has not been without friction (Burges, 2013). Tensions within
the G20-T and G33 reached a height at the 2008 Ministerial, when it
appeared negotiations were nearing conclusion; criticism erupted from
developing countries on multiple sides over the positions Brazil and
India had taken in the Green Room. Tensions likewise ﬂared within the
G33 during the 2013 Bali Ministerial, when negotiations threatened to
breakdown due to conﬂict between the US and India over the food stockholding
issue (Bridges, 2013). Yet both the two leaders and their developing
country followers are keenly aware that, as one G20-T member
stated, ‘our strength lies in the group’ and were these coalitions to crumble,
their positions would be substantially weakened.23
Brazil and India
actively worked to repair divisions and successfully maintained their
coalitions intact. This does, however, suggest potential instability in the
new-found power of Brazil and India, given its high degree of dependence
on the backing of other states.
It was Brazil and India’s leadership of developing country coalitions À
particularly the G20-T and G33 À that catalyzed power shifts at the WTO
and propelled them into the inner circle of power. As one negotiator
stated, ‘The US and EU aren’t talking to India because India is India.
They do it because India is seen as a leader of the G20-T and the G33, and
if they don’t get an agreement with India, it’s not just India that will withdraw
its support, it’s all of those countries’.24
A Brazilian negotiator concurred:
‘there are various ways to be admitted [to the inner circle]. For
us, the G20-T served as a stepping stone to consolidate our access to the
most exclusive negotiating forum [at the WTO]’.25
Lacking the economic
heft of other major powers, their mobilization of developing country coalitions
was critical in enabling Brazil and India to boost their status and
inﬂuence at the WTO.
THE RISE OF CHINA
China’s rise to power and behaviour have differed greatly from Brazil
and India. China only joined the WTO in 2001, after an arduous accession
process that took over 15 years of negotiations and required China
to undertake substantial concessions and domestic reforms. Its accession
corresponded with the launch of the Doha Round and many predicted
it would assume a central role in the negotiations, given its prominent
role in world trade. Instead, however, for much of the Doha Round,
HOPEWELL: THE RISE OF BRAZIL, INDIA AND CHINA AT THE WTO
327
China has been a relatively marginal player on the sidelines of decisionmaking.
While Brazil and India joined the elite inner circle at the WTO
following Cancun in 2003, it was only much later À not until the Ministerial
Meeting in July 2008 À that China was included in this core group
and assumed a more signiﬁcant role in the negotiations. Furthermore,
whereas Brazil and India fought their way into the inner circle, China
was brought in À and it was brought in largely because Brazil and India
had been so successful in fundamentally changing the dynamics of the
negotiations.
A quiet presence
If Brazil and India sought the spotlight at the WTO, China sought to
avoid it. Although a member of the G20-T and the G33, China made no
effort to establish itself as a leader of developing countries like Brazil and
India. As its negotiators indicate, ‘China is not a leader and China does
not want to be a leader’ À ‘we would have to take the spotlight, and that
is against China’s philosophy to be quiet, low proﬁle, modest’.26
Such a
strategy is in keeping with Deng Xiaoping’s famous directive of ‘taoguang
yanghui’ that the country should ‘observe developments soberly, maintain
our position, meet challenges calmly, hide our capabilities and bide
our time, remain free of ambition, and never claim leadership’. As a rival
negotiator stated: ‘China doesn’t want a following . . . China’s not like an
India or a Brazil. They stay behind and do not take on a prominent position
at the forefront’.27
Instead, China has been remarkably quiet and
assumed a low-proﬁle in the negotiations, with other negotiators describing
it as ‘a little on the outside of things’.28
Unlike Brazil and India, China
has sought to avoid prominence or any obvious projection of its power.
China’s quietude is often attributed to the newness of its membership
in the organization (Scott and Wilkinson 2013), and certainly China itself
has sought to foster this interpretation. But after 15 years of intense accession
negotiations and subsequently over a decade of membership in the
WTO, China’s efforts to portray itself as new and inexperienced and still
learning the ropes within the institution warrant scepticism. China has
important strategic reasons for its comparatively quiet behaviour in the
negotiations. Its position at the WTO is a complicated one. As the world’s
largest exporter, China has a major interest in reducing trade barriers,
further opening markets to its exports, and strengthening the rules of
the multilateral trading system. In fact, many expect that China would
be one of the biggest winners from the Doha Round (Polaski, 2006).
However, the size and rapid growth of its economy make China a major
target for other countries seeking access to its market. At the same time,
many countries are concerned about China’s industrial export capacity
and the competitive threat that it poses. As an export powerhouse in an
REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
328
organization designed to open markets, China frightens many WTO
members. These factors create vulnerabilities for China, as it potentially
faces both demands that it open its market and efforts to constrain its
exports. For China, being proactive or aggressive in seeking to expand its
access to foreign markets through the Doha Round risks creating a backlash
that could ultimately jeopardize its exports and economic growth.
