Angela Geck, "The Power to Persuade: Strategic Arguing at the World Trade Organization" (U Toronto Press, 2024)

Welcome to the new Books Network. Hello and welcome to another episode on the new Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Angela Geck about her book titled The Power to Persuade, Strategic Arguing at the World Trade Organization, published in 2024 by the University of Toronto Press, which is a really interesting book because it takes us very much behind the scenes of what we usually get to see to think about how arguments, how persuasion, how deals, how negotiations are actually done in the realm of global politics at the World Trade Organization, which has rather a lot of power when it comes to things that impact everyone's daily lives. And this book very helpfully helps us analyze those things rather than just sort of seeing them vaguely in the news, going, well, hang on a second, what's actually happening, and how do different countries operate, and how do some of these really big issues get negotiated. So, Angela, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast to tell us about your book. Well, Miranda, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited about our, about talking about the book. Well, I am too, but before either of us get carried away into the details, I think we need to do a bit of foundational stuff. So, can you please introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners and explain why you've decided to write this book? Yeah, well, I'm a political scientist by training, and I work at the University of Freiburg in Germany, and I became interested in the WTO already in 2003 when at the Cancun ministerial, the G20, that is a group of emerging and developing countries led by Brazil and India, stood up against the US and the EU in the agricultural negotiations, and was something quite remarkable at the time that these countries from the global south managed to well stand up to the big established trading powers, not get themselves involved in a deal they didn't want to, and well, the negotiations broke down at that conference, and so that was in the news, and I thought it was very interesting how they did that and what happened there. So, that was my initial contact, why I got so interested in the WTO, and then when I concerned myself more with the issue, I got interested in the question, how power actually is exercised in the WTOs, you always hear that, who's the big players, they get their way, they can convince or force the others, but I started thinking how do they actually do that, I mean, do they just walk up to the repress attentive tips of other countries and say, well, I'm big and powerful to you, but I do what I say, or I mean, they have to actually exercise the power somehow, and yeah, I want to know more about how that worked, and also of course, about how countries that do not have so much material power can sometimes also resist these exercise of power, or exercise power themselves in some other ways, like, for instance, the G20 did that, the Konmini studio. So, I started to do research into this question, and at first it wasn't about strategic arguing at all, I just, I did interviews with negotiators, so with staff at the permanent missions in Geneva, where is the permanent seat of the WTO, and it just can ask them how, I mean, how do you actually do that, how do you convince other negotiators of your interest, or how do you get them to agree to what you want, and also what strategies are you confronted with from the side of other negotiators? And then, I mean, I started to see that that argue was really important, that people really thought it was their main task to convince others by sexual arguments, by normative arguments, and that was striking to me, because, well, at the time there was also a debate in political science about argue versus bargaining, people said, "Well, we thought that in international negotiations, it's mostly about bargaining, and bargaining is like threats and promises, exercise of power, but now we realize there's also arguing, people also exchange arguments about facts, about normative claims." But in this discussion, arguing was always conceptualized as, you know, like the better form of interaction where less powerful actors could also have that way, and power relations were kind of suspended, and only the better argument would count. So now, what I was seeing in my research was that people were arguing, but they were arguing to get their way not to better understand each other's positions and come to a mutual agreement. They were actually using arguments as a means of power. And I thought that was really like the striking and interesting thing, and so I came to focus, yeah, on this aspect, and that's why I, many years later, finally wrote a book about the strategic arguing and the power to press weight. Now, thank you for taking us through that kind of behind-the-scenes development of the book. I do think it's always so interesting when books come out of just a really straightforward question, like, "Wait, how does that work?" And the answer is never as simple as that question seems, obviously, this being a great example of that. And in that answer, you hopefully took us through kind of how you got from that very, very big question and sort of then started poking at it. Is there anything further we should understand about the specific questions you're asking in the book before we go forward? Yeah, I mean, the main question that the book now asked is, "Who has the power to persuade?" So, meaning in the context of the WTO negotiations, which of the member states can use this persuasive power to get their way? And yeah, I think, I mean, this is something that becomes important if you think of arguing as a means of power. I mean, obviously, we don't just want to know how it works. We also want to know who can use that power, who has the power. And you can also divide it into several sub-questions that the book