The World Trade Organization and Its Outlook on Agriculture: An Excellent Neoliberal Case Study or An Organized Hypocrisy?

The World Trade Organization is a highly significant global body, acting as a permanent forum for liberalization of trade in goods and services. It recently increased management of global investment and intellectual property rights as well as agriculture. However its growing global power, that historically made it the perfect case study for neoliberals to illustrate the success of institutions in shaping international cooperation, is recently subject to growing public scrutiny where people question its legitimacy and accountability. The latest negotiation round, namely DDA (Doha Development Agenda) was launched in 2001 with an official objective of improving trading prospects for developing countries. After twelve years of negotiations not only has no agreement been reached but the content of the round in terms of possible development perspectives for the global south has significantly shifted. The goal of this research is to try to understand what are the forces and factors behind the impediments of agriculture liberalization. Do the troubles with the DDA possibly reflect the limits of the WTO efficiency as an institution in service of trade liberalization? Or does agriculture simply not correspond with liberalization? After analyzing respectively, neoliberal models, realist paradigms and critical theorist criticism on the WTO, one can make the hypothesis that power politics inside the WTO is the driving force behind agreements; and if an agreement is to be reached in the DDA it will most likely represent an organized hypocrisy.