China has therefore exercised a form of pre-emptive restraint and
avoided taking a leadership role or actively trying to shape the agenda of
the negotiations.
China has determined that the primary threat it faces is from the
advanced-industrialized states À particularly the US À and consequently
has allied itself with the developing world and joined developing country
coalitions to strengthen its defences and avoid being singled out and
targeted. As a member of the G20-T and the G33, China has allowed itself
to be led and represented by Brazil and India. Notes one observer, China
is ‘happy to leave the leadership role to India and Brazil. I’m sure they
think there is enough China-bashing already’.29
Seeking the protection of
developing country alliances and with Brazil and India advancing an
agenda broadly in accord with its own interests, China was disposed to
let those two countries wage the ﬁght against the traditional powers. A
Secretariat ofﬁcial offered this assessment: ‘they don’t waste capital if
they have others that will do it for them’.30
Thus, as another ofﬁcial
stated, for many years, China ‘effectively let Brazil and India run their
participation’ at the WTO.31
China’s entry to the inner circle
It was not until the July 2008 Mini-Ministerial Meeting in Geneva that
China was included in the inner circle and began to assume a more
important role in the negotiations. As usual at the Ministerial, the centre
of the action was the Green Room, where a small, elite group of trade
ministers gathered for negotiations. For the ﬁrst time, however, China
was invited to join this core group. What changed to prompt the inclusion
of China? The decision was driven by the US and the WTO’s Director-General.
Their motives were twofold. First, four years of negotiations
centred on the US, EU, Brazil, and India had produced a standstill À as
the breakdown of the previous Ministerial meeting the year before in
Potsdam had shown. Faced with an impasse À between the US and EU
versus Brazil and India over the issues of agricultural subsidies and market
access in the North and industrial tariffs in the South À there was a
sense that it was necessary to re-jig the players in the group to try to
break the standstill. The US in particular À as well as others seeking a
conclusion to the round À thought that China would side with them and
help to counter India, whom the US blamed for holding up the deal. As
HOPEWELL: THE RISE OF BRAZIL, INDIA AND CHINA AT THE WTO
329
one ofﬁcial commented: ‘The US believed that China would be more of
an ally than an adversary in these meetings. It made a calculation that
because of China’s relatively passive approach to being the biggest developing
country here and letting others run with the agenda, it would be an
ally’.32
Similarly, another negotiator stated, ‘China has a lot to gain, so
people thought bringing it to the table will help get a deal. They thought
it would put added pressure on India by having China in the room’.33
The US also had a second motivation for including China. While the
US is interested in gaining improved access to the Chinese market
through the Doha Round, China’s absence from the Green Room for
most of the round indicates that the US expected to be able to secure
these gains without directly engaging China. The US believed that it
needed only to strike a deal with Brazil and India, which would set the
terms of its access to developing country markets, including China. However,
by 2008, Brazil and India, leading the developing world, had been
so successful in resisting the pressures of the US and its allies and securing
their own demands that the negotiations had moved towards a prospective
agreement that provoked protest from powerful actors in the US
Congress and its business and farm lobby groups. Many in the US
viewed the deal taking shape À with what they saw as weak tariff-reduction
formulas and extensive ﬂexibilities for developing countries À as
unbalanced against the US. They argued that the US was not making sufﬁcient
gains in expanding access for its exports, particularly to the large
and rapidly growing Chinese market as well as those of other emerging
economies, to justify its concessions on agriculture subsidies and other
areas. As one US negotiator put it, ‘we’d be giving everything and getting
nothing’.34
In response, US negotiators determined that the best way to improve
the package and sell it to their domestic constituencies would be to secure
special concessions from China beyond the formal terms of the agreement
that was emerging. The US sought an informal commitment from
China that it would agree to limit the use of its ﬂexibilities in agriculture
(keeping key items of interest to the US À cotton, wheat and corn À off
their list of special products that would be shielded from full tariff cuts)
and participate in ‘sectorals’ (aggressive liberalization to cut tariffs to
zero or near zero across entire industrial sectors) in two areas of US competitiveness,
chemicals and industrial machinery. Thus, by the 2008 Ministerial,
as one negotiator stated, ‘the main demands of the US and EU
couldn’t be addressed without getting a “yes” from China. The US
needed China to be there’.35
There were therefore two key factors driving the decision to bring
China into the Green Room: one was strategic À the US thought it could
use China to put pressure on Brazil and India À the other was that
because Brazil and India had been so successful in negotiating a
REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
330
favourable deal for developing countries and had backed the US into a
corner, it needed to be able to secure extra concessions from China in
order to sell the deal back home. Unfortunately for the US, however, this
strategy backﬁred. Negotiations in the Green Room came to centre on the
design of the SSM championed by India. Rather than joining with the US,
China À who also has signiﬁcant defensive agricultural interests arising
from its large peasant population À supported India on the SSM. Moreover,
China refused to simply give away the additional commitments the
US was demanding on agricultural special products and industrial sectorals,
which it saw as unjustiﬁed relative to the concessions the US was
willing to make and beyond the scope of the terms already agreed to.