tackles. Like, at first, I asked, "How are you actually done strategic arguing?" And I look at that from a practice theoretical perspective. So, I assume that there's certain ways, yeah, how you have to do that in order for it to be effective, also because it's social norms. And how you have to argue in order to be taken as reasonable and to convince other people. So this is one first part that I look at how argue works, strategic argue works. Then, of course, I also have to look at how this affects the negotiations. And I do in the book, there's two case studies on this and also a chapter on the kind that tries to tackle the question how you can measure persuasion. But, I mean, yeah, that's a very easy task and not the main focus of the book. And then I ask, "What are the resources you need in order to make an effective argument?" And that leads me to answering my question, "Who has those resources? So, who has the power to argue?" So, we kind of. I mean, it's also the study is a grounded theory study. And so, the chapters also kind of follow the standard model of a grounded theory theory. Like, you have the actions. This is the practices. How do you do it? And then you have the outcome, the persuasion. And you have the resources. So, well, what happens in the context, the conditions, that are the resources. So, that also kind of stretches the book. Yeah, no, that's helpful to understand both in terms of the arguments, but also in terms of how this plays out in the book. Before we get into the sum of the answers to those questions, I think we need to make sure we all know what we mean by strategic arguing, because that's so central to this. And of course, these people you're talking about, the negotiators, the diplomats, they're interacting with each other, not just when they're arguing strategically. They're also having all kinds of other social interactions. So, what is strategic arguing, and how does it compare to these other things? Yeah. Thank you. That's, of course, a very important question. Well, I mean, I already referred to the debate about arguing versus bargaining. So in political science, people said there's two kinds of social interaction in the negotiations, in political negotiations. International negotiations, but also actually in like negotiations. and parliaments and stuff. And so one is arguing, where you exchange arguments about factual claims about the appropriateness of some kind of action. And the other motive interaction is bargaining, where you exchange threats and promises in order to get somebody to agree to some kind of proposition. And this distinction is related to another distinction by European Habermas, who differentiates between strategic action and human communicative action. So Habermas says that people in their interaction are other people generally either strategically or communicatively. Strategic action would mean that you have your predefined egoistic interests that you want to realize, and you treat other people just like objects. Like you try to get them to do what you want, to use them for your own purposes. And then communicative action, on the other hand, is a form of interaction where you treat the other person as a subject you communicate with, and you really interested in to hear their opinion and their perspective on things. And you're not interested in realizing some predefined interests, but you're interested in mutual understanding, understanding of the situation, maybe finding some good solutions that you didn't even think of before, which you can come up with by discussing the subject with your counterpart. Now, the difficulty is that among people in the political science debate about arguing versus bargaining, that was, I mean, the beginnings were in Germany. There's a lot of discussion to Germany about this, like the 1990s already. And people like Thomas Frisson, for instance, or Habal Müller, later Nicole Dytelhoff, they have worked with this concept of arguing versus bargaining, but their understanding of arguing is very close to communicative action. So they, I mean, I already said, they always assumed it was a more benign form of interaction and that, of course, is the case if you define it in this hypermarsial way of communicating action now. So they always assumed that if people argue, they also interested in understanding. But there's also some theorists that already took into consideration that you could also argue strategically. So, I mean, strategic arguing is something that, and it fulfills the criteria for arguing, so people make statements about facts or about normative things. What Habal Müller already said is that, you can, if somebody makes an argument, then there's three validity claims that he or she also makes with that, the claim of propositional truth. So when I say it's correct for a presentation of facts, the claim of normative rightness, it's something I might rightfully say and demand, and the claim of truthfulness. So something about like, it's an authentic representation of my wishes and feelings. And you can also challenge all of these validity claims. And that's how you talk about arguments. So I mean, as long as people say things that fall into this remit, it's arguing. It's not bargaining. But you can still do that in a strategic orientation because you want to get people to do something that you wish for and not because you want to find an understanding with them. So this is the crux of, and there's already some people like, I mean, I took the term actually from Peter Nissen, a German author of a volume and argument and community to action, but he doesn't really go into much detail. And all the years, like people like Frank Schimmel-Fennig, who has developed the concept of historical, historical entrapment, which I also use. And that's also a kind of strategic argument. But yeah, I, as I took those fragments that we're already there and tried to really develop a concept of strategic argument. - No, that's helpful to understand. I