One helpful way to consider serious ideas and proposals about reforming the global trade regime is to organize them into three clusters or sets of approaches—participation, leadership, and holistic change of paradigm. Dennis Patterson and Ari Afilalo, the authors of The New Global Trading Order, focus on the last of the three. The first cluster emphasizes ways to increase the transparency, public participation, and accountability of the WTO and associated national and international institutions. These proposals often promote more direct observation and participation in WTO bodies and processes by non-governmental organizations as the most visible and active representatives of civil society. Many such proposals aim to increase participation as an end in and of itself, while others press it as a means to some more functional goal such as increasing the weight given to environmental, labor, or development issues raised by trade. The critical difficulties of this approach are that first, it is simply impossible to represent the interests of all individuals affected significantly by trade, and second, that many suggestions might reduce the efficiency and effectiveness of institutions more than they would increase their accountability. Moreover, many of the more assertive and influential NGOs are promoting changes that a majority of member states oppose. This creates a tension between enhancing the representation of certain groups and interests, and maintaining the centrality of member state representation.

The second set of approaches to reform relies on political leadership in various forms. Most often, these focus on leadership by countries, particularly the largest trading nations and the European Union. Some accounts, however, emphasize leadership in international negotiations by individuals. The third and final approach advocates alternative or deeply reformed global trade regimes. With emphasis on what is most needed rather than what seems feasible under current constraints, some scholars or experts provide a fresh conception of the trade regime’s vital missions and core processes in the 21st century. New criteria and norms for future institutional design of the trade regime forge the intellectual foundation for trade officials to negotiate and implement deeper reforms.

One important merit of the leadership approach to trade regime reform is its political feasibility. The actors best positioned to carry out reform of the trade regime are the member states’ political leaders and ministers that jealously track the WTO and its related institutional operations to a much greater degree than those of the World Bank or International Monetary Fund. The first approach—based on participation and representation—encounters difficulty due to the concerns of political leaders in least developed and less developed countries. Such leaders fear that advancing the agendas of NGOs and public participation more generally may substantially reduce the potential role of trade in promoting economic growth and development in their countries. The final approach of alternative or transformed regimes is the most difficult to implement because it threatens existing national, regional, and international lines of political influence over the WTO and the world trade regime more generally. Still, if the WTO Doha Round launched in 2001 is not completed by 2009 or 2010 at the latest, media worldwide would surely label this a “failed and flawed” global trade regime, and the important players could reach a consensus on the need for its fundamental reform.

Under this “Doha failure” scenario, it would be most constructive to stimulate sustained discussion and debate about major reforms for, and alternatives to, the existing trade regime. In their thought provoking and original book, Dennis Patterson and Ari Afilalo provide precisely such a stimulus to thoughtful discussion. They believe that it is essential to create an ad hoc, incentive-based global trade system that provides greater economic opportunities for a much wider range of groups and actors. They call on the main players to recognize that a “constitutional moment” is required in order to forge a new “Trade Council” that is appropriate for the new “post-modern” phase in the history of states, statecraft, and the international economic order. The Council would solve problems with “incentive-driven programs” across markets and states, spreading economic opportunity to the countries and regions in need. The members of the Council would be the key trading states representing the main world regions and representatives of the industries most relevant to the specific problem at hand. Their proposed trade system is realist in its reliance on leadership by the strategic powers of the day, liberal in its market-based incentives and inclusion of industry actors, and socially democratic in its focus on the distribution of economic opportunity and well-being. Finally, the authors provide persuasive evidence for their arguments with a wide array of empirical examples and observations that draw on different periods of time.

This bold project is open first to the obvious criticism that its recommendations would be extremely difficult to carry out. In fact, the most deeply held opposition to this radical reform proposal is likely to originate with the developing and least developed member states that it intends to help out. Most trading states value, for example, the ways in which the global regime locks in and constrains the behavior of its most powerful states. Small and medium sized traders will suspect that such radical change will end up increasing the leverage of the most powerful states and reducing the existing constraints on their behavior.

Patterson and Afilalo seem to anticipate this in their categorization of states into “post-modern,” “modern,” and pre-modern,” wherein the post-modern states must lead in replacing the current trade regime which relies on the older, “modern” tools and concepts of welfare and comparative advantage. Even as the authors propose to broaden the base of the most involved trading states, they still rely on the largest trading states to lead in making the judgments about and setting the criteria for reforming the system. In sum, despite the emphasis placed on the need for a representative and accountable trade regime, this institutional design still suffers from a fundamental normative flaw. The relatively few most powerful states, industries, and international organizations remain the dominant players and decision makers for the rest.