Ultimately, the Ministerial broke down with recriminations on all sides.
Doha breakdown
On its face, the breakdown was due to conﬂict over the SSM, but the
deeper issue was the US desire to ‘rebalance’ the deal by securing greater
access for its agriculture and manufactured goods to the markets of the
large emerging economies, particularly China. If China had conceded to
the US and agreed to grant the additional concessions it was seeking, the
Doha Round may well have been concluded in 2008. Certainly, the US
has a long track record in multilateral trade negotiations of successfully
overpowering developing countries and securing their assent for its initiatives.
Instead, however, China stood ﬁrm, refused to cave to the US
and rebuffed its demands for additional market opening. Thus, when
pushed, China showed that it is willing and able to assert itself and defend
its interests against the US. Given its economic heft and the importance of
its market, by blocking the US initiative to ‘rebalance’ the round, China
effectively exercised a veto that contributed directly to the current breakdown
and stalemate in the Doha Round.
With the 2008 Ministerial, China was almost involuntarily pulled into
the spotlight. Even since being admitted to the inner circle in 2008, negotiators
report that China has still tried to slip back into its comparatively
quiet and low proﬁle role in the negotiations. Its attempts to do so have
been less successful than in the past due to the US emphasis on gaining
further opening in its market and those of other large emerging economies.
Yet China did not suddenly assume an activist role like that of
Brazil and India.
The Doha Round has remained deadlocked along the same fault line
with no signiﬁcant progress since 2008.36
With the traditional and
emerging powers unable to reach agreement, the Doha Round negotiations
were ofﬁcially declared at an impasse in 2011. In December 2013,
efforts to salvage a small number of issues from the round produced a
HOPEWELL: THE RISE OF BRAZIL, INDIA AND CHINA AT THE WTO
331
micro-agreement À the ‘Bali Package’ À centred on trade facilitation. Yet
even this very limited agreement proved fractious and difﬁcult to
achieve, and the future of the Doha Round remains highly uncertain.
Some take the fact that the new powers have ultimately been unable to
secure their objectives through conclusion of the Doha Round as an indication
that they lack power (Narlikar 2010; Schirm 2010). I would argue,
however, that this is an excessively high standard by which to evaluate
the power of Brazil, India and China. By this criterion, even the US could
not be considered powerful, since it has not been able to conclude the
round and achieve its preferred objectives either. A more realistic standard
of power at the WTO is to evaluate the impact that countries have
had on the round. By this measure, though the nature of their behaviour
and impact differ, Brazil, India and China have undoubtedly arrived as
major powers.
CONCLUSION
An analysis of developments over the last decade at the WTO challenges
the conventional wisdom that the rise of new powers in global economic
governance is merely a function of their growing economic might.
Instead, I have argued that the forces driving their rise are more diverse
and complex than suggested by a simple economic determinism and that
these countries have taken different paths to power. Although China’s
rise has been more closely tied to its economic weight, for Brazil and
India alliance-building and leadership have been critical to enhancing
their power at the WTO. My purpose has not been to deny the role of economic
change in contemporary power shifts, but to suggest that an exclusive
focus on economic capabilities risks missing important aspects of the
rise of new powers in global economic governance.
This analysis points to the need to pay greater attention to differences
in the sources of power of these countries, particularly as these differences
have important implications for their strategies and behaviour in
international institutions like the WTO. Brazil and India worked to position
themselves as leaders of the developing world and assumed a confrontational
stance in relation to the US and EU, as a means to elevate
their status and inﬂuence. Highly vocal and assertive, Brazil and India
have been a major source of initiative and played a central role in shaping
the agenda of the Doha negotiations. In contrast, China has been reluctant
to throw its weight around. China has been assertive only in a defensive
and reactive manner and has not sought to be an initiator or agendasetter;
yet, China nonetheless came to have a signiﬁcant impact in the
later stages of the round, when it refused to concede to US demands.