think so much of what we do is put in pieces together. So good to know what you've done here. Given that foundation, then, can you tell us about the two sets of practices that you found to be involved in making an effective argument in the context of the WTO negotiations? - Yes, I differentiate between two sets of practices, one of practices of getting others to agree. So those are actually the mechanisms, how you can get people to accept or agree to your propositions. And therefore, I found there in the WTO negotiations is the legitimation of claims. - So you're interested in people accepting that this is a legitimate demand of yours. You have reasons to ask for this. Then, "Collitional outbidding," which means you try to win people for your side by explaining to them that what you want is also good for their country. And they should join your, your coalition. historical enchantment, as I said already, is a concept developed by Frank Schimmel's fanning. And it means that you make an argument that draws on norms or rules that others have previously already agreed to have maybe champion themselves. And by framing the thing this way, they cannot disagree, I mean, like, if you say your podcast here is about new interesting books in political science, and then I tell you that something is a new, interesting political book in political science, then you can't really say you don't find that interesting. You have to give good reasons why. That's not a very good example. But on the other hand, if I would say something about the book on children's book, then you would be free to say, well, children's books are not something that I find so interesting or cover in my podcast. But if I frame it in a way that appeals to something that you have previously said is, your interest, your opinion, the norm that you hold up, then I might be able to resortically entrap you to agree to something even if you don't find that particularly books are very interesting. So this is kind of our historical entrapment works. And the fourth way of getting others to agree by a strategic argument is the male threats. I mean, as I said, you might remember, threats are a means of arguing, not arguing. So if I say, if you don't do this, I will hit you, then this is not arguing. And also, I mean, if a negotiate says, if you don't agree to this position, then I will cut your development aid or something, this is not an argument. But people can make a male threats. They can try to package something that actually is a threat like an argument. Like, for instance, in the WTL, what some countries, like the US like to do is say, well, we won't be able to convince our Congress of that. We would like to agree to that. But we won't, we simply won't be able to convince our Congress of that. So please, we have to find another solution that comes closer to our interests. So I mean, they pretend that this is not something that is in their hands. They say they just issue a warning about something bad that might happen like Congress won't agree, and then their all negotiations will fail. But in fact, they might have quite a hand in that that Congress will not agree. It depends a lot on how they present it to Congress. And yeah, there's a lot of examples in negotiations, generally, where people put something as a warning about something bad that might happen. But actually, this is a very important thing. bad event in the future is something that they might trigger by their actions too. So this is a more wailed threat. Yeah, so this is what the first set of practices, and then the other set of practices of construction and practices in strategic arguments is like the sign grid, like how do you actually make an argument? What are the parts that you need to construct an argument? And so an argument consists of a frame, a frame. And this is the term that was coined by Irving Kaufman, a sociologist. And it just means that everything that I've seen in a specific context, I can frame something as a human rights issue or I can frame it as a trade issue, for instance. So what is the context we're considering something in? You need to present some facts. What is the situation? Then you need to identify a solution. What should we do about this problem? Yeah, we're talking about a problem frame. What is it's a human rights issue? And it's, yeah, we should do something about it because human rights are in danger in this case. And then, all the in addition, often people also provide an additional motivation for action. Yeah, why should you be the person, the country, to do something about this human rights issue? How is it your responsibility or in other cases, what do you get from it? So these are, is another set of practices. And of course, the two are into related. Yeah, you have to use the more fine grid practice of constructing an argument in a way that lets you construct an argument that serves one of the other practices of getting other strictry. And there's also a third, a third set of practices actually, which is not a set of strategic arguing pussy, but it also plays a role in the negotiations. And I call that practices of preventing others from making an effective argument. So, yeah, this is, this is also things that people do in the debate and they kind of do also by making arguments, but it's, yeah, it's not, they don't make an argument. There's themselves, they try to prevent others from being able to make an argument. And I identify two practices that are also very relevant in the WTO negotiations. And one is stalling, they're preventing the issue from being debated. And the other is exclusion from the debate. Like, you might have heard already, the WTO negotiations take a very specific form. It's supposed to be consensus decision making and everybody has one voice. But in reality, there's a lot of informal processes. And consensus becomes manufactured. And in that, I mean, the most powerful countries have the most influence. And yeah, I mean, there's a, you can tell a lot