Relations with other organizations and civil society

The front-page treatment of the Seattle Ministerial Conference in 1999 symbolized the profound changes that had taken place in the scope and politics of trade over the preceding half-century. At the founding of the GATT system trade policy was confined to tariffs and quotas, and this field was the province of a very small set of decision-makers and stakeholders. The one global institution that dealt with the topic was so obscure that it could not even be described as an international organization; there were only a handful of countries that made significant commitments in GATT; those commitments concerned only a few government ministries, especially finance and foreign affairs; and the only domestic interests that cared were firms and workers in the affected industries. By 1999, the subject matter of trade negotiations and disputes had encompassed a far wider and growing array of laws and policies; the work of the WTO impinged on that of several other international organizations and vice versa; nearly every country in the world was in or seeking to get in; the operations of almost all government ministries were concerned by WTO rules, with commitments affecting their revenues, regulations and procurement; and ministerials became magnets for reporters, labour leaders, religious activists, “black bloc” anarchists, children adorned with butterfly wings and policemen in riot gear. The tear gas and the media scrums did not become permanent features of WTO meetings, but the larger point remains: the days when this community was isolated and low-profile have long since passed. Trade ministries and the WTO Secretariat have had to learn how to communicate with the many other policy-makers, stakeholders and opinion leaders whose interests are affected by what they do.