Cover; Writing Global Trade Governance; Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication; Table of Contents; List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; 1 Introduction: Embedding the World Trade Organization; The WTO as the 'rule of law' or as 'power politics'; The problem of defining agency in the WTO; Problematizing the WTO as Member-led; The social construction of the Member state identity; The WTO as a sedimented discursive formation; A new research strategy: the WTO in this book; What is the 'WTO'?; 2 Contesting global trade governance: A genealogy of the WTO; Introduction
GenealogyMultiple articulations of global trade governance; National security; Peaceful cooperation; Weapon of the free world; Development; Multilateralism; Radically rearticulating global trade governance; Articulating the need for an organization; Emergence of new identities; Conclusion; 3 The WTO as an uncertain political project; Introduction; The WTO as formal rules and informal norms; An uncertain identity; Conclusion; 4 The emergence of new actors in the WTO: The NGO identity; Introduction; The question of the 'actor': a problematization of the primacy of the Member state identity
Formalization of NGOs in the WTOBeyond the formal NGO identity; Contesting NGOs in the WTO; Politicization of global trade governance; Conclusion; 5 The formation of new actors contesting the WTO: The example of anti-GATS campaigning; Introduction; Case study; Emergence of a collective identity; A very brief introduction to the GATS; Articulating the critique of GATS; The sedimentation of an anti-GATS equivalential chain; Unequal mobilization; Campaigning as multi-pronged; The end of political mobilization critical of the GATS?; Conclusion: the elasticity of equivalential chains
6 Conclusion: The discursivity of global trade governanceIntroduction; Summary; So what if the WTO is understood discursively?; The WTO reconsidered; Bibliography; Index
Summary
Writing Global Trade Governance operationalises a key post-structuralist methodology in order to expand understanding on the institution at the heart of the global political economy. Despite the WTO's centrality and the growing popularity of methods utilizing discourse theory, no other text has yet demonstrated how these two fields of learning can be productively combined. The book seeks to move beyond existing literatures that assume the WTO to be a structure, institution or normative framework, in order to enquire into the discursive processes of identity formation that make the WTO both