about that. But in fact, in this way, smaller or less developed countries kind of become excluded from the debate. So, I mean, there's also legitimate misation strategies for that. People say that it's more effective like that or it's important that the big players find a solution first. And then the others can come on board as, so it's all the back arguments how they do it. All right. So let's see how all of this works kind of in practice. Because that's a, I think, definitely a contribution of the book. And theoretically, you also put it into real life situations. So ensuring that we do that as well, can you take us through the cotton discussions at the WTO, not necessarily obviously the ins and outs of all the debates, because I mean, the book does that. But I think we probably don't have time for it. But helping us understand how this focus on strategic arguing and unpicking the strategies as you've just done for us. How that helps us understand why this issue of cotton has had so much attention. And yet despite the attention, nothing really has come out of these debates. Yeah, I've gotten a very interesting issue. And so there's also others who have written on this issue. Because it's, I mean, it's just one specific crop. And usually there's no debates about specific crops in the WTO. There's the actual cultural negotiations where, I mean, which was supposed to be a very important part of the Doha round. Like the Doha round. I mean, in already in the gap, the predecessor of the WTO, you always had these negotiation rounds where for several years. I've just discussed about a set of topics and then they came to an overall package of outcomes. And the WTO was only founded in 1995. And then of course they wanted to have their own first negotiation round. And it took them until 2001 to start that in the ministerial in Doha. So that's why it calls the Doha round. Agriculture is generally is like an area which was not liberalized as much and other areas in the in the in the gap. Because it's an area where the industrialized countries, which were the. The countries that call the shots in the in the gut already. I mean, they were in so many competitive sometimes and they wanted to protect their own agriculture for more or less. Good reasons, I would say. So so there was little liberalization there, but there's quite some countries from the global South who are very competitive in agriculture. And so they demanded that this would also be liberalized and so that was supposed to be a big part of the WTO negotiations and the Doha round negotiations the first big negotiation round of the WTO. If you're familiar with the WTO, you know that well, this round has never come to a conclusion until now, probably it never will be. And agriculture hasn't really been reformed in the long ago. But I mean, what was supposed to happen is that you discussed agriculture as a whole and you said some terrorist reduction formulas for agriculture. Now in 2003, like very shortly after the beginning of the Doha round, even though actually I mean the round was supposed to end 2005. So 2003, the ministerial in Cancun was supposed to be the midterm review. It's very funny to think that now. But anyways, at that point, a small coalition of least developed countries, beneath the Queen of Faso, Marley and Chad, they launched an initiative for the abandonment of subsidies, specifically on cotton, because those were. It was a crop that was very important to their economies and they said, well, I mean, if it wasn't for the subsidies of richer countries, mainly the US. Then we could actually have a very good development opportunity here. And so did it monitor the very fast and complete end to subsidization in cotton. And I mean, actually cotton became one of the topics of the round. It was like discussed next to agriculture and services trade and non agriculture trade. And that's really striking that this one crop became such a big issue. On the other hand, as you already said, in the end, nothing really happened as in agriculture. And that's also striking because it gets so much attention. Then in the end, nothing happened. And I think we can explain both of these things by the argument strategies. The reason why cotton got so much attention is that this coalition of LDCs, they were called the cotton force C4, had a very good argument. As I already kind of hinted, they said, well, this is a liberalization issue. So this is what the W2 is about. We just want liberalization, no more subsidies, free market. And at the same time, they said, this is a development issue. I mean, you all think that development is important and there's development cooperation and all these programs and. But the only thing you need to do actually to help us in our development is just cut the subsidies. And so they appeal to two norms that industrial life countries like the US or the EU held very dearly. Free market, principles and development cooperation. And that's a very good combination. Yeah. A very good framing was very difficult for the US to respond to that. The US was the main target of this initiative because they produce a lot of cotton and they sell a lot of cotton on the world market and they also subsidize their producers. There's also other countries that pay subsidies like for instance the EU pays very high subsidies or used to pay very high subsidies at least. But they produce a little and export so little that it doesn't really influence the world market so much. And also the Chinese produce a lot of cotton. They were already in 2003 they produced more cotton than the US. And they also already subsidized their cotton producers. Now they subsidized them much more than the US. But the Chinese also use a lot of cotton. Like they have a big garment industry where they use the cotton themselves. So actually they import cotton in the end. So they're in front of the world market is also at least a different one still today and at that time even more. So that's why the campaign focused on the US the the C4 wanted the US particular to cut their subsidies. And the US had a really difficult time to direct to this because they couldn't just cut their they didn't want to just cut their their subsidies because their farmers would protest but it was difficult for them to answer because it was such a good argument strategy. And I think that's why it gets so much attention. Yeah, that's that's helped to understand and I think also goes to a bit of what we'll probably talk about more detail later but you mentioned already the idea that countries that might be seen as kind of traditionally less powerful can have quite effective strategic arguing in these sorts of context as you've just demonstrated. