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Latin America in the WTO
Participation and Influence in Multilateral Trade Diplomacy
DISSERTATION
of the University of St. Gallen,
School of Management,
Economics, Law, Social Sciences
and International Affairs
to obtain the title of
Doctor of Philosophy in Organizational
Studies and Cultural Theory
submitted by
Juan Fernando Palacio Roldán
from
Colombia
Approved on the application of
Prof. Dr. Yvette Sánchez
and
Prof. Dr. Diana Tussie
Dissertation no. 4553
Difo-Druck GmbH, Bamberg 2016
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The University of St. Gallen, School of Management, Economics, Law, Social
Sciences and International Affairs hereby consents to the printing of the present
dissertation, without hereby expressing any opinion on the views herein
expressed.
St. Gallen, May 23, 2016
The President:
Prof. Dr. Thomas Bieger
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–Sin embargo, no somos tan distintos. Un pecado nos une: la
vanidad. Usted me ha visitado para jactarse de su ingeniosa
estratagema; yo lo apoyé para jactarme de ser un hombre
recto.
–Otra cosa nos une: la nacionalidad. Soy ciudadano
americano. Mi destino está aquí. Usted dirá que un pasaporte
no modifica la índole de un hombre.
Se estrecharon la mano, y se despidieron.
Jorge Luis Borges
... Maintes fois j'ai rêvé d'un monstre mélancolique et érudit,
versé dans tous les idiomes, intime de tous les vers et de toutes
les âmes, et qui errât de par le monde pour s'y repaître de
poisons, de ferveurs, d'extases, à travers les Perses, les Chines,
les Indes défuntes, et les Europes mourantes, - maintes fois j'ai
rêvé d'un ami des poètes et qui les eût connus tous par
désespoir de n'être pas des leurs.
Emil Cioran
Success isn’t dependent on size or might.
Diccon Bewes
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Contents
Abstract ................................................................................................... 11 Acknowledgments ................................................................................... 15 Acronyms ................................................................................................. 17
Part 1: Preliminaries ................................................................................ 21
Chapter 1: Introduction ......................................................................... 23 Situating the dissertation in the existing literature ....................... 26 Latin America and the WTO ....................................................... 34 Research design ........................................................................... 39 Missionaries and actors ................................................................ 43
Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework ...................................................... 53 State influence in IOs ................................................................... 54 Putting multilateral trade diplomacy and the theory of diplomacy
in dialogue ................................................................................... 63 A nuanced approach to cross-cultural studies .............................. 69
Chapter 3: Methodology ........................................................................ 85 Scope............................................................................................ 87 Material ........................................................................................ 87 Confidentiality ............................................................................. 88 The ethnography .......................................................................... 89 Chapters in detail ....................................................................... 101 Final methodological remarks ................................................... 104
Part 2: Behind the Scenes ....................................................................... 109
Chapter 4: The Stage ............................................................................ 111 Western Europe and Switzerland as social landscapes .............. 113
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A few remarks about Geneva..................................................... 117 The International Quarter and the Latin American missions ..... 129 The actors experiencing the stage .............................................. 133 Conclusions ................................................................................ 144
Chapter 5: The Actors .......................................................................... 149 Delegates' anatomy .................................................................... 150 WTO work ................................................................................. 158 The formal ................................................................................. 170 The informal .............................................................................. 197 How delegates change ............................................................... 217 Conclusions ................................................................................ 231
Chapter 6: The Missions ...................................................................... 241 The missions’ functioning ......................................................... 244 The missions’ relations .............................................................. 269 Conclusions ................................................................................ 286
Part 3: The Play ..................................................................................... 291
Chapter 7: Act 1: Participation at the Pillars .................................... 293 Negotiations ............................................................................... 295 Dispute Settlement Body ........................................................... 306 Trade Policy Review .................................................................. 312 Conclusions ................................................................................ 325
Chapter 8: Act 2: (Soft) Power ............................................................ 329 Chairs of WTO bodies ............................................................... 332 Discussants in trade policy reviews ........................................... 355 Conclusions ................................................................................ 363 Appendix 1: Chairs of the main WTO bodies, 1995-2014 ........ 368 Appendix 2: Latin American chairs, 1995-2014........................ 369
Chapter 9: Conclusions ........................................................................ 371 Annex. Missions’ Profiles According to Palacio ................................ 381 References ............................................................................................. 403
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List of Figures
Figure 1. Dissertation structure ................................................................ 46
Figure 2. Research body ........................................................................... 86
Figure 3. WTO organization chart .......................................................... 173
Figure 4. Standard configuration of WTO meeting rooms ..................... 175
Figure 5. Member configuration of the General Council ....................... 177
Figure 6. Positions of the delegates with the highest rank...................... 179
Figure 7. Patterns of conversation flow .................................................. 227
Figure 8. Missions’ size in 2014 ............................................................. 254
Figure 9. Average stay vs. Average rate of antiquity ............................. 265
Figure 10. Missions’ typology: dedication vs. dependency.................... 274
Figure 11. Individual and joint statements in the TNC........................... 303
Figure 12. Hierarchical typology of WTO bodies .................................. 335
List of Tables
Table 1. Year of membership to GATT/WTO ......................................... 36
Table 2. Region’s GDP, current US$, billions ......................................... 42
Table 3. Region’s GDP per capita, US$, 2013 ......................................... 49
Table 4. Region’s population, 2014 .......................................................... 50
Table 5. Region´s merchandise trade, billions US$, 2014........................ 51
Table 6. Actors involved in the ethnography, by category ....................... 96
Table 7. Summary of actors ...................................................................... 97
Table 8. Type of delegations regarding dedication ................................ 251
Table 9. Missions’ size through time ...................................................... 255
Table 10. Female delegates across missions ........................................... 258
Table 11. Rates of ‘antiquity’ ................................................................. 261
Table 12. Average and maximum stays .................................................. 263
Table 13. Turnovers of ambassadors ...................................................... 267
Table 14. Websites of Latin American missions .................................... 271
Table 15. Missions’ dependency ............................................................ 272
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Table 16. Blocs and coalitions in the Doha Round................................. 283
Table 17. Country profiles according to coalitions................................. 284
Table 18. Participation in TNC official meetings ................................... 299
Table 19. TNC bodies under Latin American chairs .............................. 302
Table 20. Origin of joint statements ....................................................... 304
Table 21. Participation as complainants, 1995-2014 .............................. 310
Table 22. Participation as third parties, 1995-2014 ................................ 312
Table 23. Total questions in advance and statements in TPRs ............... 318
Table 24. Statements by year .................................................................. 320
Table 25. Questions by year ................................................................... 321
Table 26. Questions and statements in the TPRs of the United States ... 322
Table 27. Questions and statements in the TPRs of China ..................... 324
Table 28. Members in arrears, 1995-2014 .............................................. 340
Table 29. Participation in chairmanships, 1995-2014 ............................ 343
Table 30. Evolution of chairmanships, 1995-2014 ................................. 346
Table 31. Chairs of accessions, 1995-2014 ............................................ 354
Table 32. Times being appointed discussant in TPRs, 1995-2014 ......... 358
Table 33. Discussants in TPRs, delegate and member reviewed ............ 360
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Abstract
This dissertation studies the participation of Latin American countries in the
World Trade Organization (WTO). The dissertation explores the functioning
of the multilateral trade community and analyzes the work of the diplomatic
missions based in Geneva for a period of 20 years (1995-2014). Drawing on an
extensive ethnography to actors of the diplomatic community and on archival
data, the dissertation unveils the factors behind effective member participation
in the multilateral trade system. Common wisdom suggests that relative power
in the international system is what explains the influence of states in
International Organizations (IOs). Yet the evidence gathered in this dissertation
shows that diplomatic representation is equally as important as relative power
for explaining participation and influence in IOs. This interdisciplinary work
makes a contribution to the field of International Relations, IOs studies, and
WTO scholarship, and can be useful to readers interested in Latin America’s
foreign policy. It may serve as reference to governments, the private sector, and
civil society to assess member performance in the WTO, and to promote better
practices.
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Resumen
Esta tesis estudia la participación de los países latinoamericanos en la
Organización Mundial de Comercio (OMC). La tesis explora el
funcionamiento de la comunidad dedicada a la diplomacia multilateral y
analiza el trabajo realizado por las misiones diplomáticas radicadas en Ginebra
para un periodo de 20 años (1995-2014). Con base en una extensa etnografía a
actores de la comunidad diplomática y en información de archivo, esta tesis
revela los factores detrás de una adecuada participación en el sistema
multilateral de comercio. La sabiduría convencional sugiere que el poder
relativo de los estados en el sistema internacional es lo que explica su capacidad
de influencia en las organizaciones internacionales. Sin embargo, la evidencia
recolectada en esta tesis muestra que la representación diplomática es tan
importante como el poder relativo para explicar participación e influencia en
estas organizaciones. Este trabajo interdisciplinario constituye una
contribución al área de Relaciones Internacionales, a los estudios sobre
Organizaciones Internacionales y a la literatura sobre la OMC, y puede ser de
utilidad para lectores interesados en la política exterior latinoamericana.
Gobiernos, sector privado y sociedad civil pueden servirse de estos hallazgos
para evaluar el desempeño en la OMC y para promover mejores prácticas.
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Kurzfassung
Diese Doktorarbeit untersucht die Beteiligung lateinamerikanischer Länder in
der Welthandelsorganisation (WTO). Die Dissertation erforscht die
Arbeitsweise der multilateralen Handelsgemeinschaft und analysiert das
Schaffen der diplomatischen Missionen in Genf über die letzten zwei
Jahrzehnte (1995-2014). Basierend auf einer ausgiebigen Ethnographie der
Agierenden in der diplomatischen Gemeinschaft sowie anhand von
Archivdaten ermittelt diese Arbeit die Faktoren adäquater
Mitgliederpartizipation im multilateralen Handelssystem. Gemäß
herkömmlichen Anschauungen geht der Einfluss in internationalen
Organisationen (IOs) mit der relativen Macht des Staates im internationalen
System einher. Doch die im Rahmen dieser Dissertation gefundenen
Erkenntnisse zeigen, dass die diplomatische Repräsentanz ebenso erklärend für
die Partizipation und den Einfluss eines Landes ist wie die relative Macht.
Diese interdisziplinäre Arbeit leistet einen Beitrag in den Bereichen der
Internationalen Beziehungen, der IO-Studien und der WTO-Forschung. Sie
kann Regierungen, dem privaten Sektor und der Zivilgesellschaft als
Bezugspunkt für die Leistungsbewertung von WTO-Mitgliedern dienen und
die Ausübung beispielhafter Arbeitspraktiken fördern.
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Acknowledgments
This work is less of an individual project than a collective effort. This research
could not have been done without the help and support of several persons and
institutions. I am grateful to every single one of the diplomats and officials of
the WTO and other international organizations in Geneva who generously
collaborated with my research. My work also benefited from generous funding
by the Swiss-Latin American Center (CLS) at the University of St. Gallen, the
AVINA Foundation, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). I
want to mention in particular Prof. Yvette Sánchez, head of the CLS, who
trusted me to be part of her Center to pursue my doctoral studies. I am indebted
to my two thesis supervisors, Prof. Yvette Sánchez at the University of St.
Gallen and Prof. Diana Tussie at FLACSO, Buenos Aires, because of their
active advising and encouragement throughout the completion of my project.
Likewise, I want to make a special mention to Enzo Nussio, at the ETH Zurich,
who gave me sharp and enthusiastic academic feedback from beginning to end.
Several friends and colleagues read extensive sections of my work and gave
me priceless advice that ultimately helped me render a better version of the
text. Heartfelt thanks go to Pablo Obregón, Silvio Saldaña, and Gabriel Duque
in Geneva; and to Yanina Welp, Vanessa Boanada-Fuchs, Esther Nagel, and
Rocío Robinson in St. Gallen whose help was also invaluable to improve my
English writing. I am equally indebted to the professors and PhD students that,
in the period 2011-2015, made part of the Latin American ProDoc financed by
the SNSF. The permanent exchange with them at our quarterly workshops
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across Switzerland helped me grow as a researcher and my dissertation
benefited a great deal from it. For the same reason I am indebted to my
colleagues of the Association of Colombian Researchers in Switzerland
(ACÍS), who were always a source of intellectual exchange and comradeship
during this period. At several phases of my work, the strong support of various
persons was essential for me to keep the motivation up and continue working
with passion. Particularly, I want to express a deep gratitude to Pilar Ramírez,
Júlia González de Canales, Ombeline Dagicour, Joaquín Salazar, Marina
Jaramillo, Paul Jaquenoud, Anthony and Vanessa Boanada-Fuchs, Elke
Breitenfeldt, Rocío Robinson, Andrea Stieger, and Esther Nagel. Finally, I
want to thank my father, Luis Ángel, my mother, Dora, and my sisters, Natalia
and Oriana. My family and friends are an endless source of support and
meaning, and I could not be more grateful to them.
August 2016
J. F. P.
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Acronyms
ACPs African, Caribbean and Pacific Countries
ACWL Advisory Center on WTO Law
AMNA Acceso a los Mercados para los Productos No
Agrícolas
ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations
BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa
CBFA Committee on Budget, Finance and Administration
CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research
CWR Centre William Rappard
DG Director-General
DSB Dispute Settlement Body
DSM Dispute Settlement Mechanism
EFTA European Free Trade Agreement
EU European Union
FIFHD International Film Festival and Forum on Human
Rights
FTAA Free Trade Area of the Americas
GATT General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs
GC General Council
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GRULAC Latin American and Caribbean Group
ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross
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ILO International Labor Organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
IO International Organization
IOM International Organization for Migration
IR International Relations
ISO International Organization for Standardization
ISI Import Substitution Industrialization
ITA Information Technology Agreement
ITC International Trade Center
ITO International Trade Organization
ITU International Telecommunications Union
JDI Junior Diplomatic Initiative
LDCs Least Developed Countries
LLDCs Landlocked Developing Countries
MERCOSUR Southern Common Market
MFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs
MFT Ministry of Foreign Trade
MFN Most Favored Nation
NAMA Non-Agricultural Market Access
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
NMF Nación Más Favorecida
OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development
OEPC Órgano de Examen de Políticas Comerciales
OMC Organización Mundial de Comercio
ORD Órgano de Resolución de Diferencias
RAMs Recently Acceded Members
RTAs Regional Trade Agreements
SNSF Swiss National Science Foundation
SVEs Small, Vulnerable Economies
SPS Sanitary and Phytosanitary
TNC Trade Negotiations Committee
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TPR Trade Policy Review
TPRB Trade Policy Review Body
UN United Nations
UNASUR South American Union
UNCTAD United Nations Conference for Trade and
Development
UNHRC United Nations Human Rights Council
UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for refugees
UR Uruguay Round
US United States
USTR United States Trade Representative
WHO World Health Organization
WIPO World Intellectual Property Organization
WMO World Meteorological Organization
WTO World Trade Organization
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Part 1:
Preliminaries
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Chapter 1:
Introduction
The aim of this doctoral dissertation is to study the participation of Latin
American countries in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The thesis
departs from two strong convictions; the first one being that a complete
understanding of International Organizations (IOs) requires a better
exploration of the institutional channels of interaction between IOs and their
member countries. The second conviction is that an independent, non-partisan,
and comparative assessment of member participation in IOs is necessary to
identify good practices and to produce policy recommendations to its members,
something that is particularly key for developing countries. The 20th
anniversary of the WTO in 2015 makes a favorable moment for carrying out a
broad assessment of this nature, resulting in a robust number of years to enable
cross-country comparisons. The 20th anniversary, moreover, takes place when
for the first time a Latin American is in charge of the WTO Secretariat, a
symbolic event that speaks of the rising influence of this region in the
organization. This dissertation is relevant for readers interested in international
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organizations, in the WTO, in multilateral diplomacy, and in Latin America’s
international relations.
The general public and even specialized commentators have often had
a simplistic conception about the relation of states with IOs. Membership to
these organizations—whether a state makes part of them as an ordinary
member or not—seems to be the main if not the single factor of consideration.
As long as memberships are established, the relations between countries and
the organizations are taken for granted or conceived in abstract terms. A big
amount of International Relations (IR) literature has favored a similar
approach, being less sensitive to the diplomatic dimension of states – IOs
relations. This dissertation aims to contribute to shed light on that dimension,
often surrounded by an aura of mystery and misunderstanding.
Moreover, a deep-rooted belief that has turned into common wisdom
suggests that the influence of member states in international organizations is
proportional to the relative ‘weight’ they have in the international system,
regardless of the decision-making mechanisms and the institutional
architecture of each specific institution. Thus, the ‘big players’ are expected to
dominate the scene while small and medium-sized countries are supposed to be
irrelevant or barely significant at best.
Examples of this reasoning are found everywhere. The permanent
members of the Security Council are meant to be the most influential states in
the United Nations (UN). The states that make the biggest financial
contributions to the UN budget are meant to have the biggest ‘say’ in the course
of the UN agencies, and so forth. The same goes for regional international
organizations. When discussing power relations in the European Union (EU),
analysts often underline the weight of Germany and other big countries such as
France and the United Kingdom. The driving force in the South American
Union (UNASUR), or in the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) would
be Brazil, as it is the regional ‘hegemon.’ In the Pacific Alliance, the
asymmetry between Mexico and the rest of members would need to be better
acknowledged. And for the case of the WTO, the influence exercised by the
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United States, the European Union, China, India, and entities of the like would
be the only one that deserves mentioning in order to explain power relations in
this organization. This reasoning has been repeated as many times as
international organizations exist. Smaller countries seem to be merely
‘decorative’, they add ‘mass’ but it is not expected that they add much ‘value.’
They are meant to be less determinant in substantive matters, and the smaller
the countries are the less the impact they are expected to have.
This dissertation addresses a more complex picture and explores a
different path. It proposes that, for explaining country influence in international
organizations, the resources that countries deploy to attend the relations with
the organizations, and the practices with which these resources are managed,
are as important as their weight or perceived status in the international system
or in the membership of the organization. In other words, this dissertation
proposes that it is necessary to look at what happens at the level of the
diplomatic representation in a given IO to better understand the power relations
of the actors within it. This is to say that the sphere of International
Organizations is, at the same time, the sphere of multilateral diplomacy. The
way states engage in this diplomacy contributes to explain the influence they
have and the extent to which they are able to make full usage of their
membership. In short, diplomatic missions and the diplomats appointed to them
matter for explaining country participation. Diplomatic missions and diplomats
are not mere formalities that eat budgets without making a contribution on their
own in the outcomes countries can get from an IO membership. As they matter,
they ought to be better studied.
To be sure, what is valid for manifold international organizations
should be more valid for the WTO. One of the major singularities of the WTO
is its ‘member-driven’ nature. Its Secretariat is small and has a limited mandate.
Member countries and customs territories literally lead different areas of the
organization’s daily work, including the trade negotiations and the
administration of existing agreements. Moreover, all decisions are taken under
the base of consensus, giving the smallest member the same power to veto
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decisions that any big player has. This turns the WTO into a rich case of study
in respect to the linkages between the diplomatic representation of members
and the actual presence they project.
Situating the dissertation in the existing literature
The issue of diplomatic representation to the WTO has not been ignored by the
academic literature. Authors regularly refer to personnel constrains in
diplomatic missions as a key factor undermining the participation of
developing countries in the multilateral trade system (Tussie and Lengyel 2000;
Jawara and Kwa 2003; Narlikar 2005a; Narlikar 2005b; Rena 2005;
VanGrasstek 2013). The WTO schedules many meetings, all of which have a
high degree of technicality. The availability of delegates in the diplomatic
missions in Geneva, Switzerland, the seat of the WTO, is therefore a bottleneck
for many members, hindering an effective participation in the system. This is
indeed a suggestive clue that deserves a systematic account, as it is intended to
be achieved by this dissertation. As expected, this account ought to trace the
variable of diplomatic personnel, but it should explore more factors about
missions and delegates that also have an impact on diplomatic representation.
A few works have directly addressed the role of diplomatic missions
and effective participation in the WTO. In their popular book titled “Behind the
Scenes at the WTO”, Jawara and Kwa (2003) warn that many developing
countries are ill-equipped to have an effective diplomatic representation in the
organization. Moreover, they denounce that many decisions are taken in
informal settings by restricted groups, from which poorer countries are often
excluded. The authors might be considered pioneers in reporting about the
diplomatic world that takes place “behind the scenes” (as stated by the title of
their book), where strong economic interests and asymmetries of capacity can
play a leading role in shaping the outcomes of trade negotiations. While this
work has raised awareness about intrinsic components of multilateral trade
diplomacy that deserve more academic attention—which is also the purpose of
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this dissertation, as it will be seen below—, its approach is often Manichean,
interpreting the WTO under a rigid North-South divide in which the developed
countries are villains, the developing countries are victims (or alternatively, the
stooges of the rich), and trade liberalization is a veiled form of neo-
colonization. The ‘behind the scenes’ trail suggested by Jawara and Kwa
deserves to be considered seriously by new research, while resisting the
temptation to belittle the agency of all actors in the WTO membership, and
without judging per se the trade policy choices of the different members.
Going towards the same direction but with a more neutral account was
the first ethnographic work about the WTO, conducted by a team of
anthropologists led by Mark Abélès (2011a). From field observation and
interviews to various kinds of actors involved, the authors draw a fresh picture
of the institution, underlining human relations and challenges to good
understanding among parties in WTO negotiations and work. The institution
turns into “a universe of power struggles with the confrontation of often
irreconcilable points of view” (2011b, 112, my translation). On the one hand,
the advising experts on trade gravitating around delegations—from both the
Secretariat and trade-related NGOs—must remain “invisible” to the public eye,
and ought not to appear too involved with specific positions of delegations
(Badaró 2011). On the other hand, national delegates are due to play a “game
of masks” between transparency and secrecy in the interactions with one
another, with the Secretariat, and with outsiders in performing their functions
(Dematteo 2011). A double-faced tension arises among actors; on the one hand,
traditional GATT-times big players—the United States, the European Union,
Japan, Canada and so forth—struggle to adapt to the new strength of emerging
powers (Abélès 2011b, 113), on the other hand, newcomers struggle to adapt
to the WTO way of doing things, that is, to its rules and organizational culture,
as in the case of China, which declined cultural conceptions of disputes and
actively engaged in the Dispute Settlement Mechanism (Hua 2011). As Chung
(2011) states, “the visitor who goes to the Centre William Rappard (CWR) at
Rue de Lausanne, in Geneva, is tempted to believe she will find the WTO there,
as I myself thought” (172, my translation). Actually, the complexity of the
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WTO outreaches the actors and relations its main building contains, involving
the constellations of national diplomatic missions, their groupings, and their
ways of interacting. Abélès’ work is very revealing about the tension between
transparency and confidentiality that both diplomats and Secretariat staff have
to endure, and points at reserve as an important feature for individuals to gain
trust and to be accepted in the upper circles of power. Their work also suggests
ethnographic fieldwork as a productive methodology to approach the WTO.
Yet, a new research design can be made that focuses on diplomats only, to
better understand their lives, work, and challenges. Such design can be telling
from an anthropological point of view while at the same time remain readable
under a policy perspective able to guide governments on how to improve their
participation in the system.
In a different vein, Michalopoulos (2014, chap. 8) makes an
assessment of the participation of developing countries in the WTO. He links
the effective participation of members with an adequate number of mission
staff working on WTO issues. He recognizes that developing countries have
increased their diplomatic representation in the WTO, yet the averages hide
substantial differences of capacities among members. For assessing whether
members participate effectively in the system, the author privileges three
criteria: having initiated anti-dumping actions, having initiated a complaint
under the Dispute Settlement Body, and having 4 delegates in the mission
working on WTO issues. Michalopoulos’ approach is informing and fruitful,
but more can be said about member participation at an individual level; the
evolution of member participation can be more fully traced; and other
assessment criteria that consider further aspects of WTO activity can be
proposed. In short, scholarship on this subject can benefit from a more nuanced
and complete depiction of individual member participation at the WTO. This
is certainly more feasible when not all the membership of developing countries
is considered but only a smaller set within that group, as is intended in this
dissertation, reducing the comparison to a single region. Additionally, different
to Jawara and Kwa (2003), Michalopoulos’ account focuses on what is
‘visible’, that is, on more objective and traceable indicators of member
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participation. Certainly, there is room to bridge the visible with the invisible in
a more detailed study that benefits from a smaller set of members. That can be
the case in a regional study like the one proposed in this dissertation.
In his recent history of the WTO, VanGrasstek (2013, chap. 3)
comments on the major trends taking place in the Geneva trade diplomacy
community. The author remarks on the increase of resident members (members
that have diplomatic representation in Geneva) since 1995; the increase of
average personnel in diplomatic missions; and a rising proportion of WTO-
dedicated diplomatic missions participating in the system. Although he
identifies mission personnel as a key element for member countries
guaranteeing an effective participation in the WTO, there is still room for a
more granular analysis about how this happens. If individual members are
studied in closer detail, not only can we observe the evolution of mission type
and mission personnel year by year; we can also build new variables of mission
activity and contrast them all with actual data of member participation in the
system, to see how they relate.
A recent research by an African scholar is closer to this doctoral
dissertation in spirit and in subject of study. Apecu Laker (2014) has studied
the participation of African countries in the WTO for a period of 15 years
(1995-2000) with a focus on the capabilities of diplomatic missions in Geneva
and the work they do in the WTO. The author identifies the most active African
members and calls for the rest of the region to build upon their steps, by
increasing their human resources and technical capabilities of their diplomatic
missions in Geneva. The academic literature on this topic has not yet produced
a similar work to assess the participation of Latin American countries at the
WTO, and the purpose of this dissertation is to fill that gap.
Compared with Apecu Laker’s (2014) book, however, this dissertation
introduces a few methodological novelties: it positions the ethnographical work
with the diplomatic missions from a marginal position to the core of the
research; it focuses on a smaller number of objective indicators of mission
performance in the system to avoid redundancy; it increases the variables to
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analyze the missions’ capabilities and organizational practices; it privileges
cross-country comparisons instead of continental comparisons, as the former
are more productive from an analytical point of view; and, finally, it analyzes
the evolution through time of the variables considered in order to better explore
relations of causality. Compared with a work about African countries, research
about Latin American countries and the WTO benefits from a smaller
population of study, which might facilitate some methodological changes
suggested by this dissertation. Yet, a reduced number of countries does not
undermine the scope and reach of the analysis thanks to the great diversity of
modes and outcomes of the participation of Latin American countries in the
WTO, as will be seen later in this dissertation.
Additionally, this dissertation is not relevant to WTO scholarship only,
but also to the field of diplomacy when it is considered as a discipline on its
own right. The literature about diplomacy is not scarce (see Jönsson and Hall
(2005), Berridge (2010), Freeman Jr. (2007[1997]), Hamilton and Langhorne
(2010), Black (2010), Rana (2011). Several works have been written about
multilateral diplomacy in general (Walker 2004; Muldoon Jr. et al. 2005;
Insanally 2013; Karns and Mingst 2013; Mahbubani 2013), and a few more
about economic and trade diplomacy in particular (Van Bergijk 2009; Bayne
and Woolcock 2011; Van Bergeijk, Okano-heijmans, and Melissen 2011;
Feketekuty 2012; Tussie 2013; Woolcock and Bayne 2013). However, as
Jönsson and Hall (2005, 7) point out, “[t]he bulk of the vast literature on
diplomacy has been written either by practitioners or diplomatic historians.”
Ethnographic work, therefore, has not been generally used as a tool to study
diplomacy. The pioneering works by Iver Neumann (2005; 2012; 2013), that
made an extensive ethnography of the Norwegian ministry of foreign affairs,
are an outstanding exception, widening the horizons of research in the field and
becoming a mandatory reference for scholars. Moreover, the specialized
literature on economic and trade diplomacy has focused on government tools
to control trade, on government positions vis-à-vis specific negotiations, and
on the rise of non-governmental actors in trade negotiations and in the trade
policy debate.
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Building upon what has been done this far, the novelty that this
dissertation proposes is to approach a diplomatic community through
ethnographic fieldwork. The same way a traditional anthropologist immerses
into the Amazon to establish contact with an indigenous community to try to
understand its society, its values, and its symbols, a researcher can immerse
herself into a diplomatic community to understand the work of its members and
what they conceive as their challenges. To be sure, the small community of
trade diplomats in Geneva is as exotic and unique, in the strict sense of the
terms, as any indigenous community that a classical anthropologist might be
interested in. A passage by VanGrasstek (2013) describing WTO diplomats
illustrates well, how peculiar this community can be and how much curiosity it
can awaken:
The typical member of this rarified diplomatic community can
negotiate in at least two languages, converse in three, mutter
imprecations in four and order dinner and drinks in five or
more. Many of them master the art of looking fresh at 9:00 am
meetings even when they are six time zones away from Geneva
and their jet lag forced them awake just two hours after falling
asleep. In ministerials or other key meetings they can, when
necessary, negotiate around the clock for two or even three days
at a stretch. Their walls are often festooned with framed copies
of their credentials and commendations from their ministries,
sometimes alongside collections of art for which the only
unifying theme may be the owner’s postings to the various
countries of origin. In their desk drawers, the wrinkled
currencies from past missions are mixed in with jumbles of
connector cables, adapter plugs, travel-sized toiletries, an
assortment of frequent-flier gold cards and travel claim forms
waiting to be completed. They keep close at hand the bulging
passports that are filled with the perfunctory stamps of major
travel hubs and the full-page, multicoloured, hologram-
enhanced visas favoured by other countries that attract only the
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most dedicated diplomats and adventurous tourists. They are
interesting to watch. (xiv-xv)
“They are interesting to watch,” VanGrasstek acknowledges, and this
dissertation takes his statement seriously. One of the contributions of this
dissertation is, therefore, its experimental nature as an ethnographic approach
to a diplomatic community, something that could be replicated for studying
diplomats dealing with other International Organizations, as well as for
diplomats appointed in a specific capital to be in charge of bilateral diplomacy.
If the memoirs of a practitioner offer the service of giving voice to an actor that
normally never speaks on behalf of himself or herself but on behalf of his or
her country, an ethnographic account has the advantage of giving voice to many
of those actors simultaneously, while keeping distance from them at the same
time, which can contribute to bring a new perspective to things and to increase
the degrees of objectivity. The world of diplomats is by nature a world of elites,
of exclusivity. All new efforts to make that world more comprehensible to the
general public, and one that is easier to navigate in for the practitioners that are
starting their careers, ought to be welcome. As Neumann (2012, 5) would put
it, diplomats—and multilateral diplomats in this case—“are an elite awaiting
its ethnography.”
Finally, this dissertation is also informing to the field of International
Organizations studies. IOs scholarship has experienced important changes in
recent years. The conventional approach to study international organizations
used to grant little importance to the institutions themselves and to their agency.
This approach mainly understood IOs as instruments used by member states to
promote their interests, so whatever these institutions did and whatever they
became was but the result of power politics led by states and the result of the
will of big players. IOs were then seen as meeting points for states, as fora
where states discuss and (occasionally) make decisions. However, the
increasing importance of IOs in recent decades has fostered a new approach.
IOs are being taken more seriously as actors (Hurd 2011, chap. 2), and new
methodologies are being used to tackle their complexity (Reinalda 2009, 10–
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16). It is considered that Barnett and Finnemore (2004) made a pioneer
contribution in the field by applying the Weberian concept of bureaucracy to
International Organizations. Studying certain actions of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR), and the United Nations peacekeeping activities, the two authors
shed new light on how the institutions behave, what they do, their degree of
agency as well as their pathologies. Likewise, Ellis (2010) has recently talked
about an “organizational turn” in IOs scholarship, suggesting that
organizational theory may help transcend the state-centric ontology more
common in the field.
Clearly, this dissertation does not abandon the state-centric ontology
of IOs studies, as its main purpose is to survey the participation of a group of
countries in the WTO. However, its novelty lies in the fact that it splits up the
entity ‘state’ into the institutional components that make possible the relation
between the IO and the state. Without denying that diplomatic delegations
follow instructions from their capitals and are bound to report to them, by
making emphasis in these diplomatic delegations, this research rescues the
participating role—the ‘actorship’—that these entities also have, unfolding
their complexity and various degrees of agency. In other words, if a new
‘organizational turn’ opened a pathway for studying IOs as bureaucracies, the
smaller bureaucracies that connect the states with the IOs (the diplomatic
missions) also deserve academic attention on their own. To be sure, shedding
light on them is complementary and necessary for a full understanding of the
IOs. The work by Apecu Laker (2014) can indeed be considered pioneering in
this respect, and this dissertation follows the same direction. It is likely that IOs
scholarship can benefit from this approach to tackle the relations between other
IOs and their member countries.
Briefly, a better understanding of how diplomatic missions advance
member participation at the WTO is needed and can enrich the existing WTO
and IOs scholarship. Latin American countries make a great sample to explore
the participation of developing countries in this organization due to their
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diversity. The first two decades of existence of the WTO constitute an adequate
period to try a comparative assessment of this kind. And an ethnographic
approach is a promising tool to explore the world of multilateral trade
diplomacy, as mentioned earlier, a world always surrounded by mystery and
misunderstanding. While respecting the sphere of confidentiality that states
need to successfully conduct their negotiations, this ethnographic approach can
bring more transparency and elements of analysis on how the world of
multilateral trade diplomacy functions or operates.
Latin America and the WTO
Latin America has considerably changed in the last three to four decades. After
overcoming a period of dictatorships, low growth, and macroeconomic
instability, most of the region experienced waves of democratization and
initiated major processes of economic structural reform. The aspect in which
reform deepened the most was in trade, and occurred from the mid-1980s to
the mid-1990s across the region (Ocampo 2004, 21–25; Corbo 2008, 1). The
failing model of Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) gave place to
market liberalization and to an export-led growth strategy. Naturally,
engagement in bilateral, regional, and multilateral commercial agreements
became an important part of this strategy. Despite setbacks in some countries
and many social and economic issues yet to be solved, the region has in recent
years overall exhibited a better economic performance, expressed in higher
investment and growth rates, export diversification both in products and
destinations, an important reduction of poverty, lower unemployment rates as
well as more resilience to the last world economic crisis and to the current
period of weak external growth. It seems these positive developments made
Latin America gain confidence and room for maneuver on the international
stage. The weight of Latin American diplomacy has increased, as shown, for
instance, by the participation of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico in the G-20, of
Mexico and Chile in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), by the Brazil label of a BRICS country—alongside
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Russia, India, China, and South Africa as one of the most important emerging
markets—and by its current struggle for a more important role in the UN
Security Council, among others. Some authors have started talking about the
“rise of Latin America” (The Economist 2010; Reid 2009; Rivera 2011) when
observing the long-term regional panorama. Recent economic and political
turmoil in countries like Brazil and Venezuela naturally invite to caution over
too optimistic forecasts, but the trend over the mid and long-term is solid
enough to consider appealing the notion of the ‘rise’. Nevertheless, the
manifestation of this Latin American ‘rise’ is yet to be assessed in each context
and case. In particular, an open question is whether the years of stronger growth
and change of the development strategy have translated into more
commitment—and more assertiveness—in the arena of multilateral trade
diplomacy.
Even though the majority of Latin American countries did already
make part of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT)—the WTO
predecessor—by the creation of the WTO in 1995, only Brazil and Cuba were
GATT founders and subsequently members since 1948. The bulk of the region
entered in the 80s and 90s, when reforms toward open markets were taking
place (see Table 1). Honduras and Paraguay joined in 1994, just months before
the WTO set off, and Ecuador and Panama were the only ones entering in WTO
times, in 1995 and 1996 respectively. Thus, gaining experience in dealing with
the international trade system has been a rather recent process for most
countries in the region. Moreover, as part of the deal imposed by the United
States and other developed economies (Narlikar 2005b, chap. 2; Reinalda 2009,
625–36), the Uruguay Round (UR) negotiations—which gave birth to the new
organization—extended to more issues than trade in goods, such as intellectual
property, services, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, and technical barriers
to trade; all of which made negotiations and everyday engagement with the
organization more technical, complex, and demanding. Involvement has
therefore not been easy for developing and small economies due to their usual
budgetary restraints. As Tussie (2003, 5) puts it, the agenda was “calling for
additional institutional capacity in member governments. … [T]he WTO in
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contrast to the GATT accommodated on-going negotiations, demanding
perpetual involvement.” And while the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism
(DSM) represented a guarantee for Latin America and other developing
countries, nevertheless it “has imposed the need to finance and develop
expertise on international trade law in order to take full advantage of it.” It is
therefore a pertinent question to ask how Latin American countries have
performed in WTO related capacity-building, particularly in their Geneva
‘frontline’, how they have settled their diplomatic missions, and what missions
are run with adequate resources and organizational practices.
Table 1. Year of membership to GATT/WTO
Source: Tabulated from www.wto.org
Some studies have already addressed the issue of trade-related
capacity building with interesting results. Jordana and Ramiró (2002), Lengyel
and Ventura-Dias (2004), and Sáez (2006) have surveyed institutional designs
and trade policy-making of only the biggest Latin American countries. The
works show a high diversity in models for dealing with policy-making across
the region regarding presidential control, ministries involved, coordination
mechanisms, parliamentary and civil society involvement, and characteristics
First years Model transition WTO era
Country Date Country Date Country Date
Cuba 01-jan-48 Argentina 11-oct-67 Ecuador 21-jan-96
Brazil 30-jul-48 Colombia 03-oct-81 Panama 06-sep-97
Chile 16-mar-49 Mexico 24-aug-86
Haiti 01-jan-50 Venezuela 31-aug-90
Dominican R. 19-may-50 Bolivia 08-sep-90
Nicaragua 28-may-50 Costa Rica 24-nov-90
Peru 07-oct-51 El Salvador 22-may-91
Uruguay 06-dec-53 Guatemala 10-oct-91
Paraguay 06-jan-94
Honduras 10-apr-94
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of civil service careers; but they also stress similarities. Trade-policy making
in Latin America has been highly controlled by the executive branch of the
government, yet ministerial coordination involves complexity and inefficiency.
Parliamentary engagement is low but parliaments hold the ultimate right of
ratification of commercial treaties. Technical expertise has been low in
functionaries. ‘Clientelism’ is a frequent practice. Job uncertainty is common,
especially in higher-rank officials. And economic incentives are generally low,
all of which undermines good practices and long-term capacity-building.
However, political consensus and technical expertise seem to be higher in
countries where trade reforms have been deeper and lasting for longer periods.
There is also a process of detachment of WTO responsibilities from Ministries
of Foreign Affairs (MFAs) that traditionally held them, a trend that Tussie also
notices:
The complexity of the new issues has also led to changes in the
locus of responsibility for trade bargaining. Traditionally, most
countries have assigned this function to foreign affairs
ministries, which represented the ‘national interest’ single-
handedly. As the interests of ‘the nation’, and even those of
particular sectors within it, become less clear, and as the issues
become more technical, input from other ministries is
indispensable. (2003, 9)
Although these works are a good starting point to address the topic,
research ought to be both updated and extended to the rest of the Latin
American countries and it has to be more telling about the evolution through
time of institutionality, of expertise, and of its achievements. Additionally, the
cited works discuss trade policy-making in a broad sense (including
government capabilities in the home countries), instead of focusing on the
delegations’ personnel and resources. Another missing point is that they do not
say much about Geneva diplomatic delegations’ workload and the extent of
their responsibilities (beside the WTO), and other factors that, at the Geneva
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level, can affect the capacity of missions to work effectively on trade-related
issues.
On a different level, progress in engagement with the Dispute
Settlement Mechanism has also been observed. By the year 2000, disputes
involving Latin American countries as complainants and respondents were
already 33 and 43 respectively (Weston and Delich 2003, 189). By the end of
2015 they surpassed 120 cases as complainants and 90 cases as respondents.
Some works have addressed the performance of individual countries in dealing
with the DSM, such as the one by Shaffer, Sánchez Badin and Rosenberg
(2010) about Brazil and Pérez Gabilondo (2010) about Argentina. However,
new research, on the one hand, can better stress the role that diplomatic
missions in Geneva are able to play in an effective participation in the DSM;
and on the other, can also explore the linkages between performance in the
DSM and in other areas of WTO work, while offering a comparative analysis
with a bigger number of countries.
A recent, comparative work by Torres (2012) remarks that the
countries of Latin America are relatively active in using the DSM and that
participation has also increased over the years. In average, the region uses the
DSM more than what its share of world exports would predict, especially
Central American countries; but Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, and Haiti had not
used the mechanism yet. Likewise, Latin American countries are big receptors
of disputes in a higher rate than expected according to their share of world
imports, but again, Bolivia, Paraguay, Honduras, El Salvador, Cuba, and Costa
Rica have never been dispute respondents. Differences among countries then
persist. Finally, it seems that the countries of the region are facing fewer
obstacles to use the DSM than what conventional wisdom would suggest. Once
again, the literature can benefit from a study that connects the performance in
the DSM with the work of diplomatic missions, and that assesses the
performance of these missions in more areas of the WTO beside the DSM,
which is one of the goals of this dissertation.
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To sum up, it seems that a process has begun in which the government
bureaucracies of Latin America (and especially their delegations in Geneva)
have started to adapt to the practices and ‘rigors’ that the world trading system
imposes. As Tussie (2003, 11) already mentioned, “[a] new protrade, pro-
negotiating ethos with values, symbols, and goals of its own gains ground, a
feature which lends the process [of trade liberalization] a measure of self-
preservation.” It emerges as a pertinent undertaking, then, to study this
adaptation process for Latin American countries at the level of their diplomatic
missions in Geneva, and to draw conclusions when two decades of participation
have been completed.
Research design
This dissertation is an interdisciplinary attempt to better understand the work
of diplomatic missions and of diplomats in relation with their official
representation at the WTO. This dissertation is neither an account nor an
evaluation of the positions of countries in trade negotiations. What the
dissertation proposes is to draw a contrast between the practices of missions
and diplomats and their degree of activity in key areas of WTO work regardless
of the trade positions that their countries advance. This dissertation is not a
study about the WTO and the ways in which the institution could be reformed
for better functioning, or for better serving the interests of developing
countries. Instead, this dissertation’s stand is to consider the WTO as it is, to
see how countries have decided to cope with the ‘diplomatic demands’ that the
organization puts forward. While the diplomatic representation of countries is
clearly constrained by budgetary factors, it also depends on the different ways
in which governments sort out their priorities regarding external representation,
on different levels of institutional development and, ultimately, on different
degrees of awareness of the importance of an adequate representation in this
institution. By stressing the agency of governments to manage their diplomatic
representation at the WTO, this dissertation situates their current efforts in a
comparative perspective. This way, policy-makers can identify needs of
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improvement and pathways for it, while the private sector and civil society can
count on more elements to assess government practices and to call for change
when it is needed.
The doctoral dissertation is based on a three-year ethnography I
conducted in Geneva, from 2012 to 2015, with Latin American diplomats to
the WTO. This ethnography is composed of dozens of interviews and informal
conversations in manifold contexts with key actors from Latin American
diplomatic missions, WTO staff, and officials from other trade-related IOs and
NGOs in Geneva, and was complemented by direct observation of official
meetings at the WTO. Additionally, the dissertation is based on public, well-
known data about member participation at the WTO, and on original data that
I tabulated from both WTO online sources as well as physical archives, to
complete the picture of member participation in the organization.
The research questions that this dissertation aims to solve are: How
does the so-called “rise of Latin America” materialize in representation and
influence at the WTO? Which diplomatic delegations exhibit a better
performance in the multilateral trade system? And, what are the factors and
practices (by both delegates and delegations) behind successful participation in
the system? The first two research questions have a regional focus. The third
question also draws from the regional experience and its main goal is to
promote good practices in Latin American missions. Yet, its results have the
potential to inform WTO members from other regions about how to foster good
practices in their diplomatic missions and, likewise, these results are relevant
to foster good practices in the diplomatic representation to other International
Organizations, both in Geneva and elsewhere.
To address these research questions, this dissertation proposes a
leading hypothesis to be explored, discussed, and tested through this text,
working as the backbone of it. As stated earlier, common wisdom suggests that
power and influence in International Organizations derive from the ‘weight’
that countries have in the international system. This ‘weight’ is meant to be the
relative power of a country within the membership of an organization,
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commonly measured by its military capacity, by the size of its economy or
population and/or by its relative wealth. The bigger and the richer a country—
this rationale suggests—the more influential this country will be in the IOs it
belongs to. Under this perspective, for the case of the WTO, if military might
would be a less productive variable to ‘predict’ influence, another variable that
is commonly added to measure ‘weight’ is the country share in international
trade, but the rationale follows the same lines. This common wisdom—it has
to be mentioned—coincides with what realist approaches of International
Relations (IR) would predict about country influence in International
Organizations.
This dissertation, in contrast, proposes to look at country influence
through more complex lenses. Briefly, my leading hypothesis is that diplomatic
representation matters at least as much as country ‘weight’ to explain influence
at the WTO. Significant country weight does not necessarily translate into
quality of diplomatic representation and, conversely, unexpected countries can
be determinant in a membership through diplomatic means. Therefore, country
‘weight’ becomes effective influence only if it is backed by an equivalent
capacity in addressing WTO issues, particularly at the level of diplomatic
missions. In the WTO, while the strong influence of big players in the system
(such as the United States, the European Union, China, Japan, etc.) is out of the
question, this dissertation shows evidence demonstrating that, at the level of
more ‘pedestrian’ countries, their practices and capacities in the diplomatic
missions are better indicators of their participation and influence in the system
than their weight. Every section of this text discusses this hypothesis against a
different facet of member participation in the system.
If external observers were to trust this common wisdom to inform
themselves about the participation of Latin American countries at the WTO,
the rationale would follow more or less the lines of tables 2 to 5, that show the
ranking of Latin American countries according to Gross Domestic Product
(GDP), GDP per capita, population and share of international trade (tables 3 to
5 are at the end of the chapter). Brazil and Mexico would be expected to be big
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regional players throughout the 20 years of history of the organization, with a
great distance from the level of engagement of the rest of the region. Followed
by them it would be expected to find a group of ‘sizable’ countries, limited to
Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, and Peru (more or less in that order)
that would be bound to have a similar participation, yet inferior to the first two.
Beyond them, the participation—and influence—of the rest would be evenly
marginal or nonexistent.
Table 2. Region’s GDP, current US$, billions
Source: Tabulated from the World Bank. Constant 2005 US$. Update 24/9/15.
Country
GDP
2013
% of
World
% of
Brazil
Rank in
1995
Rank in
2013
Brazil 2.392 3,14% 100,0% 7 7
Mexico 1.262 1,66% 52,8% 16 15
Argentina 622 0,82% 26,0% 20 21
Colombia 380 0,50% 15,9% 35 31
Venezuela 371 0,49% 15,5% 39 32
Chile 277 0,36% 11,6% 41 38
Peru 202 0,27% 8,5% 48 52
Ecuador 94 0,12% 3,9% 61 64
Cuba 77 0,10% 3,2% 56 66
Dominican R. 61 0,08% 2,6% 69 72
Uruguay 58 0,08% 2,4% 67 76
Guatemala 54 0,07% 2,3% 70 80
Costa Rica 49 0,06% 2,1% 77 82
Panama 43 0,06% 1,8% 87 91
Bolivia 31 0,04% 1,3% 92 98
Paraguay 29 0,04% 1,2% 83 101
El Salvador 24 0,03% 1,0% 82 106
Honduras 18 0,02% 0,8% 116 110
Nicaragua 11 0,01% 0,5% 112 135
Haiti 8 0,01% 0,4% 127 141
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Such an analysis is indeed tempting, and many would be inclined to
consider the issue settled. At the same time, however, it is evident that this
rationale is too narrow and simplistic. Even if the ‘weight’ argument had any
sort of predictive capacity, it would nevertheless say nothing about the
mechanisms through which participation and influence happen in a given
context. In this sense, the relevance of this dissertation does not only lie on the
ability to contest a simplistic view about states – IOs relations, but also on
achieving a deeper analysis of the mechanisms that determine those relations.
And it is these mechanisms that, at the end of the day, are under the control of
decision-makers in the short-term, upon which measures can be taken, whereas
the ‘weight’ variables are experienced more as ‘constants’ by these actors in a
given period. Finally, to allude to mechanisms of country participation at the
WTO—this dissertation proposes—is, to a great extent, to point out diplomatic
missions and diplomats, as they are the channels of this interaction.
Missionaries and actors
Two metaphors are enlightening to picture the life and work of diplomats
working with the WTO—and of diplomats of all kinds. One is a religious
metaphor. Diplomats are similar to missionaries. Religious envoys are sent to
foreign lands to do apostolic work and to ‘evangelize’ the local community.
They go ‘on mission’ with a given amount of resources, and are meant to do
‘deeds’ for the sake of the local community but also for the fulfillment of their
mandate. Likewise, diplomatic envoys are sent abroad with a mandate, this one
being advancing the interest of his or her country while promoting cooperation
with the local entity or community. Like missionaries, they are expected to
convince, to broaden the influence of the community they represent in their
new terrain through their work. Like missionaries, diplomats are expected to
have expertise in what they do and, above all, they are expected to have
conviction, to believe in their ‘truths’ to carry out their mission. If generic
diplomacy is like missionary work, then multilateral diplomacy is like a
concilium or a synod of missionaries from different currents that meet to try to
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find common ground on some issue. It follows that a good understanding of
missionary work involves taking a look at the new context where they go, at
the way they interact with that context, and at the ‘deeds’ they are able to
accomplish there in the pursuit of their missions. All these elements take part
of the plan in this saga about the Latin American ‘missionaries’ commissioned
to the WTO.
The second is a theater metaphor. Diplomats can also be conceived as
actors. Their work of representation is in its very core an act of performance in
front of an audience. The ‘embodiment of the state’ that comes with diplomatic
representation and the nature of negotiations both involve the crafting of a
dramatis persona; in a word, they imply ‘dramatization’. Moreover, embassies
and diplomatic missions are similar to theater ‘companies’ that travel abroad
and work in teams, every one playing a different role, to conquest new
audiences. Like in theater, there are ‘plays’, which are the formal acts of
performance and the ultimate reason that justifies their presence and everything
they do. And, like in theater, there is a ‘behind the scenes’ that goes side by
side with the play even if audiences do not see it, and which constitutes a
fundamental support for the actors to achieve a good performance. If generic
diplomacy is like theater, then multilateral diplomacy is like an international
theater festival in which companies from different corners of the world perform
for each other. It follows that a good understanding of the theatrical discipline
involves studying the actors and their practices; taking a look at the result of
their work—which can be observed by anyone from the public—but without
ignoring what happens behind the scenes, as this might harbor keys to better
understand the ‘public’ side of the coin. All these elements are part of this
documentary about the Latin American ‘actors’ on tour at the WTO.
To be fair, the missionary and the actor are very imperfect metaphors
for the diplomat. First, each one of them is incomplete on its own, shedding
light only in a few aspects of diplomatic work. Second, and perhaps more
importantly, both metaphors also bear negative connotations. The first one
reminds some of regrettable colonial times in which missionaries would take
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advantage of power asymmetries to oppress indigenous communities and force
them to adopt beliefs and practices of a culture considered superior. Likewise,
the actor is often associated with artificiality, simulation, or ‘fakeness’, and
since times immemorial has been regarded with mistrust. Third, even with the
negative connotations aside, both metaphors seem to put diplomats below the
official and widely accepted dignity of their positions, whose essence and
purpose is to represent the head of a state. Because of these reasons only few
diplomats might actually feel comfortable with the use of these metaphors.
However, put together and used with precaution, these metaphors are
more useful than not. As a double metaphor, the actor and the missionary
complement each other well, each one highlighting contexts and qualities that
the other lacks. In one case is the notion of the ‘behind the scenes’; in the other
the one of ‘travel’ or ‘journey’. In one case the notion of ‘performance’ and
‘representation’; in the other the one of strong ‘conviction’ and ‘belief’.
