COMMENTARY october 27, 2012 vol xlviI no 43 EPW Economic & Political Weekly 16 James Scott (James.Scott@manchester.ac.uk) is Hallsworth Fellow in International Political Economy at the Brooks World Poverty Institute, University of Manchester, UK. Rorden Wilkinson (rorden.wilkinson@ manchester.ac.uk) is at the School of Social Sciences and is Research Director of the Brooks World Poverty Institute of the University of Manchester, UK. The Politics and Perils of Plurilaterals James Scott, Rorden Wilkinson This article explores the current turn within the World Trade Organisation and the broader trade system away from multilateralism and towards negotiating plurilateral agreements. Plurilateralism is being pushed in many quarters as a potential means of overcoming the impasse that has emerged in the Doha Round of talks. Using insights from history, the article argues that the shift to plurilateralism is nothing new. Indeed the trade system has been built nearly continuously on such agreements. But the current push holds great danger for developing countries, particularly the least developed among them. T hough it is often spoken of pri- vately and occasionally in hushed tones publicly, not one govern- ment official has yet gone on record and said that the World Trade Organisation’s ( WTO) Doha Development Agenda ( DDA) is dead. Without wanting to stretch a metaphor too far, it is clear that the Doha Round has certainly been emptied of its development content and in this re- spect it is dead. But the round itself is far from over. Indeed, recent suggestions have emerged that a resuscitation of the round might be possible if a few like- minded countries with a sufficient share of world trade to make an agreement worthwhile were to get together and open up trade. This “plurilateral” ap- proach to trade is far from new; what is new is the gusto with which the idea is being driven forward in certain quarters and being presented as a potential pana- cea for infusing new momentum to the Doha Round. Indeed, such is the energy behind the drive to plurilaterals that in some quarters it is being suggested that, should the broader membership agree to allow this form of “mini-lateralism” 1 to play a major role, it might be one way that development gains could be smug- gled back onto the agenda. One of the most interesting aspects of the emerging debate is the volte-face that has occurred in the way that some in the trade community have come to view plurilaterals. Prior to the December 2011 conclusion of the Government Procurement Agreement and the moves by the “Real Good Friends of Services” to negotiate an International Services Agreement, plurilateralism was widely held up as undesirable. Its role in shap- ing the Tokyo Round (1973-79) accords of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ( GATT ) and in distributing trade gains to a small and selective group of countries in an otherwise multilateral setting led many commentators to criticise this à la carte approach to trade, preferring instead a broad-based single undertaking in which all members are represented even if they are unlikely to gain equitably. Yet, what is now occur- ring is a conscious effort to rehabilitate plurilateralism and to present it as a nor- mal part of a trade round. Plurilateralism is currently being defined as any form of mini-lateralism that covers agreements in specific sectors and/or any group of members. Thus, bilateral and regional agreements are all now being recast in some quarters as plurilaterals – a much broader definition than previously seen. In turn, plurilaterals are being depicted as building blocks of the multilateral system – much in the same way we are encouraged to think about regional trade agreements. And while many are aware that Least Developed Countries ( LDCs ) stand to gain almost nothing from plurilaterals – even if they are multilateralised (that is, if the agreed concessions are extended to all members of the WTO regardless of whether they participated in the plurilateral agree- ment or not) – such is the desire to get the Doha Round moving that any ap- proach will be countenanced. Sitting squarely behind the changing discourse on plurilaterals is concern with the direction of United States ( US ) trade policy. Movement forward in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, President Barack Obama’s mooting of the possibility of opening up discussions with the Euro- pean Union ( EU) over a US/EU free trade agreement, and official assertions that the US will meet its trade objectives by any means, combine to put the prov- erbial cat among the pigeons. The reconstruction of the North American Free Trade Agreement ( NAFTA) as a plurilateral and the spectre of a con- cluded Trans-Pacific Partnership as a negotiating lever, driving the world back to multilateral negotiations in the way NAFTA drove the Uruguay Round, serve to further focus minds. An Old Strategy Our collective memories tend to be short, yet we forget that the turn to- wards plurilaterals is a strategy that the US has frequently used when a blockage