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about antagonistic argumentation strategies and how this can lead to deadlocks and similar to what you've just discussed but you also talk about this in the book in the context of sectoral terrible elimination. Yes, yes, so that's the other case study I am about to include it in the book. And well, I mean, yeah, let me just say something about the topic, which I think it's not that obvious what what this is about. And this is an issue that was irrelevant in the do have round not in actual trouble, not go she oceans, but in the other big part of the negotiations that is called Nama. Nama for a non actual cultural market access so all kinds of tariffs for any kind of good that are not actual culture are called Nama because yeah to separate them from the Nama for from the actual cultural negotiations because as I already said the terrorist structures and the level of liberalization that already exists is very different in these two areas. They separated it. Okay, and in Nama. The situation is that the I mean like the main trading nations that were very active in the gap already have liberalized the tariffs a lot like these only very small tariffs less and they have found their so they cannot raise them again or they would. Yeah, not fulfill their WTO go negate obligations. But other countries that are categorized as developing countries in WTO had didn't have the obligation to cut their tariffs so much so they still have much higher tariffs at least the bound tariffs are much higher and they can set there the actual apply tariffs at lower levels, but they still have the right to rise them. And when it came to the negotiations on Nama in the Doha round. Some of the most of the industrial guys countries are in the other countries are industrialized too what like of the traditional trading powers. They said, okay, we want to have cuts here and we all through want to have some kind of harmonization between us and the country some the global South that haven't cut their tariffs so much yet. We're in the general formula for cuts they were negotiation was very difficult to attain that because that was supposed to include special and differential treatment which means that the percentage cut would have to be smaller for the developing countries. And so that wouldn't get the global North what they wanted. They would have to cut their tariffs even more and the others would still cut them less even though like where they came from was still already the higher tariffs. And they came up with this idea that they could use sexual initiatives I mean sexual initiatives were already discussed from the very beginning of the Doha round and had also been used in previous negotiation rounds or something often at on where you have specific sectors like chemicals industry for instance or leather industry or pharmaceuticals or whatever where you have your interest and then you find other countries that that also interested in the sector and you create to cut your tariffs to zero in this particular sector or also your harmonize your service that was also an option that was talked about and then yes all this so some developed countries try to make this part of the negotiations and very soon that's a coalition of developing countries began to form against this and that was led by India and Kenya who published arguments about why this was not a good idea for developing countries and others were convinced at the developing countries and joined this coalition. This is an instance where we have a collational outbidding that worked really well I mean at the beginning there wasn't these two camps but then they really formed because in the Antenia provided convincing arguments and yeah and so this became a very confrontational debate and in the end they couldn't really come together in any way. And I think that's because the frames the both of the two groups used didn't resonate with the other counterpart like in the case of cotton I mean even though it didn't really come to any fruitful conclusion either there was then more instances of persuasion like that the cotton for really managed to persuade pretty much everybody that this was an important issue not I mean the US still resisted but everybody else including the EU and other industrial countries that yes we really have to do something about the situation and on the other hand I mean what the US then then did we didn't really go so much into the counter strategy of the US in that regard is that they said yes okay. We have to do something but it's also I mean as you say it's a development issue and that also means that yeah it's not just about the subsidies that make the situation difficult if we look closer at the situation in West Africa there's also other hurdles like storage facilities and crop yields aren't so high. The whole thing isn't so efficient domestic marketing chains are not efficient things like that and they offer development aid actually in order to emeliorate the situation of the West African cotton farmers which is very ironic because you know it's the absolute opposite of what they originally claimed that they that they were competitive when just needed to to have a free market. The strategy still worked and even the