Actually, it can be said that every real diplomat—as every negotiator—is at
some point of a continuum between performance and conviction, in a mix
whose real proportions are difficult to grasp. It is necessary, therefore, to
oppose both metaphors to one another. Moreover, the negative connotations of
each metaphor are actually useful on their own right: they serve as a healthy
reminder about what can go wrong in diplomatic representation. And things go
wrong at times indeed. Faking (from the actor) and power abuse (from the
missionary) function as extreme mirrors for diplomats to look at for checking
and evaluating their manners and their work. Against the connotation of lack
of authenticity, they can apply the antidote of ‘incarnation’. Against the
connotation of abuse, stubbornness of faith, and entitlement, they can apply
empathy, understanding and respect for the other. These two metaphors
therefore deserve to be taken into account, and these notions will be used and
discussed throughout the rest of the text and will frame the road map of this
dissertation.
Drawing from the theater and missionary metaphors, this dissertation
is structured in nine chapters grouped into three parts: (1) Preliminaries, (2)
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Behind the Scenes, and (3) The Play (see Figure 1). Part 1 contains three
chapters that prepare the terrain while Part 2 and Part 3 constitute the body of
the dissertation. After the current introduction (Chapter 1), Chapter 2 proposes
the theoretical framework and Chapter 3 explains the methodology of the
dissertation.
Figure 1. Dissertation structure
Source: made by the author.
Part 2, Behind the Scenes, is organized from the general to the
particular, like a funnel, taking a look at the elements that are not normally
visible by external observers but which also determine member participation at
the WTO. Chapter 4, The Stage [or The (missionaries’) Destination], makes an
overview at the spatial context where multilateral trade diplomacy takes place.
Geneva, Switzerland, and Europe constitute a very different geographical and
cultural context than the Latin American one. In particular, la Genève
Internationale proves to have a unique social dynamic that shapes the life and
work of multilateral diplomats. This chapter reports how diplomats interact
with that context. Chapter 5, The Actors [or The Missionaries], excavates one
layer deeper, exploring the world of delegates to the WTO, their perceptions
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and challenges, their interaction with one another and the process of adaptation
to the system. This chapter is the center of the ethnographic effort of the
dissertation, aiming to put readers into the actors’ shoes; that is, adding a
human perspective to the understanding of their work and completing a fresco
that started with the previous chapter. Subsequently, Chapter 6, The Missions
[or The Theater Companies], depicts the anatomy of Latin American
diplomatic missions, analyzing their resources, institutional differences and
organizational practices. This chapter is the first in which the dissertation refers
to specific countries directly based on tabulated data. It brings a cross-regional
comparison of the countries under study, and serves as a counterpoint to the
findings provided by the chapters of the following section.
Composed by two ‘Acts’, Part 3, The Play [or The (missionaries’)
Deeds], explores the actual participation of Latin American missions in WTO
work according to manifold sets of objective indicators. It is organized from
bottom to top, like a pyramid, from mission activity in areas of ordinary work
to indicators of deeper influence in the multilateral trade community. Chapter
7, Act 1: The Pillars, analyzes the members’ commitment to the three most
important areas of WTO work, namely trade negotiations, Dispute Settlement
Body, and the Trade Policy Review Mechanism. Subsequently, Chapter 8, Act
2: (Soft)Power, discusses the influence and prestige of missions in the system
through indirect indicators of peer recognition, namely, the positions of honor
that diplomats have been appointed to in the two-decade period. Finally, a
chapter of conclusions wraps up the main findings from Part 2 and Part 3.
If a single contribution was to be drawn from this dissertation and its
design, one should opt for the bridge the text makes between the ‘behind the
scenes’ and ‘the play’, between the ‘invisible’ and the ‘visible’, between the
‘informal’ and the ‘formal’ of diplomatic representation at the WTO. Each side
is informing, but both of them complement each other when put together. A
typical work from a rationalist or naturalist approach would content at
exploring ‘objective’ variables and numbers and delivering the conclusions of
their crossings, which is pertinent and necessary. In the opposite shore, a
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typical work from a constructivist perspective and from the anthropological
tradition would content at exploring the level of actors, which is valid and
fruitful. But no side goes beyond. This dissertation pushes both domains into
dialog. Each of them serves as complement and counterpoint to the other, and
together they enrich the understanding of the research’s subject. As will be
seen, such enrichment is not purely academic: an adequate participation in the
multilateral trade system demands to excel at both sides of the coin. Success in
the visible part cannot happen if the ‘less visible’ part is neglected. Only
governments fully aware of this can make the right choices about diplomatic
representation to the multilateral trade system.
Before going into details, the preliminaries ought to be completed. The
following chapter will bring the theoretical inputs that the research needs to
take off.
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Table 3. Region’s GDP per capita, US$, 2013
Source: Tabulated from the World Bank. Constant 2005 US$. Update 24/9/15.
Country GDP p.c. Rank
% of world
average
Chile 9.773 57 124%
Mexico 8.451 61 107%
Panama 7.859 62 100%
Argentina 7.782 63 99%
Uruguay 7.772 64 98%
Venezuela, RB 6.429 71 81%
Latin America & Caribbean 6.116 77%
Costa Rica 6.044 76 77%
Brazil 5.896 78 75%
Cuba 5.306 83 67%
Dominican R. 4.866 85 62%
Colombia 4.497 89 57%
Peru 4.083 92 52%
Ecuador 3.719 98 47%
El Salvador 3.189 105 40%
Guatemala 2.308 119 29%
Paraguay 2.030 124 26%
Honduras 1.521 131 19%
Nicaragua 1.404 134 18%
Bolivia 1.358 136 17%
Haiti 485 171 6%
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Table 4. Region’s population, 2014
Source: Tabulated from World Bank; UN Population Division.
Country Population
World
share
As share
of Brazil
Brazil 206.077.898 2,84% 100%
Mexico 125.385.833 1,73% 61%
Colombia 47.791.393 0,66% 23%
Argentina 42.980.026 0,59% 21%
Peru 30.973.148 0,43% 15%
Venezuela 30.693.827 0,42% 15%
Chile 17.762.647 0,24% 9%
Guatemala 16.015.494 0,22% 8%
Ecuador 15.902.916 0,22% 8%
Cuba 11.379.111 0,16% 6%
Haiti 10.572.029 0,15% 5%
Bolivia 10.561.887 0,15% 5%
Dominican R. 10.405.943 0,14% 5%
Honduras 7.961.680 0,11% 4%
Paraguay 6.552.518 0,09% 3%
El Salvador 6.107.706 0,08% 3%
Nicaragua 6.013.913 0,08% 3%
Costa Rica 4.757.606 0,07% 2%
Panama 3.867.535 0,05% 2%
Uruguay 3.419.516 0,05% 2%
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Table 5. Region´s merchandise trade, billions US$, 2014
Source: Tabulated from WTO. The share of world trade is calculated with the sum of
imports and exports. US dollars at current prices.
Country Exports Imports
Share of
world trade Rank
Mexico 397,5 411,6 2,12% 13
Brazil 225,1 239,2 1,22% 23
Chile 75,7 72,2 0,39% 42
Argentina 72,0 65,3 0,36% 48
Venezuela, Bolivarian Rep. of 80,5 44,3 0,33% 51
Colombia 54,8 64,0 0,31% 54
Peru 39,3 42,3 0,21% 61
Ecuador 25,7 27,7 0,14% 69
Panama 13,2 21,2 0,09% 76
Guatemala 10,8 18,3 0,08% 82
Costa Rica 11,3 17,2 0,07% 83
Dominican Republic 9,9 17,3 0,07% 87
Bolivia, Plurinational State of 12,3 10,4 0,06% 94
Paraguay 9,7 12,2 0,06% 95
Uruguay 9,2 11,5 0,05% 97
Honduras 8,1 11,1 0,05% 100
Cuba 5,2 13,1 0,05% 102
El Salvador 5,3 10,5 0,04% 105
Nicaragua 5,1 6,9 0,03% 114
Haiti 0,9 3,6 0,01% 146
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Chapter 2:
Theoretical Framework
The mission of this chapter is to present the theoretical framework that this
dissertation is based upon. There are basically three aspects of this thesis that
require a theoretical background. First, as this research aims to advance the
hypothesis that diplomatic representation is a strong source of influence at the
WTO, it has to discuss the existing theories about state power in international
organizations. Second, as the research aims to explore the practice of
multilateral trade diplomacy conducted by delegations and delegates in
Geneva, it can benefit from a theoretical overview about the practice of
diplomacy; acting as a reference point for the empirical undertaking that the
thesis will develop. Third and lastly, the research intends to illustrate the
process of adaptation that diplomats experience as they try to fit in the WTO
community—including the changes of individual practices that this process
involves. To achieve such a goal, it is convenient to provide an overview of the
literature on cross-cultural studies.
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State influence in IOs
How big is the influence of countries in international organizations? The easiest
and fastest answer that international analysts give to this question is that
influence depends on the ‘weight’ or relative power of countries within the
international system, or within the membership of specific IOs. It is a very
intuitive answer. If under this rationale the key to influence is relative power,
then the conventional ways to measure it would be military power and
economic power; including the size of the economy, the average level of
wealth, the sophistication of the productive capacity, the amount of
international trade, and so forth. Moreover, what seems to be relevant in most
historical accounts about IOs and global governance is merely the positions
and/or leadership of big powers; how they contribute, first, in the creation of
IOs or of specific international regimes, and, second, how they shape the
outcomes produced within them.
In the sphere of international trade, the roots of the relative power
rationale as the means to explain influence in the international system can be
traced at least as far back as Stephen Krasner (1976). Despite the rise of non-
state actors, he argues, state power and the distribution of power in the
international system primarily explain any given structure of international
trade. He therefore develops the concept of ‘potential economic power’, simply
an equivalent of relative state power, which could be measured by “the relative
size and level of economic development of the state” (318). The list of variables
used to explain relative power include the classical ones: aggregate size of an
economy, per capita income, share of world trade, and share of world
investment flows. The work is very persuasive in showing how state policy
preferences and relative power influence the international trade regime, but it
does not say much about the processes through which given relative powers
turn into the regime itself; that is, about the trade arrangements and agreements
that sustain the regime and the negotiations that made them possible. This
process is rather taken for granted, as it is expected that it would automatically
reflect the actual distribution of power in the system. Under these lines, the
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existence of a hegemonic power with a sustained technological lead (such as
Britain and subsequently the U.S.) would be enough to guarantee an open trade
regime.
More recent works follow a similar rationale. The book by Drezner
(2007) about international regulatory regimes makes a significant case. The
argument’s departure is similar: despite the rise of non-conventional actors
involved in global governance, states are still central in the rule-making
process. Moreover, the only states that really matter in the rule-making process
are the “great powers,” as the rest would be easily forced to change their
preferences through cajoling and coercion. “The great powers … remain the
primary actors writing the rules that regulate the global economy,” (5) therefore
“[a] great power concert is a necessary and sufficient condition for effective
global governance over any transnational issue” (ibid). Smaller states and non-
state actors would be limited to a very marginal role. They “do not affect
regulatory outcomes, but they do affect the process through which coordination
is attempted” (ibid); they just “constrain certain great power strategies.” (6)
Using traditional indicators of relative power as well, Drezner proposes that in
the current period there are only two great powers to be considered in global
governance: the United States and the European Union.
The U.S. and the EU are of course the two greatest powers in the
international system regarding matters of trade as well as other issues of global
governance. However, stating that they are the only ones that matter, although
suggestive, is extremely simplistic. Such reductionism does help the
elaboration of a more elegant mathematical model, like Drezner does in his
work, but at the cost of oversimplifying reality. Additionally, this idea could
not be more far away from mainstream literature on the World Trade
Organization, where the increasing assertiveness of at least a few emerging
powers at the negotiating table is an everyday topic, and where the relevance
of other ‘classical’ players such as Japan or Canada has been fully
acknowledged. More importantly, Drezner’s argument bears the same latent
assumption—and omission: it is believed that the global governance outcomes
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are a perfect function of the state preferences and the given distribution of
relative power in the international system, without considering the bargaining
process itself, and the different capabilities, approaches and strategies that the
manifold actors bring to this process. At best, it is assumed that such
capabilities and strategies perfectly correlate with the distribution of relative
power. This assumption, besides the overall simplification of the model,
outstretches a binary picture of global governance in which the international
system is strictly divided between rule-makers (the big powers) and rule-takers
(the rest). More recent literature has been willing to move away from that
binarism through the creation of the in-between category of ‘process drivers’
(Tussie 2009). When small developing countries are active, assertive and well
represented at the negotiating table, they could be classified under this category
and somehow enjoy better outcomes in the negotiating process. Yet, roles of
higher influence would apparently still be restricted to them due to the power
asymmetry.
Important is to mention that while this dissertation shares the view that
states remain the primary actors in the rule-making processes of global
governance (and of multilateral trade in particular), the relevance or irrelevance
of small states is something that should not be judged per se, but rather a
legitimate research question to be checked in the field and through evidence.
Additionally, whether the categories of rule-takers and process drivers fit
developing countries in the multilateral trading system is something that can
also be scrutinized in the field.
The narrative concerning the history of the WTO is another example
of such underlying conception of state influence in IOs. VanGrasstek (2013,
chap. 1) recognizes three different perspectives through which scholars can
study the organization: the legal perspective (international law and its relation
to state sovereignty in trade-related matters); the economic perspective
(international economics, the effects of trade barriers on efficiency and
welfare); and the political perspective (the rules on trade as a manifestation of
political agreement and of a particular world order). When he makes use of the
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political perspective, the creation of the WTO in 1995 is interpreted as an
achievement of U.S. influence in the post-Cold War era. Likewise, the active
engagement of rising powers such as Brazil and South Africa has been pictured
as crucial for the success of the Uruguay Round. The growing importance in
the multilateral trade system of rising powers such as China and India is also
mentioned frequently. Yet, when the position of small and medium-sized
members is mentioned, things seem foggier. Some of these countries “may
exercise a rising degree of influence on world affairs.” (33) It must be
considered, however, that these countries “differ tremendously in the size,
diversity and competitiveness of their economies, and also in the degree of their
ambitions for the multilateral trading system” (34). It can be seen that the
factors that are more frequently considered have to do with country
characteristics of any sort, more than with the ways in which countries relate
to the organization. The single exceptions are when the power of coalitions of
developing countries are underlined, and when it is recognized that even small
countries are becoming more “formal and active members of the multilateral
trading system” (ibid). This would occur particularly because they are now
resident members of the WTO, that is, because they now have permanent
missions in Geneva to represent them before the organization.
The steps that the literature needs to give are, first, to step away from
mere commentaries and to shift instead into making new theoretical proposals
about the WTO and about IOs in general. Second, the existing literature needs
to move from acknowledging the influence of smaller countries because of the
collective power they hold (their ability to form and join coalitions), to go
further and attempt to assess the individual influence they also have.
An article by Tussie and Lengyel (2000) had previously discussed the
possible linkages between an incremental participation in the multilateral
trading system and a higher influence in it. Their work underlines two
dimensions through which the participation of developing countries in the
system can be enhanced. The first dimension would be the “improvement of
their skills and institutional capacity” (9), which “constitutes a precondition to
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designing adequate positions and follow-up negotiations” (ibid). There is no
distinction here between the capitals and the diplomatic representation in
Geneva, but instead the government is considered as a whole. The second
dimension would be a reform of the decision-making system of the WTO, so
that developing countries “increase their ‘voice’” (ibid) in it. “What is
required”, they argue, “is a change of the context in which discussions occur”
(12).
This means that the underlying consideration is that stronger
participation in the system, although important and a “precondition”, is a
necessary but not a sufficient condition for developing countries to attain
higher influence in the system. Only institutional reform that counterbalances
the power asymmetry lying at the core of negotiations would complete the job.
This idea actually entails a major theoretical proposal. Although a final word
to test such a theory goes beyond the capacities of this dissertation, the
dissertation is nonetheless able to advance evidence that can enrich this debate,
particularly in the component of state participation. Active participation in the
system could indeed be underestimated, as it is thought that small and middle-
sized developing countries are too weak to exercise any sort of significant lead
and influence in any manner.
In his book on theories about international organizations, Barkin
(2006) identifies four theoretical distinctions in existing scholarship about the
topic. These distinctions cover the most important debates that have dominated
the literature in the last decades. The first distinction is between sovereignty
and globalization: whether IOs are agents that promote political convergence,
undermining the traditional state system, or whether they are tools that states
use to better protect themselves from the forces of globalization. The second
distinction is between power and interdependence: whether IOs are tools
serving the interests of the most powerful or they are neutral instruments of
cooperation among states. The third distinction is between regimes and
institutions: whether it is relevant to study the effects that IOs produce in their
member countries or to study the IOs themselves as independent actors on their
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own right and how they function. The fourth distinction is between efficiency
and ideas: whether and how well IOs accomplish the goals for which they were
created, and how they can affect the broader behavior of states in their relations
with each other, including the people’s underlying ideas about such relations.
Barkin’s four distinctions can be seen as coordinates that help situate
any research attempt in the field. This dissertation can be discussed in terms of
these distinctions. Regarding the sovereignty-globalization distinction, this
dissertation takes a mixed approach. IOs are seen as the expression of an
evolving international system in which closer international ties leave less room
for maneuver at the state level. Yet, states remain the most legitimate actors of
the international system, and more and more their legitimacy must be proved—
and their sovereignty must be exercised—through an active participation in
IOs. Both to protect their legitimacy and to find convenient issues of
convergence with the international community, states are called to have a
strong representation in IOs. Again a mixed approach goes for the power-
independence distinction. IOs are forums where states often advance individual
interests. In the case of the WTO not only is this part of the legitimate
bargaining processes among participants but the existence of individual
interests does not prevent the system (and can even play as an incentive) to
produce cooperative outcomes. Power asymmetries cannot always be
overcome, but often they can be managed through several devices, from which
coalitions are only one example. In contrast, the regime-institutions distinction
is beyond the scope of this research. Both perspectives are needed to
understand the WTO as an institution and its effect on members (trade policy
and trade patterns). Although diplomatic representation can be understood as a
secondary effect of a given regime, the evolution of such representation does
not depend directly on the IO’s rules and norms. Rather, it is filtered through
the agency that governments have and depends on the importance they assign
to the specific issues related to the institution. Finally, regarding the efficiency-
ideas distinction, the dissertation takes an uncommon position. As in the former
case, the evolution of diplomatic representation can be perceived as a
byproduct of behavioral changes fostered by taking part of a given regime
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(something that is particularly evident, for instance, in the engagement in the
Dispute Settlement Mechanism of the WTO). On the other hand, this research
considers that the efficiency of a given IO should not be evaluated by studying
the IO itself only, like in traditional attempts, but also by analyzing the
aggregate composed by the institution and the regular channels of relations
with its member countries. It can happen that some cases of success are the
result of a combined effort between the institution and state actors. By the same
token, lack of achievements can be the product of multiple factors, not only due
to flaws in the institution itself.
What is more crucial for this section is to situate this doctoral thesis in
the theoretical discussion about the power of states in international
organizations, and where this power derives from. Barkin (2006, chap. 2)
distinguishes five different sources of power that states are able to project in
international organizations. This individual state power would manifest not
only in their negotiation power within IOs but also in their capacity to set
agendas. Also, in their capacity to shape people’s thinking and discourses, what
Joseph Nye (2004) has coined as ‘soft power.’ The five sources of power are:
asymmetries of interdependence, asymmetrical dependence of IOs on particular
countries, structural power, institutional power, and ideology.
Relations among states can be purely based on dependence (when one
state totally depends on another one), purely based on interdependence (when
two states depend on each other in equal proportion), or based on asymmetrical
interdependence (when they depend on each other in different proportions).
Therefore, asymmetries of interdependence can refer, on the one hand, to the
relative power states have within an IO because of the unbalanced
interdependence they have on one another; and it can also refer, on the other,
at the disparity of needs states have for a given IO or for a specific negotiation
within the IO. This notion is close to the ‘weight’ of countries in the
international system. It is to expect that bigger and more powerful countries
form relations of asymmetrical interdependence with other, less powerful
countries around them, therefore increasing their power potential in multilateral
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scenarios. Likewise, some states need certain IOs more than others, making
them lose bargaining leverage before these IOs. Examples of this are indebted
countries in need of credit lines with the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
or countries whose exposure towards international trade is too big for its
relative size, such as the Netherlands or Singapore, making them need
international trade rules (for instance, a regime such as the one fostered by the
WTO) more anxiously than closed economies.
The second source of power reflects the fact that IOs depend
differently on their member countries, particularly for their operational budget.
Through big shares of operational budget as well as donations to specific
programs or projects, countries can exercise a stronger influence in IOs. For
instance, the United States is the largest individual contributor to the budget of
the UN and the WTO as contributions depend on the size of the economies of
member countries. The third source of power, structural power, refers to the
specific power that is granted to member countries through the constitution of
a given IO or its foundational treaty. The voting structure, which differs from
one IO to the other, is the clearest expression of structural power, and the
locations of IOs—equally defined through constitution— give host countries
the capacity to project certain influence in the organizations. This is the case of
the U.S. in the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank; and is the case of Switzerland
in the WTO and in several UN agencies after it became member of the UN in
2002. The fourth source, institutional power, refers to the indirect ways in
which countries can influence IOs if these organizations are staffed (and
directed) by their nationals or by nationals of other countries who were
educated in their university systems. Even if IO staff is bound to act on behalf
of the whole membership and is not contractually attached to their home
countries, the origin and education would influence their mindsets, which
translates into a particular influence from these countries in the institution. The
generic example is the influence of developed countries in IOs: since higher
education is required for most of the specialized and directive positions,
nationals from developed countries have a clear advantage applying to these
positions, and with them the indirect influence of their home countries is also
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brought. Finally, the fifth source, ideology, although even more difficult to
trace and to measure than the last source, refers to how the system of ideas
underlining the work of given IOs can empower some member states over
others depending on the government positions they have toward specific
policies.
What is worth noticing is that, despite how extensive Barkin’s account
is to cover the sources of state power in international organizations, he does not
mention the factor of diplomatic representation. It is as if this factor is taken
for granted, or as if it would behave as a perfect reflection of the other, more
‘objective’ factors of relative power. This omission constitutes a major
theoretical gap in the literature. The importance of the component of diplomatic
representation, and the recognition of its relative independence from the rest of
the sources of state power, has not been fully assessed. This missing element is
a fair justification for new empirical research. If evidence is found proving that
diplomatic representation is also an explanatory factor of country influence in
IOs, then new theoretical accounts would have to include it as another source
of state power that deserves consideration. The purpose of this dissertation is
to show that, for the case of the WTO, such an element is actually as important
as any measure of country ‘weight’ or a country’s relative power for explaining
influence in the organization. Either for achieving national or collective
objectives, diplomatic representation plays a crucial role. At the bottom of this,
at the negotiating table of an international organization, variables of ‘weight’
or relative power turn into mere abstract, discursive elements that depend on
the ability of state representatives to make them count in the outcomes of
negotiations. This way, if country ‘weight’ is to have a solid impact on effective
power in certain IOs, it has to be matched with equivalent diplomatic capacity
from any given country. While it is clear that many countries (and most big
powers) have a diplomatic capacity able to reflect their position of relative
power in the international system, there is no reason to believe that this is the
case for all. Some nations could do more and some could do less at the
diplomatic level than what would be expected from them. Thus, this deserves
to be explored.
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Putting multilateral trade diplomacy and the theory of diplomacy
in dialogue
An exploration regarding the world of multilateral trade diplomacy is likely to
be more enriching if it is served by a few theoretical landmarks that bring
structure and suggest vestiges about what might emerge in the terrain. Despite
the abundant literature on diplomacy, theoretical approaches about this matter
are scarce. This circumstance adds to the fact that traditional literature on
International Relations (IR) theory also tends to ignore this field. This is what
makes the work by Jönsson and Hall, and the more recent works by Iver
Neumann, such a formidable contribution. Their works succeed in offering a
comprehensive theory about diplomacy that frames this field regardless of
historical time, technological contexts, and differences of procedures that
might be involved. The concepts the authors develop will be useful to reflect
on the practices that take place in the WTO.
Jönsson and Hall’s book Essence of Diplomacy (2005) proposes to
understand diplomacy as a social institution. As it is a social practice, “it cannot
be abstracted from the social world” (22). As such, diplomacy is an inherent
process that takes place among independent polities as they want to remain
independent but, at the same time, find themselves under the need to relate with
one another as a response to cope with the anarchical outer system in which
they are embedded (e.g., the international system). The authors emphasize the
dynamic character of this practice: it is more a process in the making than a
static arrangement. ‘Diplomatizing’ relations—a verb the authors regret that
does not exist in our current language—would be a natural tendency in polities
upon which recognition—and therefore perpetuation—depends. The use of the
term ‘polities’, instead of states, is underlined: contrary to what many affirm,
the institution of diplomacy is not a singularity of the modern, post-
Westphalian international system. Rather, the institution has emerged again
and again in different historical periods and geographical contexts when
political units of any kind have had to interact with others beyond their
boundaries. From polis in Ancient Greece to the Church in the Middle Ages,
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to tribes in pre-colonial Africa, to principalities of the Italian Renaissance, to
the Europe of the Vienna Congress, to the global era of transcontinental flights
and telecommunications; there has been more continuity than change in the
practice of diplomacy. Their view coincides with Neumann’s (2012, 22)
statement that “diplomacy is ubiquitous once political life is lived on a scale
larger than the band.”
Regardless of the context and period, diplomacy is always defined by
the “’petty’ rituals and ceremonies of power” (Der Derian, cited in Jönsson and
Hall, 22). This practice, “at the highest level of abstraction”, constitutes in
essence “the mediation of universalism and particularism” (25). The
constituent elements of diplomacy have remained the same, and have survived
the technological and political transitions of history.
Following Jönsson and Hall, there would be four essential dimensions
of diplomacy: institutionalization-ritualization, communication,
representation, and the reproduction of the international society.
Institutionalization and ritualization refer to the development of practices and
rules, to the structuration and routinization of action and conduct, and to the
ability of actors to enact a system of symbols that represent power and achieve
group cohesion. Rituals have a “symbolic and repetitive nature” (42) and are
deployed with the purpose to “yield decorum and ceremony” (43). Rituals are
therefore considered—and defined—as repetitive, routinized practices that
entail a symbolic and ceremonial purpose. This coincides with classical
definitions of rituals in anthropology, such as Mary Louise Pratt’s (1986, 30),
in which rituals are “codifiable, repeatable forms, rather than unique;” that is,
events that are routinized rather than existing randomly or occurring in an
isolated manner.
Ritualization also involves the use of “repertoires of face-saving
practices” (44) and the use of “ritualized phrases” designed to “communicate
even unpleasant things with an amount of tact and courtesy” (46). Ultimately,
the process of institutionalization-ritualization evolves into the development of
particular protocols, fostering the practices of reciprocity, precedence,
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diplomatic immunity, among other perennial topics relative to the diplomatic
activity.
A common topic under the communication dimension is the reiterative
establishment of a Lingua Franca (Akkadian, Chinese, Greek, Latin, French,
English) as a platform of interaction in diplomatic relations. Three essential
tasks of diplomatic relations in terms of communication are the gathering of
information from the ‘other’; the transmission of information to the ‘other’
(which includes the ‘diplomatic signaling’, performed through foggy, face-
saving strategies, as mentioned earlier); and negotiation, which involves
different degrees of freedom in the negotiating parties that are due to meet.
Communication does not take place at the verbal level only but also at the
nonverbal level. The latter is related to the use of symbolic strategies, including
the choice of the very diplomats to be appointed because of their symbolic
meaning, or the practice of exchanging presents, among others. Moreover, this
dimension includes the tension between private and public communication: the
fact that often the same message simultaneously reaches different publics
(internal and external) with different interests, plus the confidential nature of a
substantive amount of diplomatic communication and negotiation.
The representation dimension involves the ambit of behavior (acting
for others), as in the actor metaphor; and the ambit of status (standing for
others), as in the metaphor of the missionary, who stands for something
superior and sacred (see Chapter 1). Instructions can be either precise, giving
the envoys no choice but to follow a single course of action and being mere
intermediaries of the rulers, or they can be broad, giving them room for
maneuver according to their criterion and their assessment of the
circumstances. In other words, the representative actions are at some point in a
continuum ranging from imperative mandate, out of which only accountability
is expected, to free mandate, giving them full authorization to decide as if they
were the rulers or political leaders themselves. At the end, the task of
diplomatic representation, as any representation assignment, falls under the
dynamics of the principal-agent relationship, with all the implications and
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obstacles derived from it. This implies that representatives are often due to
advance a ‘double-edge’ diplomacy: negotiating back and forth with the
strangers and with the represented. The debate is open about whether diplomats
(should) advance the goals of their principals only or if they (should) also serve
higher interests of mankind such as international peace and stability. Their
belonging to the same professional community and their sense of corps, or
esprit de corps, might incline them at times to “save their respective princes
from themselves” (Sharp, cited in Jönsson and Hall, 117) and tactfully act on
behalf of greater values.
Finally, the institution of diplomacy ensures the reproduction of the
international society. It constitutes the very process of socialization that polities
or states undertake to find external legitimacy. A process of socialization that,
naturally, does not happen in abstract terms, through paper, agreements, and
treaties, but through diplomats interacting with state officials and with one
another. Existence as a politically independent entity lies heavily on external
recognition, and the recognition of others’ existence is what polities give in
exchange. In the modern state system, the participation in international
organizations, particularly the UN, has become one of the most important
components of the socialization process into international society.
Following a similar direction, Neumann’s book At home with the
diplomats (2012) provides groundbreaking research that draws on extensive
ethnographic work to depict the lives of diplomats. “I discovered that the lack
of studies of diplomacy could not be overcome by drawing on the methods at
my disposal as a political scientist,” Neumann declares. “My reaction was to
retrain as an anthropologist” (2012, preface), and he then worked at the
Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for three and a half years, in the periods
1997-99 and 2001-03 “on the explicit understanding that I was to write on
diplomacy” (ibid). Based on his experience in the ministry, Neumann tries to
answer the question of what it is like to be a diplomat, trying to make sense of
the lives and tensions of their profession, both when they are appointed in
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embassies and missions abroad as well as in the interludes when they are
working in the ministry at their home country.
Neumann argues that being a diplomat involves balancing three
different scripts or stories that cannot be fully reconciled: the bureaucrat story,
the hero story, and the self-effacing mediator story. Diplomats do not like to
see themselves as state bureaucrats and yet, they are meant to perform
bureaucratic work, especially when they are appointed to their home ministries.
Only in few occasions are they able to fulfill the heroic script that is associated
with their positions, such as helping to make peace and missions of the like. In
order to maintain their careers afloat, they are meant to keep their heroic
ambitions at check without succumbing in the bureaucratic forest. Moreover,
as an official representative of the state and a channel of communication
between polities, the diplomat has to make his own self disappear from the
scene. “The ideal of being a negotiator is also a threat to the integrity of the
diplomat’s self” (15). The tensions of dealing with the three stories are
sharpened by the nomadism of his or her life and by the large gap between their
role abroad and their role at home. The esprit de corps among colleagues is an
essential feature of diplomatic life. This trace has been inherited from former
practices of European diplomacy, fully exercised by male aristocrats. However,
as European foreign ministries have become more open in terms of gender and
social background, the esprit the corps gets hindered, which adds new sources
of tension.
By the writing of speeches, statements, official positions and so on,
diplomats embark in a bureaucratic mode of “knowledge production,” whose
particularity is that it seldom produces something new. As positions have to be
carefully consulted (coordinated) with every division that has a stake on it, in
the ministry as well as in the rest of the government, there is little place for
creativity, and texts look too much like one another. There would be inertia
towards repetition and immobility, that could only be overcome by the
influence of external political forces.
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It is useful to remark that Neumann coincides with Jönsson and Hall
in the idea that, as an institution, diplomacy permits the reproduction of the
international society, and the reproduction of the state itself. Following
Neumann, diplomacy makes the state as much as the state makes diplomacy.
Permanent and routinized external recognition is a constant guarantee of the
polity’s existence.
In a more recent work, Neumann explores the notion of ‘sublime
diplomacy’ (2013, Ch. 5), which is also pertinent to discuss here (a notion not
too far from the heroic script described above). In Byzantine times as much as
today, the practice of diplomacy involves an aesthetic dimension and part of its
mission is to cause awe and admiration in the other. He rescues the metaphor
of the swan to describe the impression of what diplomats achieve or try to
achieve with their manners and actions. And yet, although the diplomatic
practice still conserves its sublime qualities, this is so only because of “intense
effort:”
Sublime diplomacy demands intense effort, but in order to
succeed, it must appear to be effortless. The swan is an
exemplar in this regard. The swan is in her element. She is a
natural at what she is doing. She may look like she is cruising
around effortlessly, but everyone who knows the first thing
about swans or diplomats knows that below the surface, they
are paddling full throttle. (Neumann 2013, 145)
This description makes one also think of the diplomat as the actor.
There is a performance on stage that appears to be natural or effortless, but
there is actually also the ‘behind the scenes’, with the preliminaries, trainings,
and preparations that it demands. If the sublime is one of the perennial ideals
of this practice, it is highly interesting to identify how sublime diplomacy takes
place in the sphere of multilateral diplomacy, where the ‘public’ that swans
have before them is not a government and a society at large as in bilateral
diplomacy, but only other ‘diplomatic swans’ like themselves.
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The works by Jönsson and Hall and by Neumann are formidable
contributions to the literature on diplomacy and offer a large conceptual
repertoire useful to analyze applied cases. These concepts will be a helpful
reference to make sense of the diplomatic sphere of the WTO. Such frame
inspires the ethnographic work of this dissertation and helps to give structure
to Chapter 5. There, the dimensions of diplomacy will intertwine with the
testimonies of diplomats and with the direct observation I carried out in
Geneva, its NGOs, diplomatic missions, and in the WTO.
In particular, if Neumann’s ethnography wanted to answer the question
of what it is to be a diplomat, the ethnography of this dissertation is trying to
answer the parallel, tacit question of what it is to be a multilateral diplomat,
and especially one appointed to the WTO. While his focus was a single ministry
of foreign affairs, the focus here is an international organization and the
diplomatic community that surrounds it. While he tries to outreach diplomatic
work both abroad and at home, the intention here is only to explore the work
made abroad, in a well-defined destination. And while he did the ethnography
as an insider, working for the ministry, I did mine as an outsider, studying the
community as an observer at the margins. These structural differences prevent
one from making symmetric comparisons between both ethnographies.
However, the opportunities for their results to enrich one another are vast.
A nuanced approach to cross-cultural studies
To study the world of diplomats appointed to the WTO requires more than a
theoretical framework about diplomacy. One of the aims of this dissertation is
to reveal the process of adaptation that delegates are due to experience in order
to blend in with the WTO community so they can become fully operational in
the system. From a policy perspective, the sooner that new practitioners
understand the ‘local’ ‘rules of the game’, the faster and better they can prepare
themselves to this new context. And the ethnographical part of this dissertation
can be read by them as a guide to the field. From an academic perspective, the
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WTO—like other international organizations—offers tremendously rich case
studies to analyze multi-directional intercultural encounters, tracing their
characteristics and patterns, namely, analyzing the effects of adaptation on
values, behaviors, and practices. Thus, to understand how diplomats experience
the adaptation to this multi-cultural environment that the WTO incubates it is
helpful to review the literature on cross-cultural studies and intercultural
interaction.
Dealing with cultural differences, working in alien cultural settings, is
diplomacy’s quintessence. Understanding and managing cross-cultural
differences has also become a major concern for all kinds of organizations in
today’s globalized and interconnected world. Both aspects prodigiously
converge in the WTO as it is the global meeting point of commercial diplomacy
and therefore an organization nourished with an enormous cultural diversity
provided by Secretariat officials and national delegates coming from every
corner of every continent. But, what might look at first sight paradoxical
regarding these diverse origins, commentators tend to describe this institution
as a rather weirdly homogeneous ‘English club’ (Narlikar 2005b; Bhaumik
2006). Despite such an interesting background, cross-cultural research has not
yet privileged the WTO as a case of study. In fact, the whole field of cross-
cultural communication and cross-cultural studies has been more connected to
the realm of management than to diplomacy or IOs studies. While it is clear
that WTO scholarship would benefit from contributions from cross-cultural
studies, it is necessary to distill an appropriate approach from which the cultural
complexity of an international organization of this kind can be tackled.
The classical approach and its critics
The traditional field of cross-cultural communication gained footing in the
1980s and was mainly conceived as a tool to help managers cope with cultural
differences when undertaking negotiations and/or controlling subsidiaries
abroad. Most characteristic works constructed cultural variables and tested
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their degree empirically across several countries through data gathered in
surveys. The cultural variables, or cultural dimensions, were assumed to be
universally valid for describing all cultures. Common research treated nations
as cultural units. The principal aim has been therefore to explain cultural
differences across nations. Although it was accepted that each individual would
differ in values and practices from a national “average”, such differences were
expected to be small, making individual behavior highly predictable depending
on national origins. Hall (1990), Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997),
and House et al. (2004) are among the major representatives of the field, but
the main contribution in this area is undoubtedly the landmark “Culture’s
Consequences” by Geert Hofstede (1980; 2001). His work—one of the most
cited in social sciences in recent years—has been both gratefully celebrated and
vigorously criticized, but his contribution has been enriching and enduring,
marking a before and an after in cross-cultural research.
The Hofstedean paradigm stimulated both theoretical and
methodological criticism. On the one hand, critics remarked that cultures are
internally heterogeneous, and are subject to change through time. Their
geographical boundaries are not always the same of national frontiers. On the
contrary, many cultures are circumscribed to smaller areas within a country
while others spill over national boundaries. Additionally, even though it is
accepted that the “programming of the mind” is stronger in childhood, the
culture of individuals can experiment significant changes depending on their
later experiences. And more importantly, the traditional view of isolated
cultures is challenged by the developments of the last decades, when
intercultural contact and international movement of people have multiplied
exponentially. On the other hand, the use of surveys for finding out cultural
differences is seen as problematic. Sample selections have been considered
unsatisfactory and sample sizes insufficient for a proper representation of
populations. In other words, the paradigm’s claim of predictive capacity risks
of being overpretentious.
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One shortcoming that is very relevant for the course of this dissertation
is the fact that the Hofstedean approach is ill-equipped to understand the
complexities that arise when intercultural contact happens. Hofstede does
discuss the phenomenon of intercultural contacts, for example when he refers
to the case of expatriates working in a different country (2001, 425–27). He
acknowledges that expatriates experience a “culture shock” when beginning
their experience. However, he endorses the idea of “acculturation” as the
concept that explains how “the visitor has slowly learned to function under the
new conditions” (426). “Acculturation” is here understood as a quite simple
process of cultural loss (the precedent or indigenous culture) and cultural gain
(the values and practices of the new place). Some people would adapt well to
the new context, some people would not, and the ones who do are likely to
experiment a new “reverse culture shock” (427) if they settle again back home.
Then Hofstede does not say much more on the subject, missing the chance to
address questions such as: How to acknowledge that the so-called
“acculturation” can actually happen at all in adulthood when standing on a
theory that states that what creates our culture, or the “mental programing of
the mind”, is totally absorbed in childhood? How to explain the “reverse culture
shock” based on the same assumptions? Does the individual really lose part of
his or her primary culture when adapted in the new context? How do
individuals handle two, three, or manifold cultural sources when their lives
move around more than two cultural contexts?
Frenkel (2008), for instance, recognizes that “[i]ndividuals’
characteristics are not limited to their ethnic heritage but, rather, are subject to
change and modification through experience” (927-8). Taras and Steel (2009)
continue, stating that “[y]ears ago, the area of residence (i.e., a country or
region within a country) probably was a much better predictor of cultural
values. In today’s “global village,” geographical boundaries are becoming less
relevant [—surely not irrelevant—] in studies of culture (50). One of Frenkel’s
examples illustrates brilliantly this point, showing how the traditional approach
of cross-cultural analysis can be misleading:
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The Jordanian manager in an Israeli-based [corporation] who
refuses to implement the organizational patriarchy proposed by
the Israeli headquarters, … does not draw on the Jordanian
cultural repertoire … but, rather, on a blend of Jornadian political
ideas and Western models of bureaucratic management he was
exposed to during his studies in a formerly British institute in
Iraq. (2008, 933)
Likewise, McSweeney (2002), a famous critic of Hofstede, stresses that
non-national cultures and non-cultural forces also influence behavior. Cultures
are not territorially unique. National populations, which are rather ‘imagined
communities’ in Anderson’s (2006) sense, does not necessarily share a unique
culture. Historical, geographical, and other factors can be very important at
sub-national and supra-national levels. That is the case for Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland in the case of the United Kingdom, or for Germanic
populations spread among different countries in Central Europe—or, of course,
it is also the case of Latin America’s common colonial history. McSweeny also
warns of the dangers of endorsing cultural determinism (92, 109-110); many
social phenomena, individuals’ behavior included, may derive from political or
institutional causes. Researchers therefore ought to be open to contemplate the
big picture, and “need to engage with and use theories of action which can cope
with change, power, variety, multiple influences—including the non-
national—and the complexity and situational variability of the individual
subject” (113).
Nakata (2009) has recently called for making efforts in order to
overcome the rigid Hofstedean paradigm, so to build better suited frameworks
for a globalized era. A common denominator of today’s world “is the
increasingly fluid nature of culture. In this age of globalization, cultures are
traversing national borders, co-mingling, hybridizing, morphing, and clashing
through media, migration, telecommunications, international trade,
information technology, supranational organizations, and unfortunately
terrorism” (4). Today people are interacting, confronting, and exchanging “at
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unprecedented rates and levels” (4-5). Thus cross-cultural studies have to be
updated so to make them able to cope with contemporary realities:
When Hosftede wrote his book in 1980, the world was a simpler
place. Nations, his primary interest, were fairly bound, stable,
and intact. In the nearly three decades that have passed, nations
have become more permeable and heterogeneous, and are
altering through dismantlement as well as integration. (5)
However, the quest is not about abandoning completely Hofstede’s
perspective, which nevertheless has produced important knowledge. “Instead,
[the current situation] suggests that it is time to widen the vista, so that other
views are invited and considered, enriching the conversation about culture” (6).
This conversation is then obliged to endure a more blurred conception
of culture, somewhat closer to the concept of ‘rhizome’ (Deleuze and Guattari
1987; Sánchez 2014; Sánchez 2015). Culture could be considered to be
comparable to a multiple-exit-and-entry, non-hierarchical structure, open to
external influences and whose expansion beyond its boundaries also follows
“rhizomatic” (non-lineal, random) patterns. Witte says it well in her
outstanding work (Witte 2011):
Culture is a figurative concept, contingent on esoteric, hybrid,
and partly invisible variables. It is more prism than lens, more
mutt than pedigree, and more organic than structural. It is botton-
up and top-down, historical and contemporary, and mechanical
and idiosyncratic. Its study requires intuition and creativity as
much as documentation and statistics. The collective sets of
behaviors and values reinforcing or shaping moral, political,
economic and lifestyle choices that we have come to call culture,
crafts, and is crafted by, both random and predictable courses of
gradual adaptation, selection, and competition. (152)
And she continues:
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Focusing on new cultural instances arising in the context of
cross-cultural and intercultural exchange and in particular [on]
cultural novelty in the context of global work, global
communication, and global teams as the basic unit of an analysis
shifts the field of study to a transcultural paradigm. … [T]he
argument for a postnational cultural analysis is not ultimately a
political, personal, or disciplinary preference. It is a knowledge-
based petition to use the full gamut of humanities, social science,
and scientific learning with all their possible and integrated
methodological, theoretical, and philosophical filters to
understand what influence the cultural has on making
organizations what they are and what they can be. (153)
With her words, Witte offers much of the caution needed to deal and
work with the concept of culture, a rich pool of objects of research where to
explore that concept, and an allowance—and a petition—to embark into
interdisciplinary research.
Building up the transcultural paradigm
Anthropology, sociology and history have also observed with interest the
phenomenon of intercultural encounter and its manifold consequences, in
today’s globalizing world as much as in the past, where those experiences have
naturally taken place as far as prehistory. The work by Appadurai (1996), has
been an important step into that direction. He calls for an understanding of
culture that does not set off from center-periphery kinds of models so it can
tackle the complex, overlapping, and disjunctive order of today’s world (32).
He does so by developing the concept of ethnoscape, which is understood as
an ethnographic landscape of somehow interconnected individuals that, instead
of necessarily sharing a spatial location, are put in motion by the current
globalized world. Although people still belong to rather stable communities
(nation, residence, family, work), “the warp of these stabilities is everywhere
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shot through with the woof of human motion, as more persons and groups deal
with the realities of having to move or the fantasies of wanting to move” (33-
4). Most people today do not only live in imagined communities (nations in
Anderson’s (2006) sense) anymore, but also in imagined worlds, what is “the
multiple worlds that are constituted by the historically situated imaginations of
persons and groups spread around the globe” (33). Obeying the logics of
motion and contact—but also of “virtuality” and imagination—the ethnoscapes
would be liquid networks of individuals sharing values, practices, interests,
imaginaries, and/or consumption of similar items. Likewise, the world would
be constituted by manifold overlapping ethnoscapes of this kind. Thus the
notions of flow and uncertainty (beside the traditional notion of locality) arise
as vital elements to understand culture.
Yet, nuanced theories about intercultural encounters can be traced as
far back as the 1940s. In order to face the “extremely complex transmutations”
(93) that gave birth to the “Cuban culture”, Fernando Ortiz (1978[1940])
coined in the 1940s the term “transculturation”. The new concept underlines
the fact that individuals exposed to cultural encounters do not simply lose
former customs and gain new ones from receptor societies. Individuals rather
adapt to new cultural settings by mixing former and new values and practices;
likewise, their singularity also ignites change in the receptors (e.g. society,
individuals). In the process, they create something new, which is not exactly a
sum of the original components (93-7). Transculturation stands as a better
conceptual alternative for describing cultural adaptation, as it “does not simply
consist of acquiring a different culture, which is what is meant by the Anglo-
American expression acculturation” (96, my translation). Ortiz affirms that
“the concept of transculturation is indispensable for understanding the history
of Cuba [—a singular zone of encounter of indigenous, European, and African
influences—] and, for analogous reasons, the history of America as a whole”
(97). Naturally, one could add that this concept is also fundamental for
understanding and describing but any process of intercultural encounter.
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So, instead of a passive adaptation to a fixed cultural standard,
immigrants in Europe or North America, for instance, although they do
experiment cultural changes, they also “provoke a change in the matrix of the
receptor culture”. All cultural change or transculturation is therefore a process
of exchange in which all parties simultaneously give and receive, “a process in
which both parts of the equation end up modified, and from which a new
compound and complex reality emerges”. Rather than a “mechanic
agglomeration of characters”, or a “mosaic”, this new reality is “a new
phenomenon, original and independent” (Malinowski 1978, 4–5, my
translation). Applying the same principle, Ackermann (2011) refers to several
varieties of individual response when facing new cultural settings: acceptance,
rejection, segregation, and adaptation. Adaptation would be meant to be the
most common strategy, entailing “a double movement of de-contextualization
and re-contextualization, whereby an item [—a person in this case: the
diplomat—] is lifted out of its original setting and modified to fit its new
environment” (21).
In the same spirit, Welsch (1999) considers that the traditional concept
of culture, a construct ultimately derived according to him from Herder’s
tradition, bears on its own too many shortcomings. Culture is a unificatory
concept, which makes it “cannot cope with the inner complexity of modern
cultures” (195). Culture is folk-bound, which is highly fictional; and finally it
is separatory, which is false and may even be dangerous. These three
characteristics are “untenable” today. Welsch argues that whilst the concepts
of ‘interculturality’ and ‘multiculturality’ are progressive as they call for
cultural dialog and understanding and therefore help to cope with the failures
of the original term, they remain insufficient for they “still proceed from a
conception of cultures as islands or spheres”; their old premise remains
unchanged. Not getting to the root of the conceptual problem makes the two
terms remain “cosmetic” (197). Transculturality is then the conceptual answer:
“Cultures de facto no longer have the insinuated form of homogeneity and
separateness. They have instead assumed a new form, which is to be called
transcultural insofar that it passes through classical cultural boundaries” (198).
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The people of our times, he considers, are “cultural hybrids”: “What once may
have applied only to outstanding persons like Montaigne, Novalis, Whitman,
Rimbaud or Nietzsche, seems to be becoming the structure of almost everybody
today” (199). Similarly, Kraidy (2005, 14) states that the terms “cross-cultural”
and “intercultural” implicitly assume that the different cultures in contact are
discrete entities, whereas “transcultural” exhibits better the fact that contacting
cultures are inherently mixed even before they meet with one another. For
parallel reasons, the use of transculturality avoids falling into inconvenient
Orientalist approaches (Frenkel and Shenhav 2006; Said 1979), that is, it avoids
considering “cultures” under essentialist assumptions (i.e. the “Mexican”
culture, the “Bolivian” culture, the “Brazilian” culture), and rejects common
binary stereotypes that put non-Western cultures in a moral position of
inferiority while allowing a patronizing attitude from the West.
Although transculturation is a potent concept as it has been shown,
there is a risk of irrelevance if it is used naïvely. As Millington (2007) states,
“[transculturation] does not occur in a vacuum …, [it] needs to be seen in its
interweaving with structures of power and the range of mutual influences
between North and South. … Influences may operate back and forth between
cultures but be asymmetrical in quantity and quality, be highly imbalanced and
still take place with well-oiled efficiency” (267, emphasis in the original). For
the same reason, Kraidy (2005) questions the novel concept of “cultural
pluralism”, considering it “an inadequate vision for international
communication and culture because it ignores power” (vii). As researchers
must trace the different sources of transculturations when studying particular
cases, they also have to illustrate the structure of power under which these
processes take place. Additionally, for Millington transculturation is a well-
suited concept because, from its original conception in Ortiz’s work, it is not
concerned with the macro-level of the transcultural (mixing) processes only but
also with what happens with the human beings involved in such processes. “It
is not just a question of disembodied cultural encounters and clashes, or
material objects and linguistic, religious and social practices but of human
trauma and creativity.” (264, emphasis added). Transculturation would
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therefore put the human being at the center, recognizing his or her process of
handling manifold cultural inflows as a drama.
When this dissertation uses the term “transculturation”, it is also
referring to the same phenomenon that other authors have agreed to call cultural
“hybridity” and “hybridization” (Bhabha 1994; García Canclini 2005; Kraidy
2005; Burke 2009; Ackermann 2011). Kraidy (2005) and García Canclini
(2005) consider hybridization as a concept superior to “creolization” (a term
more related to language), to “mestizaje” (more related to race), and to
“syncretism” (whose use is more common for analyzing religions). However,
there is still controversy about whether these two terms are equally adequate to
analyze the phenomenon of cross-cultural encounter (see for instance Kraidy
2005, chap. 1; Stockhammer 2011, 1–3). Hybridity and its derivations are often
considered as less adequate than transculturation. Hybridism could
inaccurately imply that the hybridizing components previously enjoyed
cultural purity (Sánchez 2014; Sánchez 2015, 64–65). As conceptual
advantage, transcultural flows:
do not come from a stable identity or defined subject, but rather
from one which is delineated primarily through its relationships
with others in a multi-polar movement. We must consider the
process of identification rather than the resultant identity.
(Sánchez 2015, 65)
Therefore, while transculturation is less polemic and could have more
potential in describing the phenomenon of cross-cultural encounter, it is
important to acknowledge that some authors use the concepts transculturation
and hybridization and its derivatives interchangeably and indistinctively.
Important lessons can be drawn from these reflections for the purpose
of this research. Studying “cultures” today—studying individuals’ cultural
backgrounds, intercultural encounters, and their multiple consequences—
demands moving away from essentialist and rigid cross-national approaches
while building on a more flexible and nuanced transcultural approach. It also
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demands reluctance to large-format survey-based quantitative research (with
all its assumed predictive power) for addressing the complexities of culture,
while remaining open to creative and more grounded qualitative research.
