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7 - Delegation chains, agenda control and political mobilisation: how the EU Commission tries to affect domestic mobilisation on the DDA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2011

By
Bart Kerremans
Edited by
Thomas Cottier  and
Manfred Elsig
Bart Kerremans
Affiliation:
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium
Thomas Cottier
Affiliation:
Universität Bern, Switzerland
Manfred Elsig
Affiliation:
Universität Bern, Switzerland
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Summary

Introduction

The Doha Development Agenda (DDA) is in jeopardy, or at least seems so for the time being. Negotiations have been dragging on now for more than seven years, and the end of them is not in sight. Efforts to get these talks back on track, not the least those of WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy, have not succeeded in enabling real breakthroughs. Attempts to give the talks a political momentum have largely failed as well. Whether it was the G7, the G20 Summit, or bilateral summitry, none of them really succeeded in breaking through the logic that keeps the talks in deadlock. This chapter aims to look more deeply into this deadlock, but to do so from the perspective of the European Union and its internal dynamics. The purpose of the chapter is to analyse the way the strategic negotiating set-up of an intergovernmental organisation like the WTO affects the EU's ability to participate effectively in multilateral trade negotiations. It performs this analysis by focusing on the opportunities and constraints that such a set-up creates for the institution that negotiates on behalf of the EU (its agent), and for those domestic EU players that control this agent (the principals). In doing this, we try to identify and understand the chain of delegation that matters for the EU whenever it negotiates multilaterally, and the international institutional factors that affect the processes of autonomy and control in that chain.

Type
Chapter
Information
Governing the World Trade Organization
Past, Present and Beyond Doha
 , pp. 129 - 154
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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