A Social Theory of Trade Regime Change: GATT to WTO

Traditional approaches to regimes generally understand them to be linked to the material powers of the states that create them. In contradistinction, I use a synthesis of constructivist and material theory to analyze the changing role of developing countries during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations. Employing a structurationist insight, I note that states (agents) and trading regimes (social structures) are reflexively constructed. In this context, all states have the potential to influence the meanings that constitute power in trade negotiations. Although developing countries previously had established a role as the protectionist Other, they reversed their role during the Uruguay Round. They supported a stronger, rules–based regime and the creation of the World Trade Organization. In forming part of a new collective identity of “reciprocal trader,” developing countries helped change the culture and distribution of influence in the trading regime.