These lessons are even more relevant when it is the case of tackling culture in
an international organization.
Indeed, to study culture in the WTO is not only about how delegates
from certain national origins manage to interact with their counterparts (and
with the Secretariat) in the institution; it is also about the multiple processes of
transculturation those delegates are likely to experience there. In this sense, it
can be said that, concerning culture, the WTO functions as what Mary Louise
Pratt calls a “contact zone” (see Mark and Rosner 2004), what Homi Bhabha
(1994) calls a “third space”, what Appadurai (1996) calls an “ethnospace”,
what Burke (2009, chap. 3) calls a “situation” of cultural encounter, and what
Ottmar Ette (2007; 2012) calls “TransArea”. National delegates, this “lonely
gathering of the scattered people” (Bhabha 1994, 135), who were subject to a
voluntary “exile” in Geneva and at the heart of the multilateral system
following personal interests as well as ideals and convictions, are bound to
interact with one another under the framework of this institution, adhering to—
as well as co-creating—its codes and practices. Attempts to study culture at the
WTO ought to be sensitive to those processes and subtleties.
Transculturation, diplomats, and the WTO
Literature on diplomacy has not privileged intercultural encounter and
intercultural communication as a major topic (see for instance Berridge 2010;
Rana 2011; Hamilton and Langhorne 2010; Kopp and Gillespie 2011; Freeman
Jr. 1997), nor has cross-cultural research focused too much on diplomats (be
bilateral or multilateral) as cases of study. A curious exemption was an article
written by Geert Hofstede himself. Invited to participate in a series of
conferences in 2003 and 2004 about intercultural communication and
diplomacy by the DiploFoundation, a Geneva-based institution sponsored by
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the Maltese government, he wrote a text entitled “Diplomats as Cultural Bridge
Builders” (Hofstede 2004). The conferences ultimately made part of a volume
edited by Hannah Slavik (2004) and whose first text was the one written by
Hofstede. There he makes a short reflection about the lives of diplomats and
quickly follows to present his model of cultural dimensions and the results
obtained with his data, making clear that culture or “mental programing”, as he
uses to call it, is totally absorbed in early childhood (2004, 28). His article ends
by recommending his results as a tool that would help diplomats both to better
understand the cultures they are dealing with and to do a more grounded
reporting of the local situation back home. More interesting, however, is the
first short reflection he makes about diplomats.
Hofstede argues that being the mediator between two cultures puts
diplomats in “a difficult situation, because if they understand the locals in the
place where they are posted too well they may no longer be credible at home”
(29, emphasis in the original). Their profession “gives [diplomats] the
opportunity to become bridge-builders and cultural experts” thanks to the
“enormous amount of practical knowledge about other cultures” (29-30) they
acquire. He acknowledges that there is a “price of being a diplomat” (37,
emphasis added), and he argues: “I think it’s a very interesting life, but it can
lead to social isolation from your home country and, especially for the family,
a loss of identity” (37). As this situation puts the emotional health of diplomats
and their families at risk, Hofstede recommends they return home frequently
“to recharge their batteries” (38). And the issue would end there. Hofstede´s
text is interesting here because it can be read as a graphic example of the need
for claiming for a transcultural paradigm in cross-cultural research. Here the
entire transcultural phenomenon passes before the eyes of the author and yet
he prefers to let it go by. He acknowledges that diplomats can be so embedded
in a different culture that they may even risk losing credibility at home (think
of transculturation or hybridization); he acknowledges that the family can
experiment a “loss of identity” (think of transculturation again); he is aware of
how painful (the “price”) diplomatic life can sometimes be (think on Ortiz’s
and Millington’s “human trauma”); and finally he recognizes that diplomats
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can end up becoming “bicultural experts” (transculturation, again); and yet he
sticks to the rigid model of cultural dimensions disregarding all of this
evidence—while implicitly dismissing the knowledge of diplomats as a
valuable source for further cross-cultural research. Indeed, many diplomats in
question may not entirely represent their “national” or “local” cultures anymore
(if they sometime did), precisely because of the international experience they
live and because of the compulsory adaptation process that follows, no matter
its intensity. Their values and practices may be subject to hybridizations, whose
nature, sources, shape, and consequences turn into a rich object of study.
The American diplomat Glen Fisher, author of Mindsets (1997[1988])
had gone a bit deeper than Hofstede regarding what could be now called
‘hybridity and diplomacy’, and although the latter commonly cites Fisher’s
book (2001, 430; 2004, 30) he does so mainly because of the title’s resemblance
to his metaphor “mental programing of the mind”. In his work on how
diplomats have to deal with cross-cultural differences in international affairs,
Fisher acknowledges the existence of “bicultural personalities”. Bicultural
people would be embassy officials and persons of the same kind having
extended experience in dealing with intercultural work and communication.
Instead of referring to the negative side of isolation or loss of identity that
Hofstede remarks, Fisher marvels at how bicultural people “go back and forth
from one pattern of thinking to another and from one identity to another” (190):
These are people who have had substantial experience in more
than one culture; they speak second and third languages or more,
and in their normal routines have occasion to interact with other
people in varying cultural frames of reference. Many people start
out with bicultural personalities to some degree if they have
come from homes where the parents retain distinct ethnic
identities or have worked or lived abroad. In effect, such people
are operating with more than one computer in their heads, which
is not easy, especially if the cultures they have experienced are
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ones with fundamental differences in underlying deep cultural
attributes. (190)
Fisher thinks of “bicultural personalities” as a likely assistant,
interpreter, or interlocutor of diplomats in charge of negotiations or of running
embassies. These people would be highly helpful to work with, facilitating
intercultural understanding and the promotion of the diplomat’s interests. Later
Fisher also recognizes “multicultural” alongside “bicultural” personalities and
extends the category to a wider set of people: “Now, most people with any
cosmopolitan pretensions find themselves socialized to some extent in more
than one culture; they expand the complications of their thought patterns
accordingly” (191). In fact, he believes that the existence of “multicultural
personalities” is of outmost importance as long as “[i]nternational problem
solving depends on a multiplication of just such people—the true
internationalists” (192). Yet, it can be argued that “bicultural” and
“multicultural” are certainly less powerful concepts than “transcultural” and
“hybrid” because of the reasons already expressed, namely, the risks of falling
into the essentialisms of the traditional conceptions of culture.
Thus, studying how Latin American diplomats deal with cultural
differences in the WTO, mapping out their former cultural backgrounds,
documenting their adaptation process onto the routines of the organization, and
finding out the “cultural” keys for an effective interaction with their peers and
for a successful promotion of their countries’ interests appears as a novel and
fruitful endeavor. The WTO, as one of the several clusters of multi-state
activity that it is, is a place “of both cultural convergence and divergence,
effacing the centrality of any one nation or philosophy in the organization of
socioeconomic life” (Witte 2011, 151). Witte recommends three
methodological elements for doing research in a way that moves the cross-
cultural paradigm towards a postnational (or transcultural) approach (2011,
150–53): to mitigate the use of nation frameworks and universal dimensions;
to integrate diverse stakeholders’ perspectives so to not silence any relevant
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voice; and to explore unique and unconventional instances of organizational
exchange.
The research design of this doctoral dissertation incorporates Witte´s
three recommendations into its ethnographic component. More additional
details about the methodology and design of this research are to be found in the
following chapter.
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Chapter 3:
Methodology
As it has been mentioned previously, the purpose of this dissertation is to study
the participation of Latin American countries in the WTO at the level of
diplomatic missions and diplomatic representation. The main research
questions this dissertation aims to solve are: how does the so-called ‘rise’ of
Latin America materialize in the influence and participation of the region in the
WTO? Which are the Latin American missions exhibiting the best performance
in the WTO? And, what are the practices behind the best outcomes? By
searching an answer to these questions, this thesis is able to shed light on the
life and work of the multilateral trade community and on the most important
aspects of WTO work from the perspective of the diplomatic missions. The
hypothesis that moves this research ahead is that diplomatic representation (the
work of delegates and delegations) is an important factor to explain country
influence in the WTO; a factor at least as important as (and relatively
independent from) the ‘weight’ of countries in the international system. Under
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that context, the goal of this chapter is to provide in detail the methodology
chosen to proceed with this analysis and to tackle the research questions.
The body of this research is structured into five chapters organized into
two different parts: “Behind the Scenes” and “The Play,” as described in Figure
2. Part 2, Behind the Scenes, goes from the general to the particular, exploring,
first, the spatial context surrounding multilateral trade diplomacy (the stage of
the actors), second, the universe of WTO delegates and their interactions (the
actors themselves) and, finally, the functioning of diplomatic missions (their
theater companies). Part 3, The Play, goes from bottom to top, exploring the
participation of countries in crucial aspects of WTO work (the first act) and the
influence and peer-to-peer recognition of diplomatic missions in the system
through a set of indirect indicators (the second act).
Figure 2. Research body
Source: Made by the author.
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Scope
The scope of this research is 20 years long, from 1995, when the WTO was
created, to 2014; covering until its 20th anniversary. The countries studied are
20 Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia,
Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and
Venezuela. The scope thus includes ten South American countries, seven
Central American Countries (including Mexico), and three Caribbean
Countries. The single Portuguese-speaking country in the region (Brazil) is
covered. All Spanish-speaking countries in the region are examined (Puerto
Rico’s special status places it under commercial representation by the United
States), and one French-speaking country (Haiti) also makes part of the sample.
In order to maintain the symmetry and to assure a relative control of the case
study, only these 20 countries were considered, leaving aside three continental
countries: Belize, Guyana, and Surinam, and the rest of Caribbean islands.
Because of their number, common history, and the singularities of their
participation in the WTO (half of them remain non-resident members, for
instance), these countries deserve an independent examination in the future,
and a framework for such a research could be the one offered by this
dissertation. Yet, the 20 countries covered by this inquiry are highly
representative of the region and they suffice to advance the hypothesis of the
dissertation and to give robust answers to the main research questions.
Material
The material gathered to carry out this research is mainly of two kinds. First, it
consists of an ethnography conducted in Geneva in Latin American diplomatic
missions and in the WTO from mid-2012 to mid-2015 during the preparation
and writing of this dissertation. Second, the material consists of objective
indicators about member participation in the WTO. These indicators come
mainly from online public sources in the WTO website and from WTO physical
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archives. Although some of these indicators are of public domain, and have
indeed been used in WTO literature with regularity, others were collected and
tabulated for the first time for the purpose of this dissertation and therefore
constitute original information. These two types of material are present
throughout the following chapters.
The ethnographic fieldwork mainly informs Chapter 4 and Chapter 5,
and these chapters can be read together as an independent unit, with a prose
closer to the style of a chronicle and to the style of ethnographic work. Namely,
Chapter 4 presents the spatial context in which the ethnography takes place—
a classical component of ethnographic description—whereas Chapter 5
represents the main body of the ethnography. However, a large part of the
observations and testimonies gathered in the ethnography are also present in
the rest of the chapters, not only adding content to them but also in an indirect
way, as the conversations had with the practitioners helped to select, test, and
interpret the objective variables presented in chapters 6 to 8. Likewise,
objective variables are mainly the terrain of the chapters about participation in
the system, yet they are also strongly present in chapter 6 and in the rest of the
chapters in localized cases.
Confidentiality
In consistency with the general-to-particular approach used in Part 2, most
direct references to countries will be avoided in chapters 4 and 5 in order to
protect the confidentiality of human sources. Direct references to countries will
be made again from Chapter 6 on, as long as they are supported by concrete
numbers and data. In the same spirit, the source of all quotations from the
ethnographic work made in the rest of the chapters will remain confidential.
This dissertation is about tracing the influence of Latin American countries in
the WTO and about how to strengthen the capacity of diplomatic missions in
Geneva. Therefore, it would go against the very spirit of this thesis to
jeopardize the work of the diplomats by revealing certain sources. Moreover,
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this research owns gratitude to the openness and collaboration of all diplomats
and other officials who voluntarily accepted to participate in the fieldwork and
exchanged their impressions and views with the researcher. Gratitude and
acknowledgement obliges reserve of sources in this case. That being said, the
value of the practitioners’ statements lies mainly in their content. Many of these
comments are key for understanding the WTO community. In a trade-off
between exposing sources but having less information or not exposing sources
but counting with the information, this research situates itself in the latter
extreme to the benefit of the content.
The ethnography
Getting to know the WTO diplomatic community naturally poses to outsiders
various challenges of access. The WTO buildings, as normally occurs with
international organizations of this kind, have restricted access to visitors. Entry
is allowed only for visits to the library and the bookshop, or when WTO
officials invite you to meet inside the building. In all cases the movement is
restricted to constrained areas and visitors are normally escorted by their hosts
(or by their co-workers) from the reception area until the end of the visit (library
personnel are compelled to do the same when visitors go to the library). More
importantly, WTO meetings, either formal or informal, are not open to the
public. Beyond Secretariat staff and government officials taking courses at the
WTO, access to formal meetings under the category of observers is restricted
to a small public and normally under strict approval of at least one of the
member countries of the organization. It was clear from the beginning that the
opportunities for direct observation of delegates’ interaction were going to be
scarce and that the ethnography would rely more on the testimony of actors,
mainly through interviews: the ethnography had to be conducted—or at least
started—at the margins. Yet, the immersion in the field gradually opened
several opportunities for direct observation, both inside and outside the WTO.
This was an unexpected development and the research benefited a big deal from
it.
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The interviews
The core of the ethnography was composed of two rounds of semi-structured
interviews to delegates in each of the 20 diplomatic missions in Geneva of the
countries under study. In principle, I would try to interview the ambassadors.
Yet, it was expected beforehand that some of them would decline the proposal
either because of lack of interest or because of their busy agendas, delegating
the interview to one of their subordinates in the mission, as it actually
happened. This process of auto-selection—which was, in itself, a rich source
of information about the missions’ workload and capacities—would bring as a
byproduct the opportunity to interview delegates representing different ranks
in the missions. Two interviews, instead of only one, would simply permit to
get to know the diplomats better, dividing the topics to consult into two
different and complementary parts. Again, it was expected that the first
interviewee would not always have time for a second meeting, delegating it to
another diplomat, giving the chance to broaden the set of sources. The latter
case was less common than the former, permitting to complete the two rounds
of interviews with most of the diplomats contacted. It has to be added that in
the interview proposal I suggested to visit the delegates in their offices. This
would ease the management of time of the interviewees while, at the same time,
would permit the researcher to explore the work atmosphere of the different
missions in the waiting time before the meetings, during, and after them.
The two interviews conducted in each mission covered the main
research topics of this dissertation. The first interview inquired about three
main topics: the delegates’ academic and professional backgrounds (stressing
the geographical factor, to learn about their degree of international exposure);
the work they conducted in the missions (tasks, time distribution, workload
distribution, chain of command with the capital, challenges); and—in their
judgement—what they perceived as the achievements of their work in relation
to WTO representation. While the last part permitted to end the interview in a
positive tone, it also helped to compare perceptions and differences regarding
the diplomats’ outreach and objectives. Additionally, the second interview
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inquired about three other topics: the delegates’ interaction with their peers and
with WTO staff (stressing the factor of cultural differences); their personal and
professional adaptation to the WTO community (and the processes of change
they experimented, if any); and about concrete participation of their missions
in different areas of WTO work. The last part would permit to better understand
the participation of the missions in the system and their constraints, while
helping to identify what issues to analyze in Part 3 of this dissertation, when
comparing missions’ performance.
The formal interviews lasted between 30 to 90 minutes with an average
of 50 minutes. As expected, the actual interviews did not strictly follow the
planned script. The research has to be flexible. It often happens that the
interviewee is developing certain issue with such a great detail that it is better
to ‘sacrifice’ other points of the agenda. When there was only one interview
available with a specific delegate it was also necessary to prioritize topics that
were still more obscure to the researcher, or that would be more promising
because of the specific member country represented or because of the specific
diplomat interviewed. Normally, in the second half of the ethnography, when
a good amount of material has been accumulated, the researcher increases the
flexibility to develop topics in the interviews based on needs and opportunities.
The use of semi-structured interviews is mostly recommended with a
research of this kind (Bechhofer and Paterson 2000, chap. 5; Esterberg 2001,
chap. 5; Bryman 2008, chap. 18). Given the expertise and hierarchy of the
participants, close-ended-question, structured interviews would inconveniently
restrict the interviewees’ answers, preventing them for providing more insight.
At the opposite extreme, totally unstructured interviews are not adequate either
because the research already has a list of criteria that need to be fulfilled. The
technique of semi-structured interviews does bear significant disadvantages: it
is more time-consuming not only in the process of conducting the interviews
but also in processing and coding the data gathered. Moreover, the final coding
is never as elegant as one produced by surveys and other kind of structured
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interviews. However, the richness of information that the semi-structured
alternative can gather highly compensate its costs.
In the same spirit Aberbach and Rockman (2002) recommend the
semi-structure option when conducting elite interviews. They state that “using
mainly open-ended questions … [allow] the respondents to engage in wide-
ranging discussions”, this type of questions give them “latitude to articulate
fully their responses”. Proceeding in this way “is more valuable than [a more]
analytically rigorous treatment of less reliable and informative data” (674).
Besides—the authors continue—this technique helps the researcher “to use
clues from the most insightful respondents to suggest [new] hypotheses for
[the] analysis” (676). This last element is crucial: the use of semi-structured
interviews permits to cross-reference the preconceived framework of analysis
and discover at the same time issues that emerge as relevant, which were not
in the ‘radar’ before. That was the case in this dissertation.
This point fits well in a feature suggested by Abélès’ (2011a) previous
ethnography in the WTO: he defended the “experimental nature” of the
ethnography, which turns out to be a useful tool to discover previously
unexpected clues for better understanding the object of study. On the other
hand, Apecu Laker (2014) had already tried the strategy of surveys to gather
information from African diplomatic missions. The low rate of reply was not
encouraging, which is always a risk when sending surveys to elite officials.
Moreover, as stated before, the use of surveys is less reliable and reduces the
respondents’ freedom to articulate their answers, which is a big loss in a
research of this kind. It was therefore worthy to undertake the time-consuming
task of planning, conducting, and processing the interviews.
It is pertinent to mention that in my visits to the diplomatic missions I
did not wear a tie. I deliberately opted for the casual look of an average graduate
student from any university in Central Europe in order to make a symbolic
distinction between the researcher and the actors. Matching the insiders’ dress-
code did not appear necessary to me. I considered instead that it was more
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fruitful to assume the role of the outsider that I was and to express it with
comfort through a different dress-code.
Moreover, I considered that the interviews and the ethnography as a
whole benefited from these clearly differentiated roles and from the difference
of age between researcher and senior officials. Conscious that the researcher
was a doctoral student, the interviewees were not only classic ethnographic
‘informants’, but were also willing to adopt a mentoring role (for a famous
example of ‘informant’ as ‘mentor’ see Clifford (1986b, 106–7) and Shostak
(1981)). With the interviews, instead of visiting a university to deliver a public
lecture, the diplomat would receive the university student and deliver the lesson
from his or her very office. As long as the researcher proves to the interviewees
that he is interested, intellectually apt, and discreet—despite the difference in
age and experience, such mentor-student relation can create a profound degree
of trust, allowing the ethnography to go deeper, and granting a privileged
attitude towards the researcher. This mentoring attitude sometimes present,
however, has to be understood under the broader picture: the delegates’ will to
contribute to academia and the commitment to transparency in the governments
they represent were the true keys of their cooperation with this research.
Other key actors, direct observation, and other components
The formal interviews to Latin American diplomats were the main target for
information, but the ethnography included more components. I also
interviewed former Latin American delegates reachable from Geneva, other
Latin American diplomats not related with WTO work, WTO officials, and
officials from other international organizations. The interviews were based on
the same criteria of the interviews for WTO delegates and they helped make
sense of Geneva’s diplomatic community, and of the WTO community within
it and of its boundaries. As these sources had field experience and are informed
about diplomatic participation in Geneva (and in particular of Latin American
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missions in the WTO), they earned the place of ‘key informants’ in the
ethnography.
Additionally, in order to complement the field observation, I got
involved in several events that would get me closer to the institutions of
International Geneva and its diplomatic community. These included talks and
academic panels with the presence of ambassadors from different countries and
regions, and of high officials from international organizations. The venue of
these events were the University of Geneva, the Graduate Institute—including
the talks with diplomats organized by the Junior Diplomatic Initiative (JDI)—
, and Geneva’s Club de la Presse. Diplomats and former diplomats were not
only frequent speakers in these events, but they are also regularly part of the
public, and many were active in Q&A sessions. The immersion in the field
included my attendance to two week-long UNCTAD trainings to groups of
Colombian universities in September 2013 and 2014, which included tours to
the WTO and other organizations in the city. I attended the UN bazars in
September 2013 and 2014, and the Open Doors Day of the International Trade
Center (ITC) in December 2014. I also attended the majority of panels of the
2015 International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH), which
included the participation of many diplomats appointed in Geneva. Moreover,
during the period of the ethnography I subscribed to press releases of the WTO
and its weekly agenda, and I dedicated hours to study the more than 8.000
pictures that make part of the WTO’s online photographical archive in WTO’s
Flikr account, and the video material posted in its official YouTube channel.
Moreover, my intense reading of members’ statements when studying diverse
types of minutes of WTO meetings from 1995 to 2014 also contributed to
forming my impressions about the diplomatic community.
Unexpectedly, by the end of the ethnography I also had the chance to
do direct observation of official meetings at the WTO. One of the Latin
American delegates who sympathized with the research invited me to
accompany him to the meetings in the role of an invitee by his national
delegation. This device allowed me to attend as observer, in December 2014,
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one meeting of the WTO’s General Council and, in winter 2015, to attend one
meeting of the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), one meeting of Dispute
Settlement Body (DSB), one meeting of the Trade Policy Review Body
(TPRB), and one meeting of the Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary
(SPS) Measures. This direct observation was an invaluable opportunity to
complement the testimony of the actors gathered through the interviews.
Additionally to these activities, the ethnography benefited from
numerous informal encounters with the diplomatic community, from IO staff
to WTO Latin American delegates to non-WTO delegates to WTO delegates
from other regions. These encounters had not been planned beforehand in the
ethnography but proved to be very valuable as observation experience and also
to complement the testimony of actors. These encounters included casual
conversations at the corridors of the WTO building or in diplomatic missions,
coffee meetings in the Geneva airport or at the train station, lunches, dinners,
and several cocktail encounters in different places of the city. Some of these
engagements happened spontaneously, others because interviewees did not
have time for the interview in work hours, and others because the contact
produced by the ethnography fostered affinities and friendship, which
permitted me to spend leisure time with them. Even if some of these encounters
did not have the ethnography as the main driver, it was often the case that topics
relevant to the research arose naturally in the conversation. It was impossible
to stop wearing the researcher lens in those occasions. If, in the following
chapters, this dissertation is going to underline the importance of the informal
sphere in the work of multilateral diplomats, the very ethnography conducted
in the sake of this dissertation was a living proof of that fact: most informal
encounters were meaningful in terms of the research. Although they were not
planned in the original design of the ethnography, they demonstrated to be as
crucial as the core part comprised by the formal interviews to key actors.
The results of the ethnography are summarized in the following two
tables. Table 6 shows the number of contacts established during this
ethnography differentiating type of actor and type of contact. A total of 48
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active Latin American delegates were met, and 39 formal interviews were
conducted to them. 11 of these delegates had ambassadorial rank. The high
number of informal conversations with delegates and IOs’ staff should also be
noted, as well as the high number of talks/presentations attended. Table 7
summarizes the main data: the ethnography involved a total of 160 individuals,
59 formal interviews, 214 informal conversations, and 68 public presentations.
92 of them were delegates or former delegates, and 32 of them have had
ambassadorial rank. From the scope of 20 countries covered by this research,
only three missions did not open the doors to the interviews: Bolivia, Ecuador,
and Venezuela. It will be seen in the following chapters that these are among
the missions with more personnel constrains in the region for attending WTO
work. Yet, the ethnography was sufficiently robust in the rest of the areas to
compensate this lack of participation. It is clear that the depth of this
ethnography could have not been reached on a short-term basis. The open,
engaged, and continuous contact with the actors is a strong element of this
research.
Table 6. Actors involved in the ethnography, by category
Source: made by the author.
Type of contact Individuals
Formal
Interview
Informal
conversation
Conference /
presentation
Embassadorial
rank
Latin American WTO delegates 48 39 85 3 11
Former Latin American delegates 5 7 6 1 3
non-WTO Latin American delegates 18 1 35 6 3
Delegates from other regions 21 0 8 17 15
WTO staff 25 4 33 7 2
Staff from UNCTAD, ITC and other IOs 43 8 47 34 2
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Table 7. Summary of actors
Source: made by the author.
Original design vs. final outcome
As it occurs in this type of undertakings, the final result of the ethnography
usually differs from its original design. In terms of procedure and ‘rules of the
game’, I introduced two major changes to the original plan. Initially, the
interviews were meant to be public, giving to the researcher the choice to make
direct quotations from the actors, mentioning their names if needed.
Additionally, I was using a voice recorder to register the interviews. Only some
interviewees were not unsettled by these procedures. The freedom and
willingness to talk clearly diminished in many cases. I was forcing all of them
to be over-cautious. Often the interviewees were simply demanding the
recording to be excluded if I wanted their cooperation. As I kept confirming
that both the freedom to cite the source and the voice recorder were
systematically undermining my ability to obtain information and to gain the
actors’ confidence, I decided to switch to full confidentiality and I adapted to
take notes by hand during the interviews. The speed of my note taking
improved with the practice. Yet, I kept relying on the strategy of spending the
next two hours after an interview writing down important lines before they
were lost in the memory. To prevent regrettable losses, many of these lines
were immediately written on my smartphone in the tram-way or in nearby
cafés, and others while walking on pedestrian ways, as soon as I was leaving
Total individuals 160
Total formal interviews 59
Total informal conversations 214
Total conferences/presentations 68
Total delegates or former delegates 92
Total ambassadors or former ambassadors 32
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the missions’ buildings. During winter time, with the fingers freezing, the note-
taking process through the pedestrian ways was particularly fun.
The rest of differences with respect to the original design are related
to the unexpected depth of the ethnography. On the one hand, attendance to
conferences and other academic activities started just from pure, if
independent, academic interest. However, this progressively consolidated as a
deliberate strategy to complete the picture of Geneva’s diplomatic community.
On the other, the abundance of informal encounters and conversations was an
unexpected development, and its importance became clear rather early. Finally,
the ethnography was going to rely on the voice of actors only. Fortunately,
many of the actors’ impressions were corroborated by direct observation and
by long engagement with the community. Again, only a long-term involvement
could have made this possible. Overall, the actual ethnographic immersion was
more successful than expected, and the core actors (the Latin American
delegates) were formidably receptive to the research.
The process of establishing the contacts
In terms of the number of contacts made and the amount of time spent with the
target actors, the ethnography accomplished its task. However, this was a
challenging process that started from scratch. At the outset of the ethnography,
I contacted a Deputy Director-General of the WTO and visited his office for an
interview. That was a great opportunity to discuss with a high-level practitioner
different pathways to conduct this research. Beside recommending me to visit
some specific delegates and former delegates to get a better sense of the
regional participation in the system, through his office I obtained the list of
names of the Latin American ambassadors, the missions’ phone numbers and
generic e-mail addresses. This permitted me to send formal letters to every
ambassador to invite him or her to take part of the research by accepting my
visit and interview. In the letters I specified my academic background, the
purpose of the research, and the general criteria to be explored. Then, I
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followed up the letters through phone contact with the mission’s secretary or
with the ambassador’s personal secretary when needed.
In some cases, the waiting time for a direct reply by an ambassador
was literally shorter than the time spent in writing the letter, and the scheduling
of the interview would immediately follow suit. In other cases, the phone
contact with secretaries was crucial to make the meetings come to effect, in a
process that could take an average of a month. In a few cases the process of
getting acceptance for an interview could take two, three, six months, and even
more than a year. The researcher needs to be armed with polite perseverance if
he or she is to endure such a long waiting. The long-term immersion permitted
not to miss those uncommon cases in the record of this research. Only in the
few cases mentioned already, the insistence was not enough and the busy
agendas of the diplomats prevailed.
I consider that two factors were key to explain the good reception of
this project by the target population. The first was being backed by a local
institution of studies—the University of St. Gallen—and by the Swiss National
Science Foundation—and that is to say, by the Swiss government—as co-
sponsor of this research. It cannot be forgotten that Switzerland is the host
county of the International Geneva, and this accounts for a remarkable
reputation and influence of Switzerland in the diplomatic community. Both
institutional linkages—university and sponsorship—were always mentioned in
the formal letters when asking for interviews and in my oral, introductory
remarks before setting the interviews off. This gave more credentials to the
researcher and increased the willingness of delegations to participate.
The second factor explaining the good reception was my personal
background, which gave me a sort of ‘entry point’ in the interviews so to be
perceived as an adequate interlocutor. I am Colombian—ergo a Latin
American—and the practitioners could easily sympathize with a research topic
about the place of the region in the multilateral trading system. Additionally,
my years of experience studying and lecturing subjects about the world
economy and international relations—which are entirely related to the WTO
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and to the delegates’ careers—facilitated the contact and the process of trust-
building. As Gertsen and Søderberg (2011) point out, a proper background in
the interviewers is not only useful during the initial informal talk and for
making small comments along the interview, but also “[makes] the
interviewees feel confident that they [talk] to interested and well-informed
listeners” (792). In fact, the initial informal talk sometimes went around the
beauty of the plants decorating the ambassador’s office or about the
acquaintances we already had in common, but at times it was also about recent
economic developments in their countries, or about the cover article of The
Economist of the previous week, as the magazine happened to be lying on the
ambassador’s desk. “If you work in this business, this is the kind of stuff that
you need to read,” an ambassador would add. These common interests paved
the way of many fruitful interviews and lasting relations.
Cultivating lasting relations with the target community also serves a
purpose highly recommended by ethnographic manuals. At the end of the
ethnography, I asked some of the delegates previously interviewed to review
the drafts of the chapters of this dissertation. Thanks to their interest and
cooperation, I received valuable feedback that helped me, on the one hand, to
make improvements to the texts and, on the other, to consolidate several
perceptions about the subject of study. Such practice helps to increase—and to
assure—the accuracy of the ethnography and is a guarantee for the readers.
It can be said that the process of contact-making benefits from a sort
of ‘snowball effect’. The first contacts are very difficult and unpredictable, and
the researcher is still testing the script of his interview and improvising.
However, every contact opens doors to new contacts and, as an outcome, the
ethnography gains robustness. The researcher accumulates points of reference
to better formulate questions or to counterpoint answers, and finally he gains
experience and takes better advantage of each new interview.
There are several landmarks indicating the researcher that he is doing
an adequate job in cultivating his contacts in the community of interest: having
lunch at the restaurant of the UN’s Palais des Nations and easily recognizing
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many of the delegates and officials present; attending an official meeting of the
WTO and realizing that most of the members from the region present have been
already interviewed; being invited to informal gatherings by some of the
delegates; maintaining lasting correspondence with some of the delegates; and
so forth. And this despite the often political differences and commercial
disagreements existing among some countries of the region, which confirm that
a good number of actors saw the researcher as a reliable interlocutor. If I were
to choose a telling landmark as the more significant of the ethnography, I would
choose an informal conversation with a delegate that I had not planned to
interview before, and which took place by chance. In the conversation, a topic
related with mission participation in the system emerges, he gives shortly his
opinion, and then simply adds: “If you want, just come to my office.” That was
the first time when the ethnographic process was inverted. The constancy in
the fieldwork makes the researcher identifiable to the eyes of most actors. And
so, many who were not originally in the list of potential interviews (for
instance, because the country was already covered with a different delegate)
also want to tell their views about things, also want to bring their testimony to
the research. It takes a big deal of time to build such visibility and credibility,
but when it takes root, it brings the ethnography to a new, more solid level.
As it was mentioned before, the results of the ethnography are mainly
concentrated in chapters 4 and 5 of this dissertation, but it also informs and
complements the rest of the chapters to the end of the text. What follows next
is to outline the scheme of the chapters ahead, the rest of material
(variables/indicators) they present, and the sources these additional material
comes from.
Chapters in detail
Chapter 4, The Stage, describes the sphere of International Geneva and the way
diplomats relate (or not) to it. The chapter situates the reader in the
geographical or spatial context where multilateral trade diplomacy takes place.
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Because of its unique characteristics, Geneva is a city that deserves on its own
right sound sociological studies. What the chapter does is to simply detail the
most important elements of the city and unveil the atmosphere where diplomats
work and live during their appointments to the city’s international
organizations. Beside the researcher’s direct observation, the chapter draws on
general literature about Switzerland and Geneva, and on relevant data that
underline the particular differences of this place in comparison with the milieu
that delegates were used to in their home countries. The chapter also draws on
the actors’ perceptions about living in and adapting to the city, stressing the
challenges they face associated to the place.
Chapter 5, The Actors, describes the WTO diplomatic community and
work as experienced by the delegates that deal with it on a daily basis. It departs
from depicting the actor’s academic, professional, and geographical
background—what they bring to their missions—and then describes the
diplomatic atmosphere of the WTO and the perceptions associated with it. The
chapter describes the characteristics of the formal—and also informal—work
that delegates have to carry out during their tenures, detailing the challenges
they face. The chapter stresses the asymmetries of capacities that diplomats
have, both at the personal and at the institutional level, to accomplish their
mission. Finally, the chapter describes the changes of behavior and practices
that delegates are likely to experiment because of their long exposure to this
diplomatic community, in what can be interpreted as a process of
‘transculturation’. This chapter derives exclusively from the ethnographic work
conducted for this dissertation.
Chapter 6, The Missions, focuses on the diplomatic mission as unit of
analysis and studies its functioning and the key factors behind good practices.
In particular, the chapter studies, on the one hand, the characteristics and
functioning of the diplomatic missions, and, on the other, the relations of the
missions with the ‘outer world’, that is: the coordination process with the
capitals, their relations with one another and with various institutions in the
Geneva community. Beside the ethnography, the chapter draws on institutional
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information of local ministries from the Latin American countries, on official
information about WTO groupings and, mainly, on the historical records of the
WTO phone directories, well conserved by the Information and External
Relations Division. This last source was fundamental to make a country-by-
country picture of Latin American missions. Through the phone directories, the
WTO has kept good record of the personnel working in the diplomatic missions
of member countries during most of the two decades of history of the
organization. These records not only allow to discover the size of the missions
and to trace its evolution through time, but they also allow to build a whole set
of indicators to make cross-mission comparisons such as average tenures,
antiquity rates, ambassadorial cycles, among others. Together these data bring
a clearer picture of the evolution of Latin American diplomatic missions in the
system and bring relevant insights about missions’ good practices.
Chapter 7, Act 1: Participation at the Pillars, explores the participation
of member countries (in particular the diplomatic missions) in what are
considered the main three areas of WTO work: trade negotiations (Doha
Round), the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), and the Trade Policy Review
Body (TPRB). The chapter compares the intensity with which Latin American
countries have engaged in these areas in the two-decade period, analyzing
linkages with missions’ capacities and institutional arrangements presented in
the previous chapter. The sources from which the indicators for this chapter
were built were: the minutes of the formal meetings of the Doha Development
Agenda (DDA), official figures on member participation in the DSB as
complainants and third parties, and the minutes of the meetings of the TPRB.
For both negotiations and TPR, the minutes show the frequency with which
members have participated in the meetings with statements. The chapter ranks
the participation of Latin American countries and explains how these numbers
should be read and interpreted.
Finally, Chapter 8, (Soft)Power, analyzes the peer recognition and
influence that Latin American missions have had in the system in the two-
decade period. It does so by analyzing the evolution of a set of indirect
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indicators. One is a sign of ‘negative’ influence, namely, when members fall
into financial arrears with their obligations to the organization. And the other
two are signs of ‘positive’ influence, namely, the positions of honor that
delegates are able to hold during their tenures. The main positions are the
chairmanships to the whole set of bodies, councils, and committees of the
WTO’s organization chart, whose status depend on the hierarchy of each body.
And the other positions are the designation as discussants for trade policy
reviews, whose status depends on the size and importance of the member under
review. Financial data were obtained in the Budget, Finance, and
Administration division. Historical records of chairmanships are available in
the WTO website. Records on the discussants of Trade Policy Reviews are to
be found in the minutes of all TPR meetings. The chapter analyzes the
evolution of these indicators for Latin American countries, explaining how they
can be read and interpreted, and comparing country performance with
participation at the pillars and with the missions’ organizational practices from
the previous chapters.
Final methodological remarks
It is worth to note that the design of this research follows Witte’s (2011) three
methodological recommendation for new works in the field of cross-cultural
research, which were mentioned in the previous chapter. On the one hand, this
research mitigates the use of national frameworks and universal dimensions.
First, it does so by tracing the geographic trajectory of delegates (both national
and international) to deliberately consider the possibility of other cultural
influences different than the nation of origin. Second, it does so by omitting the
use of universal dimensions during the interviews (the ones coined by classical
Hofstedean literature), in order to do not induce these concepts to the
interviewees. This way the concepts and variables of cultural differences,
adaptation, and change will rather emerge from the actors themselves instead
of being induced by the researcher. Clearly, the national framework can only
be mitigated, never erased, as the research is dealing with countries as political
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entities by nature, and with their representation in an international organization.
On the other hand, this study integrates diverse stakeholders’ perspectives. It
does so by covering all kinds of Latin American countries, regardless their size,
might, or ideological positions, instead of focusing on a smaller sample: this
would have made the research easier but would have produced only an
approximation, not bringing the complete picture about Latin American
participation in the system. Additionally, diverse stakeholders’ perspectives are
also integrated by including in the ethnography the voices of other actors, such
as WTO and IO staff, former delegates, and delegates and mission personnel
of all ranks, bringing to the research a wide variety of views. Finally, Witte’s
third advice—to explore unique and unconventional instances of
organizational exchange—is satisfied by the very fact that the research
addresses an international organization, and the unique case of the WTO, which
is a rather uncommon subject of study in cross-cultural research.
In many aspects, this research takes the form of a case study, but it also
exhibits an ethnographic vein. In terms of Latin American diplomacy and
international relations, this dissertation is a single-case study about the
materialization of the ‘rise’ of Latin America in the specific participation of the
region in the WTO. In terms of cross-cultural research, my work may also be
seen as a single-case study about transculturation in a multilateral organization.
And in terms of country performance, the dissertation turns into a multiple-case
study about Latin American practices and achievements in the WTO.
Nevertheless, this work can also be conceived as an ethnography (see
Fetterman (2008), Bryman (2008, chap. 17), Eberle and Meader (2010), and
Creswell (2012)) as long as the fieldwork it involves implies some level of
immersion in a community, through which I tried to study the “values,
behaviors, beliefs, and language of a culture-sharing group” (Creswell 2012,
90), that of the Latin American delegates in particular and of the WTO
diplomatic community in general. As both are intertwined, it can be said that
the writing style of this text combines the case-study format and the one of a
classical ethnography. In any case, as Bryman (2008) remarks in reference to
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this debate, “whether a qualitative study is ethnographic is to a significant
extent a matter of degree” (432).
Standing on the ethnographic component of the research, it is
important to mention my personal background again in order to position myself
as ethnographer before the readers. Academic research is not disembodied, and
this is especially relevant in ethnographic work. It is well known that individual
backgrounds, despite all precautions of objectivity, influence in manifold ways
the ethnographic accounts. It has to be noted, however, that individual
influences are not necessarily negative. Often they bring particular angles of
research, shedding light on issues and details that would not have been
perceived or attended by other observers with different backgrounds. What is
important then is to pull the personal backgrounds to the surface so that the
way in which they relate to the subject of study and to the ethnographic account
becomes clearer.
I am a Colombian economist specialized in international affairs. As
such, two strong intellectual interests explain a great amount of my readings
and of my research activities in the last years: the study of economic
development in Latin America, and the understanding of the place of Latin
America in world affairs. Having studied most of my school and university
years in Colombia, I moved to Switzerland to pursue my doctoral studies. And
I lived both in St. Gallen and in Geneva, where I conducted the ethnography
for this research. First, different to Mark Abélès’ (2011a) team, anthropology
is not my first academic background. On the one hand, this implied great
challenges to me for the preparation and execution of the ethnography (and also
a formidable amount of learning). But, on the other hand, this made my
academic background closer to the one of the target population, which could
have contributed to the trust-building process with the actors.
Second, I conducted the ethnography as an outsider. That makes the
experience different to Neumann’s (2012) ethnography on the Norwegian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in which he was an employee; and different to
Apecu Laker’s (2014) study of African participation in the WTO, as she has
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worked for the WTO Secretariat. Actually, it makes this research also slightly
different from the one conducted by the Abélès’ team who, although outsiders,
were granted a special invitation by former Director-General Pascal Lamy to
carry out their work. The positions of insiders and outsiders are empowered
and restricted differently. Insiders definitely enjoy more exposure and access
to their object of study. However, their voice has often less degrees of freedom.
Outsiders, in contrast, have less access, but their work can move one step
further into independence and impartiality.
And third, my experience as an expatriate adapting, first, to the
German-speaking region of Switzerland and to its education system and,
second, to the French-speaking region and to the city of Geneva, was in many
respects parallel to the one of Latin American delegates adapting to their
positions in Geneva, as I had the occasion to corroborate several times. I believe
that this similar background made my research more sensitive to issues of
adaptation to the Geneva context that other observers would not consider so
relevant. The issues raised in Chapter 4, The Stage, and in the last section of
Chapter 5, The Actors, derive to a great extent from this particular angle.
All that said, one has to remain modest about the results of
ethnographic works. Ethnographic knowledge is contingent by nature. Taking
a post-modern perspective, one would have to acknowledge that a good
ethnography is no more than a “true fiction” (Clifford 1986a, 6). The word
‘fiction’ does not suggest that ethnographic accounts involve falsehood; it
simply suggests that every account is partial and constructed. “Ethnographic
truths are inherently partial—committed and incomplete” (7). The best to
which the researcher can aspire is to form a serious, self-conscious, and
“rigorous sense of partiality” (ibid). This does not mean that one has to arrive
“to the conclusion that it is impossible to know anything certain about other
people” (ibid). It only means that the ethnographic account has to produce
carefully limited claims. Ethnographies can therefore accomplish “controlled
fictions” (Clifford 1986b, 101), fictions “of difference and similitude” (ibid),
despite (and because of) the unavoidable cultural and humanist allegories that
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stand behind and animate the texts. Ethnographic work is “the impossible
attempt to fuse objective and subjective practices” (109). An ethnographic
account is “no longer the story, but a story among other stories” (ibid). This
research, therefore, does not pretend to offer the final say about the WTO
diplomatic community; it contents with offering a new perspective and angle
of vision about the diplomatic community. The research does aspire, however,
to do so with rigor, as it can be seen in the precisions and discussions that make
part of this chapter.
Finally, and moving from the level of the ethnography to the research
structure of the dissertation as a whole, it can be noticed that its design
subscribes to a mixed methods approach, combining both qualitative and
quantitative analysis. Such approaches have gained popularity in recent years
(Creswell 2008). This dissertation privileged a topic-oriented rather than a
theory-oriented methodology, adapting the research methods to the complexity
of the institution and delegations under study and to the availability of sources.
By doing that, this project adheres to analytic eclecticism in the study of
international relations (Sil and Katzenstein 2010) and aims to move beyond
both the naturalist-constructivist divide and the quantitative-qualitative divide
that have prevailed for too long in research in the field of social sciences
(Moses and Knutsen 2012).
Up until here, the preliminaries of this work have been presented. The
next step is to ‘land’ on International Geneva and explore the small yet dynamic
city as if it were a remote region needing to be explained and discovered.
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Part 2:
Behind the Scenes
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Chapter 4:
The Stage
Diplomatic journeys, whether they are bilateral or multilateral, normally start
at home. An executive government has assigned an official to a new position
in an embassy or in a mission in a foreign country. Then the newly-assigned
delegate and his or her family pack their luggage, say goodbye to their friends
and relatives, take an airplane towards the destination chosen, and get ready for
the new instructions they will have to follow from then on. For the case of
concern here, Latin American delegates leave their capital cities in direction to
London, Frankfurt, Paris, or Madrid, and make a flight connection to the city
of Geneva, where they will live for several years. What delegates take with
them when they leave home—that is, their life experience and expectations,
their carriers and cultural background, their ideals and ambitions—is an issue
of outmost importance when we try to understand their work and performance,
as it will be seen in the next chapter. However, before going into such detail,
and in order to quite literally 'set the stage' of this research, the first question to
be addressed is: when the delegates and their families land on Geneva
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International Airport, where do they really arrive? How different is this city
from their places of origin and/or from the places where they have previously
lived? And moreover, to what extent will this new location, this new 'theater of
operations', influence the outcomes of their work and their interaction with their
work?
While narratives about ‘first-world’ diplomats who travel to ‘peculiar’
and ‘exotic’ ‘third-world’ destinations are common, what is less common is to
try a narrative of ‘third-world’ diplomats traveling to ‘first-world’ destinations
while considering or estimating these destinations as peculiar and exotic in
their own right. The challenge therefore lies in underlying relevant facts, in
stressing the most significant particularities vis-à-vis the former places of
reference. ‘The place’ might not be the most important factor to consider when
studying the work of diplomats, but it is definitely one element that ought not
to be avoided. Its influence goes far beyond mere differences in statistics and
indexes, as these numbers have a real impact in the way diplomats experience
their everyday life. For the Latin American actors that come to Geneva to
perform their plays, the stage of Geneva matters a big deal and in many senses
may shape their acting. This destination where the Latin American missionaries
settle sets the mood as well as the power relations of their ‘missionary’ work,
having thus some influence in their results.
The goal of this chapter is twofold. First, it makes a brief description
of the stage where the Word Trade Organization has its seat, especially taking
into account and stressing its differences with what might be the common
geographical, social, and urban landscape of government officials in Latin
America and the Caribbean. It does so by drawing on the researcher’s
ethnography and on popular literature about Switzerland and Geneva, that are
helpful to identify common subjectivities associated with these locations.
Second, the chapter presents the perception of actors regarding their interaction
with this stage, underlining the topics that emerge more frequently in their
discourses. For the description of the place, several layers have therefore to be
addressed, some of them obvious but nonetheless necessary and useful, from
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the continental, to the national, to the urban; from Europe to Switzerland, to
Canton Geneva, to the 'International Geneva', to the location of the Latin
American WTO missions within the city. All of this is done while placing
especial focus on the city's diversity. Not only did this ethnography confirm the
importance of the 'place-factor' for understanding diplomatic work around the
WTO, but a description of this place and of the perceptions of the actors about
it will prove to be useful for better understanding the topics and conclusions of
the following sections of this dissertation.
Western Europe and Switzerland as social landscapes
As is known, when Latin American diplomats move to Western European
destinations, they find in their new appointments a very different socio-
economic landscape than the one they leave in their home countries. Broadly
speaking, compared to Latin American countries, Western European societies
are wealthier and they generally have a higher cost of living. They exhibit lower
levels of inequality, and higher levels of education and security. With higher
life expectancy and aging populations, the average age is also higher. It differs
from 29 for the Latin American region to 41 for Europe (United Nations 2015).
Linked to this demographic trend, Western European countries have become
traditional receptors of international migration (IOM 2015, 37), which has
added more cultural diversity to their societies, particularly in urban areas.
While European countries have a higher population density in the overall
territory (United Nations 2015), their urban landscapes are less crowded and
congested than their Latin American counterparts, with more functional
infrastructure of public transport, pedestrian-friendly city centers and a high
degree of conservation of historical centers and architecture. In addition to
these socio-economic issues, the European latitudes imply the regularity of the
four meteorological seasons, which for the Latin American region is only fully
experienced in the Southern cone. Naturally, the change of climatic patterns
does not only affect clothing and dress codes but also the overall distribution
of activities and the life cycle throughout the year. Regardless of the social
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background of diplomats, expatriates, and long-term immigrants moving to
these locations, they are all likely to perceive these striking differences in their
new contexts and remark on the influence of such factors on their everyday life.
Likewise, Switzerland considered as destination adds its own
characteristic attributes. A small landlocked country surrounded by powerful
neighbors, Switzerland has based its political independence over the centuries
on a strict policy of international neutrality for which the country is still
renowned worldwide. Its mountainous topography and international status
isolated the country from many historical currents throughout the centuries and
contributed to breeding strong national and regional senses of belonging.
British bestselling author Diccon Bewes (2012, 3) calls Switzerland “the
landlocked island.” And a big-format photography book written by Swiss
authors describes the country—not without a reasonable will to appeal to
potential tourists—as “a strange archaic island in the heart of Europe” (Gerth,
Arlt, and Arlt 2011, 17). However, beyond the postcard-like views of its
country side, traditional farmers, châlets, cows, lakes and other similar
stereotypes, Switzerland is a modern, wealthy, knowledge-based economy
connected by an impressive network of transport infrastructure. With a
population of only 8 million people, it ranks 21st in economic size, first in terms
of global competitiveness, third in human development, and has been one of
the five wealthiest economies in the world for decades (IMF 2015; World
Economic Forum 2015; UNDP 2014; World Bank 2014). This dynamism has
made the economy highly dependable on foreign labor and the number of
foreign residents has reached 24,4 percent of the total inhabitants, one in every
four (Office Fédéral de la Statistique 2015). Switzerland’s economic strength
is backed by a remarkably stable political system, characterized by the exercise
of direct democracy through regular referendums, and by an atypical executive
branch of power, which is not controlled by a single personality like in regular
democracies, but by a seven-member collegial body of ministers instead. The
26 internal political units—the cantons—preserve not only a high degree of
political autonomy but also form distinctive cultural and linguistic regions. 63
percent of the population speaks German and Swiss German, 22 percent
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French—in the Western region from which Geneva makes part—, 8 percent
Italian, and less than 1 percent Romansh (Office Fédéral de la Statistique 2015),
which turns the country into a small-scale version of European linguistic
diversity. Due to its institutional architecture and to the need to be
representative of its regional diversity, the Swiss political system depends on
consensus and compromise for its decision-making process. It is worth noting
that such practice of consensus and compromise constitutes a remarkable
political parallel between the Swiss political system and the practices of
multilateral diplomacy, particularly in the WTO, as will be discussed in
Chapter 5. Although such coincidences primarily derive from similar
institutional designs, researchers should not totally abandon the hypothesis of
coevolution of practices due to the long and multiple exchanges between the
IOs based in Switzerland and their host country and to the influence they
project on one another.