C4 the proponents of the initiative where convinced to some degree they started to also talk in these terms and they accepted the development cooperation and. let themselves be involved in this kind of talk. So, I mean, so there was some kind of conviction between the two groups, but in the debate about sexual initiatives about in a NAMA, this didn't really happen. And that's because in that case, the two groups had very different ideas about how development and liberalization related to each other. In cotton, everybody talked about liberalization through development, development through liberalization. That's what the C4 demanded. And that's something that resonated very well also with the ideas that the US held about development. But in the case of the NAMA, the proponents, the global North, they also argued, I mean, this could also be a case where we have liberalization. And then this helps development. They argue a lot with South South Trade. There's so much South South Trade now, and you have to liberalize in order to enable the South South Trade. And this will be a win-win situation where, I mean, we, the global North will gain, but you, the global South, will also gain, because trade is good for everybody. And if you maintain these high tariffs, you stifle your own economy. So they try to sell it this way. But their opponents in Kenya, and the way they argued was totally different. They also argued with development, but their understanding was that a development was the most important thing, not liberalization. And only if liberalization helps development, it's a good thing. And they weren't so convinced that liberalization would always help development. Yeah, they said, I mean, liberalization can be beneficial sometimes, but if you're not, it's a very competitive, and there's other countries in the market, then it can also be very dangerous for your development. And we have to be very conservative. And I mean, countries at least should retain the possibility to raise their tariffs if it's important for their industries. And so, yeah, they, I mean, they just didn't buy these arguments by the US, because, and the other industrialized countries, because it just didn't resonate with their understanding about development and about how it related to liberalization. And the other way around, I mean, their counter-argumitation was nothing that resonated with the global North in any way. They said, well, they have this backward understanding of we protect our markets for development, and this is not how the WTO works, this is not how we think that development works. So they didn't really find any common ground. In the end, I mean, what in the end happened was some kind of rhetorical entrapment, yeah? So nobody was really convinced, but what the, and what the opponents managed is, they drew on the mandate for the, they were around negotiations on Nama, where it was written that there should be less than full reciprocity between developed and developing countries. So the developing countries would have to do less. And they convincingly argued that this was not compatible with zero for zero sectorals, and so they could prevent this to become part of the draft for the outcome, I mean, which never realized until now, but yeah, and these know it's just end at some point, but yeah, the interesting thing is that, I mean, it was really in that case, it was totally clear that it was just rhetorical entrapment. I mean, nobody could say something against the mandate because it was written there, they had to agree to that, and that wasn't compatible with zero for zero sectorals, because then the developing countries would have to reduce their still higher tariffs more. Yeah, but, but I mean, people still really said, well, we have to do that because it's in the mandate, but we think you're wrong. Yeah, a really interesting example there of, as you said, kind of almost entrapment definitely, and also in some ways entanglement, like it's so interesting to see how all these things kind of end up joining together. I want to pick up though on the idea of, when you say things like this persuasion worked, how can we assess whether persuasion is happening and the impact it's having? Yes, that's a difficult issue. I mean, persuasion of course is like a process that takes place within people, and you can't really see it. Also, the negotiations in the W2 are very complex and not really transparent, and so it's very difficult also to say what part persuasion played. And then in the case of the Doha round, what adds to that problematic is that the conclusions haven't come, the discussions haven't come to a conclusion in most of the issues. So you can't even say who got their way in the end, really, because there is no end. But still, I try to, I mean, of course, tackle this question, and there is some kind of outcomes where some kind of agreements that were at least steps to a final conclusion of the round, which you can analyze. I mean, what researchers in the tradition of this arguing research say about how you can identify persuasion and stuff, they say, I mean, if people, I mean, of course, if people say I've been convinced, that's an indicator, but also if people not only change their position, like what they demand in terms of an outcome, but also change their arguments why they wanted and they're framing at the same time. So this is an indicator, they say, for, yeah, that really think about it in a year way now. And also an indicator that is that, that you do that consistently, that you, yeah, that your new position is consistent in itself and over time. And then of course, you can also check for other plausible explanations, yeah, like if, how, I mean, if somebody changed their position if it would not have been because they were convinced what other factors could play a role, like for instance, bargaining. And yeah, so that's what I tried to do, yeah. In the cases of the cotton negotiations and the Nama negotiations, I always looked at