In looking at the rise of new powers, the experience of the WTO suggests
the need to look beyond material capabilities to understand
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332
emerging challenges to the dominance of the US and other states of the
Global North in global economic governance. The realist expectation is
that those states with the greatest economic and military capabilities will
dominate global governance and exercise the greatest inﬂuence. But this
case suggests just the opposite: that the possession of material power
capabilities can actually work to constrain a state and hinder its inﬂuence.
In this case, those with lesser economic and military might had
more room to maneouvre. With fewer material power resources, Brazil
and India were perceived as less of a threat and could therefore be more
aggressive and proactive. They were able to use leadership and alliances
to enhance their inﬂuence, which ultimately enabled them to have a considerable
impact on the negotiating agenda in the Doha Round. Counterintuitively,
the emerging power with the greatest material power capabilities
À China À has been the least proactive or agenda-setting in its
effects. The paradox is that the very things that we would expect to make
China powerful at the WTO À its large market and role in world trade À
limited its ability to exercise agenda-setting inﬂuence. Instead, its inﬂuence
has come in the form of veto power. The structure of inﬂuence at
the WTO is therefore far more complex than a mechanical reﬂection of
the distribution of raw economic power.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was supported by the US National Science Foundation
(Grant No. 0927598), the Social Science and Humanities Research Council
of Canada (Grant No. 75220060755), and a Fulbright Fellowship.
NOTES
1. While quota reforms of the IMF agreed in 2008 became effective in March
2011, further reforms agreed in 2010 have yet to be ratiﬁed by the US.
2. In the literature on rising powers, the line between the analytical and the normative
at times appears blurred, such that the distinction between assessing
the rise of new powers and making a case for their greater inclusion in global
economic governance is not always clear. Thus, in some instances, attempts
to measure and catalogue the material resources of the rising powers may be
more a question of arguing for their inclusion, rather than accepting military
or economic capabilities as the sole measure of their power or inﬂuence. The
point remains, however, that discussions of the emerging powers have overwhelmingly
focused on their material power capabilities.
3. IMF and WTO 2012.
4. The interviews not directly quoted in the paper were used for background
information, to triangulate among different sources in order to accurately
reconstruct events at the WTO, and to substantiate the selected quotes presented
in the paper. To protect the conﬁdentiality of interview respondents
HOPEWELL: THE RISE OF BRAZIL, INDIA AND CHINA AT THE WTO
333
in the diplomatic community surrounding the WTO, names and other identifying
information have been removed.
5. For Brazil, see: Armijo and Kearney, 2008; Hopewell, 2013; Veiga, 2007; India:
Dhar and Kallummal, 2007; Sinha, 2007; China: Feng, 2006; Jiang, 2010; Zeng,
2007.
6. Since Russia À the fourth ‘BRIC’ À did not become a member of the WTO
until 2012 and was therefore not part of the power shift within the institution,
it is not included in the analysis presented here.
7. I use the term veto in the informal, practical sense of having the power to
block an initiative or agreement; no state has formal, legal veto power at the
WTO.
8. I refer to the coalition of developing countries at the WTO as the G20-Trade
(G20-T) to avoid confusion with the G20 Leaders Summit.
9. Interview, Geneva, May 2009.
10. Interview, Geneva, March 2009.
11. Interview, Geneva, May 2009.
12. In Brazil, the primacy accorded to expanding its agribusiness exports has
been strongly opposed by a variety of other actors (including social movements,
NGOs, trade unions, small farmers and peasants, and many
manufacturing sectors). Yet, in shaping Brazilian trade policy, agribusiness
has largely won out over opposing social forces (see Hopewell, 2013).
13. Interview, Geneva, May 2009.
14. Ibid..
15. Ibid..
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid..
18. Ibid.
19. Interview, New Delhi, March 2010.
20. Interviews with Indian negotiators, Geneva, September 2008ÀJune 2009.
21. Interview, Geneva, March 2009.
22. Interviews with trade ofﬁcials, Brasilia, May 2010.
23. Interview with negotiator, Geneva, March 2009.
24. Interview, Geneva, April 2009.
25. Interview, Geneva, May 2009.
26. Interviews, Geneva, March and May 2009.
27. Interview, Geneva, May 2009.
28. Multiple interviews, Geneva, September 2008ÀJune 2009.
29. Interview with NGO representative, Geneva, May 2009.
30. Interview, Geneva, May 2009.
31. Interview with Secretariat ofﬁcial, Geneva, March 2009.
32. Interview with Secretariat ofﬁcial, Geneva, March 2009.
33. Interview, Geneva, May 2009.
34. Interview, Geneva, April 2009.
35. Interview, Geneva, May 2009.
36. For discussion of the difﬁculties in concluding the Doha Round see
Gallagher, 2008; Margulis, 2013; Wilkinson, 2009.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Kristen Hopewell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the
University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Canada.
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334
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