Despite its cantonal differences and its unmistakable social
heterogeneity, both locals and outsiders commonly associate a few distinctive
cultural aspects with Switzerland. Partly fostered by the particular political
system, the notions of neutrality, consensus, and compromise run deep in the
Swiss society, spilling over to issues such as corporative work, academic life,
family affairs, and are often visible in the style and attitudes of everyday
ordinary conversations. The observance of formal treatment in public social
interactions is also considered a common trait of the country. The marked
politeness of greetings in daily commerce as well as the frequent use of the
formal pronouns for the second persons (Sie, Vous, etc.), both in oral and
written communication, are the most common examples. Additionally, public
trust has developed in the Swiss society to a considerable degree. Examples are
the scant controls of payment in urban public transport, the outdoor displays of
articles in stores, the scarce surveillance, or the payment stations of
supermarkets where customers register the items themselves without direct
contact by employees. Swiss society is also characterized by a low-key attitude
in social interaction. Modesty is highly practiced and appreciated. Trying to
stand out through money, education or other tokens of privilege is uncommon
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and negatively perceived in conversations. Regional and generational
differences persist on this matter and many would claim that the low-key
attitude is less common in cities like Zurich and Geneva. Yet, this practice is
common enough to be taken into account. Moreover, in Swiss society there is
a considerable separation between the private and public spheres of life. As
Bewes (2012, 28–29) puts it, the Swiss might be “polite, yes, friendly usually,
but sharing their life story in the first few hours (or even months) of meeting—
never.” This behavior often creates confusion and misunderstandings among
people not used to such manners: “the Swiss seem cold and distant, but what
to outsiders appears unfriendly is actually them respecting personal space and
taking time to get to know someone” (29). It follows that silence emerges as a
powerful instrument in public settings for people to protect their privacy. In the
words of researcher Margaret Oertig-Davidson (2011, 143), “silence is
golden.” Spontaneous small talk in public places, although existent, is scarcer
than in other cultures; the crossing of gazes in the streets and public transports
is also more infrequent. With fewer opportunities for spontaneous social
interactions, membership in clubs of all kinds—cycling, sailing, dancing,
churches, humanitarian service, gyms, language courses, and so on—turns into
a critical aspect of the social dynamics as they are key for people to expand and
cultivate their social circles. Generational differences are also present in this
issue, as younger generations seem to be changing rapidly. Furthermore, Swiss
society is characterized by a devotion to planning. To use the expression by
Oertig-Davidson (2011, 209), the general conception is to see “the future as a
fact.” From holiday vacations to professional careers to friends hanging out on
a Friday evening, many Swiss meticulously plan their activities in remarkably
substantial advance. Strict punctuality, which is carefully observed by most,
emerges as a byproduct of this habit of planning, a custom that is very much
aided by the reliable timetables of public transport. The Swiss long-term
orientation and a fondness for precision clearly correlate with the country's high
levels of efficiency and with people's conception of friendship; still, as there is
fewer room for spontaneity, the soil is fertile for misunderstandings and
misinterpretations when interacting with outsiders that have different cultural
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backgrounds. Indeed, most reports from foreigners adapting to their lives in
Switzerland underline the difficulties of coping with the cultural differences in
the host country (Bewes 2012; Oertig-Davidson 2011; Panozzo 2014). The
most graphic example of this struggle is the book cover choice by American
writer Chantal Panozzo (2014) about life in Switzerland: like in a scene from
the myth of Sisyphus, the cover pictures a woman struggling to push a round-
shaped Swiss-flag-style rock up to the top of the Matterhorn mountain, the icon
of the country’s alpine geography. Despite the advantages of security, high
wages, social security, and infrastructure, cultural differences are perceived by
many outsiders as a major challenge for integrating to the country.
Obviously, the remarks proposed here about the Swiss society have to
be read with caution. They ultimately derive from the subjective perceptions of
several observers and from the author of this dissertation. These remarks,
therefore, do not pretend to reduce the human complexity of a country to a
handful of elements. Excessive pretentions of objectivity always have to be
checked in ethnographic accounts. As Clifford notices (see Chapter 3),
ethnographic truths are inherently partial and ethnographic work is “the
impossible attempt to fuse objective and subjective practices” (Clifford 1986b,
109). Yet, as stated in the introduction of this chapter, it is always useful to
identify the common and recurrent subjectivities associated with locations.
These subjectivities constitute legitimate material of research as long as they
reveal individual perceptions and indirectly speak of the different points of
reference that individuals have. In this sense, such perceptions can be enriching
only if they are not taken as absolute truths. This has to be taken into account
not only for the elements collected here about the Swiss society but also for the
comments about Geneva suggested in the section below.
A few remarks about Geneva
Of course, being one of the most famous and representative of Swiss cantons—
although one of the youngest in the confederation—, Geneva has traces of all
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of Switzerland. However, as it will be seen, not only because of its already-
expected cantonal singularity but also because of its international life,
Geneva—the inner stage of this exploration—is also a (small) universe on its
own.
With around 480 thousand inhabitants, the canton of Geneva is small
and well organized and its geography is atypical and improbable. Connected to
the rest of Switzerland only by a neck of land of about 3 kilometers, Geneva is
round-shaped, with a triangular slice of its territory taken for the waters that
make the end of its lake in the northeast. Geographically speaking, it is the most
disjointed of all cantons in Switzerland, not only because of this atypical
separation from the rest of the country but also because its lake significantly
divides the urban area into two parts. Different to other Swiss cities, with the
historic center, the shopping area, and train station separated from one another,
Geneva does not have a clear city center functionally speaking. Coming from
the northeast, the lake ends into the Rhône river westwards and two kilometers
later it receives the Arve river from the French Alps in the east, and together
will later disgorge into the Mediterranean. Beside a small hill in its historic
center and a few others, Geneva's terrain is flat, and yet surrounded by the Jura
mountain range in the northwest and by a part of the Alps in the southeast. The
Salève makes the closest mountain, and the Mont Blanc is the mountain most
far away observable from the city, both in the southeast, both French. Actually,
with a terrain of only 282 square kilometers, the canton is surrounded by France
in every part except in the short neck that connects it to canton Vaud. While
the land that borders the canton with the rest of Switzerland is only about 3
kilometers long, the border shared with France sums 110 kilometers, which
offers well the perspective of Geneva’s particular geographical conditions.
Indeed, few pedestrians note that, with no exception, all mountains observable
from the streets of the city are already French territory. Geneva grew in the
formerly-walled hill of the southern side of the lake, where ancient St. Pierre's
Cathedral dominates the view, and over the centuries spread all over the banks
of the lake and rivers. Its airport was built at the very northwestern boundary
with France, and the Cornavin train station, which connects the airport to the
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city and the two of them to the rest of Switzerland, was built a few steps north
from the lake's border. From the station to its borders, Geneva's neighborhoods
and nearby communes are very well connected through a smooth and proper
network of streets, tram-ways, and buses. Around the center, at the southeastern
bank of the lake lies the Jardin Anglais (English Garden). Standing there and
following the movement of the pointers' clock from the deck of the garden,
visitors can enjoy the 360º view of the lake, the popular Jet d'Eau, Calvinism’s
main Cathedral in the old city over the hill, the monument that celebrates
Geneva's entrance into the Swiss confederation, and finally the Pont du Mont
Blanc, which is the first of a series of bridges connecting the two banks of the
Rhône river. Along the two pedestrian borders of the bridge stand 26 high
flagpoles where the city hall hoists regularly the white-on-red flag of the
Confederation—one in every pole, the flags of the Swiss cantons, the flag of
the Red Cross, the flag of the United Nations, the flag of the International Labor
Organization (ILO), the flag of the WTO, and so forth, on demand and
depending on the city's calendar of events. Those are the basic topographical
facts of the city-canton, and right there in that spot visitors find all the symbols
of the city’s most-cherished spirit.
An infrequent tourist visiting Geneva would easily be impressed by
the city’s calmness and smoothness. Swans and ducks of the lake eat bread
from pedestrians. People go jogging around the lake and in nearby parks.
Crowds do shopping all over the long and quotidian Rue de la Confederation
while more selected buyers promenade in parallel Rue du Rhône among its
luxury stores. Hotels keep busy. Tourists take pictures to the garden clock in
Jardin Anglais, to the Jet d'Eau in the lake, to the monument of the broken
chair in Place des Nations (Nations’ Square), or orderly visit St. Pierre's
Cathedral at the top of the hill. Men of all ages play giant chess on the floor at
the entrance of Parc des Bastions. Timetables in the airport show the next
dozen departures to all European cities. Small grocery shops display
newspapers in six or ten different languages—and in three or four different
alphabets. Local free newspapers in the train and tram stations dramatically
inform in their first pages about a cat that died of starvation or about a brawl in
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a bar. Swiss soldiers take the train to go to their barracks and university students
rush to their classes. In the mornings, thousands of 'frontaliers' cross the Swiss
boundary from France, by car, by bus, by foot, and by bike, so they can reach
their jobs in the city. In the evenings, they make their way back. Around 7:00
p.m. people are literally packed in tram 12 or in bus 61 on their way to the
French city of Annemasse, the biggest suburb of Geneva's non-declared
metropolitan area; everyone in silence; half of them toying with their
smartphones or listening to music with their headphones on. Crowded theaters,
restaurants, and cinemas; the more-than-usual roar of an ambulance. Lonely
streets in winter; tourists flocking the city in summer. Movement, suits and ties
around the International Quarter; and, when certain conferences are too big,
delegates from the poorest countries quickly going out of their farer but less-
expensive hotels of the French side, struggling for advice to find the way to
Geneva's center, sometimes helped just by a very limited level of English or
French.
Since the middle ages, the city of Geneva had managed to maintain a
high degree of independence from neighboring powers. The Holy Roman
Empire first, then the Kingdom of Savoy, and finally France. Since the 15th
century it was ruled as a local oligarchic republic and since the 16th century it
forged an alliance with the ancient Swiss Confederacy. It turned for the first
time into a protagonist of world history in the 16th century when, at the eve of
the Reform in Europe, John Calvin became the city's spiritual leader. The new
work ethic and sense of austerity changed the city forever, and made it the
haven of persecuted Protestants that came to it from many corners of Europe
and ultimately merged with the local elites. Since then, Geneva was meant to
be known as 'the Protestant Rome'. The banking sector flourished and forged
connections with most important business centers in Europe and America,
especially among Protestant families. After the failed French annexation in
Napoleonic times and feeling vulnerable, the city-state decides to become part
of the Swiss Confederation as one of its cantons.
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As many other Swiss cantons, Geneva has marked cantonal pride and
distinctive local manners. Journalist and politician Guy Mettan (2013, 64)
describes Geneva as “always having a more agitated political life than the other
Swiss cantons.” The political polarization of the city, or as Mettan calls it, “Le
goût de la dispute” (65), makes often the cantonal political life, as well as the
mockery of Swiss German newspapers. In an interesting passage by Genevan
historian Joëlle Kuntz (2011, 26), she describes Geneva’s entrance to
Switzerland as follows: “the patrician families of Geneva had chosen to join
the Confederation by calculation rather than enthusiasm, since independence
was no longer an option in the face of French and Austrian threats.” Then,
citing Genevan historian Irène Herrmann, Kuntz insinuates that for Genevans
it mattered a big deal to understand their decision of joining Switzerland as
something that would not jeopardize the city's “superiority”. After the entrance,
therefore, it was “a matter of duty” to share with “the rest of the Swiss”
Geneva's political “advantages.” “The only way Geneva could become Swiss
was by holding the torch of the enlightenment for the rest of Switzerland.” This
makes a good example of how regionalisms still play an important role in the
country. Still today, Geneva’s local politicians often avoid the word ‘canton’;
“la République de Genève”, or simply “notre République” or “la République”
are the most common choices of political speeches.
Actually, many remark that it looks as if the city were too “into the
world” as to pay more attention to its nearby region and to the rest of its
country. It is no coincidence that the first railroad Geneva built connected it to
Lyon, and only later did it get connected to Lausanne (Mettan 2013, 21). With
a critical eye, Genevan journalist and politician Guy Mettan (2013, 58) writes:
“literally, Genevans do not “see” their vaudois and French neighbors.
Annemasse, Nyon, Lausanne are for them abstractions, less real than Paris,
London or New York. They are grey zones on the map, terra incognita,
inhabited by nice yet rustic peoples.” Drawing on this impression, he warns
about the danger the canton faces if it does not plan appropriately its growth
and 'regionalization' in partnership with the authorities of the neighboring
regions, which today constitutes the canton’s greatest political challenge.
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The first step towards Geneva's internationalism was made with the
foundation of the ICRC and the signature of the first ‘Geneva Convention’ in
1864 on humanitarian treatment of the wounded under the event of war. The
second step—and probably the most difficult one—was the decision to place
the seat of the League of Nations in this city after the end of World War I. The
two candidates were Geneva and Brussels. The latter, in Belgium, also a neutral
country, was the choice of France and other parties, not only because of
political reasons but also because of the functionality that a capital city could
offer to a major international organization, against what looked like a small
parish to the sceptic eyes. After many setbacks and an intense Genevan and
Swiss lobbying, the commitment—others would call it stubbornness—of U.S.
president Woodrow Wilson guaranteed the seat for the League in Geneva.
Wilson's Presbyterianism (derived from the religious reforms promoted by
John Calvin), the ICRC, the Swiss reputation of neutrality, and the fact that the
country was a democracy instead of Belgium’s constitutional monarchy (which
made it closer to the American political taste), all these factors might have
played a role in the final decision.
In the 1920s the city was slowly taking the form that it has today, with
the construction of hotels and the arrival of international delegations from all
the League's members. When the final headquarters of the League of Nations,
the Palais des Nations, was inaugurated in 1937 it was the biggest public
building in Europe. The accumulation of the ICRC, the League, and the ILO in
a single city was enough a force of attraction, and made small Geneva the center
par excellance of multilateral diplomacy in the world and the seat of dozens of
IOs and NGOs. In the aftermath of World War II and when the U.S. was
committed to host the recently-created United Nations (UN), Europeans called
for maintaining in Geneva—that is, in European soil—the second UN seat,
occupying the same building of the now-inexistent League. While New York
kept the more political part of the UN, hosting the Security Council, Geneva
specialized in more technical and social issues, just as in the League's old times.
The last phase of the city's evolution has been determined by the end of the
Cold War. A more peaceful world also makes easier for other countries and
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cities to host major conferences and international organizations, which
constitutes a paradox of Geneva’s own diplomatic achievements. Although
from Vienna to Madrid, to Bonn, to Nairobi, competition has become fiercer,
Geneva has so-far succeeded in maintaining its place as the second biggest seat
of the UN, and no other city in the world hosts so many IOs and UN agencies
as Geneva does. However, if the small size of the city as hub of international
organizations was an issue when Geneva first entered the scene of multilateral
diplomacy, it remains an important concern, shaping much of the city’s
diplomatic life, as it will be seen below.
Beside the WTO, important landmarks in Geneva are the United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the ILO, the
International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO), the International Organization for Migration
(IOM), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the
World Health Organization (WHO), the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO), and the European Organization for Nuclear Research
(CERN).
Counting NGOs and IOs, the diplomats and officials who work in
Geneva roughly sum 43 thousand people, half of which are IOs officials, and
40% of those are residents of France, crossing the border on a daily basis to
reach their jobs. Taking into account their families and the direct services they
demand, one can argue that at least one third of the residents of the canton are
directly or indirectly related to what has come to be called "International
Geneva" (Kuntz 2011; Mettan 2013, 41; CCIG 2014, 21–22).
The 480 thousand inhabitants and almost 70 thousand foreign
frontaliers make up the canton's economy (République et canton de Genève
2015; CCIG 2014, 81), not counting the Swiss nationals that work in Geneva
while being residents in French territory. Driven by a prosperous economy, the
number of frontaliers doubled in one decade, which has also increased political
tensions as well as the need for more regional cooperation. Actually, the
number of frontaliers in Geneva is such that, despite the fact that the canton
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only has 5% of Switzerland’s population, it hosts one quarter of the total
amount of foreign frontaliers who live in neighboring countries and who work
in Swiss territory (ibid).
Beside the ‘international industry’, Geneva also hosts the headquarters
of several high-tech multinationals and important universities. Banking
remains an important sector as it is revealed by the fact that Geneva is one of
the 20 more important centers for finance in the world, according to the Global
Financial Centers Index (GFCI) (Z/Yen Group 2015) despite being the smallest
city in the list in terms of population. The mixture of the canton's economic
specialization and its extreme constraints of space turn Geneva into one of the
most expensive cities in the world (UBS 2015), something that can be
perceived by its residents not only in the high rents and real-state prices of the
city, but also in every coffee shop, restaurant, boutique, or supermarket.
This concurrence of bankers, their clients, diplomats, and global
governance intelligentsia, and the frequent visits of governmental authorities
and high-income tourists from all over the world, combined with the high living
standards that are characteristic in Switzerland, all of this gives Geneva an air
of luxury and distinction. For the trained eyes it is not uncommon to see well
known figures of international politics making use of the city as other residents
and visitors do. There, the head of an IO does shopping at Rue de la
Confédération on a Saturday afternoon with his wife; the former Secretary
General of the UN frequently gives public lectures in a local university; two
ministers who are attending a global meeting promenade in the old city in the
evening looking for a restaurant, with no traces of security detail; ambassadors
chat in cafés and restaurants all over the city; or they buy oranges and bread on
their own in the only supermarket that is open on Sundays. Yet, notably, far
from noisy crowds of autograph-seekers in the style of Hollywood stars, the
reaction of the people around these personalities is rather closer to unawareness
or to indifference. This is partly because such scenes are common currency in
the city and, therefore, part of the landscape and nothing to be too excited
about; and partly because of the well-known respect to people's sphere of
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privacy that is as common in Geneva as it is in the rest of Switzerland. In 1992
Colombian Nobel Prize Gabriel García Márquez published a short story that
takes place in Geneva, where he describes it as “the city of the illustrious
unknowns” (García Márquez 2006, 3). His depiction of Geneva was indeed
accurate and maintains its validity over the decades.
Yet, another important aspect of Geneva, an aspect that is difficult to
underline enough, is the city’s great and uncommon degree of internationalism.
The ancient maxim used to say that if one was willing to know the world, it
was necessary to travel around the whole world; or, alternatively, just to stay
in Rome. This maxim normally has applied well for the biggest urban centers
of all times, and applies especially well for today's biggest metropolis. If
observers pay enough attention to the people of cities such a New York,
London, or Berlin, they can learn a great deal about the world as a whole. Such
centers, with their influxes of goods, trends, visitors, and immigrants teach a
lot about the world's human diversity. And well, the same can be said about
nowadays Geneva, just that in the outmost degree of intensity.
Beside a considerable number of ‘confederates’ who live in the city
(that is, Swiss non-Genevans, who count for 23% of the total residents), the
foreign residents in the city reach the number of 41% (République et canton de
Genève 2015). And it has to be noted that a considerable percentage of Swiss
national residents in the canton have a foreign origin from first to third
generation. This means that the great majority of the population in the city has
a foreign origin. This goes well with a common saying that is always repeated
by the residents: “A Genève, il n’y a pas de Genevois” (In Geneva there are no
Genevans). To put this in perspective, it has to be noted that only a few cities
in the world attain such levels of foreign residents. Toronto has 46% of foreign-
born residents and constitutes a remarkable case. Brussels reaches 62%, a city
where the European institutions are a powerful pole of attraction for EU
citizens and for the world’s diplomatic, NGO, and lobbying community. With
83%, Dubai has the highest percentage in absolute terms, yet one single
country, India, is the origin of most of them (IOM 2015, 39).
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What stands out in Geneva, compared with the other cities mentioned,
is the unusual smallness of the total population combined to the extraordinary
diversity of origins of its foreign residents. In Geneva there is a naturally high
representation of French population, which can be easily explained by language
and geography; but what is striking is the fact that all foreign residents literally
come from every single corner of the world. The same happens with the
frontaliers who work in the city. Although there is again a French majority and
a quarter of them are in fact Swiss themselves who reside in the French side,
lots of frontaliers come from all over the European Union and from the rest of
the world. Geneva is therefore populated by all kinds of international
restaurants imaginable, and in tram-ways and buses, in parks and sidewalks,
one can hear all the major languages of the world. You go through any random
street and in less than a hundred meters you hear Catalan, Russian and
Mandarin; you turn left in the corner and you hear Chilean Spanish, Brazilian
Portuguese, and Arabic; you get into a bus and there two men speak British
English and a lady reads poetry in Japanese at their side; you get out in the
following station and there two young ladies chat in Zulu while waiting for
another bus, while a bunch of young students joke in Italian; and so on. When
observing the family names of mail boxes in residence buildings, visitors would
hardly find one building in which at least half a dozen of national and linguistic
origins are not represented in those boxes. It is true that similar scenes of
linguistic international diversity could be described for New York or Paris, for
Montreal or São Paulo, but in these megalopolis—because of their size—the
intensity and the frequency of these events is not equally great, as the local
population is more able to assert itself and stand out in the social landscape.
That is less the case in Geneva. From the construction worker to the hairdresser,
to the waiter, to the interpreter, to the diplomat, to the IO director-general,
Geneva is an unparalleled case of human and linguistic diversity in a single,
confined space. To put it simply, Geneva is the smallest and the most compact
of global cities. It sounds therefore doubly fair that journalist Blaise Lempen
(2010), for his book about the city, had decided to call it “the laboratory of the
21st century,” not only because of the international governance that the city
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fosters, as he points out, but also because of the very human diversity that the
city hosts. The city’s social dynamics deserve deep academic attention.
However—and this aspect might be as important as the former—, it
looks like if all of Geneva's multinational and multicultural diversity is
somehow filtered through the city's protestant austerity. The city might seem
embedded in a certain silence and monotony. The same charitable fellow who
is standing an unknown's parked bicycle up in a pedestrian way, that just fell
down because of the traffic speed, would not dare to establish eye-contact nor
to smile to the pedestrians he crosses in the way to his job. There is a long
tradition of outsiders who dislike small and rigid Geneva or that do not feel
totally at ease in it. Italian Niccolò Machiavelli, according to Genevan Robert
de Traz in his L'Esprit de Genève (1929), used to call it the “città degli
malcontenti” (the city of the malcontents). Difficult to assess if it was only a
description about religious preferences against Catholic Rome or a deeper
comment on the city’s overall seriousness and austerity, which is more likely
the case at least in the sense that Robert de Traz wanted to give to his citation.
More recently, British Diccon Bewes (2012, 73–74) has arrived at similar
assessments. Trying to explain why Geneva is commonly the “least favorite”
Swiss city for Swiss Germans (actually, many joke saying that “Geneva is not
Switzerland; Geneva is Geneva”), he writes:
Maybe it's not the lingo that's the problem but the sombre
nature of everything and everyone. Too serious even for the
Swiss, with no joie de vivre here in any language. The
Protestant work ethic seems to have seeped into the buildings,
the streets and the people. For sure there are lots of expensive
baubles glittering in shop windows, but very few twinkles in
people’s eyes.
And he continues:
This is a city that forgot how to have fun even after Calvin
died, and his influence is evidently still at work—as is the
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whole population. You only have to see his hard wooden chair
sitting in the very bare cathedral to know what he thought
about comfort and beauty.
In a similar spirit, Genevan Guy Mettan (2013, 87) complains about
the “ugliness” of the city:
Why do we always build hideous (affreux) buildings? Why do
our public squares have to be ugly? Why do our architects
make boring lines for our buildings knowing that modern
architecture makes everywhere else magnificent works?
Maybe because of stupid rules, or because of a misunderstood
Calvinist austerity, it is that we are always forced to build
ungracefully. Only the audaciously-delineated and colorful
buildings of the International Quarter break the monotony of
6-floor shoeboxes. (My translation)
His remarks graciously coincide with Genevan historian Joëlle Kuntz
(2011, 63) about the somber nature of the city. When describing the epoch of
the construction of the Palais des Nations in the 1930s, she declares that
“energy and excitement flowed from these global institutions into the small,
rather dreary city”. In fact, not even the WTO building is saved from this
‘austere spirit’ as, according to her—yet with no irony—the former ILO and
current WTO building was a “Protestant interpretation of Florentine
architecture” (59). Despite the charm of its history, despite the amazing
postcard view of the lake, despite its huge and unembraceable cultural agenda,
despite its yearly international motor show and other events of the like, and
despite its unique human diversity, the sobriety of Protestant Rome is not to the
like of many. Anecdotic trivia as it may sound, this fact proves to be
fundamental for understanding the lives of diplomats and staff who work in
Geneva's IOs and NGOs.
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The International Quarter and the Latin American missions
Now, where are the Latin American delegates to the WTO in Geneva to be
found? The UN’s Palais des Nations, located in Ariana's park, is the heart of
the International Quarter, which expands around with a radius of approximately
one kilometer. In front of the Palais is the Place des Nations, where the
monument of the broken chair stands, and the WIPO and ITU buildings are just
in the opposite front of the square. Avenue de la Paix connects this complex
westwards to the Centre William Rappard, which is the building of the WTO,
and ultimately to the lake.
Diplomatic missions tend to be located around this axis, most of them
within the International Quarter itself. Their locations, office size, and gardens
are all important approximations to the might and budget of every country and,
therefore, to the power asymmetries in the world. The Russian and Canadian
diplomatic missions, for instance, are big complexes surrounded by green areas
located just a few steps from Place des Nations and quite in front of the UN
building. Likewise, the U.S. and French missions are located along the
prestigious Route de Pregny, which is a continuation of the Avenue de la Paix,
in the upper side of the Palais des Nations. In contrast, Latin American
missions are of the ordinary kind, occupying a floor or a section of a floor in
office buildings often shared with other permanent missions. A few countries
have managed to put their offices in the International Quartier’s inner circle,
such as Mexico (occupying a whole floor), Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay
and Chile. Others have sacrificed location in order to assure bigger space, such
as Venezuela, located in the Grand Saconnex area, or Cuba, who owns a two-
floor palace that is located closer to the French border in the most distant part
of the Pregny area. Others, such as Argentina, Peru, and Brazil, preferred the
architecture of modern business buildings, in the strategic location of the
airport and in the avenue that connects it to the city. Still, the rest (Bolivia,
Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti,
Honduras, Panama, and Uruguay,) have opted for the more modest Rue de
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Lausanne and its surroundings, which is the central street that connects
Geneva’s train station to the WTO building.
The different missions’ ‘headquarters’ range from old to modern
buildings, to residential apartments that were adapted as government offices,
to half the floor of a small château with high ceilings. Sometimes they are as
well-arranged and aseptic as a hospital and inside visitors can have the
impression that they are in modern business offices anywhere in the world. Yet,
the missions stand through a characteristic decoration of flags, coats of arms,
presidential portraits, maps, and touristic posters, through which the office
embodies the official governmental representation. In other words, the
missions’ offices are an instrument of institutionalization-ritualization
practices in the sense of Jönsson and Hall (2005) (see Chapter 2). Depending
on the mission, this decoration with official symbolism can be sharp and
precise, as if it were conditioned by experts in institutional relations. And in a
few cases, when it was possible to underline the institutional strength, the
symbolic ensemble is culminated by a wall of honor showcasing the pictures
of the current and previous ambassadors that have been in charge of the
diplomatic mission. In other cases, by contrast, the mission decoration is less
harmonious: altered and added upon by different waves of secretaries and
assistants who pass by, and with the numerous touristic souvenirs from home
left behind. Sometimes, the selection of the decoration—and its saturation—
can transport the visitor, as under a stereotype, to the very country that the
mission represents. In one case, the delegates saw no contradiction between the
majesty of a diplomatic office and the use, at the mission’s entrance, of a
welcome mat with a smiley, tongue-in-the-air, cartoon-like dog printed on it.
In some missions, photography books of national landscapes and touristic or
economic brochures of the country are at the disposal for visitors on the table
in the waiting room. In others, there are neither photography books nor waiting
rooms, but chairs alongside a corridor instead. In some missions, delegates of
all hierarchies enjoy individual offices of 20 square meters or more, beside the
mission´s meeting room and the traditionally extended ambassador’s office,
which includes its own couch and living room table. By contrast, in other cases,
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employees are packed into smaller and louder spaces. From these missions to
the WTO building, in workdays and in work hours, delegates come and go.
The locations and general amenities of the diplomatic facilities, as well
as their symbolisms, are relevant because they are the first out of several layers
of conditioning parameters that delegates face in the field for conducting their
work. The importance of such conditioning parameters—which include
salaries, residence conditions, representation budget, among others—cannot be
analyzed only in absolute but in relative terms, in relation with the peers’
situation in the diplomatic community. When these parameters are adequate,
they empower delegates, safeguard their status, and ease their way in the
diplomatic community. When they are not, they turn into important constraints.
However, although the differences in these parameters are an expression of
power asymmetries among countries, the notion of ‘power asymmetry’ as such
falls short to explain the different levels of the phenomenon. As a concept,
‘asymmetry of power’ is too abstract, and implicitly subscribes to the also
abstract concept of ‘relative power’ discussed in Chapter 2.
Just to cite a few examples, the United States has by all means more
relative power today than Russia, and yet the symbolism of the location of their
diplomatic missions is only equivalent at best. Guatemala is bigger and
wealthier than Nicaragua, and yet they enjoy the same privileged location at
the center of the International Quarter. Conversely, Colombia is one of the
biggest economies in the region and Uruguay one of the wealthiest, but the
location of their missions is not necessarily outstanding. This shows that the
abstract references of relative power do not manifest evenly or uniformly in the
diplomatic field. It is therefore useful to advance a couple of new concepts that
complement and discriminate the notion of asymmetries of power.
In addition to asymmetries of power, delegates also face asymmetries
of resources. These can be understood as the concrete means that they have at
their disposal in the field to attend their work and the constraints that they
endure. The technical knowledge of delegates, their knowledge of languages,
or the size of their teams—all variables that will be discussed below and in the
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following chapters—can be considered part of the asymmetries of resources.
What matters is that they have a concrete manifestation in the diplomatic field,
regardless of their measurability or of the public availability of data. Thus, the
quality of the mission’s facilities and the symbolism of their location—when
there is such—make part of this category.
Moreover, in addition to the asymmetries of resources, delegates face
asymmetries of awareness. This third category of asymmetries can be equally
independent from the other two. ‘Awareness’ refers to the consciousness or
recognition that delegates exhibit about the rules of the diplomatic game in the
multilateral setting. It can be understood as the awareness about the multiple
factors that are at stake, about the procedures to navigate in the system, and
about the subtleties and manifold symbolisms of their mise en scène in the
diplomatic community (the theatrical dimension of diplomats is there again).
The choice of missions’ internal decoration, including the otherwise trivial
welcome mat for the entrance door, makes part of this category. To continue
with the example provided earlier, if the choice of a smiley cartoon dog for the
welcome mat makes part of a deliberate will to exhibit casualness and
informality, then things are under control, even if risks are being taken. If, in
contrast, the mat choice is an unconcerned, careless decision, then it could
constitute a lack of tact and therefore an example of asymmetries of awareness
in the system. The example presented here is rather banal but it is illustrative.
Key cases of this type of asymmetries will be discussed in Chapter 5.
Naturally, knowledge is power. Therefore, the asymmetries of
resources and awareness are at the very end only different forms of power
asymmetries. However, the hierarchization of these categories turns useful for
the analysis of multilateral diplomacy. Particularly, these categories provide
clues in regard to the research hypothesis of this dissertation, namely, that
diplomatic representation is as important as—and relatively independent of—
relative power for explaining the country influence in international
organizations. After all, decisions on welcome mats, mission decorations, and
many other things of the like do not depend on budgets and/or relative power.
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And such decisions are not simply a matter of good or bad taste: what is a stake
is the mise en escène du pouvoir; that is, the legitimation of political power
through image, iconography, and disposition of space (Bonnell 1999; Agulhon
2001; Dierkens and Marx 2003; Haselstein, Ostendorf, and Schneck 2003;
Andermann and Rowe 2004).
The actors experiencing the stage
For diplomats, to work in embassies and in diplomatic missions always implies
to enjoy a certain cultural and linguistic continuity in the workplace. Such
continuity is provided by the colleagues that also work in the mission, who
under normal circumstances are fellow nationals, as well as by the constant
communication that they have to maintain with government offices in their
capitals. In this sense, embassies and missions can operate as a sort of national
bubbles that dose or mitigate the contact between diplomats and the contexts
of their destinations. Apart from that valuable advantage, the human experience
that diplomats have to endure while living abroad is no different from that of
ordinary expatriates working in a new country or from common immigrants
during the first years of integration into their new place and circumstances.
That is to say, the experience of diplomats living abroad inherently involves
cultural shock and adaptation. When diplomats are on a mission in a foreign
country, the same way as other expatriates, they have to be far away from their
circle of relatives, friends, and acquaintances, and away from their cultural
comfort zones. They have to cope with their condition of expatriates and the
subsequent homesickness that it tends to involve. The relevant concern that
emerges here is what is the case of adaptation in Geneva, and what are the
specific challenges associated with this destination. To be sure, most delegates
acknowledge that they pass through a period of adaptation to the new urban
environment, and that the host city imposes a few hardships on its own.
Most testimonies by delegates unveil a dichotomy, duality, or
ambivalence of perceptions regarding life in Geneva. This mixed assessment is
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more common than opinions uniquely positive or uniquely negative about the
city. At one extreme, this ambivalence is composed by a great admiration about
the quality of life they can enjoy in the city and about the dynamism of
International Geneva. At the other extreme, the admiration is checked by
several hardships that they have to endure when adapting to the city. As will
be seen below, delegates are due to face challenges related to the cost of life,
to language, to cultural differences, and to the small size of the city, which
reinforces—and facilitates—the connection among the actors of International
Geneva, but invading, at the same time, the actors’ sphere of privacy.
Positive perceptions
On the one hand, there is the admiration, and the comfort and privileges that
come along with life in Switzerland and with work in the diplomatic
community. As previously mentioned, Switzerland is one of the countries that
ranks highest in quality of life, what translates into advantages in terms of
security and tranquility, quality of the education system (which matters a lot to
delegates with families), medical care, infrastructure, and access to a wide offer
of goods and services. In the words of a delegate, “adaptation is hard at the
beginning, but after that period all goes like on automatic pilot… because
everything works. Public transport is reliable, there are no big traffic jams,
Internet doesn’t get shot down, neighborhoods are tranquil.” When delegates
come from emerging countries, it is clear that many of these amenities are less
common—or at least less universal—in their places of origin. Others even
follow more romantic lines, referring to the fulfillment they find by being
surrounded by so much nature, as the one offered by the typical Swiss
landscape. Actually some delegates do not live within the urban area of the city
but in small villages in the rural parts of the canton and surrounding areas,
which are located at a comfortable distance to the city center by car. “I have
the joys of the life of a peasant,” one of those delegates affirms. “I breath fresh
air here; every day I walk in the middle of vineyards and flower fields,” he
explains. This comfort and high quality of life is often backed by generous
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salaries, which are traditionally higher than in their capitals in order to
compensate the higher cost of living in a city like Geneva. As a matter of fact,
Indian diplomat Kishan Rana (2011, 98) considered multilateral posts to be
“among the most comfortable of all diplomatic assignments.” In particular,
New York and Geneva are perceived to be at the top of these “charmed places,”
where the living conditions of diplomats are substantially better than in most
of bilateral posts available world-wide in national foreign services.
Additionally, admiration and privilege also come along with the
opportunity to work in Geneva’s diplomatic hub. Taking into account both
diplomats, IOs and NGOs staff, the city functions as a permanent magnet of
human talent. For delegates it turns into an opportunity to increase their
professional contacts, to boost their careers, to mingle with talented officials
and to learn from them. An ambassador marveled at the accumulation of talent
and expertise that diplomats could find in the city. “That is the power of
Geneva,” he states; a place where concrete opportunities of state-to-state
collaboration at a very deep technical level are possible, but that would
otherwise be unlikely if International Geneva did not come into being. Many
often refer at the “weight of history” that Geneva makes them feel in their work.
This is because of the centuries-old neutrality of Switzerland, because of the
long-standing record of establishing landmarks that this diplomatic center has
gathered over the decades, and because of the very antiquity of the city.
Compared with the modern architecture of the UN complex in New York, or
the buildings of the UN agencies in Vienna, Rome, Madrid, and everywhere
else, Geneva’s Palais des Nations and the Centre William Rappard (the WTO
building) are covered by a special majesty because of their antiquity and more
classic architecture. “Here you just feel it,” one points out. It is like if this
architectural majesty were there to demand more personal responsibility from
the actors, but also to reinforce the sense of exclusiveness and personal
privilege associated with their assignments in Geneva. In sum, the dynamism
of the diplomatic hub is a key factor among the positive things that bring the
new life in the city.
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Challenges
On the other hand, however, there are the discomforts and the challenges. The
first of them is the high cost of living. As stated before, Geneva is one of the
most expensive cities in the world. Although diplomats enjoy exemption from
consumption taxes (VAT), this high cost of living forces governments to make
substantial financial efforts to fund the missions’ staff and facilities (and in
some cases the ambassador’s residences). Governments are due to decide the
number of delegates they want to afford in the city and the financial conditions
they will be subject to. For countries with a small budget and/or scarce interest
in the multilateral trade system there is often a trade-off between those two
variables. At the ambassadorial level there are less problems as the salaries are
the highest in the missions’ payrolls. At that level, only a small proportion of
ambassadors are ready to admit severe underpayment in relation with the local
cost of living. Where it is easier to find struggles is at the level of lower-ranking
delegates, who earn lower salaries. Even though these salaries might be high
compared with equivalent jobs in the delegates’ home countries, they are often
insufficient to match local expenses. Attracted by gaining international and
work experience, in some cases junior officials accept diplomatic positions in
Geneva at the expense of a reduced quality of life than the one they would
enjoy with an equivalent job in the public or private sector if they stay in their
home countries. Other potential candidates are simply deterred by worse living
conditions. Some ambassadors admit that the calamitous combination of low
salaries in their countries’ public sector and Geneva’s high cost of living
systematically undermines the capacity of their missions to attract young talent.
“I cannot invite a good professional to have a bad living here… they would
give up short after they have arrived anyway,” an ambassador points out. In
any case, the delegates who are not deterred by the diminished conditions, and
the ones who do have better salaries, are constantly facing an expensive
context, causing them to be more alert than usual with their expenses.
Among the challenges of living in Geneva there is also a linguistic
dimension. Geneva is a French-speaking canton, yet English has evolved over
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time as today’s lingua franca of diplomacy and global governance. Most
delegates speak English and use it as the language of ordinary work
interactions, but knowledge of French is less common in the diplomatic
community as a whole. This does not prevent delegates from making a basic
functional use of the city. The service sector has adapted to the flux of
expatriates and tourists, and a substantial amount of the residents speak English
as a foreign language. Actually, as “everything works” in the city, many
immigrants—and even a few diplomats—are able to navigate through the city
even with no command of English or French. However, the fact that an
important amount of diplomats do not speak French reduces their chances of a
deeper immersion into Geneva’s local community and into the city’s cultural
agenda. The non-universal use of French as a second or third language by the
diplomatic community decreases the social choices of delegates, and therefore
becomes one of the factors reinforcing social interaction within the sphere of
International Geneva while creating a boundary towards the rest of the city. It
thus becomes one factor preventing some diplomats from a fully and more
successful adaptation in the city’s social life.
Another factor is the wide-spread perception that the city is “cold,” a
label that ranges from a plain description of climatic conditions to more direct
opinions about the people’s “character” or “mentality.” “Geneva is a good
place to live only for two months during summer,” is a frequent claim made by
some diplomats and other residents. Arguably, the weather affects more the
delegates who come from regions with gentler temperatures. But the
assessments run deeper. Geneva is often pictured as a city where it is not easy
to make friends and to meet local people. On the one hand, the common cultural
traits of the Swiss society are present in Geneva, characterized, as mentioned
earlier, by inclination to reserve, strict separation between work and private
life, long-term conceptions of friendship, and less room for spontaneity. On the
other hand, these Swiss cultural traits get reinforced in Geneva by the
bureaucratic, professional-like, and ultimately aseptic style of the officials
working in the international organizations who, to a great extent, dominate the
city’s atmosphere. This is connected to Diccon Bewes’ description of Geneva
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as being “too serious even for the Swiss,” a place where there are “very few
twinkles in people’s eyes.”
Many delegates recognize these cultural differences and report a
diminished social life because of them. “Here, there are new codes to interact
with others. And no one tells you what those codes are about. It’s very hard to
meet people while you figure them out on your own,” a delegate observes. “In
other places you find an individual-based social dynamics. Here the social
dynamics is group-based,” another delegate adds. It seems that, often, the
empathetic, relatively more informal or even permissive style of Latin
Americans in their social interactions can struggle to find receptiveness in local
residents. Mutual misunderstandings and diverging social codes are common.
Yet this perception is hardly reduced to Latin Americans; rather, it makes part
of the ordinary small talk of many of the city’s residents, from the most diverse
origins. As in the case of language, one effect of this is to bolster social
interactions within the sphere of the diplomatic and IOs community, while
fortifying the boundary between that sphere and the rest of the city. At both
sides of this boundary, observers find that International Geneva is like a
“bubble,” or like “a city within the city.” The two sides coexist in the same
territory and to a great extent depend on one another in economic terms, but
each seems to follow its own social dynamics.
Clearly, adaptation into Geneva’s environment also depends on age
and marital status. Delegates bringing their families with them experience this
adaptation differently. Family ties function as a buffer regarding the new city
and the social relations yet to build. However, for the other members of the
family—generally wives and children—, the adaptation is likely to be tougher.
As they do not work in the diplomatic missions, they can be more detached
from “home,” what makes their immersion into the city more intense as well
as more difficult. Additionally, for delegates’ partners it is not always easy to
find a suitable job in the city, which adds stress and difficulties to the families.
Nonetheless, as long as their family members start building social networks on
their own, delegates may benefit from this expanded family network. For
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instance, an ambassador who is at the end of his tenure declares: “the only
opportunity I had to get to know Genevans was through my children. Their
friendships at school eventually made for an invitation to a dinner in the home
of a local family.” In comparison, younger and single delegates can experiment
more difficulties in their adaptation, not only because solitude forces to start a
social network from scratch but also because peer-to-peer networking in the
WTO sphere seems to be less present at lower ranks of the mission’s hierarchy,
pushing them to try a higher engagement with local social life.
If there are challenges when trying to interact with local people, there
are naturally challenges when interacting with members of the International
Geneva. One that is usually cited is that many of them stay in the city only on
a temporary basis. Diplomatic assignments eventually meet their ends, and the
same happens with internships, consultantships, and temporary positions in
international organizations. There is a big floating population in the city,
coming and going very fast. International Geneva is always crowded, but it
renews its faces quickly over time. The city is seen as a lieu de passage, a good
place to meet people from everywhere around the world, but where, at the same
time, everybody leaves too soon. A delegate observes: “you barely have time
to cultivate friendships here. All go back to their countries at some point or go
to live and work somewhere else, and you are forced to start the process all
over again.” The process is perceived as “too fluid.” “Friendships become more
pragmatic, because everybody knows that everybody leaves soon,” another
delegate points out.
Finally, one more relevant challenge that diplomats face when
adapting to Geneva is its size. The city is small. To be sure, the dynamism of
cities and the diversity of activities they can offer are not only associated with
their local culture but they also—and simply—depend on their size. In the case
of Geneva, it must be considered the fact that only a very small fraction of the
world capitals—that is, the places where most delegates have lived and worked
previously—have smaller populations than Geneva. Paramaribo, Bern,
Reykjavik, or Malabo might be the more famous examples of capital cities
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smaller than Geneva, and they are naturally far from being central in world
politics and in the world economy. Somehow amazed by the fact, some
delegates point out that Geneva turns out to be the smallest urban
agglomeration where they have ever lived. This intrinsically poses challenges
to them in terms of life style and of the city’s dynamism.
However, the issue of size is twofold. It is not only that the city is
small, but that it is, at the same time, arguably the most important diplomatic
center of Europe. The two things combined create an atmosphere of high-level,
ubiquitous hyper-connectedness in public settings that is difficult to match by
any other city. “We live in a diplomatic ghetto,” an ambassador jokes. Another
one declares: “you observe, and you are always observed.” It is just too easy to
run into other members of the diplomatic community anywhere in the city. A
delegate declares: “You go to a theater; you find colleagues there. You go to a
cinema; you find colleagues there. You go to a restaurant; and you find
colleagues there.” And as the community is small, gossip runs fast. A delegate
explains: “You make a mistake and people know it. A car with diplomatic
numbers doesn’t stop at the red light. You know the codes; you know to what
mission it belongs. You cross a pedestrian red light and a delegate from another
mission who was sitting in the bus nearby saw you through the window. You
over-drink in a pub and the employee of an IO saw you; you don’t know who
he is but he does know who you are.” If delegates must watch their moves
carefully, or otherwise reputation—a precious asset in diplomatic work—pays
a price, then the delegates’ response can be no other than to add one more layer
of austerity to a city already renown by its austerity. Yet not everyone follows
the same rules. Stories of misbehavings are common currency in circles of trust.
There are also delegates that have loud cellphone conversations in buses and
tram-ways that by all means should be considered confidential. Forgetting that
many random ears in the city understand their native languages, and that what
they say is professionally relevant for many as well, they talk in public settings
without realizing the risks. These episodes are not uncommon.
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This intensity of diplomatic life in Geneva is not easily matched by
other diplomatic centers in the world. The case of New York can be used as
comparison. One or two blocks after a diplomatic car leaves the UN complex
in Manhattan, it is subsequently ‘swallowed’ by a metropolitan area of more
than 20 million inhabitants, and which imposes its own social dynamics. There,
UN staff and diplomatic community are simply a minority. Both officials and
diplomats can make clear ‘cuts’ between official representation and private life
more easily if they want to, as a big urban mass comes along with the
anonymity of the ordinary citizen. Quite not the case in Geneva. Geneva is
never able to ‘swallow’ or ‘absorb’ its diplomatic community the same way
that New York, London, Vienna, or Paris can. Instead, it is the diplomatic
community—its codes, its rhythms—that imposes itself on Geneva. The city
operates as a sort of decentralized version of the Foucouldian panoptic or a
revisited model of George Orwell’s Big Brother, where the control by a single
authority has been replaced by mutual and accidentally permanent surveillance.
Such intensity can be tiring for delegates and produce a bit of
claustrophobia. As a result, some members of the diplomatic community take
any advantage to leave during their free time. “Whenever I have the chance, I
travel abroad,” many declare. The numerous connections of the local airport to
European destinations help. Mediterranean destinations are among the most
popular. Actually, it has to be added in passing that this does not differ from a
common strategy that many expatriates living in Switzerland adopt. Many
acknowledge that they like the Swiss order and tranquility but, at the same time,
they need their “batteries recharged” every two or three months and they do so
by traveling abroad. Still, in the case of diplomats, this pattern can be
considered the evidence of a mental division under which Geneva—and
everything within it—is completely associated with work, while the rest of the
continent turns into the real place for having a private life. This makes sense
for a city in which, because of its size, “after a while you get to recognize that
the people walking in the streets are always the same,” according to a delegate,
and where many of these “same people” are closely related with the Genève
Internationale, and that is, they are related with the delicate networks of their
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jobs. Really resting from work may become for many the equivalent of
escaping from the city for a couple of days—or, alternatively, not leaving their
homes.
This being the context of the city, a long and complex period of
adaptation awaits diplomats with their appointments in Geneva. Diplomats
truly face a drama of adaptation to the particularities of their new urban context.
Some never fully adapt to the city until the end of their tenures. The
ambivalence of perceptions between admiration and struggle, comfort and
discomfort towards the city last long and is characteristic of the diplomatic and
IO community. This drama of adaptation is more or less acute depending on
personal and budgetary circumstances. Yet, it cannot be assumed that generous
economic conditions for delegates are a guarantee to avoid all the struggles
involved in the adaptation process. There are aspects of it for which a higher
budget is not effective.
At the other side of the coin, there are the delegates who, after half a
decade or more living in the city, truly adapt to it and to its social codes.
Sometimes they do so to the point that their new adaptation to their countries
of origin proves to be difficult. After “going local” in Geneva, some even
confess they find it hard to have satisfactory conversations with fellow
nationals and even with relatives when they visit their home countries. Their
changes produce new conversational patterns and new logics for social
interactions, which are hard to move away when they go back. Differences in
the quality of life between Switzerland and their countries of origin also play a
crucial factor. A former ambassador explains: “It is not about wealth. It is about
a more integral conception of life. People often ask me what I miss the most
from Switzerland. Many get surprised when I tell them that what I miss the
most is the silence.” The temptation to remain in Geneva becomes a factor to
consider, especially because many positions offered by the international
organizations in the city match quite well with the skills and experience of the
most competent delegates. This puts governments in a difficult dilemma. On
the one hand, it tends to be regarded as an honor for them that their national
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delegates are considered for interesting positions in IOs, and it is also an
opportunity to increase the national indirect influence in these organizations.
On the other hand, however, the delegates who leave represent a great loss of
human capital that goes out—at least temporarily—of the circuit of government
institutions. It should also be noted that this government dilemma has no
equivalent in bilateral diplomacy, where diplomats do not face an equivalent
offer of career opportunities in their destinations abroad; it is rather associated
with several branches of multilateral diplomacy. In any case, the important
thing to underline here is that the drama of adaptation is twofold: it involves
one cultural shock and integration to the new context and, after success, it is
likely to produce a second cultural shock and a new process of integration to
the old context of the home country. The risk of the double shock also generates
from time to time, as a byproduct, that a few delegates prefer to avoid the
second shock by trying not to go back. A former ambassador observes: “Many
prefer to stay. Some try. Not all are able to make it.”
So, summing up, like other expatriates, delegates do experience a
drama of adaptation. They may suffer homesickness or “depaysement”
throughout the process of integration into the new geographical and cultural
context. This is an important drama to consider even if hardships are less rude
than in the case of ordinary immigrants. This drama is also twofold in the sense
that it involves the effort of adaptation to their new life in Geneva but also the
subsequent effort to adapt once again to their own cultural environment back
in their countries. Paradoxically, the more they succeed to adapt to the new
atmosphere, with the positive effect this adaptation has in the accomplishment
of their institutional goals, the higher the risk that their ‘counter-adaptation’ to
their countries of origin becomes heavier.
One thing becomes clear at this point regarding the research hypothesis
of this dissertation. It can be underlined that successful diplomatic
representation in IOs in Geneva, including representation to the WTO, depends
very much on the delegates’ capacity to adequately adapt to Geneva, their new
context. Yet, adaptation capacity comes from both personal qualities (linguistic
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knowledge, international experience, capacity to deal with cultural differences,
etc.) and institutional support (work conditions, salary, mission budget, etc.).
Common sense suggests that the bigger the relative power of a country, the
easier it can appoint suitable diplomats and the more likely its diplomats will
be backed by a strong institution behind them. However, this is only an
assumption. Institutional capacity and relative power can come hand in hand;
or not. It is always something that needs verification in the terrain. Likewise,
taking into account the variables considered so far, it is evident that institutional
capacity has its limits of action and cannot guarantee on its own the success of
diplomatic representation. To a great extent, this success is in the hands of
diplomats, namely, in individual knowledge and capacities. There is no doubt
that institutions can do much to foster the right skills in their current and
potential delegates. Nonetheless, what is starting to be outlined by this
dissertation reaffirms the central position of the individual in diplomacy (and
in multilateral trade diplomacy). Individuals bear a great responsibility
throughout the diplomatic process; and they also deserve a big part of the credit
when the outcomes are satisfactory, both for the system and for the countries
they represent.
Conclusions
The aim of this chapter was to present the geographical and social context in
which multilateral trade diplomacy takes place and the perception of actors
regarding their adaptation to it. The chapter analyzed general characteristics of
Western Europe, Switzerland, and Geneva, seat of the WTO, and how they can
differ from the previous Latin American contexts of the diplomats. Beside
presenting socio-economic indicators that highlight the differences between the
two contexts at each side of the Atlantic, the chapter discussed the issue of
cultural differences in the Swiss society. Additionally, the chapter presented
both positive opinions by actors as well as the challenges they face when
adapting to Geneva and to International Geneva.
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The chapter has reaffirmed that the World Trade Organization is not
an abstract entity located in a vacuum. The WTO is not only a few hundred
pages of international treaties. Nor is it simply a giant, ubiquitous website. Or
an abstract power struggle among member countries. The organization has a
spatial dimension; it is also an institution with facilities and staff, located in a
very singular context: the city of Geneva. Likewise, the relations of member
countries with this organization are not abstract, but pass through the
diplomatic missions located in the same city and through their officials.
Practitioners, therefore, are compelled to cope with this context on a daily basis
and to adapt to it for a successful participation in the system. They do so in
their own ways, but very much depending on their individual backgrounds and
on the economic resources at their disposal.
Western Europe highly differs from Latin American contexts,
particularly in terms of economic and human development, demographic and
urbanization patterns, and its greater linguistic and cultural diversity.
Furthermore, because of geographical and historical reasons, Switzerland has
forged a special political system and owns distinctive social codes of behavior
to which newcomers are due to adapt. Besides sharing common cultural traits
with the rest of the country, Geneva has its own cultural dynamics, which are
highly marked by the combination of the sphere of global governance that the
city hosts and the small size of the city. Key for delegates is their adaptation to
that local reality. Moreover, it is relevant to consider these local socio-cultural
codes because they become natural vectors of attraction of delegates’ social
practices, as will be expanded upon in Chapter 5.