these two things and so for instance, you can see that, yeah, like the US in the cotton case, they never challenged the proposition that cotton was an important issue and they had to do something about it. So they were very consistent in this. On the other hand, the C4 sometimes agreed that it was also very important to look at other development problems in the issue of cotton, but sometimes they also protested and said, well, this was actually supposed to be about free trade and not about development aid. So this is not so consistent. So this is an indicator that it might have rather been rhetorical entrapment and they were not truly convinced that this was the right way to tackle the issue, but they went along because they didn't see any other way. So this is one indicator. And then the other thing, of course, I always also tried to, yeah, to check how much could bargaining have played a role. Would that also, well, I mean, could that explain the outcome or how much of the outcome could that explain? And like for instance, for the question, why did cotton receive so much attention? Power, like material, traditional power, material power in the traditional sense, just can't be the explanation because Benin Bukinath Faso, Mali and Chet don't have the power to make an issue, a big issue and then WTNO negotiation. So it must have been something else because material power just can't be the explanation. So in this way, I tried to go out kind of how much influence did the arguing strategies have, how much persuasion has happened and yeah, the answer is a differentiated one. I think we always have to figure in more traditional explanations of material power too. Yeah, so this also plays a role in all of these negotiations. But I think we can trace that certain arguing strategies have had an effect that is not, cannot be explained by other factors and that they have structured the negotiations in a way that, yeah, that make some arguments possible now and others not. And even if now, maybe if there ever is some kind of an end game, maybe then the powerful countries, the material powerful countries will still exercise this power, but still the whole layout of the negotiations, the options that are on the table have already been pre-configured in a way that has an impact on what can be the outcome. And this is something that has been heavily influenced by the agonementation strategies I would argue. Now thank you for taking us through that as much as it's not a simple answer, it's still quite an important one. I'd like to pick up on that point you just made about Burkina Faso and Mali, right? Because we've talked a number of times, or it's come up a few times during our conversation that countries that don't have as many material resources can nonetheless use these strategies to improve their positions. In what ways do however more material powerful actors? How does that enable them to have better arguments or more strategic, more effective strategic argument? Yeah, in the end of the book, I actually, I come to the conclusion that it is not only a button, mostly the material more, materially more powerful actors that also have the better arguments, which is of course a disheartening, outcome in a way. And there's two reasons to very different kinds of reasons. One is that the norms of the world trade regime are every important arguing resource. People negotiate just always have to draw in these norms, they have to argue with these norms. And these norms, I mean, they have developed over time in the regime and in this organization, it has always been the materially more powerful actors that were most influential. So at least to a high degree, they set the norms. And so these norms of course resemble their interests. Like for instance, the most central norm of the world trade regime today is liberalization. And I mean, you might think this is a neutral thing and more like a question of economic policy, but I would disagree because liberalization is a very good strategy and a good thing to demand if you have many competitive industries. If you do not have many competitive industries and you know you would struggle on the world market, liberalization is not such a good strategy. And I mean, that's also how negotiators approach the subject. Actually the the negotiators in the WTO, they all act like mercantilists. They all want to have access, market access for the industries of their home country where they are competitive and they want to protect their markets in the industries, in the sectors where their home country is not the competitive. They all work the same way. But yeah, if you have many competitive sectors, then you can argue for liberalization. If you don't, you can't. So it's also a question of material power. What your trade policy will likely be, I think. And so these norms of the trade regime, they they favor those that are materially powerful, that have competitive industries, that have big markets and they that yeah. Because of these reasons are, yeah, have developed these norms that the trade regime that make up the trade regime. And the other thing is a bit more like down to earth. And it's that I mean, grasping a good arguing strategy in four WTO negotiations is a very complex task. The things that they that they negotiate about are very technical details in some in many cases. They don't just talk about tariffs. We've talked a lot about tariffs now. But that's actually only a small part of WTO negotiations today. I mean, I selected those because they're I mean, they're at least likely cases for arguing because they are not so complex. But much of the WTO negotiations today about things like intellectual property rights and product safety standards and customs procedures and rules for for indirect investment and therefore services trade and all these things. It's very a very complex things and you really need to have experts on this in order to to craft a good argumentation strategy. But you don't I mean, you