A Neo-Gramscian Analysis of the Incomplete Doha Development Trade Round
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This paper analyzes the lack of progress and the breakdown of the Doha Round talks in world trade
since 2001 from a neo-Gramscian perspective. The failure to conclude multilateral trade negotiations reflect an
emerging new architecture of power politics in the world political-economic order. Major economic powers,
including the United States (US), the European Union (EU), Japan and Canada as well as leading transnational
companies used to have a significant impact on guiding the agenda of the multilateral trade negotiations as well
as defining the outcomes. However, in the context of the WTO, emerging powers such as India, Brazil, and
China and several non-governmental organizations critical of neoliberal globalization began to confront the
former groups’ dominance. Developing and developed countries have contending views on the agenda issues,
marked by confrontation on the former’s insistence for the liberalization of agricultural markets by
industrialized states and the latter’s pressure for the liberalization of non-agricultural markets. Both sides
employ certain strategies and discourses to coerce or to persuade the opposing parties. Hence, the paper argues
that the multilateral trade negotiations emerge as zones of exercising hegemony rather than being an area to
produce common norms, values and policies for the well-being of all members in the world trade regime.
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