In the narratives of delegates—and other practitioners—there is an
ambivalence of perceptions about the city. On the one hand, delegates manifest
admiration for the city’s quality of life and for the power, attraction of
knowledge, and social dynamism of International Geneva. On the other,
delegates admit their adaptation to Geneva poses several challenges. Among
the most important ones are the high cost of living, the language, cultural
differences, and the intensity of relations in the diplomatic community
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produced by the small format of the city, which erodes the sphere of privacy.
Many experience a ‘drama’ of adaptation; and this drama becomes twofold
after adaptation has succeeded, because delegates are likely to live it again
when they go back to their home countries and try to adapt to their previous
cultural contexts once again.
Successful diplomatic representation depends on delegates
successfully adapting to the context of Geneva and International Geneva.
Capacity to cope with this context depends on individual factors, such as
linguistic background, international exposure, sensitivity to cultural
differences, among others; and also depends on institutional factors, such as
salaries, missions’ budgets, and other kinds of institutional support. The co-
relation between the relative power of countries and their institutional strength
vis-à-vis the adaptation challenges of their delegates is not necessarily
automatic. Indeed, both things can be independent to a certain extent. Delegates
do not only face asymmetries of power—considered in abstract terms—when
trying to accomplish their work. Asymmetries of resources and asymmetries of
awareness also manifest in the diplomatic field and turn into useful notions
when analyzing multilateral diplomacy, as will be further discussed in Chapter
5.
This is the stage. When the Latin American delegates that come from
their capitals make their flight connections in Madrid, London, or Paris to
arrive at Geneva's airport, they are welcomed by long lines of publicity for
Swiss private banks and luxury watches, and by one of the last airport duty-
free zones in Europe. This austere yet diverse city of hot summers and cold
winters, its expensive restaurants and lively theaters, its hotel halls, its cafés,
its airport, its histrionic political posters and its characteristic Swiss tranquility,
become the delegates’ new milieu for about half a decade of their lives and
even more. Here is the stage where Latin American actors do their trade-
diplomacy plays, the destination where these missionaries will try to
‘evangelize’ on behalf of their countries, promoting their countries’ interests
by gaining influence on their peers. The stage having been settled, what follows
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is to depict the profiles of the Latin American delegates that come to Geneva,
the way they engage with WTO work, and the new set of challenges they are
to face in that deeper stage. That is the purpose of the next chapter.
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Chapter 5:
The Actors
Having the stage being settled in the previous chapter, the next step of this
dissertation is to draw a profile of the actors. In a member-driven organization
such as the WTO, learning who are the official representatives from member
countries and studying how they work daily is of outmost importance for
understanding the functioning of the organization beyond the treaties and
official data about member participation; that is, for understanding the WTO—
and country participation in the WTO—beyond common places. That makes
this chapter a central piece within the structure of this dissertation. What do the
Latin American actors do in the Geneva scene? Who are they? What were their
trainings? How do they prepare their performances? Who are the Latin
American missionaries that journey to Geneva and how do they assure outreach
for their national 'creeds'?
This chapter is divided into three parts. The first one portrays the
origins of Latin American delegates, their careers, and several imaginaries they
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exhibit that are relevant in their interaction with their fellow delegates. The
second part describes how the delegates work with WTO-related issues, what
they do to advance the commercial interests of their countries, and what is the
work atmosphere they experience. Lastly, the third part explains how the
delegates change throughout the years due to their permanence in the city and
in their functions, and to the process of adaptation they are forced to live; in
other words, what is the effect of their 'exposure' to the international
atmosphere that the WTO and Geneva offer to them. This chapter will prove to
be relevant for a better comprehension of the functioning of multilateral
diplomacy 'behind the scenes', and especially of the particularities of
multilateral diplomacy in the case of the multilateral trade system. It is also
relevant as a case study of cross-cultural differences and of the cultural
hybridizations that a long-term human contact fosters, particularly in the
context of international organizations. Additionally, this chapter is important
as it unfolds the challenges delegates face in the WTO for accomplishing their
objectives, as well as the most important virtues and skills they have to cultivate
for an assertive participation in the organization.
This chapter moves one layer forward within the body of this
dissertation, in-between the level of generality of the previous chapter and the
factual findings about all Latin American missions delivered in the Chapter 6
and in Part 3. Although presented under this non-detailed approach, the
panorama drawn here is key for explaining the individual success of Latin
American countries at the WTO (as well as the success of members from
different geographies). Therefore, its conclusions must be taken seriously into
account when interpreting the objective criteria of member participation in the
organization, which is the topic of the following chapters.
Delegates' anatomy
In terms of diplomatic rank, permanent envoys to the WTO can be divided
broadly into four categories: ambassadors, who are the heads of the missions;
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minister counsellors (deputy ambassadors), who are the seconds in charge,
informally called "number two"; and finally counselors and secretaries, who
are the body and base of the missions' pyramid but also enjoy diplomatic rank.
The next chapter will describe the hierarchy in better detail and will also
consider other types of assistantship that the missions receive such as
internships, and the work of secretaries and itinerant experts, but this chapter
focus particularly on the four types described above, as they have more
responsibilities and tend to hold offices for longer periods of time.
The hierarchies of the delegates are gradually marked by differences
of age. While low-rank positions can be nourished by younger officials
between the ages of 30 and 40, ambassadors range from 50 to 60. It can be
argued that age proximity helps delegates to build peer-to-peer relations,
especially at the ambassador level. Younger ambassadors are atypical and,
although debatable, a too large generational difference can play against them
when they try to build a social network among their peers. Additionally, gender
is another issue to consider in the community of delegates: men are
tremendously dominant, especially at ambassadorial level. Nonetheless,
generational change is bringing more and more women to the permanent
missions throughout the years. Some delegates accept that men's dominance
might affect the topics of conversation in certain circles and a few even declare
that the organization hosts a sexist work atmosphere both in the missions and
in the Secretariat. However, most delegates, both men and women, while
acknowledging the disproportion of gender, consider that the work
environment is not sexist, unfavorable, or hostile to women. Gender statistics
for the Latin American missions will be explored in more detail in Chapter 6.
In terms of professions and professional experience, delegates tend to
be of two kinds: either experts in international trade with small or nonexistent
diplomatic background, who are adapting to the work atmosphere of diplomacy
for the first time, or experts in diplomacy (career diplomats mostly) that are
deepening their knowledge of the technicalities of international trade thanks to
their daily engagement in WTO activities. Newcomers fulfilling both
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professional backgrounds at the same time are more rare, but they do exist in
several missions, especially at ambassadorial level, normally after long public
careers. However, although it is true that many delegates of the second kind did
not have previous diplomatic experience, in several cases they have gained
experience in (international) trade negotiations, when they were officials in
charge of such matters at home. The more a Latin American country has
engaged in negotiations of bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and
Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) from the 1990s on, the more often its non-
diplomatic delegates in Geneva fulfill this profile. Many delegates, therefore,
both juniors and seniors, are veterans of the failed negotiations of the Free
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA, or ALCA in Spanish); others are veterans
of trade negotiations with Europeans, U.S. Americans, Japanese, and other
Asian countries. By participating in these negotiation processes they gained
important insight about the styles, contents, and procedures that would become
common currency in their new positions in the missions in Geneva; and they
met, in the process, officials from other countries that would eventually become
their peers in the WTO, as they also become official representatives of their
countries in Geneva after some years and promotions.
Regarding professions, economists, lawyers, and business
administrators are the most predominant in the missions. Graduate education is
also common, especially in the higher ranks. Several high-ranking delegates
have had experience as university professors in their fields, a trait that they
invariably describe as a background that helped them to improve their
communication skills, which emerges as a fundamental asset for the WTO
work, as will be seen below. Still, for many lower-ranking delegates, and for
delegates of smaller and/or less developed countries with less developed higher
education, their stay in Geneva often represents an opportunity for obtaining a
graduate degree in a local university. Most delegates have been working as
government officials during many years, either in their country capitals or in
diplomatic—and sometimes even consular—positions abroad. Their
professional projections after their stay in Geneva also tend to remain within
the frame of the public sector.
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As important as their professional careers, the delegates’ geographical
mobility through time is to be considered. A majority of them grew up in the
capitals of their countries, but delegates of provincial origin, particularly from
secondary cities are not uncommon, especially when they represent the bigger
countries of the region. While there are delegates with short or even inexistent
international experience before their current positions in the Geneva missions,
most of them have a wide international background, expressed in the time they
have worked abroad for their governments, but mainly regarding their
education in European or U.S. universities, notably at graduate levels. In some
occasions this international background is reinforced by childhoods with
parents of mixed national origin. It is not rare to find delegates whose fathers
were career diplomats themselves, a circumstance allowing them to acquire
international experience in several countries, even in Geneva, during their
childhood and adolescence, where they followed school and/or university
studies. For this special kind of delegates, Geneva does not challenge heavily
their adaptation as they are more used to the city.
However, underneath these general characteristics of the delegate-
types mentioned here, emerges a visible diversity. Delegate family origins
often transcend social elites and move to the body and bottom of the social
pyramid. But more importantly, besides the delegate with doctoral education
and extensive teaching experience or the proliferous writer, one can find
delegates with only a bachelor degree who are the same age and at the same
rank. Some of the most important experts on international trade world-wide of
the current generation often share the club with newcomers and even illiterates
in the field. There are cases in which the international experience of delegates
consists only of a few touristic trips and/or the assistance to an academic
seminar. There are also cases when this international experience is only
confined to small and relatively closed geographical circuits. Performance and
mastery of foreign languages also varies widely from one delegate to the other.
Very often these differences in social, academic and international backgrounds
derive from the constrained human resources that some countries of the region
have at their disposal for the positions in Geneva. But in certain cases it also
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derives from governments’ narrow interpretations of the skills needed in the
Geneva missions when choosing suitable officials to appoint there. In any case,
the WTO community is full of paradoxes regarding social upbringings. It
happens that often many developed countries are more meritocratic in
government service, which brings more delegates from the middle classes to
their missions in Geneva. Inversely, it can be that delegates from Least
Developed Countries (LDCs) may come from the wealthiest families of their
countries and have enjoyed the finest education in world class universities.
Imaginaries and narratives
As diverse as the origins and backgrounds of delegates, are their imaginaries;
or, said more concretely, their personal conceptions about the world, about their
peers, about themselves, and about the ultimate purpose of their jobs. Economic
data about their own countries and about the rest, such as Gross Domestic
Product (GDP), GDP per capita, country participation in international trade,
are naturally the most important input to help delegates situate themselves in
the map of ‘who is who’ in the organization. Categories such as “developed”,
“rich”, “developing”, “emerging”, “less developed” and “poor” are of everyday
use in common language. The world is likewise divided into mental regions
and sub-regions with different categories. Within it, the Latin American and
Caribbean countries form an “emerging” region with partial economic success
in between intrepid Southeast-Asia and an Africa that is still behind. Still,
although the “situating” of countries in the world economy tend to be the same,
what differs widely is the conception of the path towards economic
development and the reasons for the current differences in wealth. The fairly
liberal and pro-market attitudes of many delegates still concur with more
defensive “North-South” visions of the world. Additionally, the images of
themselves and of their countries range from simplistic localisms to more
complex dualisms. That is, when asked about their countries and their people,
some delegates only associate positive descriptions and narratives with them in
a somehow-idealizing way. Other delegates, however, are able to reconcile
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their patriotism with more critical portrayals of their countries, in which
negative aspects (political, social, etc.) can also be depicted and talked about.
A similar logic goes for their conceptions of “the other”. When describing
people of other countries, narratives vary from the simplistic to the complex.
Simplistic visions can be either negative or positive, revealing the different
philias and phobias that delegates have towards certain countries and cultures.
In contrast, more complex visions can exhibit admiration—even affinity—
towards certain aspects of a country or culture, while maintaining a critical
stand on others. Indeed, it has to be remarked that the degree of complexity in
the (economic, social, cultural) prisms through which delegates look at the
world can be very different from one to the other.
An issue that emerges frequently is their attitudes on different
negotiation styles by Europeans and U.S. Americans, the two most important
players at the WTO. Most judge the U.S. approach direct and target-oriented
while Europeans seem to look for the common good for all partners involved.
But while some cherish the European quest for the common ground and judge
the U.S. style as too rude and imposing, other delegates cheer the bare honesty
of the latter, which would be but the legitimate search of their interests, instead
of disguising them constantly with the cloak of the common good. Different
philias and phobias then emerge. Another frequent issue is the constant use of
English as the working language in the organization. Many delegates show
affinities towards English; they use it with ease and do not see in their use any
political or cultural subordination. Others, however, regardless of their ability
or command of the language, exhibit resistance. “Why is it us who should make
the effort of learning another language instead of them?” many point out. For
Spanish and French speakers this debate tends to be more vivid as these two
languages also enjoy, beside English, official status in the organization,
although in practice they are less important.
Beyond the national patriotism that they express as a whole, the
narratives of delegates show a latent conception of identity as product of
different sub-national and supra-national layers, on which their individual
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geographic trajectories exert a subtle influence. According to their testimony,
the regions, cities and provinces where they were born and where they have
lived throughout their lives leave distinct traits in their character and in their
conceptions of belonging. Long periods of life in foreign countries (either for
work or education) also have effects on identity. In some cases, such exposures
to the other help them gain awareness of cultural differences and reinforce local
and national practices, attitudes, and values. In others, these exposures produce
a cultural brewing that foster practices and values seen as “foreign” onto the
previous layers of identity. Additionally, “Latin America and the Caribbean”
recurrently work as a unit of identity. Not only because the dynamics of the
institution compels delegates to conduct regular meetings under the GRULAC
(Latin American and Caribbean Group), but especially because delegates
recognize historical, linguistic and cultural continuities within the region. The
extensive use of Spanish among these countries, and its proximity to
Portuguese, is a powerful means through which this notion of macro-identity
is permanently reinforced. However, although these countries become “natural
points of reference”—in the words of most—for delegates throughout the
region, and are often described as “brothers” or a “brotherhood”, all
acknowledge that political consensus in the region—and among the missions
in Geneva—does not follow suit. Political and ideological inclinations of the
governments in charge in every country have a considerable (though not total)
influence in the system of regional alliances in the WTO community. Still, at
similar levels of political or ideological affinity, the alliances or partnerships
can be stronger between countries of the same region. Vicinity, language, and
cultural identification thus play an influential role.
In the conceptions about their jobs, delegates often experiment a
tension between the double purpose of advancing the interests of their countries
in the international trade system and simply building a better international trade
system for all. Such tension is frequently experimented by members of
epistemic communities that work in multilateral diplomacy. Therefore, these
tensions are not uncommon to health diplomacy, labor diplomacy, among
others. Although delegates normally follow government instructions from their
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capitals, their individual position along the spectrum of national and global
interest might influence their attitudes and choices on what capitals leave as
room for maneuver. Many senior and former delegates see this global interest
as a sign of old times, especially of the early years of the organization. They
observe that the work of delegates throughout the years might have evolved
into a sharper defense and promotion of national interests, which coincides with
the years of poorer results at the negotiating table. Indeed, their own
identification with the label of “citizens of the world”, a trait that appears to be
more common in senior and former ambassadors from the old golden times,
has faded in the new generations, just when the struggle for national interests
appears to have intensified.
The diplomatic atmosphere, the rules and customs of the organization,
and its level of professionalism help so that diverse imaginaries can cohabit
with minimal frictions. But too divergent imaginaries can clash. Actually, this
not only happens occasionally, but constitutes normal circumstances of the
delegates’ everyday life. From deeply opposite visions about the market system
to diverging triggers of humor, to different conceptions of personal space and
privacy, to dissimilar time dynamics in the conversation flow, diverging
national interests are not the only element that risks undermining mutual
understanding and constructive dialogue. As a former delegate puts it:
“Personality and cultural differences should not play a big role in multilateral
diplomacy. Work should be led by common and national interests only. But the
truth is that, very often, affinities and aversions between delegates of different
countries can be more influential to final outcomes than what outsiders would
expect.”
In effect, cross-cultural sensitivity has severe gaps among delegates,
and the formal study of cross-cultural differences does not seem to be a usual
background for most. While some delegates only make a distinction between
“nice” and “not nice” among their peers regarding the national or cultural
background, others display more refined and complete descriptions of the
differences in practices and behavior observed by them. When more elaborate
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explanations are present, they tend to recur to historical, geographical and at
times even religious rationale in order to explain differences observed. It seems
every delegate keeps un-intendedly building up his own mental map of cultural
differences that helps him “navigate” in the social interactions he conducts with
his peers. These mental maps are, in part, made of evolving stereotypes about
other cultures, which are either checked or reinforced at every new interaction
or information. Regarding dealing with people from other countries, a delegate
stated: “Individual personality is a factor you always have to consider, but some
stereotypes are somehow guiding you while you get to know someone better.”
WTO work
Job impressions
For the government officials coming to Geneva to be in charge of WTO
representation, especially at the ambassadorial level, the new diplomatic
positions constitute, almost invariably, a major honor, an important summit
along their long (or at least, ongoing) public careers. It is seen either as the
professional consecration and one of the final appointments after a successful
career, or as a training ground for some of the most talented officials that
prepares them better to take on leading responsibilities at ministerial level back
in their countries when they finish their stays. In this sense, it is not surprising
that delegates have such a great esteem for the institution with which they work
permanently and the people that work around it. There is the perception that
the delegates working in all official missions are “the best their countries have”
related to international trade. “Here you have la crème de la crème” it turns to
be a common analogy. “This is major leagues” is a sport metaphor that also
pops up in the narratives of delegates. In a conference to visiting undergraduate
students, a middle-rank delegate declares “I know the WTO is not sexy,… but
understand this is the FIFA of international trade,” implying that among trade
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passionates this organization should produce the same kind of passion that
football—and particularly the World Cup—evokes to its lovers.
The same general perception of admiration and esteem directed to
WTO delegates is also directed to the WTO Secretariat, and even in a higher
degree. The common perception is that the Secretariat is a high center of
excellence with an outstanding accumulation of human capital in every
division. The admiration delegates express for the work of the Secretariat is
overwhelming. Moreover, it is a Secretary with the reputation of permanently
encouraging missions’ activities, and its functioning very much depends on it.
“The Secretariat is ‘hungry’ of delegates that go there, ask for advice, consult
things,” one points out.
At the same time, the Secretariat is renowned for its proverbial
impotence and powerlessness. “I never saw the Secretariat of an international
organization with its hands and legs so tied as the one of the WTO,” a senior
delegate declares. A former ambassador illustrates: “the Secretariat gives one
step forward, then someone [from the missions] complains, and then it has to
give two steps back.” Another one adds: “the Secretariat is always bombarded
by criticism; there is always someone [from the missions] discontent or
complaining about something.” It is a permanent challenge for the Secretariat
to project its image of neutrality vis-à-vis all the members of the organization,
which lead its officials to be extremely cautious over language and behavior.
A delegate illustrates: “we show them a good proposal for the ongoing
negotiations. And they see it’s a really good proposal but they cannot say it!
They just raise their eyebrows, their eyes spin around anxiously, and say
something like ‘oh, well, you should further explore it with the rest of the
members.’” A Secretariat official confirms bluntly: “We never induce a
member to join a consensus. That would be the equivalent of insulting him.”
This connects to what Badaró (2011) coined—within the Abélès-led
ethnography of the WTO—as the “invisibility regime” that experts have to
endure in order to give preeminence to delegates from member countries. As a
side-effect, the ones that actually can and do induce members to join
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consensuses are the members themselves. And this implies that beside the role
of negotiators, delegates very often need to perform the role of mediators
between different sides of the negotiating tables, as seldom someone else has
enough legitimacy to fulfill that role. Yet, the missions’ discontents about the
Secretariat or about the course of negotiations are not treated as if they were an
atypical noise or alteration but rather as an ordinary byproduct of institutional
life; at times it is even considered an aim in itself. “In the negotiations, if
everyone is discontent about the outcome, it’s because we had success,” WTO
officials often declare, as every member was compelled to cede something
through the negotiation process.
To dimension the level of empowerment the missions feel in regard to
the Secretariat, the following anecdote can be illustrative. For the occasion of
the Trade Policy Review of his country—a Spanish speaking member—a
minister will come to the capital to personally lead the review. In these
occasions it is common for the high-ranking officials who come to Geneva to
meet with different actors of the city, including Secretariat officials. The
Geneva delegate then phones the secretary of the WTO Director-General (then
former DG Pascal Lamy) to schedule a routine courtesy meeting with him for
his minister. “Does your minister need that we bring an interpreter to the
meeting?” the secretary asks to assure there would be fluid communication
between the two. “Let me correct you—the delegate replies—the one who
needs an interpreter is the Director-General, as he is the one who doesn’t speak
one of the official languages of the organization.” The secretary takes note of
the correction and, at the day of the meeting, the interpreter sits beside the DG
instead of staying beside the minister. Clearly not all WTO delegates would
feel in the need of using a similar tone to address Secretariat officials, but the
fact that they are empowered to do so is already telling of the power relations
between the missions and the Secretariat.
A key lexical instrument for the Secretariat to maintain its neutrality is
the permanent—if excessive—use of the terms ‘member’ and ‘members’ both
in official discourse and common communication. As all members are meant
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to be equal regarding the institution, better not to mention them. A classic
example is the reports by the Director-General about the state of trade
negotiations, which usually include statements such as “some members
consider that… but some members think that….” The plurals always hide the
identity and the proportion of members at each side of the controversies,
underlining that every position is legitimate. In press conferences and public
lectures by Secretariat officials it is common to hear “if members want it…,”
“only if members wish…,” and more variants of the like as the only way-out
to face some difficult questions by the public. Some minutes of internal
meetings are written under the same style: “one member suggested…,” “other
members supported…,” “one member disagreed.” Even when referring to
banal issues and without external witnesses around, some officials prefer to
stick to the ‘member’ keyword. While waiting in the WTO administrative
divisions for an appointment, I see an official visiting his subordinate at the
nearby desk to ask: “Have you finished the report that the member asked for?”
“Please finish it soon. The member needs it urgently.” The official uses the
generic form instead of mentioning the specific country that made the request.
What in a different context could be considered as artificial language, for the
Secretariat is mandatory in order to put them all at the same level of importance.
The world that comprises the WTO, the missions, and the closer
satellite institutions (some UN agencies included) is highly restricted, highly
exclusive. Its internal connections are dense, intertwined, multidirectional, and
intense. But its realm is remarkably separated from the outer world with the
exception of a few formal channels. As mentioned in the previous chapter, this
results in that the WTO sphere, and the diplomatic work of Geneva and its
international institutions as a whole (what is called la Genève Internationale)
is often described by most of its actors as a “bubble”, or as “a city within a
city”, or even as a “diplomatic ghetto”, that is, a space that despite being located
in Geneva is highly disconnected from its host city and seems to follow a
parallel yet distinct course. “We are a small world here. We get to know each
other very well”, an ambassador explains. By hosting the routine official
meetings among the delegates of member countries and by facilitating the
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informal contact of the participants around, the WTO ends up producing an
atmosphere of intimacy in the inside (not totally free of tensions) and a palpable
separation from the outside.
Moreover, among many delegates and staff officials there is a latent
pride about the nature of the work made at the WTO compared to the
neighboring United Nations. In the judgment of many the work in the WTO,
even in moments of paralyzed trade negotiations, is “more concrete, less
rhetoric”, and “has a more real impact in the everyday life and well-being of
millions of people.” An ambassador who represents his country in both the UN
and the WTO contested this generalized view as “quite unfair with all the work
that is made in the UN and its agencies.” An intern of a UN mission quite
disagrees, describing some of the meetings in the UN sphere as “a circus”:
“there are delegates that interrupt others, that even cry out, obstructing the
day’s agenda”, totally indifferent about the established protocols, something
that would rarely happen in the WTO sphere. In fact, this sort of mental divide
between the UN and the WTO can reach several layers and topics. For instance,
the symbolism and effects of Swiss neutrality, as a cherished characteristic
feature of the host country of these organizations, is highly present in the
narratives of UN officials working in Geneva and in many diplomats working
directly with this institution. But the more you move toward the sphere of the
WTO the less this element is present in the discourse of delegates and staff, as
if these political and symbolic dimensions were more alien to the WTO arena,
among other things, because the Swiss political neutrality is less perceivable in
the area of trade. Additionally, an ambassador says, “countries get involved in
the two organizations in two different ways. In the UN everyone promotes the
principle of equality. I work for my country to enjoy the similar rights and
preponderance than the rest, no matter if others are bigger or more powerful.”
In contrast, “in the WTO everyone wants to make his country look different:
not having a coast, being extremely poor, being an important producer of a
certain good… everything counts for making a difference and trying to enjoy
special privileges because of that.”
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Additionally, although diplomatic missions to the UN and to the WTO
are both hierarchical, described with irony by some as “a caste system”,
missions to the UN are seen as being even more rigid, where deputies and other
middle-rank delegates find it difficult, sometimes impossible, to address a few
words to an ambassador of another country because they are not at the same
hierarchical level. The perception is that in the UN system rules of diplomatic
protocol are followed more strictly, and there is more distance among the
delegates of different countries, especially at the higher rank. Talking about
how close to each other delegates to the WTO could become despite the
political differences between their countries, a delegate declared that his
ambassador, who has representation in the UN as well, was always amazed.
“At the UN that would be just impossible!” As other delegates put it, the WTO
can be “more relaxed than many other diplomatic atmospheres.” Dress-code is
among the differences between the two organizations. In some informal
meetings of the WTO, delegates are expected to wear more casual clothes,
including not wearing a tie, or even not wearing a suit. An ambassador who
represents his country in both organizations amusedly complains: “when I go
to WTO meetings I feel that if I want to fit in I am forced to not wear a tie!”
However, more “relax” does not distort the diplomatic manners and
the diplomatic nature of the interactions. The use of language is very often
indirect and subtle, which is proof of the presence of the practice of ‘diplomatic
signaling.’ This makes part of the tasks of ‘transmission’ of information in the
typology by Jönsson and Hall (2005) referred to in Chapter 2. According to
some, this would make WTO trade diplomacy very different from bilateral
trade negotiations, which use to be more frank and direct, and can even be more
“crude.” “Here we don’t call things by their names”, a delegate says. Another
one observes: “we get used to nuances, to read between the lines” the real
meaning of messages. In official reports as well as common communication,
language tends to contain some degree of “vagueness” and “imprecision.”
“That’s how people communicate here: they never say ‘yes’, they never say
‘no’.” Communication is “restrained; you must look after the forms”, another
adds. A recently appointed ambassador confesses, “one has to work on the
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language, on its nuances… one has to master language… something I never
had to do before.” In a similar line, a former ambassador says how he struggled
during the first months in his new position for adapting to this change in the
language style: “I didn’t understand anything at all. It took me weeks to grasp
the real meaning of things.” This coincides with Karns and Mindst’s (2013,
150) observation that multilateral diplomacy has a “socializing effect” on
diplomats. They are socialized into a “culture of language, politeness,
euphemisms, and stock phrases with agreed-on meanings.” Although these
manners are often criticized by outsiders, their absence “can create havoc”
(ibid). What Karns and Mindst wrote about the UN and forum diplomacy in
general is also valid for the WTO. Another delegate with long experience in
the system confesses: “Sometimes I still see myself reading a key text three and
five times until I understand all its nuances.”
The last remark by the delegate is additionally relevant when
considering Neumann’s (2005; 2012) proposals about the bureaucratic mode
of knowledge production (see Chapter 2). Indeed, texts produced by diplomats
also look too much like one another in the context of the WTO. But one of the
reasons for this is apparently the practice of diplomatic signaling. Novelty and
creativity do take place, but mainly through subtle changes, carefully crafted to
be deciphered by few outside the institution.
“Discrete leadership”
Connected to this, the work of delegates is characterized by an atmosphere of
outmost reserve and discretion. Although this feature is undoubtedly common
in all spheres of diplomacy as well as in several other government
environments, in the domain of multilateral diplomacy the need of discretion
reaches a point of high tension. What is usually at stake—hundreds of jobs, the
growth potential of economic sectors, the interests of powerful private
players—often heightens this tension. As delegates from every member
country are simultaneously cooperating with and competing against each other,
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they need to do the double effort of being open, sympathetic and approachable
and at the same time being credible, worthy of keeping a secret, incapable of
divulging anyone of their own or of any other third person. Delegates try to
manage their permanent need for communicating. They are meant to share
some information so as to keep being useful and credible partners in the eyes
of their peers, while never going beyond the boundaries of government
confidentiality, which would jeopardize the goals of their own work. And they
are meant to honor the trust of the peers and officials who share restricted
information with them by not revealing it or by using it wisely. However, not
all delegates seem to be capable of maintaining this reserve or being willing to
do so. “Sometimes I am amazed at the lack of discretion of some colleagues”,
a delegate remarks, “I say to myself, it can’t be true he’s telling me all this!”
Still, the most common case is that, although everyone looks for information at
every interaction, all accept the constrains and reserve that everyone seeks to
maintain. “Reserve is required, deception is condemned” was the description
by anthropologist Lynda Dematteo (2011, 61) in the Abélès-led ethnography
of the WTO, which proves to be the case.
Additionally, as consensus is the rule of decision-making and,
therefore, every country—that is, every delegate—counts regardless country
size, wealth or power, delegates are permanently bound to more democratic
practices. Among the delegates there is little room for vivid or aggressive
campaigning that could collide frontally with the comfort zone of other peers.
A subsequent marginalization or even the lack of support for a concrete
initiative could be the price. Rather, what is common in the everyday operating
of delegates is what Kishan Rana (2011, 110) calls “unassertive or discreet
leadership”. Discreet leadership would be about never risking to step on
anyone’s heels. It is about waiting for the invitations to exert leadership rather
than to impose it. When support cannot be obtained, the second best outcome
is indifference. Fierce opposition, in contrast, must be avoided as much as
possible because it can be more determinant than actual support. The advancing
of national agendas and the search for common ground in negotiations must be
gentle, avoiding to unsettle both potential rivals and allies, who routinely have
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the same amount of decision-making power than the rest. Interestingly enough,
on this matter there are several parallels between the WTO system and the
political system of Switzerland, the host country of the organization, as
suggested in Chapter 4: both systems are based on consensus, and in both
discreet leadership is the compulsory rule of behavior. For both, a positive
effect of this practice is the general harmony of the system, as it always stays
within the boundaries of the politically correct. But a negative effect is a
relative lack of dynamism, the slowness of the decision-making process.
All that said, the job of delegates, mandatory duties and everyday
responsibilities aside, consists very much on building a network of partners and
allies based on the diverse interests and affinities that the other countries might
share with theirs. The permanent forging of such a network is key for advancing
the country’s interests. A broad support previously crafted with allies or
banding up countries into coalitions might be decisive factors for negotiation
initiatives to prosper. Delegates, therefore, must forge credibility among their
networks regarding both trust and expertise. This networking never starts from
scratch; new delegates normally draw on the contacts and affinities left by the
officials they are replacing and on all the bridges the mission has built as a
whole. However, much of the success of this networking, and the enhancement
of it, depends on their own personal commitment and communicational talents.
As an ambassador puts it, in the organization “every country ends up earning
its own reputation. If this image is positive when an ambassador leaves, the
new one taking office has a good start. But acceptance is not automatic, it is
‘on hold’ until he proves to be trustworthy to the circles of confidence that the
former one has left.”
Even though delegates did not make deliberate efforts to create their
networks, it is true, anyway, that many of these networks would also appear as
a natural outcome of the process of multilateral trade diplomacy, which
automatically puts all delegates of member countries together in a single place,
encouraging them to mingle with each other. In any case, the outcome of this
constant multidirectional networking is a configuration of interrelations that
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tends to be both fluid and hierarchical. To explain this feature of the work at
the WTO, it is common argot in the narratives of delegates the expressions of
“changing geometries” and “concentric circles.” On the one hand, affinities and
coalitions are very dynamic. They can be weak, even fragile, depending on how
the interests of countries evolve, and depending on very specific sectorial
interests. Likewise, new sets of affinities and coalitions can follow suit. This
“makes part of the game” and most players see it as a normal and accepted
practice. “Ministries of foreign affairs sometimes struggle to understand it”, a
delegate says, which marks the contrast between the WTO and the more
traditional diplomacy. On the other hand, the net of groupings among delegates
take a pyramidal shape. The top is composed by all big players and by the
countries that are perceived as the most active and the most committed with the
system’s functioning. Assistance to “Green Room” meetings—informal off-
schedule gatherings aiming to boost negotiations, whose participation tends to
be chosen ad-hoc by the Director-General—is a by-default approximation to
the changing and often undeclared composition at the top. With or without the
protagonism of the Green-Room meetings—which very much depend on the
managerial styles of each Director-General—it is clear that only the missions
with the best reputation in the system can aspire to take part of the center of
these concentric circles. As a delegate concludes: “here we are about 40
[members] who really count.” The most passive missions are seldom influential
in ongoing negotiations and in the most important circles of power. This is
crucial in relation to the research hypothesis of this dissertation: for
practitioners, it is clear that although the big players have a seat of influence
guaranteed in the system, for the rest, the influence that they are able to project
depends more on the delegates’ dynamism in the system than on any traditional
measure of a country’s relative power. As another example, when asked about
a country that has a passive diplomatic mission with insufficient delegates to
cover WTO issues, an ambassador replies: “That country? It doesn’t exist in
the system.” Such a severe conclusion is never part of public discourse, neither
by the diplomatic missions nor by the Secretariat, but the sharpness and
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spontaneity of the comment is very revealing of the negative effects caused by
underrepresentation.
Stats and norms
Two more characteristics must be considered in an initial depiction of WTO
work. First, that the life of delegates is extremely busy. And, second, that the
nature of their work is overly technical. First of all, the regular agenda of WTO
meetings and related responsibilities is highly demanding. It is not only about
assisting the meetings. Effective participation obliges a large amount of work
for the previous preparation of the country’s position and statements in every
issue, plus efforts of fluid communication with the capital, to both ask for
instructions and to communicate results. The weekly schedule can be so full of
official meetings that absence to some of them is the only choice many missions
have. “The way we exclusively stick to priorities is merciless”, an ambassador
declares emphatically; “it’s impossible to cope with everything” a former
ambassador adds. Time pressure is so heavy for certain delegates in specific
moments that colleagues in the mission have to cover them in certain functions,
even though their areas of expertise are not related. The anecdote of a delegate
in a speech to university students illustrates this well: “I had nothing to do with
that deal, but that [concluding] day I was assigned to go to the meeting so it
was me who appeared in the official photo”. A former ambassador also
comments: “I had so many activities that during the first years I never went to
[a certain official] meeting. But when I went there for the first time I discovered
it was so important that I never skipped it again.” The amount of work also
depends very much on the situation. When negotiations are dynamic, for
instance, or when biannual ministerial meetings are approaching, the workload
soars, devouring evenings until late hours in weekdays and also time of the
weekends. In fact, many believe that this busy nature of work is not associated
with the mission’s number of delegates (something that will be discussed in
more detail in Chapter 6): “I speak with friends of small missions: they are
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always over-busy, their agendas totally full” an ambassador explains, “and then
I speak with friends of big missions, and they are over-busy as well!”
Second, it is hard for outsiders to grasp to what extent the work of
delegates is eminently technical. It does not only demand to have a minimal
background knowledge in economics and law in order to navigate through the
existent international treaties on the subject. It also demands to master the most
intricate details and lexicon of international trade, to have a good idea of the
new trends, and to know how to translate these high levels of numeric and
terminological abstraction into the factual implications for the country, private
sector and employment, of any matter under discussion. One delegate with a
high reputation in the system declares: “Before coming to Geneva I used to
consider myself an expert in foreign trade. After years of work here I am not
so optimistic about my knowledge anymore. The truth is I don't stop learning
new things every year, and I'm more aware of all what I still need to study”.
Other ambassadors add: “here, if you want to gain credibility, your
interventions need to add value to the discussions,” something that would go
in parallel with the “inclination” in the organization to “look for very concrete
results.” The only way of doing ‘adding value’, therefore, is by having an in-
depth knowledge of the matters in question. Another ambassador who
represents his country both in the UN and the WTO acknowledges the same:
[in the WTO] “the levels of technical sophistication are enormous. Usually
such sophistication is only common in the secretariats of the international
organizations, while diplomats that work with them tend to be ‘generalists’.
But that is not the case here.” Another ambassador with an overloaded agenda
confesses: “It does happen that I don’t understand the technical content of a
statement that I have to read in a meeting and that someone else wrote for me.
And that is terrible. Our mission should have more resources so things like this
don’t happen.” The technical expertise needed in the WTO missions usually
takes years to acquire. Only a few people hold these capabilities in every
country, in every government, not to mention that, for some delegates, their
appointments to Geneva is the first moment in their lives in which they come
into contact with issues of international trade, so they have to build their
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capabilities from scratch. This constitutes one of the most serious handicaps
for their work, preventing them from being assertive with their peers.
A crucial echelon in terms of technical expertise is the ambassador. A
delegate explains: “the task of lower-ranking delegates is to feed the technical
discourse of the ambassador,” for him to have material for—and craft a position
in—the negotiations with his peers of the same hierarchical level. “But if in
these meetings it is the other ambassadors who are better positioned to explain
to him what are the economic effects of a certain measure, then it is them who
have more control of the negotiation.” Broad differences in technical
knowledge can change the symmetry of peer-to-peer negotiations towards a
teacher-student relation, translating into more indirect power for the
ambassadors with deeper knowledge and more technical credibility. As a result,
diplomatic missions that are only dedicated to WTO-related work tend to have
a clear advantage in the multilateral trade system compared with missions with
universal representation, including the UN and its agencies. As it will be further
discussed in Chapter 6, it is more likely that the ambassadors appointed to
WTO dedicated missions have a most adequate educational and professional
background to excel at WTO representation than the ones appointed to general-
purpose missions. Commenting on the lower-ranking delegates who do not
have this close support from their ambassadors in WTO-related work, one
declares: “they suffer.” The pyramidal pattern of socialization and negotiation
in the system puts them at a great disadvantage. This is a clear example of the
asymmetries of resources that countries face regarding direct representation in
the system.
The formal
It can be argued that the work of diplomatic representation involves two great
components, which are reciprocal and indivisible. The first and most evident
of them can be called the formal component. For many observers—and for a
few practitioners—, this component seems to be the only one that exists or at
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least the only one that is relevant. On paper, the job of delegates to the WTO
simply consists in representing their governments in the meetings scheduled by
the organization, both formal and informal. Both junior and senior diplomats
must be the ears and voice of their countries in these official gatherings, and
fulfill the well-known diplomatic cycle: representing, negotiating,
observing/gathering information, reporting/recommending, and receiving new
instructions. This work component is essential and unavoidable by envoys and
it is important to consider the form it takes for the case of the WTO and the
specific challenges it poses to them.
Meetings and meeting rooms
The same way that for a teacher the unit of work is a class and for a chef the
unit of work is a dish, for the multilateral diplomats studied here the most basic
unit of work is the meeting at the WTO headquarters. Meetings structure their
work into what has to be done before (coordination and preparation), during
(representation and delivery), and after (report and coordination). Therefore,
beside the offices in the permanent missions, the most common setting of WTO
work is the meeting room. The WTO building counts with 21 meeting rooms
whose purpose is to harbor these gatherings.
Official WTO meetings can be either formal or ‘informal.’ The latter
are normally preparatory gatherings before some of the official meetings take
place, and they differ in format in that minutes are not taken, and in that the
presence of language interpreters is less common. The common duration of the
meetings is half a day or one day, but some can last two and even three days.
The organization operates through three dozens of bodies, as can be seen in the
organization chart of Figure 3. The WTO bodies schedule more than 250
official meetings per year. In 2015, for instance, the WTO hosted 298 official
meetings, six of which were meetings of the General Council, the highest body
of the organization below the biannual ministerial conferences. If non-official
meetings are also taken into account, such as Aid for Trade, the Parliamentary
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Conference, the Geneva Week (for non-resident members and observers), the
WTO Public Forum, and the different seminars, symposia, workshops, book
launches, and other informal meetings—all in which diplomats are usual
participants—the number of meetings hosted in 2015 at the WTO was close to
400. With the exception of the summer vacation during the month of August
and the Christmas-New Year period, the WTO headquarters host hectic activity
at any time period of the year. If only official meetings are considered, in 2015
the WTO hosted an average of 27 meetings per month (not counting August),
and an average of 6,7 meetings per week. There are many days without
meetings and others with only 1 or 2 meetings per day. However, in 2015—to
continue with the example—there were 18 days with 3 meetings running
simultaneously the same day, 11 days with 4 meetings, 5 days with 5 meetings,
and 1 day with 6 meetings the same day. Naturally, these overloaded days are
a huge challenge for small missions who count with 3 diplomats or less in
charge of WTO issues. Additionally, it is important to note that the dates of
most of these meetings are scheduled months and even years in advance, which
facilitates the planning and anticipation by the would-be participants. Finally,
although the minutes of the meetings are the best source available for
understanding their contents, agendas, and dynamics, there also many events
and aspects that do not make part of the minutes but that are, nonetheless, a
crucial part of the experience of the meetings for the delegates, which is to say,
a crucial part of the formal component of diplomatic representation in the
organization.
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Figure 3. WTO organization chart
Source: https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org2_e.htm
The two biggest meeting rooms of the WTO are the William Rappard
Room (or Council Room), with a total capacity for 580 participants, and the
Wyndham White Room (known as ‘W’ Room), with the capacity to host 250
delegates. Independently of their different sizes, all WTO meeting rooms use
the same configuration in terms of the organization of tables and distribution
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of seats, as seen in Figure 4. One step higher above the floor’s level, there is
always a main table located at the backdrop of the room where participants sit
facing the room’s center. In this table sit the meeting chairperson at the center,
who is a delegate chosen by consensus to play that role on a pro tempore basis.
The chair is accompanied at his or her right by the meeting secretary, who is
usually the head of the Secretariat division relevant to the specific meeting. The
rest of the seats of and behind the main table are occupied by other Secretariat
officials belonging to the same division or somehow relevant to the meeting.
Their task is to support the chairperson’s and the secretary’s work. Regardless
of the seniority or the experience of the secretary—which is often large—he or
she plays the role of a mere assistant while it is the chair who is really invested
as the true symbolic authority. In meetings of the General Council and of the
Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), the main table is also where the
Director-General and the Deputy Directors-General sit. The first one does it at
the right of the General Council chairperson, and the others sit on the table’s
extremes. As with the secretary, the role of the Director-General is the one of
an assistant while the GC chair is the one that holds the symbolic authority.
The Trade Negotiations Committee, in contrast, is the only case when the DG
has the role of chair, yet the GC chair is always sitting at his side. (More on
WTO bodies and the role of the chair will be addressed in Chapter 8).
In front of the main table and perpendicular to it, stand several rows of
tables where the delegates from all member and observer countries sit. Seats
and tables have the same height and the only device that differentiates delegates
from one another is a rectangular, black-on-white sign with the country’s name,
which is placed in the part of the row that is closest to the main table. All large
meeting rooms have cabins for language interpreters and each individual ‘desk’
in the tables is equipped with a microphone and a headphone. Headphones
work through four permanent channels: 0 for having always the original
language of the speakers; 1 for English (original voice when it is in English and
the voice of the interpreters when it is not); 2 for French; and 3 for Spanish. In
these rooms, it is impossible to follow the meetings without the use of the
headphone. An external observer suddenly entering there in the middle of a
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meeting would get a strange impression as one finds a room crowed with people
in suits sitting together, all of them silent except one that is difficult to trace in
the crowd, and who seems to be murmuring to a microphone.
Figure 4. Standard configuration of WTO meeting rooms (S1 Room, 204
delegates)
Source: made by the author.
To go to the meetings, delegates wear their WTO badges, which
ultimately turn into an instrument of power and status, allowing them to enter
the institution and visit all its divisions at any time. The delegate badge
naturally includes authorization to attend official meetings, which are arguably
the most restricted events in the institution. Delegates arm themselves with
laptops, tablets, smartphones, printed statements, other documents, notebooks,
and blank sheets of paper to attend the meetings, and water and coffee await
for them in the lateral tables for helping them to survive the meetings to the
end. Delegates go to the meetings to negotiate (especially in the informal ones)
and to deliver statements, but also to take notes. The last mission is very
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important because official minutes are available only after a certain period of
time, for instance a month. So if delegates want to keep track of the meetings
on time and to report what is going on, both to the rest of the mission and to
the capital, the task of note taking becomes crucial, and in some cases it is done
by more than one delegate from the same mission. Presence and note-taking is
also a matter of mission visibility in the system. An ambassador declares:
“Only by being present with one delegate taking notes in a meeting can make
the difference.” This shows to the peers interest in the issues discussed.
Between equality and asymmetry
There are several procedural and locational devices in the meetings that stress
the equality of all members. Delegates have the right to take the floor regardless
of the member country they represent. They ask for this right by raising the
rectangular sign with the name of their countries with their hands and get
included in a waiting list. There is no precedence to take the floor unless a
member is representing a group of members or a coalition. Turns to take the
floor basically depend on how fast delegates raise their country signs.
Additionally, the tables and chairs where they sit have the same height and are
equal. The location of the countries follows a slightly changed alphabetical
order. Members have some say in the decision about where they are going to
be located in the rooms and this alters the otherwise regular alphabetical order,
which is also perceived as a sign of empowerment of members. When blocs of
economic integration are consolidated, they normally sit together. That is the
case of the European Union, the members of the European Free Trade
Agreement (EFTA), and the ones of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN). No bloc of Latin American integration sits together. Yet,
when China entered the WTO in 2001, Chile and Colombia managed to
maintain their vicinity continuously with Costa Rica in their row. Central
American countries, including the Dominican Republic, also sit together in a
different row, and the fact that Costa Rica is the only Central American country
sitting somewhere else is not well regarded by some. However, Costa Rica has
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a strong argument to keep its traditional place, as it sits near two other members
from the region. The configuration of the General Council can be seen in Figure
5.
Figure 5. Member configuration of the General Council
Source: made by the author.
Beyond the efforts and symbolism put in stressing the members’
equality, formal settings are also the first place in the WTO headquarters where
the asymmetry of the members’ representation capacity is evident, or, as stated
in Chapter 4, their asymmetries of resources. The abundance of mission
personnel can be approached by looking at the number of delegates present in
them. In the meetings of the General Council, a fixed number of chairs is
assigned to every member. Only two members have six chairs: the United
States and the European Union (which represents the European Commission
and leads the two rows of EU countries). The most common assignment of
chairs is four and the smallest missions have only two or even one chair. Having
more constancy with the presence of delegates, missions with one or two chairs
can always require more; yet many missions are simply unable to do so due to
their small size. Additionally, although attendance to General Council meetings
tends to be complete, it is less so the case in meetings of other WTO bodies,
which, again, shows the raw technical strengths of the missions as well as their
different thematic priorities.
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For instance, in the meetings of the Committee on Sanitary and
Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures, the participants tend to be specialized officials
coming from the capitals only to attend the event. The two rows of the EU can
perfectly be half-full, counting for the biggest representation in the meeting.
The United States can easily be represented by eight delegates, all of them
senior, ‘invading’ the chairs of the neighboring members. The most active
developing countries could be represented by a full set of four delegates, or by
two junior delegates, or by a single one. And yet, about a third of the
membership or more would not even send a single delegate. A similar
asymmetry can be observed in other meetings. For instance, in meetings of the
Trade Policy Review Body (TPRB) or the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB),
while some members are represented by a good amount of delegates who are
present until the end, some others are represented only by a single delegate who
tries to make his statement (a concept about the ongoing TPR in the first case,
a declaration of support about an ongoing dispute in the second) as quickly as
possible in order to leave soon and jump into another meeting, or to go back to
his mission to attend other businesses. Indeed, the aura of majesty of an
ambassador can be tested by him going alone to one of these meetings,
delivering a short, marginal statement and leaving the room 20 minutes after
the meeting started while the others stay patiently until the event’s closure.
Having time for the important as well as for the petty is definitely a marker of
the delegates’ control of their situation and functions, and a marker of their ease
in the system. Following Neumann’s (2013) metaphor referenced to in Chapter
2, not all delegates are able to produce the ‘swan effect’ in front of their peers.
Additionally, although subtlety, formal meetings also display
differences of status among delegates. For every member, the position they take
in the rows is not random. As seen in Figure 6, ambassadors sit on the chair
that is closer to the main table and in the position where they can face the
chairperson directly. When ambassadors are not present in a meeting, it is up
to the delegate with the highest rank in the mission to take this position. While
some ambassadors also encourage junior delegates to sit there when they are
attending the meetings alone, a few juniors do not dare to do so as it would be
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considered as a usurpation, which shows the differences of the conceptions of
authority among the different missions. Although most practitioners would
argue that status matters less in the WTO than in the UN sphere, status still
matters and, above all, it makes part of the ritualization processes of the
organization’s functioning. Furthermore, it is clear that in every meeting the
presence or lack of presence of delegates, and the positions where they sit
already produce—for the practitioners present—a rich mapping of strengths
and weaknesses of the diplomatic missions, and of the status of their different
delegates.
Figure 6. Positions of the ambassadors or delegates with the highest rank
Source: made by the author.
Meetings’ procedures
Delegates have a few minutes for socializing with one another before meetings
start. They normally exchange words of courtesy with neighboring peers in
their rows, and a few visit more distant peers or Secretariat officials to chat
with them before the session starts. These minutes are a natural period of
socialization for them, and the dots that are connected (or not) can be subject
to all kinds of interpretations regarding differences, acquaintances, friendships,
and alliances. But, then, in the main table the chairperson strikes the wooden
gavel, the participants go to their places and wear their headphones, and the
meeting starts.
Brazil (4) Albania (2) Zimbabwe (2) Switzerland (4)
Angola (2) Zambia (2)
Cabo Verde (2) Argentina (4) Venezuela (2) Lichtenstein (2)
Cameroon (2) Uruguay (4) Norway (4)
C. Afr. R. (2) Armenia (2)
Main Table
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The procedures of WTO meetings are not far from the ones of a court,
a parliament, or an assembly of any sort, but they can be more structured or
even rigid. The meeting’s agenda has been jointly decided and distributed days
in advance, therefore all the participants know with anticipation in what points
of the agenda they can or should act in order to prepare beforehand. The
meetings go very fast, all parts ticking as a clock. They can be described as a
well-performed choreography in which everyone knows their roles. The
content of the statements and the variety of topics handled give a measure of
the amount of work that had to be done in the missions and in the Secretariat
in order to jointly ‘produce’ the meeting. To fully follow it with the myriad of
small details it encompasses requires total attention by the participants.
As expected, the language of the delegates’ statements is full of
technical jargon related to trade, to existing and ongoing agreements, and to the
WTO itself, which make them hard to follow by neophytes. But, additionally,
the language is often metaphorical. The organization can turn into “this house,”
the Doha Round can become a “Christmas tree,” trade agreements evolve
towards “road traffic rules,” among many others. In a talk at a university in
Geneva, an ambassador to the WTO is asked why delegates speak in such a
metaphorical way. With a mix of frustration and irony, the ambassador
answers: “When you work with trade negotiations, you become a philosopher!”
The recurrent use of metaphors is clearly not far away from the practice of
diplomatic signaling.
