African Demands for Special and Differential Treatment in the Doha Round: An Assessment and Analysis

Interest in Special and Differential Treatment (SDT) is experiencing a revival and Africa has made it a WTO priority. This article reviews the African SDT proposals and puts forward a political economy explanation of the strong focus on it. Small African economies cannot reap gains in the WTO throug...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inDevelopment policy review Vol. 25; no. 1; pp. 91 - 112
Main Author Jensen, Michael Friis
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.01.2007
Subjects
Developing countries
Development economics
Economic development
Export-import trade - Africa
International trade
LDCs
Studies
Trade liberalization
Trade negotiation
World trade organization - Africa
Africa
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Summary:Interest in Special and Differential Treatment (SDT) is experiencing a revival and Africa has made it a WTO priority. This article reviews the African SDT proposals and puts forward a political economy explanation of the strong focus on it. Small African economies cannot reap gains in the WTO through the use of reciprocity. However, there are still opportunities for them to influence the negotiations, if (i) no major trade interests of the main powers are in play, (ii) they can make a sufficient claim to the moral high ground and/or (iii) they can exploit the decision‐making procedures to block negotiations. This favours a prioritisation of negotiations on SDT, but potential gains here are fewer than they might be since the African approach to SDT is unfocused, substantially and politically.
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ArticleID:DPR361
ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:0950-6764
1467-7679
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-7679.2007.00361.x