don't only need people that are yeah, professional experts on this. They also need to have lots of time to to really get into thick of the negotiations. Also understand the positions of all the other countries. There's a lot of meetings in Geneva all year round where you have to be present and to pick up all the developments. And you need to know about the situation in your own country. You need to know what are the businesses in my country? Where are they competitive? Where could they gain a larger share of the world market if we there was some liberalization and where could they probably be possibly be heard from liberalization? And for that, you need a lot of expertise also in the country. You need you need think tanks and universities that do research on your country and they run trade simulations and all these things. And these capacities for all these things are not distributed evenly between countries. Big and highly developed countries have all these things. They have a big apparatus in Geneva and in the capital that specializes in trade politics. And they also have the the background institutions at home. The university institutions that think tanks the stakeholder processes. Small developing countries often don't have this. There's some countries that only have like one representative in Geneva. And this person has to tackle all these negotiations. And it's simply impossible to get into all the details. And this is why actually it's also easier for material, more powerful actors to craft good arguing strategies. This is such an important finding to highlight in the conclusion of the book and it really brings together so many of the different things we've been talking about throughout our conversation. So thank you for explaining why that is the case in terms of your findings. And I think because it brings all the threads together, it's a pretty good place to end our discussion about the book as well. But I do have one last question. What might you be working on now that this book is done? Are you continuing to investigate the WTO or are you off to different things now? Yeah, I mean, what I want to plan to do in the in the future, starting to work on, yes, look more into the norms of the trade regime actually and how they're developing at the moment. That was, I mean, as you heard, there was a topic in the book already too, but I didn't focus on the norms. I only considered them as a resource for arguing strategies. And yeah, but I found my investigation into that very interesting and to see how they have developed over time. It's kind of like layers and layers that have built on top of each other. I mean, in the immediate post for years after World War II, when the the GAT came into being, what I mean, the normative buildup of the multilateral regime is what has been called embedded liberalism by Ruggie. And yeah, so that was like, I mean, a really like more of a cautious approach to liberalization. And a lot of safeguards built into it. But then later when the WTO was founded, I was in the high times of the near-liberal ideas, washing consensus. And so the WTO has much more neoliberal rules, but they are, I mean, they didn't just supersede the GAT rules. They build on top of it. So it's still both still there in the mix. And then now today we have a lot of discussions about what is fear in a centrade in a world where the global south is playing an ever more important role in the world economy. And a lot of the emerging economies of the future have a different economic model where the state plays a much more important role. And I'm not only talking about China, also of course, is the elephant in the room, but also in other countries, even though they're the capitalistic, these still have much more state control, much more emphasis in industrial policies. And yeah, so this has triggered, I think, a discussion about what fairness means in trade rules, like how can countries where the state plays a big role in countries that don't, how can countries at different levels of development, how they can they interact in a fair way? What does that even mean? And there's very different positions on that, I think. Yeah, I think that's what actually is happening at the moment that in the trade regime that, yeah, there's a process where rules on that need to be developed. And yeah, I think that's very interesting. So I want to concern myself more with that. But I don't want to look at the WTO only now, because, yeah, as you might have also, gathered from the media reports, the WTO is not really that important anymore, because it came, it came so that luck, then the Doha round never got anywhere. And so there has been a proliferation of bilateral and regional trade agreements during the last years, not only caused by the, but that look of the Doha round, but that has certainly been a factor in it. And, yeah, so if you really want to know what the global regime on trade politics is like, you can't just look at the WTO now. And yeah, so I want to look at the norms of the trade regime, but I also, I'm also very interested in looking at how, I mean, what norms are actually implemented in trade agreements outside the WTO, and how do they, how do they defer from the WTO rules? Where do actors go in different directions? And yeah, so that's kind of what I'm planning to do. It's not a very concrete project yet, but that's where I'm heading at the moment. - Well, thank you for giving us a sneak peek. Obviously, it's not a finished project yet, but always interesting to hear what authors are working on next. And, but of course, while you're doing that, listeners can read the book we've been talking about, titled The Power to Persuade, Strategic Arguing at the World Trade Organization, published by the University of Toronto Press in 2024. Angela, thank you so much for spending time with us on the podcast to tell us about your book. - Yeah, thank you so much for having me and for the great questions and wonderful exchange. (soft music)