A common feature of delegates’ statements is a permanent reverence
to the meeting’s chairperson, who is the one that, symbolically, is giving them
the floor to speak. Actually because of the frequency at which the chair is
mentioned, many statements sound more as a conversation between delegate
and chair. “Thank you, madam chair;” “Si me lo permite, señor presidente…;”
“Cependant, monsieur le Président…:” and others are typical formulas that
accompany the statements. Other than that, the meeting flows without pomp
and circumstance. On the contrary, the atmosphere of WTO meetings is
austere, grave, and heavy. Silence is customary. Moderation of forms is
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common, including dosed indifference as a typical reaction to others’
statements. Regardless the eloquence or brilliance of interventions, applauses
are not part of the participants’ reaction. Instead, they are rare. Only when new
members are accepted in the organization, when new agreements are signed—
very rare events—, or when the venue of a ministerial meeting has been
decided, applauses can make their appearance. Otherwise meetings start and
finish in silence. As a matter of illustration, it could be said that the world-
famous cheering and jeering of the British House of Commons would be the
exact opposite to the regular sobriety of WTO meetings. This grave atmosphere
of official meetings is contagious: it is also present in other non-official events
of the WTO. Prominent academics that give a talk about their avant-garde
research on international trade are not necessarily received with applauses, but
rather with polite yet tough criticism instead (there are many conflicting
interests at stake, so delegates air their criticism against the research
methodology, against the research results, or against any other weakness they
can find). Naturally, the fact that WTO meetings lack pomp does not mean that
they lack a ritualistic—or even a theatrical—component; it only means that the
ritualistic component of the meetings is not one based on pomp but one based
on silence and austerity.
While the meeting goes on, the technical delegate or technical
delegates present are supporting the ambassador or the delegate in charge in
everything they need. Besides taking notes about the course of the meeting,
they can do punctual research for data or something of the like to add to the
draft of the statement, or to suddenly prepare an additional statement for
another moment of the meeting, if the evolution of events requires them to do
so. Normally, the most junior and inexperienced delegates only stick to the
previous plans and to the statements previously written. Only the most senior
and experienced delegates allow themselves some room for improvisation.
Based on the new conditions developing in the meeting, this improvisation can
take the form of drastic, last-minute changes to statements previously written;
new statements drafted quickly for immediate use; or short interventions
without the help of any notes.
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Despite the silence, communication among the ambassador and his
technical delegates can be very fluid. Short words, subtle indications with the
eyes as a reaction on what is happening in the meeting, brief instructions to
work on something immediately or later. Communication within the delegates
of the same mission during the meetings—and a few even with neighboring
delegates from other missions—can turn into a dance of tight coordination and
complicity. In other cases, however, the lack of communication between the
delegates reveals frictions and tensions between them. Some seem to forget that
by behaving in certain ways in these formal settings they are exposing their
mission’s internal problems to their peers. Or even if some are aware of the
consequences they seem unable to prevent it. This could be considered a case
of asymmetries of awareness, following the notion presented in Chapter 4.
Through this type of subtleties, the mission’s representation can exhibit
fissures. When the actors lack consciousness about the full consequences of
their public actions, the performance they deliver is not optimal. And yet, such
fissures are neither a lack of technical knowledge nor a lack of a mission’s
resources.
Through small details, the meetings are also revealing the delegates’
professionalism and experience. Some deliberately deliver their statements
short and with a simple structure that facilitates easy understanding by a large
number of participants. Some speak deliberately slower in order to facilitate
the interpreters’ work. The quality of the statements and the confidence with
which they are delivered are somehow part of the message, as well as part of
the input the peers take note of. By contrast, these meetings and their particular
atmosphere can be very intimidating to some, especially to beginners, who at
times exhibit traces of scenic panic. There are cases of new delegates that due
to their nervousness are unable to deliver a statement already written and that
they were required to do; their fear makes them to do not raise the member sign
so they are not counting in the lists to take the floor. Some nervous delegates
that do manage to speak do so anyway with a shaking voice from the beginning
to the end. Others just let themselves go with the speech while forgetting to
turn the microphone on. There is an impasse of five or ten seconds while the
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rest of the participants make them understand the situation, and then they have
to start their statements all over again. Also, in several cases when the delegates
come directly from the capitals and are to raise a grievance in a technical
committee, the tone and language they use can be considered insulting and
inappropriate by any diplomatic standard, provoking an additional,
unnecessary (and embarrassing) tension in the room, which would have been
easily prevented if the statement would have been adjusted to the manners of
the organization—for instance, if it would have been revised by senior
delegates in the mission.
The different atmospheres of the meetings
The choreography of the meetings naturally has different sequences and styles
depending on each WTO body. The meetings of the General Council are
invested with a special majesty, not only because they are the ones that have
more participants but also because all major decisions of the organization have
to pass through it. Additionally, the internal media service of the Secretariat—
photographers and camera men—always cover these meetings, producing
material for press releases and other pieces of information aiming at an external
audience, adding more pressure and preponderance to the event. The official
meetings of the Trade Negotiations Committee have also a particular majesty
due to the importance of the negotiations, and are also covered by the internal
media service. Yet they have a stronger air of exclusiveness, especially when
they are restricted to head of delegations only or to heads of delegations ‘plus
one’.
Meetings of the TPRB also become an important act of public relations
as they normally include big delegations from the capital of the member under
review, normally including a minister and vice-ministers. Yet, in these
meetings the pressure to conclude the event on time is literally palpable: the
main table is escorted by two big screens showing a timer of seven minutes,
which is the maximum time members are allowed to deliver their statements.
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The timer starts running again and again every time a new statement is
delivered. DSB meetings are the most court-like of all WTO meetings. They
run very fast, and they are dominated by issues concerning the big powers, as
they are the most frequent users of this mechanism. The spokespersons of the
United States and the European Union can perfectly take the floor seven
different times or more to bring a concept about seven or more different
disputes involving them. This can be difficult to handle. For instance, the chair
can call the U.S. to pronounce on a new issue and the delegate keeps looking
during several seconds for the right document to read on that specific point of
the agenda. “U.S.?”, the chair asks after some waiting period. “Sorry, just one
moment,” the U.S. delegate replies, and five seconds later he finally finds the
right one and rushes his delivery.
The atmosphere is relatively more relaxed in the meetings of more
technical and lower-ranking bodies. In those where delegates usually come
directly from the capitals such as the SPS Measures Committee, pictures and
selfies are more common, as it is an extraordinary event for many to attend this
type of meetings. Moreover, both the chair and the secretary of the committee
are more ludic in their statements, particularly at the introduction, trying to
assure a good welcoming to the new delegates and willing that the meeting
goes on fluently. However, such trivialities do not free these meetings from
their technical nature and from their ordinary tensions. When delegates from a
member raise a grievance against another one—for instance, because of an
allegedly unfair blockage to their exports—the meeting sees the tension raising
as long as delegates from other countries with similar export interests adhere
their support to the initial concern. ‘Accused’ members can anticipate that they
will be the target of a concern in a certain meeting, but they cannot totally
anticipate the soundness of the presentation, nor the echo it will have in the rest
of the membership.
Informal meetings of trade negotiations are a case apart. Apart not less
because, as they involve bargaining processes, these are the meetings were the
theatrical dimension of diplomatic work is stronger. Negotiations largely
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operate through coalitions. Additionally, substantial work is made in small
groups, whose participants vary depending on the issue. One delegate marvels
at how the configuration of these groups can be strange or unlikely: “there we
had represented a small Caribbean island, an African country, an Asian one, a
developed country, and ours. Probably I won’t never visit those countries in
my entire life. And yet for this specific topic, it was the cooperation between
these countries what was pushing the issues ahead.” Moreover, negotiations are
always sequential. Although some delegates do have room for maneuver at the
mission level, the common reaction by all when they receive new proposals by
their peers is to suspend the process and consult the new scenario with the
capital. It turns into a back-and-forth process involving dialogue with capitals,
dialogue within the coalitions, assessments within the missions themselves, and
ultimately a new round for the ‘contenders’ in the negotiations. Peer-pressure
and domino-effects play an important role in the consolidation final outcomes.
Delegates are due to seek visibility in the system if they want to remain
included in key negotiations. It is here where the strategy of many countries is
to try “to sell themselves as different” in order to receive special treatments or
to push for specific agendas. Yet, one delegate explains, “here there is less
room for ‘bluffing’ than in other types of diplomacy.” The main input of
negotiations is the economic and commercial data that members produce about
themselves and that can be studied and analyzed by all. For instance, if
delegates from one member insist in that a certain rule or measure
exaggeratedly damages certain industry or produces a disastrous imbalance in
their public finances, the only thing that their peers need to do is to corroborate
it with numbers. It happens that negotiating positions that initially appeared to
be strong get roundly dismantled when they are checked against true numbers.
Econometric models and other research tools, both to support and to contest
positions, become important instruments in the negotiating repertoire.
Additionally, multilateral negotiation is a lot about “repetition,” a
delegate assures. “You go to the meetings and you insist that you want A, B
and C. You keep repeating that you need A, B and C so the others don’t forget.”
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Absence of repetition could make the rest not consider the requests in the final
outcomes. As expected, the negotiations are also fertile soil for the deployment
of all sorts of bargaining strategies that the abundant literature on negotiations
has produced. One example of such strategies is dosing the arguments behind
a position and ordering them in a classical, rhetorical way. If after days of
insisting on two arguments, they prove to be insufficient to convince, then a
third, more powerful argument is deployed to finally change the balance of a
bargaining. In other words, not all cards are put on the table from the beginning.
Examples like this abound, and one only needs to look at literature on
negotiation to get informed of more strategies. This type of literature does not
only make part of the book collection of the WTO library, but it is also followed
closely—and privately—by many practitioners.
To cite just a few examples, among the more than two thousand book
entries associated with negotiation, the catalogue of the WTO library includes
works that regularly target an audience of managers, such as Raiffa’s (1982)
The Art and Science of Negotiation, Zartman and Berman’s (1982) The
Practical Negotiator, Rojot’s (1994) La Négotiation, Saner’s (2000) The
Expert Negotiator, Watkins’ (2002) Breakthrough Business Negotiation,
Wheeler’s (2013) The Art of Negotiation, and other titles of the like. The
collection also includes the famous novel by Francis Walder (1992), Saint-
Germain ou la négotiation, about the 1570 peace process between the French
Catholics and Huguenots. The Abélès-led ethnography states that former
Director-General Pascal Lamy would recommend this book to newcomers for
a better understanding of the negotiation processes in the WTO (Dematteo
2011, 64). The library also counts with Lall’s (1985) Multilateral Negotiation
and Mediation, Iklé’s (1985) How Nations Negotiate, Young’s (1991)
Negotiation Analysis, Kremenyuk’s (2000) International Economic
Negotiation, Susskind and Crump’s (2008) Multiparty Negotiation, among
many others.
Derived from this issue, the fact that the use of manifold negotiation
strategies is common makes that delegates find it difficult to ‘read’ one another.
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For instance, does certain behavior they observe happen because of a cultural
difference or because of a negotiation strategy? One delegate recounts the
anecdote of a negotiation meeting with a certain Asian country. In the very
middle of the negotiation, a junior delegate apparently fell asleep while sitting
on the table, neck and face up in front of everybody, and in front of his own
boss. His colleagues do not change countenance and instead follow with the
meeting as if the ‘strange event’ were not happening. Strategy or cultural
difference? Difficult to say, the practitioners conclude. On the one hand,
inverse confusions (from the other delegates trying to read their peers) can also
happen on an ordinary basis. On the other hand, the cultural ‘otherness’ can be
easily exploited as a tool to increase pressure and to gain procedural advantages
or supplementary patience in the course of negotiations.
Another issue that emerges in trade negotiations is the great divide that
exists between delegates with professional background in ministries of foreign
affairs—generalist diplomats—and delegates who made a career in ministries
of trade or in equivalent agencies and government divisions. The discourses of
the first ones commonly “remain at the level of principles,” a delegate explains,
“but hardly move on to a more concrete level. Principles are fine. But then,
what’s next? What do you do with them?” he complains. The system, therefore,
becomes very dependent on delegates who master the minutia of trade, who are
more able to translate the principles into proposed measures. Usually it is not
the principles—although there are different and conflicting ones—which are
negotiated but the measures that are to derive from them. Yet the challenge of
the generalist diplomats is reciprocal: while one type struggles to convince the
other of their principles, the other struggles to convince the first of the concrete.
If “trade is our Latin,” as some delegates affirm, it is also clear that not all of
them are equally versed in the organization’s lingua franca.
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Rituals
Multilateral diplomacy is known for being less ceremonial than ordinary,
bilateral diplomacy. Additionally, the WTO has built a reputation of
concreteness and of hosting a business-like work atmosphere in comparison to
other international organizations. However, even if more subtly, the presence
of rituals and the symbolism of power make part of the daily life of the
organization in its formal settings, just as Jönsson and Hall (2005) would have
predicted. Examples of rituals are the use of the gavel by chairpersons and the
short, coded formulas they use for procedure, such as “the General Council
adopts the agenda” or “the General Council so agrees.” Additionally, the chairs
are the ones who speak first at the opening of the meetings, and it is their words
that give closure to them. Another example is the introductory words by the
chairs, which are often marked by condolences over natural disasters and other
calamities that have taken place in some part of the world some days or hours
before the meetings. The introductory words in the meetings of the General
Council are also marked by welcoming expressions to the new ambassadors
appointed to the organization who are attending the meeting for the first time,
and any special guest present in the meeting, such as ministers coming from
capitals. When one of these guests are to pronounce a special speech in the
Council, they are escorted by a protocol official from their chairs in the rows
of delegates to a lectern at the backdrop of the room, beside the main table.
Once a year, when the turnover of chairs takes place, at the end of the turnover
meeting, the new chairperson is also escorted by the protocol official from his
usual seat to his new position at the center of the main table, where both
chairpersons give conclusion to the meeting together. Other practice that can
be considered as an example of ritual is that when delegates take the floor to
speak, no one, not even the chair, is in the right to interrupt them. They are
invested with the special majesty of being the representatives of member
countries and, as such, they enjoy this respect regardless the size of the member
or the length of the statement.
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Another practice that deserves the category of ritual is the permanent
reverence that delegates express publicly for the chairpersons and for the figure
of the Director General during their statements. Delegates are fond in gratitude
for the chair ‘allowing’ them to take the floor, and deploy other similar
expressions. Despite the general awareness that consensus is the rule of
decision-making—and although some disagree with these actors in private—,
the chair and the DG, even if just symbolic authorities, are addressed with
superlative respect. This is also visible at the turnover of chairs. Delegates
present in these meetings take the floor again to express gratitude to the leaving
chair for his work on behalf of the membership, and give the entering chair the
best wishes for his starting period. This reverence takes many forms. For
instance, when the meeting rooms are not in use, their by-default configuration
anyway include the black-on-white signs with the name of the chairperson and
the secretary at the center of the main table. In many conferences and seminars
offered to visitors in these rooms, this configuration remains. And then, the
speakers of these events always sit at the extremes of the main table or stand
up while they deliver their talks, therefore never ‘usurping’ the empty central
positions of authority. The practice is not too different from what many temples
do with their sacred books or with the chairs where the leading priests sit.
Similar parallels can be found in many monarchies, where the ruler is the only
one allowed to sit in certain ceremonial thrones.
Another practice that takes the regularity of a ritual—and that is made
as an expression of reverence and respect—is the ‘playfulness’ with which
delegates switch from language to language in the meetings. Chairpersons
generally conduct the meetings in English, yet when the chair represents a
Spanish or a French speaking country, it is common for them to start with a
few words in their own mother-tongues (which will be subsequently translated
into the rest of official languages by the interpreters in the cabins). After
‘paying respect’ to their languages during some instants, they switch to English
and continue with it to the end. It is also common that after a statement was
delivered in Spanish or in French, the chair takes the floor again with a
‘gracias’ or a ‘merci beaucoup’ respectively, instead of the more common
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‘thank you,’ as a way of consideration towards the delegate that spoke. These
expressions of deference are well received by the audience. Delegates too
switch language for short periods or for short expressions from time to time.
And it is not atypical that a delegate from Canada, for instance, delivers one
whole statement in English and another one in French at two different moments
of the same meeting. When delegates can, they generally exhibit a bit of their
language skills from time to time in the meetings. And this also involves non-
official languages. For instance, in the Trade Policy Review of Japan in 2015,
at the turn of Brazil’s statement, the Brazilian Ambassador speaks during the
first 10 seconds in Japanese to the joy and excitement of the large Japanese
delegation, who did not expect to hear their language there. The Ambassador
was drawing on his experience as the former Brazilian Ambassador in Tokyo
and on the language skills he had developed because of that.
Finally, the most important rituals gone through at the WTO are the
meetings themselves. Literally, they are perceived by many as “rituals.”
Sometimes the meetings are mere redundancies as all important decisions have
been made previously in informal meetings or in lower-ranking bodies, or
grievances have been aired in other formats and through different mechanisms.
Yet, official meetings are ceremonies where all businesses are made formal.
Because of their formalizing power, the meetings are respected and followed
by all as a fundamental part of their representation work.
Time pressure
As mentioned earlier, representatives of member countries have the right to
speak in meetings without being interrupted. Yet, the membership is big and is
getting bigger every year. As many delegates are willing to speak in the
meetings, there is always the latent risk of them getting out of control in terms
of length. As many meetings already last one, two, or even three days because
of the amount of issues addressed and the amount of statements, there is a
permanent urgency to control time and keep the meetings as short as possible.
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At the meetings—and depending on personal styles—a big amount of the
energy and comments of the chairpersons have the single purpose of
controlling time and accelerating the meeting’s agenda. There are a few
episodes when the chair gives the floor to a delegate and for some reason the
delegate was still not ready to talk. After seconds pass in silence, the chair
becomes more impatient: “[country], you have the floor…, [country], you have
the floor…, [country]… pleeeeease.” The awkward moment—and the loss of
time—ends when the delegate finally finds his document and starts delivering.
Often, the lack of concretion and efficiency of a statement are immediately
‘punished’ by comments by the chair asking for brevity in the next
interventions (but delegates are never interrupted while they speak). “Please,
restrain yourself from taking the floor unless it is absolutely necessary,” is one
of the formulas typically used by the chair. “If you want your statement to be
on the record please use a different meeting,” the DG would politely repeat
after some ambassador abuses his time in the Trade Negotiations Committee.
A different strategy to keep the meetings short—also frequently used—is to
praise delegates when they administer their time better. A statement lasting
only one minute would easily be followed by a comment such as: “Thank you
for being concise... a model for the rest.”
Many delegates confess their exasperation when some peers make
long statements perceived as unnecessary, especially when they repeat
common places or positions that were already expressed by spokespersons of
the coalitions that they make part of. Long meetings can be very tedious and
more when the statements are over-redundant. Actually, certain delegates are
excluded from key informal meetings not because of their political orientations
or lack of technical knowledge but simply because they are perceived as not
being efficient with the management of time. Other delegates, in contrast, gain
more influence simply by keeping their interventions short and concrete, and
by talking only when it is strictly necessary. A well-positioned ambassador
concludes: “Sometimes the most constructive participation in a meeting is not
to talk.” In this respect, a key factor for delegates’ success is a fluid
coordination with capitals and trust by them about this different, if shorter, way
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of participating in the system. It happens that a certain delegate knows that his
long speech will not be well received by his peers and even by his allies, and
yet he has no choice but to deliver it as it was a compulsory request from the
capital. When capitals—or even disconnected ambassadors—require their
delegates to bluntly deliver statements in inadequate settings and stress too
much the content and too less the form, they co-opt the delegates’ freedom for
tact. Here again, the differences of awareness that delegates exhibit regarding
the manifold elements involved in diplomatic representation in a multilateral
setting can be perceived, and how crucial these elements are for a successful
performance.
Humor
Another instrument used by chairpersons to encourage short statements is
humor. It can be equally effective (or ineffective), but with the clear advantage
of gaining a few sympathies in the audience and making the procedures
smoother. For instance, the meeting of the Trade Negotiations Committee in
January 2015. In the first half a dozen statements there are two where the
delegates have already ‘misbehaved’ by making them too long, over four or
five minutes. After the second long statement, the DG, performing as chair,
reminds the participants that as it is the kick-off meeting of the negotiations
that year, it is meant to be short, and asks delegates to speak shortly so the
meeting does not take too long. Then, he adds: “I don’t want to tell you how
many seconds… you should speak, but please make it short.” The use of the
word ‘seconds’, instead of saying ‘minutes’, triggers the public’s laugh, and at
the same time makes it very clear that the statements should be very short. Most
of the statements in the meeting were ranging between 1 minute 30 seconds to
3 minutes, and the meeting ended in a range of 2 hours.
The humorous style of other chairs can be harsher. One example is the
General Council meeting of December 2014. In the first round of statements,
the harmony of the meeting is abruptly interrupted by the intervention of an
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African delegate that perfectly lasted more than 10 minutes. At the end of his
statement, the delegate repeated several times that he wished the ongoing talks
on negotiations could end by July. When the Canadian chair takes the floor
back, he builds on that comment with no mercy: “Well, I wish we could end
this meeting by July! But with long statements like that I’m not sure anymore.”
When he says ‘by July’, the crowd of delegates bursts out laughing at the
expense of the verbose speaker. After that it should be clear for the rest that
mild public scorn is what they risk if they abuse too much of everybody’s time.
And yet, a few statements continue to be borderline-long through the meeting.
When the meeting reaches lunch time and it has to be stopped for some hours,
the chair says: “And please, during lunch, you delegates that are going to speak
in the afternoon, please read the statements that you wrote, or that someone
else wrote for you, and cut the paragraphs you don’t need!” Again, a big
number of delegates laughs in approval.
Interestingly enough, though, is the fact that the DG does not laugh.
During the wave of laughing he stays serious as a monk and does not dare to
raise his head above the notes that he seems to be taking. Delegates may feel
allowed to laugh at someone’s expense in a moment like this, but for a DG, that
could be too much a lack of respect, and it is better not to risk an always-fragile
political capital. In an interview, a delegate observes that Secretariat officials
do avoid laughing at someone’s expense more often than delegates.
Nonetheless, he adds: “but sometimes they can’t help it when the joke is too
good!”
Naturally, neither the only aim of humor is to control time, nor it is the
monopoly of the chairs. For instance, at the very end of an invitation for a
delegate to take the floor, the chair, who is not an English native speaker,
struggles four times to pronounce well the word ‘phytosanitary’, always
stopping in failure without finishing the word, but whose complete form was
nonetheless evident through all the tries. Then he says “Whatever!” grumpily
and stops trying. The scene is hilarious and the participants laugh loudly in
complicity with the chair. Also, in the Trade Negotiations Committee
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mentioned before, when the DG asks the delegates to make short statements,
he subsequently gives the floor to the EU Ambassador for his statement.
Amusedly frustrated, the ambassador says: “That was really a bad moment to
clarify that… but I promise to follow your advice in the next meeting.” The
participants laugh. If the DG had injected a dose of tension to the meeting by
asking for shorter statements and by politely criticizing the previous delegate,
this tension was timely fixed by the following ambassador for the benefit of all.
A common trait in these two examples is that the speakers were always making
fun of themselves instead of laughing at someone else’s expense. That is
always a less risky type of humor, and therefore more fitting in a diplomatic
setting.
So, despite the grave atmosphere that predominates in official
meetings, humor erupts from time to time through witticism and timely
comments, changing the meetings’ tone for a few seconds. A delegate
observes: “One thanks when that happens. Meetings are heavy and full of
tensions.” When well crafted and used with tact, humor turns into a powerful
tool to alleviate these tensions, as well as to increase the visibility of the
speakers. The delegate declares: “Delegates want to attract attention. They
want to be seen.” They need to be remembered if they want to count. Overall,
humor is too risky to be more common in multilateral diplomacy. “You will
never find a ‘joker’ here,” an ambassador observes. However, humor is not
totally absent in formal events. It is used as a sporadic instrument for manifold
purposes.
Silence and body language
One important feature of the experience of official meetings is silence. This is
especially true for meetings of large format. In these events, normally more
than a half of the delegates present never take the floor publicly. Either their
missions only sent delegates to take notes, or the delegate with the highest
ranking is the one who makes the statements while the rest are there to assist
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him. And, due to the number of participants, the delegates who do speak are
likely to do so only about 5 percent of the meeting’s duration or even less, in
periods excessively short. Additionally, there are other types of participants,
such as diverse Secretariat officials, who are never there to speak. For instance,
in General Council meetings, the four deputy directors-general join the chair
and DG at the extremes of the main table, but they never utter a word through
their microphones. The meetings could be indeed understood as an endurance
test on silence. They are an exercise on patience and waiting, where the energy
of most participants is dammed during long periods of time before it can go
into action. And such silence and waiting time makes somehow part of the
ritualistic dimension of the meetings.
One byproduct of the preponderance of silence is that it increases the
importance of body language. During long periods of time, it is “the only
language you have at your disposal,” an ambassador remarks. Delegates can
observe one another in the neighborhoods of their rows, and body postures and
facial gestures are the first thing they check. But the impact of body language
goes beyond the neighborhoods where they sit in the meetings. On the one
hand, as the diplomatic community is small, comments after the meetings can
easily spread, covering significant numbers of delegates. On the other hand, the
internal media service covers some of the meetings of large format, which
induces delegates to deploy their body language accordingly. The WTO press
releases covering these meetings do not have a big public coverage, but the key
actors that matter in the Geneva trade community and in ministries do follow
them, including the collections of pictures that they contain.
Body language can express a big variety of messages including
annoyance, disapproval, agreement, fun, happiness, coolness, hatred, anger, or
sympathy. Everything counts: to whom you express sympathy in public and
how; to whom you express indifference or disdain; even to whom you follow
with your eyes. Body language tends to remain neutral and austere, in order to
avoid misleading or unwanted interpretations, and also as a way to bring more
strength to the gestures when delegates do want to communicate something
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with it. Not all master body language equally well. Some delegates transmit a
big deal of arrogance through their gestures and postures, as if they do not care
about their peers or as if they want that the rest thinks that they do not care.
That comes at a high cost for the ‘perpetrators’ as most expressions of
arrogance are likely to produce enmity in some. As mentioned earlier, in a
consensus-based organization indifference is a better outcome than fierce
opposition, and when this opposition is the result of communication instead of
plain national interests, it is a simple diplomatic failure.
Some delegates, by contrast, are extremely careful with their use of
body language, as they are aware of what is at stake. They can be particularly
keen to express attention for the delegates they antagonize with. At moments
when one of them is delivering a statement, some ambassadors can be seen as
they slowly move into a position of extreme attention in which they ‘petrify’
for many seconds; enough time for many delegates to take note of the interest
and even for the official photographer to arrive on time to take a photo of the
scene. An ambassador explains: “The more antagonistic the positions, the more
important the attitude of attention and interest that you have when they talk.”
It could be argued that delegates with the background of generalist diplomats
can perform better in these issues than delegates with background in trade, yet
the picture is not clear. The dividing line could also be senior and junior
delegates. In this context, body language tends to be more refined at higher
levels of experience. However, generalizations on this area are difficult to
formulate as the styles of individual performance are so diverse. In any case,
the dimension of silence and body language constitutes one more area in which
the asymmetries of awareness about the diplomatic context are evident among
the WTO delegates.
Ordinariness
Although WTO meetings are genuinely unique in the world in terms of format
and content, for delegates they also become their quotidian milieu; that is, they
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become a bit of a routine. Meetings can be simultaneously extraordinary and
mundane, at least depending on the level of interest that delegates show for
them. They can be repetitive and tedious, and not all have the perseverance to
follow them fully. While some delegates can be seen yawning once in a while,
others check their Facebook accounts in their laptops and tablets. Others take
advantage of the ‘cold’ moments of certain meetings to socialize with one
another outside. They write SMSs to each other and coincide for a brief coffee
in the cafeteria, and then go back. Although meetings are invested with the
majesty of a diplomatic setting, the ordinary does not escape from them.
Either at noon or at the end of the afternoon, when the meetings are
over, a different phase of work begins. Outside the Council Room, a long line
of cars and drivers waits for the ambassadors to leave the building. Other
delegates go to find their cars at the parking area and drive, and some leave the
headquarters walking, cross the Rue de Lausanne and take the bus.
The informal
It is equally important to remark that in multilateral trade diplomacy, informal
work is a vital and quite an inevitable component of the lives of delegates.
Moreover, informal work constitutes one of the most important areas in which
asymmetries of awareness can occur among delegates. Of course, formal work
as the one mentioned earlier is indispensable for the organization to function.
But behind all this visible work there is a myriad of informal communication
that takes place among all actors, which is equally key to the organization’s
functioning. It comes to be like the other side of the same coin. E-mail and
telephone communication; informal group meetings at the WTO facilities or in
the diplomatic missions; bilateral meetings (many of this is labeled in official
speeches with the keyword of “consultations”); but also breakfasts; coffee
breaks; small talk at the corridors; work lunches; dinners; receptions;
gatherings on the occasion of national days or other special festivities; and,
importantly, all the ‘free-time’ delegates spend with each other doing sports or
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pursuing some hobby in common. All this constitutes the common (work) life
of delegates and serves for integrating them with one another. In those spaces,
delegates—deliberately or not—craft positions, forge alliances, gather
information, exchange views, know each other better, and look for
understanding.
Most delegates agree in that this component is the most important one
in their mutual interactions. “Official meetings are mere formalisms, like
rituals.” “When there is an important agreement in an official meeting, it is
usually because it was already crafted by previous work,” many delegates point
out. For delegates to “move” in the diplomatic community “as fish in the
water,” they also need to be active and perform well in the informal part of their
work as much as they do it in the formal part. Another ambassador
acknowledges this importance and adds: “in my first years I was too focused
on ‘work’, now I’m trying to participate more often in social life.” Another
even declares that he was not “physically” ready for this life: “my weight
suddenly rose! So many receptions, dinners, buffets.” Neumann (2012, 11) had
already remarked that “wining and dining” was one of the most important
“integrative factors” in diplomacy, and this indeed proves to be the case for the
WTO community as well.
The intimacy of these contexts is not paralleled with the one of official
gatherings. A delegate comments: “you go to a working breakfast and there
you can easily see who has knowledge and who is lost.” A different delegate
explains: “In the negotiations your colleague says ‘no’ about some issue, but
it’s harder to grasp how firm he is in his position, how much of a ‘no’ is his
‘no’… but when drinking a beer like friends he can be more transparent, he can
tell me his government won’t change its view about it, so progress have to be
looked for somewhere else.”
Quite naturally, the logic of this social dynamic facilitates the
formation of many “clubs” of delegates with interests in common. These clubs
are more common to the ambassadorial level but not exclusive to them.
Football players, football watchers, billiard pool players, golf players, tobacco
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smokers and so forth, many band up and do these activities together as part of
their integration to the group. It is precisely this peculiarity of their work life
what has made this organization to be called “an English club” even since
GATT times, a trace that never disappeared in the WTO era. As in ordinary
clubs, it is often the case that the rank of the delegates invited to certain
gatherings plays an important role. Some ambassadors happen to get
disappointed when they discover that certain invitation was open to officials of
lower ranks. While the disappointment of some would derive from the lower
distinction or exclusiveness of the gathering, for others the disappointment can
derive from pure pragmatism, as the productivity of their networking in the
event decreases.
These informal activities, therefore, are far from being banal. They
constitute a big opportunity for delegates to socialize with one another and
sympathize. Moreover, these gatherings easily lead to conversations over
content that are meaningful for the delegates’ work. Cases are known of
delegates—and even ambassadors—who deliberately avoid receptions and
other events of social life because that would reveal to the rest how unprepared
they are at a technical level and/or how disconnected they are about the ongoing
negotiations. While this lack of preparation is less evident in a formal meeting
as they can read statements prepared by someone else, the situation is different
and can be more transparent in an informal gathering.
Additionally, when friendships are consolidated in informal contexts
they can reap benefits of manifold kinds, increasing the quality and the
outreach of work in the formal context. For instance, delegates from small
missions, being unable to cover all the meetings, often rely on one another for
note taking in different meetings. Then they share the notes once in a while to
multiply the reports they can write to the capitals. The practice is not too
different from school students helping each other with their homework, except
that in this case every one reports to a different supervisor.
It has been recently stated that chain hotels are rising as typical
locations where diplomacy takes place. An example of this is the Iran’s nuclear
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deal of November 2013. The negotiations were held in InterContinental
Geneva and then the envoys went to Palais des Nations to take the official
picture of the deal (The Economist 2013). Either a rising trend in general
diplomacy or not, this is not uncommon to diplomatic life in International
Geneva. Actually, global governance in Geneva does not take place in IOs’
headquarters and diplomatic missions only, but also in hotels and restaurants
over the city, in pubs and bars over the Rue de Lausanne, and even on the
dancing floors of those bars.
Between passivity and strategy
Some delegates engage in these informal activities of the diplomatic
community in a passive or somehow unnoticed way. As they are new in the
city it is just natural to spend time with people with whom they work with and
who share so many professional interests in common. A few engage in these
activities even with frustration: “I had lectured diplomacy for years, but real
diplomacy is not made as it is written in textbooks”, an ambassador declares.
They finally accept they need to learn “to play the game.” Some passively,
others with frustration, but it is more often the case that delegates engage in
these informal activities deliberately and actively, seeing them as a means of
integration and networking and, briefly, as part of their jobs. For instance, an
ambassador states: “I say to my younger delegates who don’t like alcohol that
they should learn to take a few drinks in a social context, so they can go out
and meet the colleagues of their rank. Sometimes what they can learn there [for
the mission] could not be obtained otherwise.” Another ambassador adds: “A
good ambassador is not only the one that stays at home studying at night. A
good ambassador has to go out and interact with others, and persuade them to
take certain positions.”
Many take the informal activities very seriously. They use it
systematically to gather information. A piece of information obtained in certain
circles can be exchanged for another piece of information in a different circle,
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and so forth. The informal settings are also a fitting format for inducing the
flow of information in the mission’s favor. At times the information is retained
until the time is ripe. Then it is injected into the flow at the moment when it is
judged better so that delegates—or certain circles of delegates—start
commenting about it. A delegate declares: “You need to know the things that
are going to happen before they actually happen.” This informal networking is
also used as a way to build preventive buffers of sympathy that support the
formal work. A delegate explains: “You need to cultivate relationships as much
as you can before tensions arise. That way relations may survive after the
tensions.” The practice of informal networking conceived as a mission’s
strategy is summarized by a delegate in the following terms: “If you’re not
meeting your peers over the weekend, you’re not doing your job.”
Still, many doubt of the effectiveness of this informal networking, or
at least of parts of it. On this issue, an ambassador observes: “I’m not so sure
that ‘partying’ [with other delegates] is so important, but it´s true that real work
happens in the corridors, in informal group or bilateral meetings. The
information you can gain eating a croissant and drinking a coffee with a
colleague at the WTO cafeteria can be more crucial to your work than anything
else.” Moreover, in certain circles, the affective dimension of the
communication and interaction and the solidarity of group are highly
appreciated. Addressing such circles under a purely strategic approach is the
seed of potential tensions and even the seed of enmities. Additionally, some
relativize the strategic component of the informal networking. An ambassador
observes: “We are like students in a school. During class we compete fiercely
against each other for the best grades, and in break time we are united as the
best friends. We eat together, we play football together, we travel together…
despite the constrains of our professions, true friendships are possible.”
In any case, it must be noticed that the informal component of the work
of delegates, as it takes considerable time of their evenings and weekends, has
a non-negligible impact in the way they integrate—or not—to the city of
Geneva and to Switzerland as a whole. Certainly, the amount of social life left
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to non-diplomatic activities gets markedly reduced. These dynamics turn into
an important factor for the consolidation of the “city within the city” or the
“diplomatic ghetto”—as mentioned in Chapter 4—for those who make part of
this sphere. And it is hard to imagine how it could be otherwise.
Therefore, the world of multilateral diplomacy is a world where many
asymmetries are visible across the participants. Beside the raw asymmetries of
power and the previously discussed asymmetries of resources, the asymmetries
of awareness play an important role as well. Delegates exhibit different degrees
of awareness (or, conversely, of naïveté) towards the whole range of practices
that make part of their work. Depending of these degrees, they approach their
work differently. In other words, the asymmetries of awareness lead to
asymmetries of strategies for the conduction of WTO work. Once again, this
new set of asymmetries does not fully depend on the countries’ relative power
within the membership or in the international system. Instead, it depends on the
skill, expertise, and experience of delegates in charge of member representation
in the system. It is routine that delegates from a few bigger member countries
exhibit less awareness about several issues while the delegates from some
smaller member countries prove to be more accomplished.
Sophistication
A curious aspect about delegates’ narratives that deserves a special remark is
the frequency with which they use the term ‘sophisticated’ to refer to other
delegates that they admire because of some reason. “…, she is sophisticated;”
“He’s sophisticated;” “… they are all sophisticated…;” “He was
sophisticated;” this kind of description pops up when less expected in their
descriptions. It seems that sophistication somehow emerges as an important
personal quality necessary to ‘accept’ and ‘be accepted’ if not in the
organization as a whole, at least in certain circles of it, a quality that
automatically entitles respect and regard. Although difficult to define in real
practice—and every individual can underline different aspects of such a
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quality—sophistication acts as a sort of latent, non-declared ideal in terms of
social manners and behavior that delegates ought to fulfill or towards they
ought to drive themselves to. Suddenly, sophistication turns into a key concept
for understanding the diplomatic community, its socialization processes, its
dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, particularly in informal interactions.
Sophistication would count at least with two fundamental dimensions.
The first is the professional dimension. In this arena, sophistication has to do
with the depth of collateral knowledge required to excel in the ordinary
functions of the delegates’ formal work. It is less about the core technical
knowledge on international trade, and more about the contiguous set of skills
that help to put that into action in the diplomatic community. It has to do a lot
with communication skills, and with amassing a big amount of general
knowledge about history and current affairs, especially with an international
focus. A former delegate points out: “[It’s] going to a meeting and immediately
knowing that this delegate here represents a government from the left; that one
there represents a government from center left; and that one over there
represents a government from the center-right, and talk to them accordingly.”
Small, even minor details are important. A delegate would have to master per
se important details about the countries and governments that their peers
represent. Knowing about historical conflicts with neighbors and how this
shapes their foreign policy; about internal ethnical or religious compositions
and divides in each society; or about how strong is the support of a government
in the country’s parliament or its popularity in the streets; everything counts
for addressing formal and informal conversations in the right manner.
Additionally, the aspect of communication cannot be neglected. This
relates with the capacity to properly ‘be in society’ at the level of an
international organization, and ultimately at the level of a high intellectual elite.
A former delegate explains: “Let’s say you’re invited to a meeting with two
Nobel prizes of economics, two ministers from big countries, two senior
officials of important international organizations… you need to know how to
talk. You cannot prepare yourself only two weeks in advance for that meeting.
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You have to be preparing yourself all your life in advance for that meeting.
You cannot fake it. The difference can be noticed in the first 20 seconds.”
Although the time of personal preparation can be a matter of debate, what is
clear is the difference in the performance in this kind of meeting between the
ones that are well prepared and the ones that are not.
Importantly, sophistication entails subtleness and subtle signaling.
Sophistication implies a preference for few words, for not over-remarking what
might seem—or should be—obvious to everyone. A weak moan or the arching
of the eyebrows by some delegates can be more telling than long discourses by
others. An ambassador observes: “I ask a question to some and they give me a
long speech on the subject. I ask the same question to others and they answer
me only with a moan or with a brief sentence. But if I insist in asking them to
elaborate on their moans and brief words, they come up with really elaborated
opinions, more elaborated than the long monologues of the others.”
The second dimension of sophistication would be a personal
dimension. It can be more complex to apprehend than the first one because of
the variety of potential vectors it can involve. At this level, sophistication is a
mixture of deep general knowledge about manifold topics and distinctive
refinement in social manners. On the one hand, it is about the number of
languages one speaks, the number of countries one has visited, the knowledge
one has about literature, opera, and music, the experience one has gathered in
trying wines and cheeses throughout one’s life, and so forth. On the other hand,
it is about how little one speaks about all that. Refinement has to appear natural.
The sophisticated individual is not meant to be easily surprised or overwhelmed
by ordinary objects that belong to his or her refinement or to the refinement of
others, as everything is obviously connatural to his or her style and way of
living, and to the way of living that usually surrounds him or her.
The vectors of two sophistications can be totally different and even
opposite, and yet earn the same reciprocal admiration. In one case it can be
Latin languages, Russian literature, piano, tennis, and Scotch. In the other it
can be a deep knowledge of Mandarin, Indian traditional theater, skiing, and
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Italian cuisine. In one more case it can be Anglo-Saxon literature, golf, cinema,
French wines, and modern art. But the levels of refinement being equivalent,
their owners can manifest the same mutual respect for each other, a respect less
easily allotted to a peer that does not exhibit comparable ‘credentials’.
Sophistication is different than luxury and wealth, but there are several
intersections between them. At least one condition of the sophisticated
individual is to feel at ease when surrounded by wealth, regardless how
eccentric someone’s hobbies and likings might look because of how
inaccessible or unaffordable they are to the greater public. Some delegates
insinuate that sophistication would be less about money than about education.
“An affluent family is no guarantee of a good education,” a former delegate
points out. Another one remarks, “It’s not money; it’s education. Well educated
people are much more interesting and fun to be with.”
Additionally, sophistication is different than ‘class’, but, again, there
are intersections between them. It is true that, being a world of high-level
political elites, an important proportion of WTO delegates comes from the
upper-class of their home countries. However, although sophistication is easily
a sign of privileged upbringings, neither all representatives coming from the
upper-class prove to be highly sophisticated individuals, nor all sophisticated
representatives have an upper-class upbringing. Again, the roles of education
and individual inclinations are important to be considered. Besides, it is very
likely that the participation in diplomatic life in general—and in the WTO
community in particular—operates as one of the attracting factors that pull
individuals into sophistication. In other words, sophistication as being part of
the community’s socialization process. Commenting about the internal social
dynamics of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Neumann (2012, 153)
considers the case of new diplomats entering the service who distinctively have
a rural or working-class background. He states that, “they embarked on a class
journey.” This class journey, however, would be partly frustrated, as “their
habitus often continued to mark them as hierarchically subordinate” (ibid).
Indeed, for the case of the WTO sphere, a few delegates would be ready to
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acknowledge some ‘class-journey’ effects of their participation in the
multilateral trading system. After all, sophistication is highly related to
Neumann´s (2013) swan metaphor, that is, with the diplomats’ attempt to
project the ‘sublime’ to their audiences, which means that the ‘arts’ of the swan
is something that they would be meant to learn in their jobs. Here it is worth to
recall the remark by VanGrasstek (2013, xiv) about how many delegates
“master the art of looking fresh at 9:00 am meetings even when they are six
time zones away from Geneva and their jet lag forced them awake just two
hours after falling asleep.” Yet, being so wide and diverse the WTO
membership as well as the upbringings of representatives, and being the WTO
governed by the rules and practice of consensus, a working-class background
can play negatively against delegates as much as an upper-class background
can. It depends less on the background itself and more on the ways and attitudes
with which delegates publicly relate with their backgrounds.
As mentioned, sophistication comes along with inclusion and respect.
Yet, with sophistication also comes the temptation for disdain. Disdain turns
into rejection, and rejection is paid back with rejection in the opposite direction
by the ones who found themselves rejected first. This is especially relevant in
the dynamics of the organization in the WTO era. While in the GATT times
the diplomatic club could have been more closed and homogeneous, in WTO
times it grew bigger and more ‘democratized’. Some delegates are able to keep
themselves in balance in the middle of this tension: heading towards refinement
as some of the circles induce, but remaining approachable to the rest. That is a
difficult balancing act in which only a few succeed.
It is useful to remark, however, that sophistication, although central, is
not the only potential trigger of disdain in the multilateral community. Actually
any group or individual subjective conception of superiority can turn into a
potential source of disdain. This naturally includes raw relative power
(‘because ‘we’ are more powerful’), national wealth (‘because ‘we’ are
wealthier’), and individual wealth (‘because I am wealthier’). Yet, some of
these sources are so ‘mundane’ that most outsiders would never imagine that
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they could play a role in a diplomatic setting: ‘‘we’ are more just’, ‘‘we’ are
more pious’, ‘‘we’ are more cultivated’, ‘‘we’ are less privileged’, ‘‘we’ are
more quiet’, ‘‘we’ speak better English’, ‘‘we’ work harder’, ‘‘we’ are not
vulgar’, ‘‘we’ are more clean’, and so forth. Of course, one of the typical
sources of pride in the epistemic community is ‘‘our’ economic policies are
better!’ Some more intensively than others—and despite the protocols and
decorum of the diplomatic interaction—every subjective ground for disdain
can potentially filter into the social dynamics of the diplomatic community no
matter how far-away from the real business of the organization it looks like. To
every source of disdain there is a network of affinities and a potential target
population. The networks that are active in a given moment overlap one
another, sometimes in contradictory ways. To a certain extent, the mixture of
all these layers of solidarity and rivalry, of inclusion and exclusion, contributes
to shape the group dynamics of multilateralism. Once again, as in the case of
sophistication, only the most able delegates are capable of going beyond most
of these subjective divides, keeping their own value systems in check, building
bridges among the extremes, and sympathizing with a larger proportion of the
community. As expected, the ones that can do it exert a considerable amount
of influence in the system, regardless of the member country they represent.
Languages
The big protagonism of informal interactions in delegates’ work has also a
pronounced consequence in what concerns the languages used for these
interactions. Despite de fact that Spanish and French have the status of official
languages in the WTO alongside English, it is the latter that is overwhelmingly
used as the language of informal interactions. Although the language of the
host city of Geneva and the mother tongue of a high percentage of Secretariat
employees, the common perception is that the use of French is decreasing
through time. Among delegates, an ambassador says, “French is not common
anymore. You barely hear it, especially after [French DG] Pascal Lamy left.”
In effect, as mentioned in Chapter 4, even after years of being appointed in their
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positions in Geneva, many delegates from non-French-speaking counties do
not make the effort to learn French. It is not only that it is hard to find room in
their agendas to study the language, but also that most feel they do not need
French either for accomplishing their missions as delegates or for their
everyday life in the city, whose service providers are pretty used to non-French
speakers. And even though delegates perceive a rise of interest in Spanish
around the organization, English remains by far the most widely-used
language.
Because of the official language status, French-speaking and Spanish-
speaking countries feel sometimes tempted to appoint officials with poor or
inexistent dominion of English. It seems to make sense since they are allowed
to make their official statements in Spanish or French, and the service of
simultaneous translation is available in such cases. It also happens to smaller
countries that the human capital with the right technical capabilities does not
match the needs of language performance. In both cases the price these
countries pay is very high. It is true that having French and Spanish as official
languages does indeed constitute a substantive advantage for their countries as
all the information that the WTO produces is available in these languages not
only to government officials in the capitals but to the broader set of local
researchers, university students, and business community. It thus might
translate into a broader engagement of these countries as a whole with the WTO
compared with countries whose languages are not official in the organization.
However, in what concerns delegates working in Geneva, French and Spanish
prove to be insufficient for effective communication with the bulk of their peers
and with secretariat officials. On the one hand, simultaneous interpretation, no
matter how good, is an imperfect process. Many delegates confess they give
up—headphones on or off—their struggle with interpretations in official
meetings just because they are hard to follow. Yet, for some, using a mother
tongue in official gatherings is a matter of patriotism or of national pride, and
they can even feel indignation when a colleague from a different country—but
sharing the same mother tongue—do not use it for his statements. This
preference for English in manifold contexts can also be judged as ‘snobbism’,
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without considering how deeply English is intertwined with the personal lives
and personal histories of some delegates. For many, however, it is not a matter
of preference as it is of pragmatism. “If I really need to get me understood in a
meeting by all, I switch to English,” an ambassador states.
On the other hand, having a wide dominion of French or Spanish, or
of even more languages of other member countries represents a big advantage
to a delegate for informal interactions. But a high dominion of English is simply
a must. Not using it constitutes a serious handicap for the effectiveness of his
work, putting him out of the circles of information flow and reducing
dramatically the outreach of his potential influence. Sharing a table with five
of his peers in a Friday dinner—a priceless opportunity to foster trust, to know
the colleagues better, and to gain friends for his causes—but being unable to
even speak with four of them; that can be the small-scale drama—but huge and
decisive for his individual diplomatic experience—that a delegate can face
because of not mastering English. Episodes like this are not hypothetical.
Additionally, the issue of language poses another kind of challenge for
the integration into the diplomatic community. Regardless of their level of
command of English and French, Spanish-speaking delegates in the WTO (and
in International Geneva) constitute a big community on their own and they
share many historical and cultural references. This community functions as a
cultural comfort zone for them. The positive effect is that this comfort zone
eases the adaptation process of the Spanish speakers by offering them a big
repertoire of opportunities of interaction. The negative effect, however, is that
the comfort zone can drag the Spanish-speaking delegates towards itself,
keeping them from making bigger efforts to interact more frequently, at the
informal level, with delegates from different regions. The overall outcome can
be a diminished outreach of influence in these latitudes and lesser knowledge
about their positions and options. While English-speaking and French-speaking
delegates can face a similar challenge, their communities are more culturally
diverse than in the case of Spanish-speaking delegates, not to repeat that
English is the central language of the organization for the first case. The
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challenge of the cultural comfort zone functioning as a golden cage is
undoubtedly bigger for delegates with weaker command of other languages,
but it is latent for all. Some are aware of the challenge and double their efforts
to keep their networks balanced. Like with the issue of sophistication, the one
of cultural comfort zones implies for delegates a balancing act, with exclusion
being the price of not handling it well.
Cultural differences
Several behavioral differences among delegates in their interactions with one
another are judged by them as being associated to cultural differences and/or
to national origins. There are several examples relevant to the interactions
within this diplomatic community. The practice of giving and receiving
presents is marked not only by diplomatic custom as Jönsson and Hall (2005)
point out (see Chapter 2), but also by cultural traits, national customs, and
legislations. While, for some, receiving presents edges with corruption, for
others is a sign of politeness and a necessary ritual of friendship. The frequency
of deception in negotiations would be marked by habits fostered in the societies
of origin. While some are seemed to be cold and capable of lying if they need
it, others are perceived as incapable of doing it, but skillful enough to omit in
many different ways what they do not want to say. “In those cases, it’s
important to learn to ask the right questions in order to find what you need,” a
delegate observes. The same with the tolerance to negative feedback and
negative responses. Some delegates are judged as incapable of saying ‘no’. A
delegate points out: “They tell you ‘no’ in five or ten different ways—for
example with a ‘maybe’ or a ‘we’ll see’—but never with a ‘no’. You need to
learn their codes to make the right interpretations.” In certain cultures and
subcultures, directness, rudeness, and criticism are not socially sanctioned but,
instead, they are encouraged. This fosters different negotiating styles in the
delegates and turns into another potential for frictions. There are also marked
differences in the cultures of hospitality. For instance, the frequency of
invitations to receptions and national festivities in the diplomatic community
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does not depend on budget only. Several diplomatic missions owning generous
budgets do not have these customs. Other variables would also be heavily
marked by cultural and national lines, such as the levels of sophistication, the
tolerance to frustration, or the levels of solemnity in the public sphere.
Another element heavily marked by culture, and observable in the
WTO sphere, would be the differences in the conceptions of authority, and
particularly the personal distance between different levels of authority and the
conceptions of social status. Power distances are too high within several
missions. What some ambassadors judge as ordinary ways of exercising
authority (instructions, orders, requests, manners, sacrifice of personal time,
etc.) are perceived by other peers as authoritarianism. There are ambassadors
who project their conceptions of power to their peers, imagining that the others
display similar behaviors just because they share a similar status. Mistreatment
of subordinates or of waiters in a restaurant would hardly evolve into an open
complaint by a peer in a diplomatic context, but such practices can create
repulsion and distance in peers with different social standards, undermining the
chances of trust and friendship. Moreover, if delegates observe one another in
terms of the positions they adopt on trade issues, they also do so in terms of
labor standards and social practices within the missions. This gives lower-
ranking delegates a permanent reference to compare and assess their
conditions, even if they are unable to change them. One mild example of
different conceptions of authority is the way lower-ranking delegates address
their ambassadors. Whereas in most Latin American countries and in other
regions delegates use the formal “Ambassador” or “Mr./Mrs. Ambassador” in
regular communication within the mission and in public, in Anglo-Saxon
missions there is a preference for the informal first names or even their
abbreviations, flattening the power field. Differences of the like are
permanently perceived and they are talked about in the diplomatic community.
