‘This compilation of forty-five case studies … demonstrates that success or failure is strongly influenced by how governments and private-sector stakeholders organise themselves at home … Above all, these case studies demonstrate that…sovereign decision-making can…undermine the potential benefits flowing from a rules-based international environment that promotes open trade.’ [ WTO Website : ‘Managing the Challenges of WTO Participation-45 Case Studies‘, December, 2005 ]

After seven years of intensive effort, negotiations in the Doha Round have failed to produce agreement. As the WTO study confirms, this results from the influence private interest groups have exercised over the market opening offers participating governments took to the negotiating table. While market access requests were generally structured in response to domestic producers seeking external markets, the reciprocal offers of access to domestic markets were heavily influenced by protected domestic producers who felt threatened by liberalisation. The influence of those interest groups over national decision-making has swamped consideration of the economy-wide (national) interest in domestic preparations for multilateral trade negotiations. And it is these larger, economy-wide, gains that provide the economic justification for opening domestic markets to international competition. The response of domestic constituents to the prospect of opening domestic markets to international competition has been heavily influenced by the information available to them about the domestic consequences. In the absence of public information about the economy-wide gains at issue for the community as a whole, and in view of the quite visible costs to the prospective losers, the latter have naturally found sympathy at home. As a result, governments have had difficulty mobilising a strong domestic commitment to reduce their national barriers in a trade bargaining context.

Denis Hussey has explained briefly why an initiative like that proposed by the Tasman Transparency Group (TTG) is needed to focus public attention, within WTO member countries, on  the domestic (economy-wide) gains at issue in reducing their own trade barriers. A more detailed account is on the TTG website.