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The drama of asymmetry
Exclusive to representatives of the poorer countries, a social drama to which
delegates are exposed to is the power asymmetries among member countries of
the organization, which crudely materialize in the differences of resources that
they dispose at to carry out their work. At times salaries are low considering
the high cost of living in Switzerland as a whole and in Geneva in particular.
“Everything is expensive here.” As mentioned in Chapter 4, low salaries can
be a big issue particularly at the lower ranks of the mission’s hierarchy. Having
representation budget or not can be also determinant for giving ambassadors
and other higher-rank delegates outreach to conduct their work and to build
relations with their fellows, from offering a symbolic present in a birthday, to
inviting to a dinner or a concert. “Recently my government decided to eliminate
my representation budget. What a brutality!”, an ambassador complains, “now
I have to use my own salary” to fulfill these functions, implying that it was
impossible for him to maintain his networking and therefore be effective in his
work without doing this.
Although a declaredly more relaxed diplomatic atmosphere, some
delegates acknowledge that small differences in the availability of resources
can derive into a bigger symbolic effect regarding peer-to-peer status. Mundane
things of the order of not having a driver, that is, to drive his car to go to work
to the mission and to the WTO building might be, at ambassadorial level,
enough trigger for segregation—or, at least for some, a form of auto-
exclusion—according to several testimonies. However, more determinant is
the issue of physical facilities, both for work and for private life so that
delegates are able to host meetings and events. An ambassador explains: “The
ones who live in a big house can host people there, so they can mobilize their
peers. But if I want to offer a dinner or plan a special celebration, I have to
book a restaurant or a reception hall, and the mission doesn’t have all the
means.” And he follows: “and if the hall is not big enough, I’m not able to
extend the invitation to all the colleagues I need.”
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This situation raises not few ethical as well as practical questions: How
much budget and resources should a developing country, especially a small
one, assign for its diplomatic representation in the WTO, proportionally to its
needs and wealth? Moreover, to the eyes of his peers: What is more ‘alluring’
or appealing in a diplomatic envoy from a developing country: enough
economic means to interact with the rest in equality of conditions, or the dignity
of poverty, or at least the dignity of strict austerity? In any case, the
asymmetries of resources are endured by the delegates with the less favorable
conditions. These actors have to enter into the playground of multilateral trade
diplomacy with considerable disadvantages for building their networks and
projecting their influence to the rest of the group. They are compelled to be
creative, wisely exploiting their presence in the gatherings that others host, and
capitalizing their informal interactions during working hours for an assertive
participation in the system.
The ideal delegate
Considering the aspects discussed in this section: what are, therefore, the most
important individual qualities or virtues that delegates are to cultivate in order
to accomplish their mission? The two main domains that delegates target as
key for their success are, first, technical knowledge and, second,
communication skills. In the first domain, the usual stress is not only in the
‘stock’ knowledge, but also in the capacity—and will—to keep learning about
trade-related topics. Delegates perceive their field as evolving quickly through
time; if one does not deal permanently with its topics and new trends the
expertise gets easily—some add “irreparably”—out of date. For negotiating
positions to be seriously taken into account by large proportions of the
membership they must have technical solidity. The positions that are usually
the most extreme often are the ones that lack strong technical backing. There
are delegates that are very active in participation but who are perceived as
lacking the technical strength. They only “make noise,” in the judgment of
some, and their influence in the community ends up being lower than their
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‘objective’ presence in the system. Naturally, the technical domain touches the
fibers of the WTO’s raison d’être, and its importance must never be
underestimated.
With regard to the second domain, there is certainly a special praise
for the fluent mastery of foreign languages, particularly English, as it was
mentioned; subsequently the other two official languages, French and Spanish;
and later more languages of other member countries as they undoubtedly
contribute to cultivate bilateral relations with their representatives. “Empathy”
is also a very much praised value. Still, it could the said that the issue some key
delegates underline the most regarding communication skills is the ability to
listen. “you have to listen to others,” “to really listen”, “to be able to wear the
others’ shoes, to understand what they want, what they need.” Even though
much more could be said about communication skills—indeed more will be
developed in the last section of this chapter—it is this ability for total focus on
the interlocutor, this extreme attention to the peers, this capacity to absorb and
interpret every signal that they produce in order to build a constructive and
assertive relation with them all, what emerges as the backbone of delegates’
interactions. Although not all are considered equally professional in this
respect, one delegate observes, “you cannot not talk to your peers.” An
ambassador adds: “The delegate you don’t treat well today is the ally that
you’re going to lose tomorrow.” The final aim, many point out, is “to be
included.” In a vivid example of the notion of ‘discreet leadership’, an
ambassador declares: “The ambition is not to be the protagonist; you cannot
always aspire to that. But the ambition is to become referents. The ambition is
that when certain topics are being discussed, the others turn their backs around
and ask you what is your opinion.”
Another element that ranks high in the qualities of the ideal delegate is
“patriotism.” It is less mentioned in the narratives, as it is often taken for
granted (simply because strong expressions of nationalism are less common in
the sphere of multilateral diplomacy). However, when patriotism is mentioned
in the narratives, it emerges with special vigorousness. The deep love for the
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country they represent is for many what justifies, at the very bottom, all the
personal sacrifices they go through, and their endurance against adversity.
Depending on the case, such adversity may derive from an uneasy position
within the membership or from disadvantageous labor conditions, particularly
in terms of salary and career uncertainty after the appointment in Geneva.
Patriotism is indeed a strong source of motivation for many to be active and
give their best, even “to the point of being masochism.” A delegate declares:
“I cannot stay quiet; I am the representative of my country.” Another one takes
a similar line: “It is about my country that we are talking about.” Many work
until physical exhaustion and despite the indifference and vague feedback from
their capitals. Thus, patriotism and personal motivation are aspects that cannot
be neglected in this sphere, and that undoubtedly make part of the preconditions
for delegates to correctly fulfill their duties. This shows that despite all the
‘theatrical facets’ inherent to the work of diplomats, it remains useful to think
of them as ‘missionaries’: devoted representatives fond of their cause and
beliefs, who are capable of individual sacrifice in order to champion their cause
forward.
One ambassador includes two more qualities to the list of the ideal
delegate. He declares: “In the business of multilateral trade diplomacy, it is
necessary to have stubborn optimism and the patience of Job.” Impossible to
endure the pace of negotiations and to handle their endless details and
conflicting interests otherwise.
Additionally, depending on the specific backgrounds of the delegates,
they are to face particular challenges. Generalist diplomats have to work more
than the rest in acquiring technical knowledge in order to be assertive in the
negotiations. Experts in trade, by contrast, have to adapt to the subtleties of
diplomatic language and diplomatic signaling, and pay more attention to the
dynamics of socialization and to how to fit well in them. Delegates coming
from the middle classes have to gain awareness of the refinements proper of
the elites and develop strategies to cope with them. And delegates coming from
exclusive environments have to make efforts to be inclusive and approachable
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in a community that is based on consensus and that has evolved as more
socially diverse.
After three decades of practitioner experience in the field, Singaporean
former diplomat Kishore Mahbubani (2013, 254) concludes that he encounters
three “voices” playing a role in multilateral diplomacy: “reason, power, and
charm.” Coinciding with the ethnographic account of this dissertation, he
affirms that “[t]he voice of charm has been underestimated.” And yet, despite
the disbelief, “[c]harm works in multilateral diplomacy as in other areas of life”
(255). While Mahbubani’s claim has to be seriously taken into account, it must
be added that what counts as ‘charm’ for some circles does not necessarily
count as ‘charm’ for the others. Diplomats appointed to multilateral settings
have to be aware of the multiple factors that come into influence and perform
balancing acts accordingly.
It is therefore important is to underline two considerations. First, the
dividing lines of member countries between ‘developed’, ‘developing’, and
other categories of the like are only superficial—or at least not as relevant—at
the level of diplomatic delegations as other dividing lines related to social
upbringing, education, cultural references, and professional trajectories.
Second, all these dividing lines play a role in the processes of socialization,
negotiation, decision-making (and lack of decision-making) in the diplomatic
community alongside national interests. Neumann (2012, 11) had already
observed that for the case of the internal dynamics of ministries of foreign
affairs, the diverse social backgrounds of new incoming diplomats were a
significant source of tension that was undermining the legendary esprit de corps
for which diplomacy was renowned. If that can be said about institutions that
count with clear chains of command and that belong to single political entities,
it can only be expected that such tensions are exponentially amplified in
multilateral diplomacy. Indeed, the history of the transition from the GATT to
the WTO era is partly the story of the arrival and rise of such tensions at the
heart of the organization’s diplomatic community. However, although this
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represents a higher obstacle for the actors involved, it also inspires new creative
ways for these actors to cope with the challenge.
How delegates change
It is already complex to predict the paths of cultural hybridization or
transculturation when individuals move to a foreign country. Many aspects are
involved. Factors such as family origin, and the different (and juxtaposed)
subcultures from which an individual comes from (social, professional,
regional, generational, etc.), as well as the subsequent subcultures in which
these individuals will get involved in the host country are, no doubt, a
fundamental part of the equation. But individual history and personality,
particularly the sets of affinities, aversions and resistances, and rigidity or
flexibility to change also play a major role. All these elements have to be
considered when reflecting about the changes (in values as well as in practices)
that diplomats experiment due to their appointments abroad. However, when
movements are simply from one country to another, it can be argued that the
tendencies of those changes are more easily traceable: it is easier to see what
“going local” means in every specific circumstance. The host pole of attraction
is quite clear. In contrast, what could be “to go local” in the context of
multilateral diplomacy? When the “host place” is not only a foreign country
but also the people from every corner of the world who work for their national
diplomatic missions, which adds a new degree of complexity to the equation,
is it possible to find reliable patterns of cultural change for the delegates
involved? In other words, which “localities” attract the delegates’ social
behavior in the supra-national sphere of global governance?
A major element of attraction is the institution itself, its routines, its
system of rules. Each institution may condition in its own way the social
behavior observed in its participants, which naturally applies to international
organizations in general. They can create an atmosphere or relative uniformity
in which cultural differences can result less evident, and might even look as
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less relevant. Referring to the WTO, an ambassador says: “homogeneity here
derives from the very nature of the diplomatic atmosphere.” In a similar vein
was the comment previously mentioned by another ambassador: “You will
never find a joker here.” As a former UN official explains: “The IO system has
rules and protocols. The rules are meant precisely to homogenize our officials.
There is a trend towards uniformity… but it is also true that everyone follows
the rules according to his own logic. Sometimes you can recognize the size of
our differences. For instance, in special festivities many officials wear their
traditional dresses. There you grasp again more vividly how different we are!”
Of course, the dress code, although an important marker is neither the most
important nor the only visible expression of cultural differences among IO
officials and country delegates.
Other “attractors” (of values and behavior) are the host city and the
host country, which offer the stage for all interactions, both in the WTO
headquarters as everywhere else, as it was already proposed in Chapter 4.
Additionally, the most powerful and wealthiest countries exert a significant
influence in many ways: they dispose of more resources, the number of
delegates they appoint to Geneva tends to be bigger, and it happens that many
delegates from less developed regions have received superior education in
these countries. In this sense, the WTO appellative of “English club” could be
interpreted differently, as an acknowledgment of the outstanding influence that
Anglo-Saxon countries in particular, and the rich Western countries in general,
have projected in the institution by several means, including the fact that they
are frequent centers of graduate education for delegates coming from other
countries. This connects with Barkin’s (2006) forth source of state power in
international organizations, ‘institutional power’ (see Chapter 2), which
arguably also has cross-cultural and transcultural consequences. However,
after the GATT-WTO transformation, the multiplication of member countries
has subsequently added more diversity and also a different dynamic to the
institution. New ‘big weights’ have thus emerged and they compete for
influence against traditional powers. Lastly, hypothetically speaking, every
individual—therefore, every member country—is able to exert as attractor and
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project influence on his own, deploying practices, manners, styles, that,
deliberately or not, can be imitated by others due to his prestige or success.
This means that the metaphor of the rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari
1987; Sánchez 2015), which was introduced in Chapter 2, has to be taken into
consideration here: The individual change that delegates undertake—or not—
during the process of adaptation helps them to get ‘tuned’ to the exigences of
the organizational atmosphere. But the patterns of this change are to a certain
degree unpredictable and multidirectional; in a word, rizhomatic (see Chapter
2). To use some graphic, hypothetical examples, the WTO sphere can perfectly
enable that a Latin American diplomat gets hooked by Japanese codes of
politeness, a Japanese deepens his knowledge and appreciation of African
cultures and ways, and an African delegate gets fond of Brazilian literature,
music and manners. This type of multidirectional cross-fertilizations take place
on a daily basis, and constitute examples of transculturation on their own right.
However, it seems that some centric poles of attraction, even if they are
themselves dynamic and heterogeneous, guarantee a considerable degree of
convergence. At the end, for the delegates who work with the WTO, “going
local” means converging into a sort of international magma of diversity in
which everyone participates but in which the institutional rules, Switzerland,
and the bigger and wealthier nations have the outmost influence. Once again,
the process is not deterministic, but observation and the testimonies gathered
for this research show that several traces of this convergence are identifiable.
In what follows, this chapter presents the most relevant cases of
transculturation or hybridization that delegates experiment due to the exposure
to their jobs in Geneva, understanding by these terms the changes in values and
practices fostered by the contact with ‘the other’. These cases of hybridization
range from the more superficial layers of appearance and language to working
practices, to variables more deeply associated with individual cognitive
structures and with ethical values.
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Around the surface
As expected, in the field of dress code there is not much place for striking
differences. The extended, practically compulsory, use of business-like dark
suits makes delegates look like a uniform crew. The use of ties is still the rule
in formal gatherings and bow ties still make part of the picture. Accessories
tend to be scarce and austere. It is uncommon to observe more than the
traditional wedding ring in the hands and, although watches include the finest
of Swiss brands (probably as a traditional wink to the host country), sober or
classical designs are the most common. Actually, it has to be noticed that the
Swiss brands of watches are the official providers of the customary clocks of
meeting rooms both in the Palais des Nations and in the WTO headquarters;
and the marketing strategy may have an effect. Classic coats and scarfs are
added during the coldest months. The equivalent code goes for women who,
despite having more freedom for combinations through scarfs and other
accessories, remain in the sphere of Western business-like outfits. In both
cases, it turns out to be not necessarily an adaptation to the WTO environment
but also the extension of routine dress codes in government positions in most
of countries as well as in former diplomatic appointments, except for the winter
additives. Summer time brings the chance for many to dress more casual,
especially for working at the mission or for attending informal meetings.
However, certain rules of casual etiquette follow suit, in which monochromatic
colors in t-shirts and renowned brands are privileged by some. Underneath this
mass of uniformity lies the subtle personal touch of everyone, but there is no
doubt that the domain of dressing remains one of rapid convergence.
In contrast, the field of language is one of the richest regarding change.
First, the permanent use of English by all, and of French by some, in the
everyday life of delegates leave important sediments that are notorious to the
trained ear. Second, the diplomatic world and the city expose delegates to
different varieties of their mother tongues, what introduces them to new argot
and different intonations. And third, the frequency of formal and informal
contact among delegates and Secretariat officials and the common vocabulary
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used in negotiations, particularly the dozens of acronyms related to the
organization or to international trade subjects, truly make delegates part of what
linguistics call a “speech community.”
Hybridizations of accents, intonations or cadences are among the most
interesting. For the case of Latin American delegates, although the different
accents of Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil) and French (Haiti) easily filter into
English, English intonations seldom travels back to mother tongues, which
might be due to the high structural differences between these languages. In
contrast, French—a Latin language—easily travels to other Latin languages
through intonation. Many registers denounce a long exposure to French
(several years, for instance, sometimes decades). Certain endings of sentences
contain a clear Swiss, or even Genevan flavor. These traces are less common
in delegates that do not speak French or that use it less frequently. Yet in those
cases, Spanish registers can still lose a good deal of local argot and local twists
as the frequent contact with different varieties of Spanish leads to more
standardized forms. It is not uncommon to discover, for instance, that a
Colombian register is heavily charged with Central American twists, or vice
versa, due to long informal contact with colleagues or other friends from such
origins. Peninsular twists are also common in a city with high rates of Spanish
migration and with an important number of Spaniards working in the Genève
Internationale.
More evident to all are the regular lexical borrowings from one
language to the other and the mutations of content. Not too different to what
happens to business executives working for a multinational, delegates insert
many words from English into their mother tongues. Acronyms are the most
typical. They are normally spelled in English rather than in Spanish or in any
other language even if accepted equivalents exist. This applies both to
acronyms regarding the WTO sphere (DSB, TPR, etc.) and the ones associated
with international trade lexicon (MFN, NAMA). For instance, DSB, from
‘Dispute Settlement Body’, can be more common in informal oral Spanish than
an acronym ‘ORD’, from ‘Órgano de Resolución de Diferencias’; ‘TPR’, from
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‘Trade Policy Review’ more common than ‘OEPC’, from ‘Órgano de Examen
de Politicas Comerciales; ‘MFN’, from ‘Most Favored Nation’, more common
than ‘NMF’, from ‘Nación Más Favorecida’; ‘NAMA’, from ‘Non-
Agricultural Market Access’, more common than ‘ANMA’, from ‘Acceso a los
Mercados para los productos No Agrícolas’; and so forth. Indeed, the language
of delegates is heavily nourished by these terms, and English dominates in their
use. Additionally, there are English words highly related with work that are
seldom translated to Spanish, such as “schedule”, “back office”,
“commitment”, “feedback”, or “trade-off.” Even if translation exists for every
case, the generalized use and the perception that the Spanish version do not
contain the exact connotation of what is meant by the English term guarantee
the spread use of the latter.
Being a Latin language, French is more structurally similar to Spanish
and Portuguese, what makes “interferences” and “borrowings” both more
common and more complex, although almost exclusive to the delegates who
are really familiar with this language. There are naturally several French words
that come to integrate the regular repertoire of current vocabulary, such as
“gare” (‘train station’, instead of “estación de trenes”), “tram” (‘tramway’,
instead of “tranvía”), “boîte aux lettres” (‘mailbox’, instead of “buzón de
correo”) or “paneau” (traffic sign, instead of “señal [de tránsito]”, or “aviso”).
It is often the case that the French versions are shorter, easy to pronounce and
that their use turns natural not only because of daily routines but because of the
equivalents in Spanish were in fact alien to quotidian life. Think of a Latin
American country without railroad network or with a less developed postal
system; related-vocabulary subsequently does not make part of common
language, therefore keeping the use of local French vocabulary, even when
speaking Spanish or other language, appears as a practical and natural decision.
Sometimes, besides the practical vocabulary, common expressions of French
can be found in regular oral Spanish because they mark the tone of a polite
conversation; because it is a comic wink between bilinguals; or for maintaining
the voice intonation borrowed from French. “Ça va” is an example of the first
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two cases and “Voi-là” of the last one, especially when it goes at the end of a
description, answer, or explanation.
Additionally, language can contain French words brought to Spanish
by confusion with the real Spanish versions, which usually come from the same
root: “imprimante” (pronounced in Spanish) instead of “impresora” (printer);
“populación” (from French “population”) instead of “población”;
“indisponible” for the negative of “disponible” (available), whose negative
version does not exist in Spanish; “depasar”, from the French “depasser” (to
pass over), which does not exist in Spanish, instead of “pasarse”; “iraniana”
or “isrealiano” instead of “iraní” (Iranian) and “israelita” (Israeli), and other
nationalities in which the Spanish versions are irregular. Moreover, often the
connectors “de”, “a”, “por” and “para” are used incorrectly in Spanish by the
own Spanish speakers, who do not notice that are following the French rules
for “de”, “à”, “par” and “pour”, which are different in several cases.
It is also common currency that many words and expressions are
translated literally into Spanish despite the fact that they do not contain the
same meaning than in French (In Spanish the technical word for this is
“calcos”). For instance, “mismo”, from “même”, can replace (sometimes
totally) the use of “incluso” and “inclusive” in oral Spanish. The expression “Si
tu veux…” (literally “if you want…”), which in French can be used as an
introductory remark before more detailed content, and also as a slightly
affirmative answer after a question containing an invitation, gets current use in
Spanish in the version “Si tu quieres…”, even if it does not belong to common
Spanish argot. The use of the expression “de acuerdo”, from French
“d’accord” (‘It’s okay’, ‘I agree’) does exist already in Spanish but it is less
common. In Geneva its use increases in oral communication in Spanish,
especially when used as a marker expression indicating to the speaker that the
listener is paying attention to the details he or she is transmitting: (“… de
acuerdo… de acuerdo… de acuerdo…” [and in-between the interlocutor goes
back to talk]). The adverb “normalement,” which is very common in oral
French, makes that the Spanish equivalent, “normalmente,” which is less used,
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has suddenly a more frequent appearance in registers of oral Spanish. The
expression “en revanche”, which in French is a connecting particle for “in
contrast”, turns into “en revancha”, which is uncommon in Spanish, instead of
“en cambio” or other alternatives. Even “no soy rubia”, from the comic
expression “je ne suis pas blonde” (‘I’m not blond’, ‘I’m not stupid’), can
emerge despite the fact that in Spanish such expression does not have any
particular meaning. Finally, there is just simple code-switching from one
language to the other in the quotidian speech. It can be anticipated by a polite
formula like “as it is said in English”, or “as it is said in French”. But it can
also enter directly from the verb or from the direct or indirect object of a
sentence and remain until its end.
All that said, in terms of proficiency, Spanish relatively maintains a
good standing if compared with the case of typical immigrants, who can be
more disconnected from their mother tongues due to their absence in work life.
Therefore, this good proficiency derives mainly from the fact that Spanish
remains the language of work inside the diplomatic missions and in many
formal meetings as well as the language of communication delegates use with
their families. The same can apply for Portuguese in the Brazilian delegation.
But although linguistic hybridizations may represent less than 5% of oral
Spanish in average, they are indeed significant and follow traceable patterns.
The more familiar delegates are with a foreign language, the deeper and more
common are those mixings. However, “familiarity” does not necessarily count
for a good performance in the foreign language. Sometimes the frequency of
mixings is indeed correlated with the high mastery of the correspondent
language, but in many cases the mixings come without the mastery. It is also
true that the mixings are more frequent when the contexts are more informal.
The emergence of these mixings could not be judged in any case as intellectual
negligence, as acts of mere snobbism, or as a lack of love for or interest in the
mother tongue. What operates here is rather the economies of language, a sort
of mental compromise to diminish the cognitive effort involved in the perfect
switching of languages, and, additionally, the certainty that most of the
interlocutors understand the final outcome as they also are bilingual to some
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extent (here the concept of “speech community” comes again). This is very
much in line with an analogy proposed by American linguist John Lipsky
(2008) when he analyzes the patterns of code-switching by Spanish and English
bilinguals in the United States. At the end, every language an individual uses
is like a musical instrument he knows how to play. Mixing in oral language
comes to be a free expression of their capacities and creativity. “I do it because
I can” turns out to be the ultimate answer or reason behind every case of
linguistic hybridization. Moral judgements about the correctness of “pure”
languages are hard to make in this issue.
Toward the core
Other domains of hybridization move from the layer of mere language into the
field of paralanguage and non-verbal communication. Without any pretention
to be extensive in these areas, at least two strong points of convergence can be
observed here. First, body contact during interactions tends to diminish through
time. Second, body language becomes more austere. In interactions, body
contact is limited to handshakes at the beginning and at the end of a talk (first
encounters are marked by a compulsory exchange of personal visit cards) but,
beyond that, body contact is less common. This is not the case of the regular
styles of communication in Latin American countries, even in formal and
official environments, where a frequent touch on hands, arms or shoulders of
interlocutors is seen as gentle and helps to maintain the communication flow.
People used to it can see it as necessary, and its absence can be judged as a lack
of politeness. On the contrary, people not used to it often interpret this custom
as invasive. Many delegates were already used to absent or reduced body
contact due to their professional careers, others found in their appointments in
Geneva the occasion to be more aware of these communicational differences.
Others never change their styles or adapt to specific situations even at the end
of their stays. The same happens with body language. Hands and arms are for
many a fundamental part of oral communication, a very common trace in
personal interactions in Latin American countries, broadly speaking. The
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reduced movements of the body in interactions in the WTO sphere induce
many, consciously or not, to adapt these habits. Still, not everyone converges.
Connected with that, the issue of speech flow is of outmost importance.
In the works by Graham (1983) and by Hernández Requejo and Graham
(2008), a model of speech flow is offered in order to understand common
practices by Brazilian negotiators when they do business with outsiders.
According to this model, three main types of speech flow can arise in a
conversation or meeting by three or more parties, as shown in Figure 7. In the
first type, the first interlocutor speaks shortly and subsequently gives the word
to the other interlocutor(s). The second interlocutor starts to speak only after a
pronounced pause meant to facilitate reflection and to mark the speakers’
takeover. Interrupting an interlocutor while he or she speaks does not exist here
as a common communication device. In the second type, interlocutors
exchange the turns to speak smoothly, without friction: every speaker develops
his idea until the end, and later he gives the word to the other so he can do the
same. Again, interruptions are not common; everyone is allowed to finish his
or her ideas. In contrast, in the third type there is no clear switch of turns:
everybody is allowed to interrupt the other to participate in the conversation.
Interruptions are seen as an acceptable instrument to complement the other’s
statements or simply to get into the conversation flow. Moreover, time pressure
to end a point/idea before giving the word to the others is reduced. Under this
type of communication, the absence of interruptions by the other interlocutors
can give place to an indefinite monologue by the one who speaks.
The first style of conversation flow is commonly associated with East-
Asian nations, the second with Anglo-Saxon and Northern-European countries
in general, and the third style with Latin American and Mediterranean
countries, among others. All the three styles are perfectly functional on their
own and follow their own logic and formulas for politeness. The impasses arise
when individuals used to one style interact with individuals that use a different
one. According to the testimony of delegates, this model works well for
understanding the interactions of Latin American delegates with their peers in
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the WTO sphere. As many do not automatically create a pause for the rest to
enter in the conversation, and as the others are not used to interrupt, the talk
gets dysfunctional and can easily break. This, plus the high appreciation of
eloquence in Latin-derived languages, may be at the root of the quite extended
reputation of some Latin American delegates as being too “talkative” and
“florid.” In this case, again, the point of convergence is the Western-like second
type, and most adapt to it unconsciously, especially the ones with a longer
international experience. However, others never get fully conscious of the
structures lying behind their inter-cultural conversations and do not
acknowledge the damage that the lack of adaptation can cause to an interaction.
Figure 7. Patterns of conversation flow
Source: made by the author based on Graham (1983) and by Hernández Requejo and
Graham (2008).
Partially related to the previous topic, another point of convergence is
toward more concreteness in spoken and written communication. Long
interventions that put meetings agendas under pressure and speaking turns that
take minutes to finally arrive to the point are, to the eyes of delegates
themselves, a common feature in some Latin American colleagues. Clearly,
many newcomers from the region do not classify in the stereotype. But as some
A
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delegates acknowledge that their changes were produced during the period of
adaptation to the work in the organization, others associate their “concreteness”
to a university degree obtained in an Anglo-Saxon country or to their
international background in general. A delegate declares: “at the beginning,
when the Secretariat asked me for a legal concept on a specific issue I used to
write 20 or 25 pages. Now I tend to make my ideas more concrete and write 4.
The shorter I am able to write my concept, the more appreciated it is”. There
are important divergences here, and again, many judge that, in some
interventions, some colleagues focus on the content and on eloquence only,
instead of also considering length. Naturally, this issue is very much related
with delegates’ conception of time and with the way they manage it.
As mentioned earlier, discretion is a crucial aspect of the life of
delegates and the more they can master it the more successful their adaptation
and the more effective their work. The WTO environment therefore fosters
discretion, and many feel pulled toward that pole of attraction during the period
of adaptation. Again, the cultural influence of Switzerland—the host country—
and of the traditionally important Anglo-Saxon countries may also reinforce
this trend. Yet, not everybody agrees with this view. Rather than culture, the
trend may alternatively be led by power. An ambassador observes: “Delegates
from the biggest and most influential countries watch themselves more what
they say: not only the U.S. or the EU; envoys from Brazil, China, or India are
equally careful. On the contrary, delegates from less influential Anglo-Saxon
countries feel able to speak more freely.” Diplomatic atmosphere, a few
cultural influences and the big bets at stake, the three factors may be behind the
move toward discretion.
Fostered by this environment, some working practices are able to
evolve. For instance, the rules of the WTO and the propensity to plan meetings
in advance—beside the city’s order, the relative fluidity of the transport
network, and Switzerland’s social practices mentioned in Chapter 4—promote
a convergence toward punctuality as well as toward strictness following
scheduled appointments, whether they are formal or informal. Once again it
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must be acknowledged that not all delegates adapt. In any case, these same
rules and customs around punctuality create an atmosphere of predictability
that fosters planning. An ambassador explains: “Of course I have many days
when I am terribly busy, but I know in advance how these days will be. I can
get prepared for them”. Not only he, but several delegates coincide in that this
is not the case when they were working in their respective capitals. The
convulsive pace of political events in their countries and high overturn of
ministers can make the agendas, as well as the priorities, change quickly,
making that everyday work turns unpredictable. And this lack of planning and
pressure from political events produces another consequence: there is no divide
between work time and free time; it is socially accepted—even cherished—to
work until late hours in the evening, preventing officials from spending time
with their families and, ultimately, from having a life out of their jobs. A
delegate tells an anecdote from his time as official in his country’s capital:
“once there was no electricity in the ministry’s building, so the employees were
forced to leave the offices by sunset. It was so weird for us to be already on the
streets still with the last bit of sunlight! It was like if we didn’t know what to
do with our lives with this unexpected free time!” In Geneva, in contrast,
delegates tend to follow a more regular work schedule, making a more
distinctive divide between work and leisure. As said before, it is true that some
of the ‘leisure time’ is indeed part of their work as it is spent doing networking
with colleagues in informal contexts. But several delegates and former
delegates acknowledge they have more quality time to spend with their families
as well as healthier routines than compared with their jobs in the capitals.
From this work and other practices fomented or acquired in Geneva,
what can delegates bring back to their countries? Skepticism is generalized. A
few amounts of change would be easily swallowed by a whole social system
that works with a different logic. “I cannot say bye to the minister, my boss, to
go home at 10:00 p.m. knowing that he will work until 11:00. I will join him
until the end,” a delegate declares, arguing that it would be difficult to settle
new work practices in the divisions where they are likely to work again in their
capitals. An ambassador replies: “the change I can bring back depends very
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much on the positions I will have in the government. If I am appointed an
adviser I don’t have much room to bring change. But if I hold a position with
twenty-five officials under my responsibility, I could have a bigger chance.”
Although the points of convergence are clear, a final debate is still
open. What is the real nature of this convergence? Are behaviors and practices
consistently converging toward certain cultural vectors that can be clearly
associated with specific countries, regions or “nations”; or are delegates simply
becoming more “professional” through time? The question is not easy to
answer. But several hints must be considered. Instead of homogeneous and
constant, culture has a fluid and heterogeneous nature. In the same vein, it must
be recognized that any practice, feature or characteristic is not a monopoly of
any social group. The concept of ‘subculture’ helps more to understand what
happens in the WTO sphere. This sphere, as any other, fosters its own practices,
and is also nourished by the waves of individuals who participate in it. On the
other hand, these individuals exhibit a social behavior that has been partially
shaped by their geographical trajectories and by their careers. The WTO
sphere, therefore, while being an important center of excellence and a pole of
convergence of certain work and social practices, at the same time, remains a
heterogeneous, rhizomatic-like international community that reflects the
demographic, economic, and political shape of the world at any given moment.
The examples presented here are therefore relevant because they show
how transculturation takes place in the context of an international organization,
considering this organization as a 'contact zone'. These findings are particularly
pertinent as they illustrate the case of a unique and unconventional instance of
organizational exchange—the WTO—, as Witte (2011, 150–53) recommended
as a subject of research. The cases collected here demonstrate that WTO
diplomats tend to develop hybrid or transcultural practices (Fisher would
directly prefer the term ‘personalities’, see Chapter 2) as a byproduct of their
engagement with the organization and with the diplomatic community—not to
mention the host country. As diplomat Glen Fisher (1997, 190–92) would have
predicted (see Chapter 2), these hybrid practices are not only a trait of their
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adaptation into the system, but also constitute an advantage as they can increase
cross-cultural awareness for the benefit of the conduction of the diplomatic
work. And, as in the other cases related with awareness discussed throughout
this chapter, there are differences across missions and across delegates; and
higher degrees of awareness entail advantages in the socialization processes.
The first superficial layer of examples discussed—dress-code and language—
proves how strong the group dynamics can be and how much they can affect
individual practices. The cases of language hybridization are especially telling
as most of them are integrated in a highly unconscious and involuntary manner
through socialization and adaptation. Then, the second layer provides concrete
examples of hybridization of practices such as body contact, body language,
patterns of speech flow, concreteness, discretion, reserve, and organization of
work agenda and work life. Importantly, this exploration shows that a large
amount of these processes of transculturation in delegates take the form of
convergence into a subculture—the one of the WTO sphere—, which is a
‘global’ subculture as much as it is local or localized.
Conclusions
A few more reflections must be proposed before turning the page of the actors.
First of all, the findings of this chapter have to be thought under the perspective
of the leading hypothesis of this dissertation. Indeed, the broad testimony of
diplomats and other practitioners who know the field well shows with clarity
that country influence in the WTO does not depend on country size or country
‘weight’ only. For practitioners, it is clear that the individual strengths of the
delegates play a substantial role in determining to what extent the member
countries they represent count. The practice of consensus gives by itself a big
amount of influence in the system to members of all sorts. Yet, such influence
is just potential; it can be translated into actual influence only through assertive
diplomatic representation. The ability of individuals to adapt to and integrate
in the diplomatic community is a key element of this representation (the other
is organizational practices in the missions, which will be discussed in Chapter
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6). The delegate’s claim mentioned above that “here we are about 40 who really
count” should be taken very seriously. The number of members who count is
elastic, and such elasticity widely depends on the human resources they allocate
to the missions in Geneva. Members have room for maneuver to escape from
irrelevance partly through their diplomats, and diplomats have it too partly
through their practices and strategies in the system.
Moreover, building on the concepts presented in Chapter 4, this
chapter shows that delegates face a wide variety of asymmetries when
participating in the system, all of which play a role in the influence they are
able to project. Beyond the bare asymmetries of power related with country
‘weight’ in the international system, the diplomatic community exhibits
asymmetries of resources and asymmetries of awareness. Different degrees of
awareness lead to asymmetries of strategies in the way delegates relate with the
diplomatic community and with the multilateral trading system as a whole.
Even if they are ultimately variables of effective state power, such stratification
is needed. These categories do not only help to remark the different nature of
the asymmetries, but make more evident that they are not always correlated.
This speaks again of the importance of diplomatic representation as a source of
state influence that is to a certain extent independent of relative power.
Although Apecu Laker’s (2014) assessment of the African diplomatic
missions in the WTO was mainly technical and focused on ‘visible’ and
quantifiable variables, she suggests in several passages the importance of the
‘invisible’ components for an effective participation in the system. She
comments, for instance, on the need of “specialized skills” (13) or on the
importance “of the personalities involved” (37). In this sense, the contribution
of the ethnographic account presented in this chapter has also been to complete
Apecu Laker’s picture. This account expands upon the skills that are to be
fostered by delegates and on the manifold ‘personalities’ that make appearance
in the diplomatic community.
This chapter has also contributed to the debates previously presented
by Tussie and Lengyel (2000) and by Tussie (2009) and about participation and
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influence in the multilateral trading system. Independently of the needs and
possibilities for system reform, the ethnographic account shows that, for
developing countries, higher participation—considered here as diplomatic
representation—does lead to higher influence and to higher capacity to defend
national interests. It is clear that the dynamics of multilateral trade diplomacy
also depend on structural factors that are not under consideration in this
dissertation. But not only. This chapter as well as the following ones highlight
the importance of agency. As far as this ethnographic account can go, it is
extremely difficult to make a strict division of the WTO membership between
rule-makers and rule-takers. Only the members that do not participate or that
participate poorly in the negotiations are clear rule-takers. Yet, they do not
‘take’ the rules from the big powers or from the wealthy countries but from all
the actively engaged members. To be sure, the give-and-take of negotiations
seems to be intense enough to think of ‘rule co-authorship’. Moreover, in
addition to the complexity and the obscurity of the negotiations, there are
differences between reality and discourses. Some claim or hide rule authorships
given the moments or circumstances. They adapt the discourse to the peers and
to the several audiences at home, regardless of the true outcomes of the
agreements and of the distribution of benefits they entail. The interpretation of
agreements, authorships, and benefits is elastic enough. Besides, some
members do fit in (and feel comfortable with) the denomination of ‘process
drivers’ and ‘middle grounders’, acting as bridges between extreme positions
at the negotiating table. Yet, it is acceptable to think that, by doing that, they
are also pursuing their national interest and/or their own agendas of economic
reform.
Moving to a different dimension, this chapter also shows that the
sphere of multilateral trade diplomacy exhibits all the theoretical topoi of
diplomacy explored by Jönsson and Hall (2005) and by Neumann (2005; 2012;
2013). The WTO as organization fosters processes of institutionalization-
ritualization, communication, representation, and the reproduction of the
international society. Countries fully exert their membership in the
organization as long as their representatives engage in such processes.
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Ceremony and ritual—and their permanent repetition—is essential to the
functioning of the organization. The meeting, considered as a ritual, is the
vehicle through which delegates perform their power as representatives, and
the vehicle through which the organization itself seeks to assure its legitimacy
and continuity. When the membership acts en masse in these ceremonies, for
instance accepting a new member or adopting a new agreement, is when these
acts of consolidation are more evident. Likewise, the diplomatic community
that gravitates around the WTO follows protocols, engages in diplomatic
signaling, and communicates through linguae francae. Delegates operate
through different positions throughout the continuum between free mandate
and imperative mandate. Their negotiation process is not only facing their peers
but also mediating (and negotiating) with their principals in their capitals. And,
finally, they also exhibit the tensions between the national interest and the
global (common) interest, which emerges in their epistemic community, and
which is reinforced through their permanent socialization process.
In the same direction as Jönsson and Hall, the ethnography shows that
there are several types of ritualization processes. There are at least three levels
of rituals: the official compulsory practices, which include the meetings, the
participation in them, the delivery of statements, and so forth; the ceremonial
practices that are not compulsory, which include showing respect to the chair,
the switching of languages in official meetings, and so forth; and, finally the
individual practices that belong to the informal sphere, which include the
weekly appointments to watch or play football in groups, the regular working
lunches and breakfasts among peers, the formation of informal ‘clubs’ with
common interests, and so forth. Although non-compulsory, the last two types
of processes are also perceived as an essential component that enhances the
effectiveness of diplomatic work. To be sure, some delegates do engage with
the diplomatic community through randomness and serendipity, but what is
common is that they do it through routinized practices, that is, through rituals.
Additionally, this account shows that the work of delegates appointed
to the WTO can be read under the three scripts Neumann (2005; 2012) proposes
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to understand what diplomats do. The heroic script is present in the prestige
and dignity associated with their appointments as national representatives and
with the organization’s ceremonials. But, equally important, it is also present
in the pride delegates express about the more business-like atmosphere that
they jointly foster in the organization, and for dealing with “concrete”
economic issues. Of course, heroism is particularly evident when deals are
reached, even “if everyone is—always, somehow—discontent.” The
bureaucratic script is also present. The diplomatic rank does not save delegates
from their clerical roles; they remain writing statements, carrying out
instructions, and following tight agendas of meetings as part of the fulfillment
of their functions. And the self-effacing mediator is equally present, as
delegates strive hard for speaking ‘on behalf’ of their governments and
communities. Yet, there are different degrees of self-effacing practices, as it
will be discussed in Chapter 6. ‘Sublime diplomacy’ (Neumann 2013) is also
present in the WTO diplomatic community, but in a somehow more constrained
form. On the one hand, it coexists with considerable asymmetries of resources
among missions and with the public complaint by many developing countries
about their lack of representation capacity. On the other, the specific audience
of these swans are swans themselves, who know well and use the same kind of
techniques. This arguably reduces the efficacy—and/or increases the exigence
—of the awe displays.
Furthermore, the chapter has shown that multilateral trade
diplomacy—and, broadly speaking, all types of multilateral diplomacy—has a
formal and an informal dimension. The success of the delegates not only
derives from the work they do directly with and in the institution of the WTO,
that is, on what is ‘observable’ by the outsiders’ eyes. Success also depends
much on what it is done ‘behind the scenes’. Governments, missions and
delegates are due to “play the game;” they are due to actively engage in
networking, otherwise diplomatic representation is less effective. The price of
not doing it is high in terms of the country's influence. In other words, certain
rules and codes must be followed for mingling with the local (global) tribe.
More than criticizing the international trade system because of this degree of
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informality, it has to be accepted that it is unlikely that multilateral diplomacy
could work otherwise. It is in its nature, as in the nature of any kind of
diplomacy, as governments—and their representatives—have full autonomy to
interact with one another at all levels. The best path to take is to gain
government and public awareness of these realities. What is needed is a
conscious policy for coping with this reality in the best of ways, promoting the
adequate conditions for participating constructively and proactively in the
system, while guaranteeing a necessary degree of budgetary austerity and
transparency on the use of public resources.
A powerful and epicentral international organization it might be, but
because of its institutional structure of shared government and decision-making
through consensus, the WTO remains—and will continue to remain—a club, a
very exclusive one. It therefore follows that certain rules of ‘clubbing’ ought
to be followed for a successful participation in it. Neither delegates nor national
governments should neglect this fact. The actors should not realize how the
system works only after months of rude adaptation or, worst, only at the end of
their tenures. This is knowledge that might be internalized in advance through
right training and helpful advising. It might be imperfect, but the WTO system
works, and is even more functional than what the media and other external
observers are able to acknowledge. Moreover, there are many cases of success
in country participation in the system. And all actors try to do their best to the
benefit of their countries.
As it was shown, cultivating cross-cultural awareness and cross-
cultural skills is of outmost importance for delegates working in the WTO. And
this is not only because of the very nature of multilateral diplomacy, but
particularly because of the extent to which informal work is important for
delegates’ success. Far from the standardized protocols of the official meetings,
individual cultural backgrounds have room for a higher role in informal
interactions. Learning the others’ communicational codes might be more
important than learning any foreign language, and as important as mastering
the three working languages of the institution. Delegates are to adapt quickly,
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finding a conscious compromise between indigenous practices and the
organization’s practices, and are to develop the ability to switch from one to
another. In the context of this institution, speaking fluent French or English
only, without doing the cultural switching at the same time—without
understanding the cultural manners of the peers and their inner logics—is
totally insufficient.
A long international experience tends to be the source of cross-cultural
awareness and of the cultural hybridization that delegates exhibit. The process
of learning from the culture of other countries can be correlated with the
learning of its language, but not necessarily. Each one of them can happen
without the other. Although years of experience appear to be a crucial
background, they are not guarantee. Openness, patience, continuous
observation, and the capacity to suspend judgement turn to be as important as
experience. On the other hand, mainstream literature on cross-cultural
differences is not yet a regular source of learning for delegates. The
overspecialization that their work demands may not give enough room for a
field that could be seen as marginal or merely comparable to ‘soft-skills’. Not
only this should change for the benefit of their performance in the organization,
but scholarship should better adapt to the study of cultural differences at the
heart of organizations of this kind. Beside IOs, many multinationals,
universities and NGOs are both a fertile field for research, and a public in need
of new studies.
Additionally, it can be said that hybridization of practices is a constant
in the delegates’ social interaction fostered by their work in the missions.
Changes can be conscious and unconscious, moved by will or rather by the
constraints of the new social sphere they inhabit. In any case, a total mapping
of those hybridizations is difficult to trace: the paths of change involve a
mixture of chance, political influence, fashion, imitation of what seems
effective, individual choice, individual background, individual philias, phobias
and resistances, conceptions of patriotism, etc. Despite such complexity, it
seems there is a kind of “Geneva effect” that operates in many of them.
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Fostered by the protocols of the organization and by the delegates’ professional
background, several aspects of interaction and some working practices tend to
evolve towards a considerable degree of homogeneity. In this sense, the
delegates to the WTO emerge as an outstanding example of what Peter Burke
(2009) coined as the tension between cultural creolization and cultural
convergence, when he tried to interpret the long-term effects of globalization
in different societies across the world. As delegates gather, they mingle and
they ultimately hybridize, taking as inputs the stimuli from the institution and
from one another. The rhizomatic character of this transculturation as well as
the manifold indigenous resistances assure that the melting’s outcome is never
homogeneous.
It is important to address one last discussion regarding the nature of
diplomacy. Not only outside the diplomatic world but also inside, negative
views about the work of diplomats are common currency. At times diplomats
and relatives of diplomats are heard saying that diplomacy is “pure hypocrisy.”
Lynda DeMatteo (2011), when describing the “clair-obscures” of the work
around the WTO, found in “cynicism” a defining aspect of diplomatic life.
Former WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy echoes her. In a conference at the
University of Geneva in October 2013, just after he left office, he commented
that “cynisme” was at the heart of the work of diplomats, insinuating that this
trace in them was hard to deal with from the perspective of a DG. Cynicism
and diplomats is an old and overspread mental association. And this stereotype
is particularly strong in people that are alien to diplomacy.
On the contrary, this ethnography suggests that resorting to such
imaginary involves a dangerous starting point. Linking diplomacy
automatically to cynicism predisposes negatively—and incorrectly—against
the discipline and against diplomats themselves. This creates unnecessary and
very inconvenient prejudices and, what is worst, might jeopardize constructive
work. Rather, it can be agreed in that the ethos of diplomacy is constituted by
the triad of reserve, discretion, and cautiousness. A diplomat is a custodian of
the interests of his country and reserve is his last line of defense. This sphere
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of his must be respected by the rest. What defines a diplomat is his
simultaneous tension between the—sometimes opposite—needs of reserve and
empathy. Success in this world, therefore, starts by respecting the diplomats'
inherent sphere, their somehow contradictory mission of building relations and
facilitating cooperation while remaining the guardian of national secrecy.
Deception or cynicism, then, are not part of the ethos, they are only terrible and
unrecommended ways of exercising the job. When this is made clear,
constructive negotiation and interaction can flourish.
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Chapter 6:
The Missions
The previous two chapters of this thesis have introduced the context in which
the work of the WTO is made. Chapter 4 shed light on the urban, national, and
continental atmosphere that surrounds diplomatic life in Geneva. Then,
Chapter 5 made an ethnographical approximation to the lives and work of
delegates to the WTO with a focus on Latin American actors. Unconventional
as it was, this approach has deepened the understanding of our issue of concern.
However, the research has remained so far at the level of generalizations. It
would be insufficient if one wants to move forward in terms of the research
question of this dissertation: to assess the work and influence of Latin
American countries in the institution, and to analyze the factors behind that
influence. What follows now, therefore, is to drill down one layer deeper into
the subject to start discovering the “who’s who” of Latin American delegations
to the WTO. By gathering and analyzing the information available on
delegations’ functioning, this chapter intends to do so. By the end of it readers
should have a better idea on how the diplomatic missions are organized and
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work. Broadly speaking, the chapter explores the means or resources Latin
American countries have deployed in Geneva to face WTO work. How
effective those means are is a question that could be solved only when we also
ponder the factors and facts of the following chapters in Part 3. For the moment
the purpose is to gain a closer look at the Geneva ‘artillery’ that every country
has or has had.
At least three things are relevant in understanding WTO diplomatic
delegations: their organization, the resources (of all kinds) at their disposal and,
finally, the relations they establish with the outer world; that is, with every
entity outside their inner organizational structure. By looking at the missions’
inside, plus the flux of exchanges with the outside, the blueprint of their
functioning can be drawn up. The purpose of this chapter is to develop both
aspects for the Latin American missions.
Confidentiality and availability, however, reduce the range of criteria
used to depict and compare diplomatic delegations. For instance, it would be
relevant to compare salaries and representation budgets across countries and
through time. Indeed, this kind of variables are regular points of comparison in
informal conversations between members of the Geneva diplomatic
community and have emerged as a relevant topic in some of the interviews.
Nevertheless, a systematic analysis of such variables would undermine desired
standards of confidentiality and could produce a negative impact in the current
work of delegations. Open and reliable sources would not be easy to obtain for
all cases either. Similarly, it would be useful to gather reliable statistics about
the number of internships missions offer for graduate university students and
to what extent missions rely on this kind of help to carry out support tasks. But,
again, reliable and comparable data are hard to obtain for a big set of countries,
not all delegations are equally open to share this information or even have
systematic historical registers about it and, moreover, the WTO itself does not
count with records of this kind.
In contrast, researchers do have some key data about the delegations.
The archives of the WTO Information and External Relations Division preserve
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phone directories of members and observer countries since the creation of the
institution in 1995. After making numbers out of this data-base, one can tell a
big deal not only about the size of the delegations but also about the
delegations’ types, gender participation, rates of delegates’ turnovers, and
more, as it can be seen below.
The directory does pose some difficulties of its own. From 1995 to
2009, the directories were updated at least once a year in the form of a print
book meant to be distributed to the Secretariat’s personnel and to the
delegations themselves. But, from them on, the directory survived only as an
electronic version. The new version associates a list of active and inactive
employees to every delegation, but it does not record neither the date of the
names’ entrance nor the date in which the names become inactive. That forces
to make some estimations for the period 2010-2013 instead of presenting the
real numbers. Additionally, information about ambassadors and about the rest
of personnel are not equally accurate. For ambassadors, the exact date when
they take office is always recorded. For the rest there is none, so only the year
is known when they first appeared in the directory. This means that for all non-
ambassadorial personnel, it has to be assumed that every appearance counts as
one year in office. This data thus cannot give notice of shorter or longer periods
in terms of months, or of the eventuality of delegates staying periods shorter
than one year when the dates of arrival and departure do not intercept the
months of elaboration of the directories. Finally, the directories were not
elaborated systematically in the same month of the year. The most common
month was March, but in certain years the directory was updated in June,
August, or even December1. The last issue might not be too problematic; it is
acceptable to assume that most turnovers happen at the end of the year, so the
month of preparation of the directories does not radically affect the account.
Despite all these inconveniences, the information offered by the directories is
1 In detail, the versions consulted were, for 1995, July-October; 1996: October; 1997:
June; 1998: November; 1999: August; 2000: October; 2001: April; 2002: March; 2003:
December; 2004: March; 2005: June; 2006: October; 2007: March; 2008: March; 2009:
March; 2014 (electronic): consulted in end March 2014.
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of great help: the source is trustworthy, data are comparable across missions
and give a rich panorama of the evolution of human resources in Geneva. The
directories, therefore, combined with the official information governments
publish about their delegations and with the interviews conducted in Geneva,
will help to complete the puzzle of Latin American delegations presented in
this chapter.
The missions’ functioning
Quite similar to traditional embassies, the backbone of diplomatic missions is
the figure of the ambassador and the lower-ranking diplomats surrounding him.
Under the ambassador there is commonly the designation of the minister-
counsellor (informally the “deputy”, from “deputy ambassador”). Under him
there are the counsellors, subsequently the first, second, and third secretaries,
and finally another set of counsellors and attachés. The final forms of these
designations and the rigidity of the hierarchy varies very much depending on
the size of the delegation, on its chain of command in the capital, and on
institutional tradition. For instance, countries such as Colombia or Costa Rica
only use the designation of counsellor for all delegates behind the minister-
counsellor, whereas Chile, Argentina or Brazil can employ all the plethora of
designations. Many combinations exist, but they seem not to say much about
the delegations’ functioning. In contrast, it must be said that designations do
not always reflect the real hierarchy of a delegation. Small sizes of personnel
and significant differences of field experience in Geneva may produce a de
facto flat structure in which all lower-ranking delegates report directly to their
ambassador, regardless of hierarchical differences between them; and in which
the more experienced delegates enjoy certain preeminence even if they are not
labeled by the highest ranks.
The diplomatic corps is normally backed by some administrative staff.
One secretary and the ambassador’s driver tend to be compulsory. Both jobs
are highly gendered in the delegations. The higher the size of the mission, the
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more likely that the ambassador counts with an additional private secretary, or
that delegations as a whole count with two or more, or that a receptionist, beside
the general secretary, escorts the team. Unlike diplomatic positions, in which
by definition all members must be fellow nationals of the country, it was seen
more flexibility regarding the nationality of the administrative staff. As these
positions are not usually filled with employees coming directly from the capital
but instead with the migrant population available in the city, small and even
middle size countries are in need to recruit personnel from different
nationalities. Some staff, therefore, may come from other Latin American
countries or even from Spain. Guaranteeing the mother tongue in the mission
appears as the stronger rationale in such cases. Additionally, a few delegations
benefit from the work of university students doing internships, often on non-
remunerated basis. The periods of interns are short, commonly of one semester,
and although they mostly cover complementary or support tasks, at times some
deal with more meaningful issues or even represent their countries in ordinary
WTO meetings alone. Finally, depending on the negotiations in course and on
the topics of technical meetings, missions can occasionally host experts from
the capitals who engage directly in specific negotiations for short periods of
time, namely days or weeks. The frequency of these visits depends very much
on the budget of every country, and many do not have them.
It is important to note that labor relations within missions can draw on
different dynamics and are never free of tensions. In some, leadership and
workload distribution are widely accepted. This brings harmony to the
missions, losses up their work, and increases the likelihood of overall
accomplishment. In others, leadership can find higher degrees of contestation.
Internal frictions can arise and even blocks of interests can be formed.
Subjective perceptions on each other about competences, experience, and
seniority, or about the outreach of everyone’s functions, can be at the heart
these frictions. A deep depiction of these situations does not make part of this
dissertation. Enough is to say that, given the strictly hierarchical structure of
the missions, the turnover of ambassadors constitutes a common origin of such
frictions. Changes of leadership can imply new manners or style, and a different
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distribution of responsibilities and power within the missions. Moreover, while
the process of convergence that was referred to in the former chapter has had a
higher effect in ancient delegates, newcomers are due to follow the lead from
them to a certain extent in order to adapt. While this is easier to lower-ranking
delegates when they arrive, it can turn more difficult to new ambassadors as
their leading position is effectively challenged by their lack of field experience.
The recovery of harmony and a high level of functionality can be short, or it
can last a long period and may even need that a new series of turnovers takes
place, to renew the mission’s atmosphere.
Dedication
There are resident and non-resident members of the WTO. Non-resident
members do not have diplomatic representation in Geneva and must deal with
WTO work from their capitals or from traditional embassies in other cities,
particularly Brussels, London, or New York. Only a few number of countries
remain under this category, and they are mostly small islands. The possibility
for these countries to truly engage in WTO work is highly reduced. Among
GRULAC countries, the only non-residents in 2014 were Antigua and Barbuda
(dealing with issues from New York), Belize (from Brussels), Dominica
(London), Grenada (Grenada), Guyana, (Brussels), Saint Kitts and Nevis
(Brussels), Saint Lucia (London), Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (Brussels),
and Suriname (Brussels). In contrast, Bahamas (still an observer country),
Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic
and the rest of continental countries have some kind of direct diplomatic
representation in Geneva.
Among the resident members, the most significant feature that
differentiates diplomatic delegations is their purpose or responsibilities. As
mentioned in Chapter 5, the two basic types are the “general-purpose” mission
and the “dedicated” mission. General-purpose missions—or UN missions and
“universal” missions—are in charge of national diplomatic representation in all
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international organizations and key NGOs in Geneva, including the WTO. Yet
their main focus is the United Nations. Although focused on the WTO,
dedicated WTO missions are in fact in charge of relations with other economic
organizations in the city as well. The most traditional diplomatic representation
in Geneva has been the general-purpose mission, but the creation of the WTO
in 1995 made dedicated missions more frequent. VanGrasstek (2013, 88)
shows that whereas in 1982 (still GATT times) only 4 countries had dedicated
missions, all of them developed countries, in 1997 the number rose to 20 and
by 2012 there were 39 dedicated missions. Following VanGrasstek (2013,
chap. 3), the increase of dedicated WTO missions is one of the main trends in
the Geneva diplomatic trade community, which will also prove to be the case
for Latin American countries, as seen below.
The common additional responsibilities that WTO dedicated missions
have are the International Trade Center (ITC), the International Center for
Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), the International Organization
for Standardization (ISO), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU),
the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). However, these
responsibilities are not always present; they vary across missions. At times,
WIPO stays under the charge of the UN mission, following the logic that the
institution might be highly related with the home ministry of justice, thus
having a different circuit. The same happens with UNCTAD, perceived by
many delegates as being less technical and more political in what concerns the
diplomatic community surrounding its Secretariat. Nonetheless, the trend is
that dedicated WTO missions gather everything related with trade and
economic issues of the kind. According with delegates interviewed in dedicated
missions, non-WTO activities can consume between 30 and 40 percent of the
missions’ working capacity. The regular practice is that one lower-ranking
delegate is full-time or part-time in charge of one of those organizations,
whereas the ambassador engages in the work with specific institutions by
waves, only when issues involve high priority.
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Beside these responsibilities, general-purpose missions are in charge
of dealing with the International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC), the
International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations Human Rights
Council (UNHRC), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR), the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO), among the most important ones. In these cases, the
importance of trade-related issues competes fiercely against other topics of
similar or even higher weight. The dedication of delegates to the WTO is
subsequently reduced. According to his own informal inquiries, VanGrasstek
(2013, 91) estimates that general-purpose missions invest in average one third
of their time to WTO issues. This number coincides with the result of my
interviews in general-purpose missions of Latin American countries. Once
again, the amount of dedication is not always the same. According to the
delegates interviewed, there may be periods of intense activity in the WTO in
which time and resources are almost exclusively dedicated to this organization,
as well as moments of low activity when such over dedication is not needed.
Other international organizations in Geneva work in this wave-like pace,
according to their own calendar of negotiations, ministerial meetings, and so
forth.
Additionally, in general-purpose missions, the professional
background of ambassadors can influence their level of dedication to each
international organization. For instance—as mentioned in the previous
chapter—, generalist diplomats that never dealt directly with issues of trade
and economics find it more difficult to adapt to the technical jargon of their
peers in the WTO and therefore prefer to engage with the organization more
passively, while delegating more responsibility to their subordinates. Still,
general-purpose ambassadors with significant expertise in commerce tend to
be more WTO-oriented. According to my fieldwork and interviews in Geneva,
both cases can take place in Latin American general-purpose missions. In fact,
it can be said that governments, by deciding who will be appointed as the
ambassador of a general-purpose mission, according with his or her previous
career and academic profile, are already deciding the level of personal
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engagement he or she will exhibit to each institution in Geneva. Finally, the
level of ambassador attention to the WTO in general-purpose missions is likely
to be influenced by instructions from the capital.
Both types of missions have advantages and disadvantages. Having
general-purpose missions is less expensive. They can enjoy a relatively bigger
budget and better facilities—not only the mission’s offices but the residence of
the ambassador as well—than if the missions were split while maintaining the
same level of resources. At least in theory, they also have the chance of
modifying the assignment of diplomats at a seasonal pace, so more people
contribute with WTO work when issues are hot. This way other diplomats can
back full-time WTO diplomats by participating in certain meetings or
accomplishing other tasks. Moreover, having a single head can bring more
coherence to the country representation in the whole set of Geneva’s
international organizations. When a country has two missions, coordination
between the two is not always fluent or even intended.
Nonetheless, in general-purpose missions, only a fraction of delegates
do really work full-time on WTO issues. It is more likely that these delegates
have a professional background more distant from the technicalities of foreign
trade and the multilateral trade system; some start learning only after the
appointment in the mission. More importantly, the ambassador dedicates to the
WTO only partially, if at all, which decreases the stature of the representation.
As it was discussed in Chapter 5, although the WTO might be perceived as less
hierarchical than the UN, hierarchies still matter. Additionally, although no
mission is free from the appointment of ambassadors on political instead of
professional grounds, the practice is more likely to happen in general-purpose
missions than in dedicated WTO missions. Conversely, it is true that dedicated
missions may dispose of less resources (fewer delegates) and reduced facilities,
or that they imply a bigger financial effort for member countries, but the reward
is a sharp focus on trade and on the economic sphere of the city’s international
institutions. Besides, ambassadors are fully dedicated, and it is more likely that
they command technical issues, or that they do learn to do so during their
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tenures. Also, it is more likely that lower-ranking delegates who deal with the
WTO have a more adequate background.
Most opinions are inclined in favor of dedicated WTO missions. As
seen earlier, VanGrasstek (2013) has a favorable opinion about the positive
effects of dedicated missions. Apecu Laker’s (2014, 16) perception is equally
favorable, yet she remarks the fact that only 3 countries out of the African
membership—Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa—had dedicated missions until
then. Likewise, when comparing his responsibilities with those of his peers in
general-purpose missions, the ambassador of a dedicated UN mission states:
“It is just impossible to wear so many hats!”. Another sign is that while most
of ambassadors of dedicated WTO missions were diligent to cooperate with
this research through interviews, ambassadors of general-purpose missions
were more likely to never reply requests or to delegate it to one of their
subordinates. The ambassadors of general-purpose missions that did accept me
in their offices invariably showed interest and knowledge of WTO issues, but
they were somehow resigned to the fact that they had to engage with the WTO
more passively: “When there is not enough soldiers you have to participate
[only] when it is vital for the interests of the country,” an ambassador declares.
“Good midfielders are not the ones that run too much but the ones that know
when to run.”
Here is the picture for Latin America. Table 8 shows the type of
diplomatic delegation in terms of dedication of Latin American countries since
the creation of the WTO. In 2014, 12 countries had managed to establish
dedicated WTO missions in Geneva: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica,
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico,
Panama, and Uruguay. 8 countries still have general-purpose missions:
Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. 4
countries had already constituted the dedicated mission by the creation of the
WTO: Chile, Colombia, Honduras, and Mexico, while the other countries have
made the transition throughout the two decades. Haiti has been the only country
in the region that, after establishing dedicated missions in 2002, was forced to
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merge them again in 2013. Such measures followed suit after the 2010
earthquake and the lasting budgetary restraints of the country, which ranks as
the poorest in the region. Additionally, it can be noted that the two latest
transitions into dedicated missions were made by the Dominican Republic and
Brazil.
Table 8. Type of delegations regarding dedication
Source: WTO phone directories adjusted by fieldwork in Geneva. Made by the author.
Table 8 shows well that the size of the country (in territorial,
demographic, or economic terms) does not co-relate well with the type of
mission. Big countries like Mexico or Colombia have opted for dedicated
missions but small ones like Ecuador or El Salvador as well, whereas Brazil,
the biggest country in the region, made the transition only lately. Big
Argentina, Peru, or Venezuela remain in the general-purpose side alongside
small Cuba or Nicaragua. Income level do not explain the differences in type
either. Chile and Uruguay do have dedicated missions but not Argentina, for
instance. Many low income-level countries, like Bolivia, Cuba, or Paraguay
maintain general-purpose missions, but El Salvador, Honduras or Haiti have
made a budgetary effort to establish dedicated missions. The openness of the
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Chile
Colombia
Honduras
Mexico
Ecuador GPM
Costa Rica
Guatemala
Panama
El Salvador
Haiti
Uruguay
Brazil
Dominican Rep.
Argentina
Bolivia
Cuba
Nicaragua
Paraguay
Peru
Venezuela General-Purpose Mission
WTO Mission
General-Purpose Mission
GP Mission WTO Mission
General-Purpose Mission
General-Purpose Mission
GP Mission WTO Mission
General-Purpose Mission WTO Mission GP Mission
General-Purpose Mission
WTO Mission
GP Mission WTO Mission
General-Purpose Mission
General-Purpose Mission
General-Purpose Mission WTO Mission
General-Purpose Mission WTO Mission
General-Purpose Mission WTO Mission
Dedicated WTO Mission
WTO Mission
WTO Mission
GP Mission WTO Mission
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economies, measured by the number of free trade agreements signed in the last
decades, might be slightly related, but there again are important exceptions. It
is true that Mexico, Panama, Chile, Colombia and the more opened Central
American countries have dedicated missions, but it is not the case of Peru.
Moreover, some periods of trade liberalization in countries such as Argentina
or Venezuela in the 1990s do not coincide with conversion to dedicated
missions, and the division of Brazil’s mission do not match any significant
switch toward more trade liberalization.
The case of El Salvador illustrates well how small countries can afford
dedicated missions while maintaining the costs of the Geneva representation
low. El Salvador’s dedicated WTO mission, which was established in 1999,
has always shared offices as well as administrative staff with the dedicated UN
mission. To split the mission did not imply another cost in terms of paying a
new rent or buying another facility, and the only effort made was in diplomatic
personnel. Panama did likewise for about one year before the dedicated WTO
mission found new offices.
Size
Still, the dedication of missions should not be analyzed in isolation. The
mission’s size, that is, the number of delegates working for it, is an indicator of
outmost importance. It helps to better assess the capabilities missions dispose
to carry out their functions. For instance, when a general-purpose mission is
big enough, its outreach can be equivalent or even bigger than the one of a
dedicated mission.
A few remarks about the quality of the numbers has to be made before
they are presented. The phone directories of the WTO give a good picture of
missions’ size, but direct comparisons cannot always be made. The principle is
that, when the Secretariat periodically updates the directories by contacting
every mission, the mission’s personnel can decide whether to inform the names
and contact information of all their delegates in office or only the ones that are
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relevant for WTO issues. This means that the directories of dedicated missions
are potentially more accurate. In contrast, in several cases it is seen that some
general-purpose missions omit names. For instance, Haiti’s mission omitted its
ambassador in 1997-98 despite that he was in office until 2001. Following the
description of delegates’ position, it is clear that Bolivia only transmitted the
names of its ambassador and the two people in charge of WTO issues at least
in the period 2000-04. Something similar might have happened with Argentina:
the comparison of the 2014 directory with the list of delegates of its mission’s
website shows that only delegates in charge of WTO issues were included; up
to 5 delegates dealing with Human Rights, the ILO, and so forth, do not make
part of the WTO directory. In contrast, the detailed descriptions for delegates
in the Dominican Republic show that delegates in charge of the UN and the
ILO were also enlisted. However, it is more common that the generic position
of delegates (counselor, first secretary, etc.) hide the real responsibilities they
have had. This means that the directories for dedicated missions can be more
accurate than the ones of general-purpose missions. Yet, my informal inquiries
in general-purpose missions suggest that they have tended to inform the full
personnel.
Figure 8 shows the number of delegates across missions in 2014
according with the type of dedication. It can be seen that Brazil has by far the
biggest personnel working with the WTO among Latin American countries,
with 16 delegates. It is followed by Mexico, with 10, and by Ecuador, with 8.
The smallest one is Panama with only 3 delegates. Among general-purpose
missions, Cuba and Venezuela have the highest number of delegates in 2014,
with 12 and 11 respectively. They are followed by Argentina and Peru, with 8,
while the smallest missions are Nicaragua and Haiti, with 4 and 3 respectively.
My inquiries show that about 6 to 7 delegates can work on WTO issues in the
Argentinean delegation (without counting the ambassador), about 4 for the case
of Peru, and about 3 in the Cuban and Venezuelan missions.
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Figure 8. Missions’ size in 2014
Source: Electronic phone directory of the WTO. May 2014.
Table 9 expands the picture, showing the evolution of size since the
creation of the WTO. It can be seen that the patterns vary considerably among
countries, and that the “big weights” have not always been the same. In 1995
Brazil and Argentina had the biggest general-purpose missions with 11 and 8
members respectively. Mexico and Uruguay, with 7, and Chile and Colombia,
with 5, started with a significant representation in the WTO, while Ecuador, for
instance, was running a general-purpose mission with a single diplomat.
Colombia has remained the more stable mission, hosting 5 members in almost
every year during the two decades. Most of the missions, however, have seen
their size to move up and down. The peaks of Brazil in 2006-7, the Dominican
Republic in 2005-7, and El Salvador in 1998 happen exactly before the
transitions into dedicated missions, but while El Salvador increased from 3 to
5 and the Dominican Republic from 4 to 5 since then, Brazil reduced its size
from 20 to 16 members. Brazil’s case coincides with a similar yet smoother
reduction in Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, and Peru by the same period.
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
WTO dedicated missions General-purpose missions
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Interviews suggest this was the product of failure of the Doha negotiations at
the time, which made some countries move negotiators back to the capitals to
work on negotiations of other bilateral and regional trade agreements. While
the evolution of size is rather regular in most countries—although never as
regular as in Colombia—Ecuador experiences a jump from 2 o 9 delegates in
2002 to start suffering a subsequent reduction two years later; Haiti from 2 to
6 in 2008 before another subsequent reduction; or Venezuela from 8 to 5
delegates in 2006. Such irregularities speak of a lack of continuity in the
policies regarding diplomatic presence in Geneva. Still, the most important fact
to take in Table 9 is that not all countries have tried to increase their presence;
many have remained around the levels of the early years of the WTO.
Table 9. Missions’ size through time
Source: WTO phone directories. The period 2010-2013 is an estimation based on
available information, namely, a simple average of 2009 and 2014. Made by the author.
It is interesting to note that, although there is some relation between
the size (and power) of countries and the size of their missions in Geneva, such
relation does not apply to all countries. Uruguay is a small country that has
made extraordinary efforts to maintain a significant representation. Something
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010-2013 2014 Average
Brazil 11 11 11 11 12 13 12 12 14 11 14 24 24 21 18 17 16 15,2
Mexico 7 8 8 8 7 7 7 6 8 10 9 9 9 8 8 9 10 8,3
Uruguay 7 7 7 8 9 9 9 7 7 7 9 9 9 4 6 5,5 5 7,1
Chile 5 7 7 6 6 6 7 5 6 5 6 7 7 7 6 6 6 6,2
Guatemala 2 2 2 6 6 6 6 6 6 4 6 6 6 5 6 6,5 7 5,4
Dominican Rep. 2 2 3 3 3 6 6 5 4 4 11 11 11 4 4 5,5 7 5,4
Ecuador 1 2 2 3 3 2 2 9 9 8 6 5 5 5 5 6,5 8 5,1
Colombia 5 5 5 5 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5,0
El Salvador 2 5 5 6 3 3 3 5 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 4,5
Honduras 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 5 5 5 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 4,1
Costa Rica 3 1 4 5 5 4 2 4 4 4 4 4 5 4 4 4 4 3,9
Panama 3 2 3 2 2 2 3 3 4 4 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 2,9
Argentina 8 7 7 7 8 7 7 7 10 9 9 8 10 10 9 8,5 8 8,3
Peru 4 6 6 8 9 9 4 9 10 10 9 10 10 7 8 8 8 8,0
Venezuela 5 5 6 8 8 8 8 7 7 7 8 5 5 5 6 8,5 11 7,2
Cuba 3 5 5 6 6 6 6 5 5 4 5 5 5 5 5 8,5 12 6,1
Nicaragua 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 6 8 7 6 5 5 5 5 4,5 4 4,5
Paraguay 3 4 4 3 3 6 5 6 5 6 4 4 4 4 4 4,5 5 4,4
Bolivia 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 5 5 5 4 3 3 3 4 5 3,6
Haiti 3 3 2 2 4 4 4 2 2 2 1 2 2 6 6 4,5 3 3,3
: Current WTO missions were GP missions in that period, and current GP missions were WTO ones.
WTO
Missions
General-
Purpose
Missions
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similar can be said of Chile and Guatemala, as well as of Ecuador during the
last years of the period. Among general-purpose missions, Cuba is outstanding
in terms of the mission’s size. It becomes clear that a few countries in the region
have made more efforts to guarantee a significant presence in the WTO than
the average or that what would be expected considering their country size.
Among delegates there are diverging opinions on the subject. For
most, missions’ size do matter. Small missions are more restricted to follow all
the meetings actively and are due to focus on what is essential to them. Most
would at least accept that it would be convenient to see marginal increments in
size—one or two delegates, for instance—so to better accommodate to the
current work. But others are sharper when explaining their needs: “In two
decades the mission’s agenda has multiplied by four whereas the number of
delegates has remained the same”, an ambassador declares. At the other side of
the spectrum there are delegates content with their mission’s size. The
ambassador of a middle size mission observes: “Had we a country of 300
million inhabitants like the United States and we would need a bigger number
of delegates in order to defend all our trade interests… but we don’t. For
instance, as we don’t have aeronautical industry, we don’t need an expert in the
mission on that subject. Our size corresponds to the commercial interests we
have.” This is not the most common case though. Still, although the number of
personnel is important, only looking at these numbers can lead to a wrong
impression about the mission’s real capacities. “Sometimes, from the capitals
they send you ‘the senator’s friend’ [instead of someone technically capable].
Then he comes to Switzerland and thinks he’s on vacation. When that happens,
you, as an ambassador, are doomed,” a former ambassador observes,
suggesting that the case was not unlikely. Another ambassador accepted that
appointments on political instead of technical grounds of lower-ranking
delegates could happen especially in small countries. “When they are starting,
these new people are a burden [to the mission],” he declared.
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Gender
As mentioned in the last chapter, the diplomatic personnel that populates the
missions tends to be masculine. There is a significant asymmetry in terms of
gender, but not all countries in the region exhibit the same behavior. Table 10
shows the percentage of women working in the missions throughout time. It
can be seen that the average of female participation varies from 7% in the case
of Haiti to 77% in the case of the Dominican Republic. It is a remarkable
coincidence that two countries that share the same island are found at the
opposite extremes in terms of gender representation. In average, female
representation in Latin American delegations is 34%. The Dominican
Republic, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, and
Panama are the only countries in which women represent more than 40% of
total staff in average. Additionally, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia,
Colombia, El Salvador, and Panama have been the only countries that, at least
for one single period, have been totally run by women. On the other hand,
Ecuador, Brazil, Costa Rica and Argentina rank beside Haiti with female
representation under 20% and do not show a significant improvement
throughout time. However, the region as a whole had 28% of female
participation in 1995 and by 2014 the number rose to 39%, which is a
significant gain. At the ambassadorial level, female representation is still lower.
Only Cuba and Bolivia had female ambassadors in 2014, which represents 10%
in the region. The only countries that have had a female ambassador once in
two decades have been Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala,
Nicaragua, Peru, Dominican Republic, and Venezuela. The only country with
a better performance at the ambassadorial level has been Bolivia, with 3 female
ambassadors, representing half of the Bolivian ambassadors in the two decades.
Yet the overall picture is more conservative: from all ambassadors that the
region has had in two decades, only 12,8% have been women. The patterns
behind gender representation in Latin American missions seem hard to trace;
some countries seem to have abandoned traditionalism much faster than others,
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or have had more disposal of women with the right professional skills than the
rest.
Table 10. Female delegates across missions
Source: WTO phone directories. The period 2010-2013 is an estimation. Made by the
author.
Turnovers
Besides the number of personnel, another crucial issue that sheds light on the
capabilities of diplomatic missions is their ‘institutional memory’ and that is
directly connected to the field of knowledge transfer and knowledge
management (Argote and Ingram 2000; Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995; Szulanski
1996; Pasher and Ronen 2011; Hislop 2013). Institutional memory can be
understood as the field experience of delegates, something they obtain by
staying in the mission for a considerable period of time. Turnovers are therefore
a relevant indicator to assess the good functioning of missions. It is important
both the number of turnovers that take place each period (frequency by year)
and how much these turnovers last (frequency through time), that is, the time
delegates last in their Geneva positions. On the one hand, it is convenient to
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010-2013 2014 Average
Dominican Rep. 100% 100% 100% 100% 67% 67% 67% 80% 100% 100% 64% 64% 64% 50% 50% 73% 86% 77,4%
Bolivia 33% 50% 67% 67% 33% 67% 67% 33% 40% 40% 80% 75% 100% 100% 100% 75% 80% 66,6%
El Salvador 100% 80% 80% 67% 33% 33% 33% 20% 75% 75% 50% 60% 60% 60% 60% 70% 80% 62,3%
Honduras 50% 50% 50% 67% 67% 67% 67% 40% 40% 40% 50% 50% 60% 60% 60% 50% 40% 52,8%
Colombia 40% 40% 40% 40% 25% 60% 60% 80% 80% 100% 80% 40% 40% 40% 20% 40% 60% 50,3%
Cuba 33% 20% 20% 33% 33% 33% 50% 60% 60% 75% 60% 40% 40% 40% 40% 53% 58% 45,4%
Guatemala 0% 0% 0% 67% 50% 67% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 40% 50% 54% 57% 44,8%
Panama 33% 100% 67% 50% 50% 50% 33% 33% 50% 75% 33% 0% 33% 33% 0% 33% 67% 42,1%
Nicaragua 0% 0% 0% 67% 33% 33% 33% 33% 50% 57% 50% 40% 40% 40% 40% 33% 25% 33,8%
Mexico 43% 38% 38% 38% 29% 14% 14% 17% 25% 20% 22% 22% 22% 50% 50% 44% 40% 32,9%
Uruguay 29% 29% 29% 38% 33% 22% 22% 29% 43% 57% 33% 33% 33% 50% 33% 27% 20% 32,1%
Peru 25% 17% 17% 25% 33% 33% 50% 44% 40% 40% 44% 30% 30% 14% 13% 31% 50% 31,5%
Venezuela 40% 40% 33% 38% 38% 25% 25% 57% 57% 57% 25% 20% 0% 0% 17% 24% 27% 29,6%
Paraguay 0% 0% 0% 33% 33% 50% 20% 17% 40% 33% 25% 50% 50% 50% 50% 22% 0% 27,0%
Chile 20% 29% 29% 33% 17% 17% 29% 20% 33% 40% 50% 14% 14% 14% 0% 25% 50% 25,4%
Argentina 13% 14% 14% 14% 13% 14% 14% 14% 30% 33% 22% 13% 10% 10% 22% 24% 25% 18,5%
Costa Rica 67% 0% 0% 20% 20% 25% 0% 25% 0% 0% 0% 0% 20% 25% 25% 25% 25% 17,6%
Brazil 0% 0% 18% 18% 17% 15% 25% 17% 14% 9% 21% 21% 21% 24% 17% 15% 13% 15,4%
Ecuador 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 11% 11% 38% 50% 80% 40% 20% 20% 8% 0% 15,0%
Haiti 33% 33% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 17% 17% 11% 0% 7,2%
Total 28% 28% 29% 38% 29% 32% 32% 33% 39% 44% 41% 34% 33% 32% 31% 34% 39% 34,0%
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have a low proportion of turnovers by year. In other words, every year the
proportion of ‘ancient’ personnel should be high in the mission. This
guarantees that the newcomers can be assisted by their colleagues with more
field experience during their process of adaptation. Such practice may have
good repercussions not only in a better assimilation of the new responsibilities
but also in a faster adaptation to the new city and country.
On the other hand, it is equally convenient that turnovers do not take
place too soon. The more time delegates stay ‘on mission’, the better they are
adapted and the higher the yield of their work. The case of every person is
different, but it is arguable that a full process of adaptation to diplomatic
functions in Geneva may take two years. Adapting to the new atmosphere and
getting the logic of the new responsibilities can take six months or even a
shorter period of time. Yet this is just a superficial adaptation. What takes more
time is building up a good reputation among peers and vis-à-vis the Secretariat,
doing extensive networking in benefit to the country’s interests, and achieving
a complete mastery of all functions, all of which takes more time. Thus,
regardless of the personal or governmental decisions involved, if delegates
leave office too soon, missions do not fully take advantage of the human capital
they are developing in the initial phases of the stay. Apecu Laker (2014, 64)
shares the same view: “Longer tenures, generally, are consistent with deeper
specialization and knowledge, more familiarity with procedures, better peer
recognition and more stable networks that enhance effectiveness.”
Additionally, although arguably less problematic, too long stays cause
troubles of their own. The ‘institutional memory’ is indeed saved and in
function but, despite the intense communication their work allows them with
home capitals, diplomats staying too much time abroad gradually lose touch of
the realities of their countries, which may adversely affect the goals they try to
pursue in the mission or the strategies they use. Apecu Laker agrees but with a
more pessimistic tone: “it is also the case, as suggested by the evidence, that
beyond a certain threshold in time, complacency, fatigue, and cynicism are
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likely to set in, requiring a vital rotation of the negotiator and ‘refresh’ of the
Member” (ibid).
Perhaps more importantly, long tenures affect the practices of
knowledge transfer and the regularity of institutional capacity building. On the
one hand, when delegates stay in office for too long they are indirectly
preventing others from gaining experience in these diplomatic positions. On
the other, they delay their return to new positions in the capital, where they can
revert all the exclusive knowledge they have gained through their direct work
with the WTO. In sum, too low turnovers jeopardize the government’s
capacity-building in the field of foreign trade. Drawing from the missions’
experience and from the traditional diplomatic practice, a healthy average stay
for a delegate should range from 4 to 6 years. Although some circumstantial
reasons may explain some flexibility regarding long stays (for instance, the
current lack of an adequate candidate for the positions in Geneva), short stays
are more difficult to justify (except, of course, if a new delegate proves to be
inadequate in regard to his responsibilities). In other cases, however, it is the
existence of political favoritisms, the lack of continuities when the executive
power changes, the lack of better policies or a poor implementation of the
existing ones what divert governments from satisfactory practices.
The first indicator to observe is the proportion of ancient personnel in
the missions through time. Table 11 shows the rate of ‘antiquity’ of Latin
American missions by year. This index is built as the percentage of delegates
in a given year who were already in office at least the precedent year. When
this index is 100%, it means no new delegate came to the mission at that given
year (however, if a delegate left office compared with the previous year while
the rest stayed, this measure does not detect it). When the index is 0%, it means
all delegates are new compared with the previous year. For the few delegates
who are in the missions for a second time after a first stay, the second arrival
counts as if they were new in what respects this index. Reductions of the index
from one year to the other do not necessarily imply a loss of institutional
memory, but simply can be due to a net increase in the mision’s size. However,
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low percentages do mean that, during such periods, missions have a weak
institutional memory because of a proportionally big turnover. This weakness
can be found in Figure 5 in all grey boxes, marking rates under 50%.
Table 11. Rates of ‘antiquity’
Source: WTO phone directories. Numbers for the period 2010-2014 are not estimates
but real, based on personnel in 2009 and in active and inactive personnel in the
electronic directories of 2014. Made by the author.
As it can be seen, all missions of the region have an average rate of
antiquity above 69%, but there are significant differences among them. From
Panama up to Honduras, all missions have rates above 79% and most have only
experienced one year of weak institutional memory each. Colombia (2000,
2006), Guatemala (1998, 2005), and El Salvador (1996, 2002, 2003) are the
only exceptions, but the high rates of the other periods significantly compensate
the average. The cases of Costa Rica and Honduras are surprisingly the highest,
constituting a case to discuss below. In contrast, from El Salvador to Paraguay
(except for Panama) all missions have experienced at least three episodes of
weak institutional memory. Again, Haiti (2005, 2008) and Brazil (2000, 2006)
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010-2014 Average
Honduras 100% 100% 33% 100% 100% 100% 60% 100% 100% 100% 100% 80% 100% 100% 80% 92,3%
Costa Rica 100% 25% 80% 100% 100% 100% 50% 75% 100% 75% 100% 80% 100% 100% 85% 89,2%
Mexico 88% 100% 75% 100% 86% 100% 67% 38% 80% 78% 100% 89% 75% 100% 82% 87,8%
Colombia 100% 100% 100% 75% 20% 100% 60% 100% 80% 80% 40% 100% 100% 80% 80% 85,0%
Guatemala 100% 100% 0% 83% 83% 67% 100% 100% 50% 33% 100% 100% 100% 67% 88% 84,7%
Nicaragua 67% 67% 33% 67% 67% 100% 50% 63% 100% 83% 60% 100% 60% 100% 91% 82,2%
Chile 71% 100% 83% 67% 50% 86% 100% 67% 100% 67% 43% 100% 86% 83% 77% 82,2%
Uruguay 57% 100% 38% 89% 89% 100% 86% 71% 71% 67% 100% 100% 75% 67% 75% 81,9%
Dominican Rep. 100% 67% 100% 67% 50% 83% 100% 100% 100% 27% 100% 100% 75% 75% 67% 81,5%
Argentina 100% 86% 43% 88% 86% 100% 57% 50% 89% 67% 63% 80% 100% 67% 79% 81,4%
El Salvador 0% 60% 67% 67% 100% 100% 40% 0% 100% 75% 80% 80% 80% 100% 96% 80,2%
Panama 50% 67% 100% 100% 100% 67% 67% 75% 75% 33% 100% 67% 100% 67% 73% 79,3%
Venezuela 100% 50% 38% 100% 63% 100% 57% 57% 100% 25% 100% 80% 100% 33% 79% 77,7%
Ecuador 0% 100% 33% 100% 100% 100% 11% 89% 63% 100% 60% 80% 80% 100% 72% 76,3%
Cuba 20% 80% 50% 100% 83% 67% 100% 100% 50% 80% 40% 100% 100% 100% 55% 73,8%
Brazil 100% 55% 100% 83% 31% 67% 75% 57% 73% 64% 33% 100% 57% 67% 73% 73,6%
Peru 33% 100% 25% 89% 100% 25% 33% 90% 100% 67% 80% 90% 57% 88% 70% 73,5%
Haiti 100% 50% 100% 75% 100% 100% 50% 50% 100% 0% 50% 100% 33% 100% 64% 73,4%
Bolivia 100% 67% 33% 33% 33% 100% 67% 40% 100% 40% 50% 67% 33% 100% 75% 69,1%
Paraguay 75% 100% 67% 67% 50% 80% 83% 80% 83% 75% 25% 100% 100% 100% 38% 69,0%
Total 73% 79% 58% 85% 71% 85% 66% 68% 85% 62% 67% 92% 78% 82% 75% 78,9%
: Periods of week 'institutional memory' (inferior to 50%).
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constitute exceptions with two years each, but their rate in the other years is
sufficiently low to pull the averages down. The worst cases are Peru, with a
long period of weakness from 1996 to 2002; Bolivia, with 6 years of weakness
while three of them were continuous between 1998 to 2000; and Paraguay,
which despite enjoying a healthy first decade, became the country with the
most persistent weakness of the recent years.
Two more things are interesting to remark in Table 11. First, the
average rate of antiquity is not related with the countries’ size. For instance,
Costa Rica, Mexico or Colombia have healthy rates whereas Paraguay, Brazil,
and Peru do not. Second, dedicated WTO missions do tend to enjoy higher rates
of antiquity. Argentina becomes the single general-purpose mission that has
not changed into dedicated mission and that nonetheless enjoys a high rate of
antiquity. In contrast, Ecuador has been the dedicated mission with the lowest
rate, yet its performance got significantly better in the second decade. In the
case of Brazil, the average rate only became slightly better in the period of
dedicated mission, passing from 69% to 72%, which suggest that for the
Brazilian case, the particular policies of turnover can be structural and are not
connected to the mission’s type.
The second variable to consider is the turnover rate or, inversely, the
duration of delegates’ stays in the missions. Table 12 shows the average stay
in years for ambassadors, non-ambassadors, and the total mission, and the
maximum stay that has taken place in the mission for ambassadors and non-
ambassadors. Although all these data derive from the same WTO phone
directories, the fact that information was recorded differently produce two
different levels of accuracy. For ambassadors the exact date of their arrival has
been always registered, which is not the case for non-ambassadors. Not
knowing their exact dates of arrival and departure oblige to count as one year
each appearance in the directories, even though his or her actual presence lasts
a few months less or more. Nonetheless, the quality of the data remains
acceptable and comparable. Additionally, the stays of several non-ambassadors
are incomplete in the records: from those who appeared in 1995 the real arrival
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is unknown; from those who appeared in 2009 and are not present in 2014, the
departure is also unknown (due to the transition to electronic phone directories,
as mentioned earlier in this chapter). And from the non-ambassadors in office
in 2014, the arrival is unknown when they were not already there by 2009. In
these cases of incomplete stays, the delegates were included into the averages
only if their total stays in the known period lasted at least four years. This
decision guarantees more robustness of the averages without artificially
altering them with the low stays of delegates with incomplete periods. In the
same spirit, the only ambassadors in office in 2014 that were included into the
averages where the ones with total stays of at least four years. This way the
averages do not move unfairly down.
Table 12. Average and maximum stays
Source: Calculated from the WTO phone directories. Made by the author.
Ambassadors Rest Total Ambassadors Rest Ambassadors Rest Total
Honduras 11,5 9,2 9,9 15,0 15 2 5 7
Costa Rica 22,0 5,3 7,1 22,0 18 1 8 9
Mexico 7,0 5,4 5,6 10,0 12 3 21 24
Uruguay 5,4 5,1 5,5 6,3 8 4 16 20
Guatemala 6,0 5,1 5,3 10,0 11 4 13 17
Dominican Rep. 4,4 5,3 5,1 6,0 20 4 13 17
Colombia 4,8 4,2 4,3 5,7 6 4 14 18
Chile 6,5 3,9 4,3 9,3 6 3 18 21
Argentina 3,6 4,4 4,3 6,9 8 5 25 30
Nicaragua 3,7 4,4 4,2 6,0 13 5 12 17
El Salvador 6,0 3,6 4,0 11,0 12 3 17 20
Haiti 2,9 4,3 3,9 6,0 7 4 10 14
Panama 3,4 4,3 3,9 5,0 11 5 6 11
Peru 2,5 4,3 3,8 4,8 7 8 22 30
Paraguay 3,8 3,8 3,8 6,1 7 4 12 16
Cuba 3,5 3,9 3,8 4,8 6 5 15 20
Venezuela 3,3 3,8 3,7 5,4 10 6 24 30
Ecuador 2,7 3,6 3,4 5,7 6 5 15 20
Brazil 3,7 3,0 3,1 5,2 7 5 58 63
Bolivia 3,1 2,6 2,7 9,0 6 6 12 18
Average years Number of delegates countedMax. Stay (years)
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Table 12 shows that practices on the frequency of turnovers vary
significantly among the countries in the region, revealing troubling extremes at
each side of the spectrum. Honduras and Costa Rica rank higher with average
stays of 9,9 years (9 years and 10 months) and 7,1 years respectively. In both
cases the average stays of ambassadors are surprisingly high, 11,5 years for
Honduras and 22 years for Costa Rica, which has had only one ambassador
throughout the two decades of WTO existence. Honduras’ average stay of non-
ambassadors is equally high, 9,9 years, while the longest stay for a non-
ambassador is 15 years. Costa Rica appears with a more normal average for
non-ambassadors but long stays are equally common in this case, with 18 years
being the longest. Thereafter, Mexico, Uruguay, Guatemala, Dominican
Republic, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, and El Salvador enjoy
averages between 5,6 and 4,0 years. This set of countries seem to have the more
adequate rates of turnover. Yet Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador had stays
of ambassador and non-ambassadors of 10 years or more, while in the
Dominican Republic non-ambassadors have had significantly long stays. For
Mexico, a long period in a few delegates rather constitutes a special exception
for this case due to the size of its mission, but the small size of Dominican
Republic and El Salvador (alongside Honduras and Costa Rica) means this
practice involves a higher proportion of delegates. On the other hand, the
missions with the highest turnovers are Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela,
Cuba, Paraguay, Peru, Panama, and Haiti. Bolivia is the single country having
an average stay shorter than 3 years for non-ambassadors, 2,6, while the worst
average stays for ambassadors are held by Peru (2,5), Ecuador (2,7), and Haiti
(2,9).
The distribution of countries in this indicator is very similar to that of
the rate of antiquity. Here it can be seen that, first, dedicated WTO missions
generally enjoy better institutional memory than general-purpose missions
(Argentina has again the best performance of the second group while Ecuador
the worst performance of the first group). Second, despite the small size of the
missions and of the countries, the same Central-American delegations exhibit
high indexes of performance, yet very extreme in certain cases. Third, Brazil is
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again an intriguingly odd case. Having the biggest delegation in the region, it
is only surpassed by Bolivia in terms of a weak institutional memory when
measured by the turnover rate.
As can be expected, there is a high correlation between the rate of
antiquity and the average stay, as can be observed in Figure 9. However, being
at the same level in terms of the duration of stays, Mexico is able to get a higher
average rate of antiquity than Uruguay; Colombia a better one than Chile,
Nicaragua or Argentina; El Salvador and Panama better rates than Cuba, Haiti,
Peru, and Paraguay. For the cases above the average, the turnovers have been
made more smoothly.
Figure 9. Average stay vs. Average rate of antiquity
Source: made by the author.
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It is not convenient to prematurely condemn the extremely low
turnovers of Central-American countries. It is true that such practices bear all
the inconveniences described earlier: delegates can lose touch of the realities
of their countries and the capacity-building of other divisions in the capitals is
not fostered at a higher degree. However, it must be considered that the
financial efforts these countries have made to devote dedicated missions to the
WTO are extraordinary regarding their country size. It is possible that low
turnovers are a compensatory strategy that guarantees a first-rate representation
to the WTO despite of a lack of specialized human capital at home. As higher
turnovers would be inadequate due to the scarcity of good technicians, over-
specializing the delegates in the WTO missions and guaranteeing their
positions there would make for a rational strategy, bearing fruits in the short
and middle term. To say a final word on that matter it will be necessary to check
if these missions exhibit a higher efficiency in their WTO work than, say,
neighboring Nicaragua, which has opted for a classical general-purpose
mission with average indexes of turnover. This issue will be duly discussed in
the following chapters.
The importance of ambassadors in the missions makes useful to
analyze their cycle of turnovers in more detail. Table 13 represents these
turnovers by changes of color from grey to white, again to grey and so forth,
for the last two decades. When the first ambassadors were already in office by
1995, their presence is traced in grey during those years. Additionally,
according to the directories, in some years there was no information about
ambassadors, which are marked in red. For dedicated WTO missions, it is sure
that this can be interpreted as a real absence of the ambassador. For general-
purpose missions it can mean a real absence or alternatively that, although the
ambassador is in office, he is not a relevant contact for WTO issues. For
instance, that seemed to be the case for Haiti in 1997-8 as the following
directories confirm that the country did not change its ambassador until 2000.
Even if in the other cases it is harder to know the real cause of such absences,
every red box implies a lack of ambassadorial engagement with the
organization.
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Table 13. Turnovers of ambassadors
Source: WTO phone directories and fieldwork in Geneva. Made by the author.
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
Tota
lW
om
en
Co
sta
Ric
a1
0
Ho
ndur
as2
0
Chi
le3
1
El S
alva
dor
30
Mex
ico
30
Gua
tem
ala
41
Do
min
ican
Rep
.4
1
Uru
guay
40
Co
lom
bia
51
Ecua
dor
NM
51
Pana
ma
NM
NM
50
Bra
zil
60
Hai
ti5
0
Nic
arag
ua5
1
Para
guay
50
Arg
enti
na6
0
Bo
livia
63
Cub
a6
1
Ven
ezue
la7
1
Peru
91
This
co
lor
mar
ks a
bsen
ce o
f am
bass
ado
r in
the
mis
sio
n.
Bo
th c
olo
rs in
dica
te t
he p
rese
nce
of
an a
mba
ssad
or.
Cha
nge
of
colo
r m
eans
cha
nge
of
amba
ssad
or.
The
ser
ies
of
each
coun
try
stra
rts
in g
rey
wit
h th
e am
bass
ado
r w
ho w
as p
rese
nt b
y th
e cr
eati
on
of
the
WTO
in 1
995.
WTO
Mis
sio
ns
Gen
eral
-
Pu
rpo
se
Mis
sio
ns
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Table 13 shows again the extreme cases of stability already observed
in Costa Rica and Honduras, with only 1 and 2 ambassadors respectively
throughout the two decades. Besides them, the missions that have exhibited the
best regularities in ambassadorial turnovers are Chile, Colombia, Mexico,
Uruguay, Brazil, and Cuba. In these cases every ambassador has remained in
office beyond the simple period of adaptation, and missions therefore have
profited from their work at their highest potential. El Salvador and Guatemala
had each one period of absence and one short ambassadorial period of two
years, but by the second decade both moved into the stability typical of Central-
American missions. The rest of countries have suffered several periods of
irregularities. Ecuador, for instance, had two ambassadorial periods of one year
and three years of absence. Peru has had three ambassadors with periods of
about one year and, worst, two of them consecutively. Haiti had a dedicated
WTO mission for eleven years, but during six of those eleven years the mission
was not led by someone with ambassadorial rank. Again, it can be seen that
dedicated missions exhibit in general more regularity than general-purpose
missions.
Even if it is not always the case, some short ambassadorial periods
coincide with moments of political instability at home. For instance, the
political turmoil in Argentina derived from the 2001 economic crisis finds
correspondence in the shorter ambassadorial cycles of those years. Even if the
first short period of Bolivia was an appointment under president Jorge Quiroga
Ramírez, who took over after president Hugo Banzer quit due to illness, the
following short terms echo well the internal instability taking place in the
country before president Evo Morales took office. The Ecuadorean mission, in
contrast, seemed freed from the political turmoil of its country during the
1990s, but only until Lucio Gutierrez presidency. In the case of Peru, the first
short term coincides with the transition after the end of Fujimori’s government.
Oddly enough, the instability observed in the Venezuelan mission takes place
despite the continuity of Hugo Chavez’ government.
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The missions’ relations
Traditionally diplomatic missions have had restricted connections with the
‘outer world’, a feature that does not seem to have changed dramatically, at
least in Latin America, in recent years. The most important exchanges that
missions undertake are naturally with the international organization they have
in charge—which is the topic of Part 3 of this dissertation—the home
governments they represent, and the circle of other diplomatic missions that
conduct a similar work. Each mission has its own particular way of interacting
with the capital, and these interactions often evolve throughout time not only
due to institutional changes but also to the different managerial styles of the
persons in charge. Each mission also builds its own network of contacts among
peer-missions, following various rationales, as will be seen. All these issues
and the few other contact points with which missions interact are the topic of
interest for the rest of the chapter.
To give an idea about how restricted these connections are it is useful
to recall how difficult it was to get in contact with the missions in order to
conduct the interviews for this research. In most cases addresses and phone
numbers are hard to find. Often they are not public information published on
Internet, and contacting the ministries to which they report in every country or,
alternatively, the international organizations they work with, are the only
means to have access to the missions. Their busy agendas and enormous
personnel constrains certainly do not contribute for them to open up to dialog,
but it can be said that it is rather uncommon, even awkward, for the workforce
of missions to be under intense public or academic scrutiny. For instance,
despite my numerous efforts to contact missions’ personnel through electronic
letters and phone calls, I was not able to interview delegates from Bolivia,
Ecuador, and Venezuela. Indeed, it is interesting to remark that Cuba—a
founding member of the GATT, be said in passing— and Nicaragua were the
only ALBA members open to this research. Almost all these cases which
declined were linked with general-purpose missions. The exception was
Ecuador, which nonetheless has showed a low performance in most of the
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indicators discussed in the previous section; yet its bigger size by 2014 suggests
that personnel constrains influence this poor visibility less than the mission’s
policy or practices might.
Another indicator of the lack of interest and lack of contact with the
public opinion is that by 2014 most Latin American missions had not developed
institutional websites. Table 14 makes a summary of missions’ websites for the
countries of the region, in contrast to three external missions of reference.
While Colombia, Ecuador, and Paraguay publish the organizational chart and
contact details of their delegates in a single page within ministerial websites,
with no further information about their activities of responsibilities, El
Salvador and Panama have websites with poorer content, which were not
updated since 2010. The countries not present in Table 14 did not even have a
website up to mid 2014. In terms of relevant content, the exceptions in the
region are Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and Venezuela. These websites
tend to publish the ambassador’s CV, the list of current delegates in office and
their specific responsibilities, and some news related with the missions’ work.
Argentina and Cuba also publish some of their statements in the WTO,
constituting the only cases in the region. It can be also seen that general-
purpose missions are more inclined to have high-quality websites than
dedicated missions, which suggest that their work is perceived as more related
with the public interest. The only exceptions of dedicated WTO missions with
robust websites are Brazil and Chile. Still—and very telling—the Chilean
government does not see it relevant to publish neither the mission’s address in
this website nor the delegates’ contact details. In any case, only the Argentine
and Cuban sites can compete head to head with those of the mission of the
United States, which has a better updating of statements but does not publish
information of lower-ranking delegates. Moreover, none of them are as
complete and frequently updated as the site of the WTO mission of the
European Union. Although Chinese Taipei’s is not as complete and frequently
updated as the US’ or the EU’s, it offers in exchange an impressive database of
photographies of the mission’s staff participating in meetings and others
events, including dinners hosted by its ambassador. Thus, only a few countries
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in the region have been managing to turn their missions’ websites into veritable
tools for public diplomacy. In contrast, the majority of Latin American
missions are far backward regarding this issue, and are a better example of the
traditionally closed style that has characterized diplomacy in general and trade
diplomacy in particular.
Table 14. Websites of Latin American missions
Source: Sites of ministries and search engines consulted by 30-6-2014. Made by the
author.
In the home country
Although several entities, both public and private, are concerned about the
national representation to the WTO, diplomatic missions follow a single chain
of command. They depend on the Executive branch, namely a ministry, and
ultimately on the President in charge of the government. Missions have
traditionally reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) or to its
equivalent. These ministries often have internal divisions in charge of
multilateral agreements, economic affairs or even foreign trade, where the
control of diplomatic missions is likely to fit. However, the growing
importance of foreign trade in the governmental agendas of the last decades has
produced institutional changes in several countries, which in some cases has
had a repercussion on the chain of command of WTO missions. These,
Country
Address and
contact info
Ambassador´s
CV
Staff
names
Staff
responsi
bilities News
Some
statements
in the WTO
Frequency
of updates
Relevant
content
(aprox.) Site
Argentina Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Medium ˃10 pages www.eoirs.mrecic.gob.ar/
Cuba Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Medium ˃10 pages www.cubadiplomatica.cu/ginebra/ES/Inicio.aspx
Brazil Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Low 5-10 pages delbrasomc.itamaraty.gov.br/
Peru Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Low 5-10 pages http://www.onuperu.org/
Chile No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Low 5-10 pages http://chileabroad.gov.cl/omc/
Venezuela Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Low 5-10 pages http://onu.embajada.gob.ve/
Colombia Yes No Yes No No No None 1 page www.mincit.gov.co/mincomercioexterior/publicaciones.php?id=2908
Ecuador Yes No Yes No No No None 1 pagecancilleria.gob.ec/representaciones-permanentes-del-ecuador-ante-
organismos-internacionales/
Paraguay Yes No Yes No No No None 1 pagehttp://www.mre.gov.py/v1/Representaciones/64-misionpar-naciones-
unidas-ginebra.aspx#cont_funcio64
El Salvador No Yes No No No No Last in 2010 1 pagehttp://www.minec.gob.sv/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id
=650:embajadayrepresentante&catid=108:funcionarios&Itemid=104
Panama No Yes No No No No Last in 2010 2 pages http://www.mici.gob.pa/clase.php?cid=15&sid=60&clid=69
US Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Medium ˃10 pages https://geneva.usmission.gov/us-mission-wto/
EU Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes High ˃10 pages http://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegations/wto/index_en.htm
Chin. Taipei Yes No No No Yes Yes Medium ˃10 pages http://www.roc-taiwan.org/WTO/mp.asp?mp=502
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therefore, do not depend anymore on MFAs but on economy-related or trade-
related ministries, following the model of the United States Trade
Representative (USTR). Table 15 shows the chain of command of the Latin
American missions. It must be added that there are some hybrid cases which
are more difficult to trace. For instance, under Colombian law, all first-rank
diplomatic envoys must depend nominally on the MFA and even be paid by
this ministry. Ambassadors to the WTO are therefore part of the MFA payroll.
Yet, in practice, they report directly to the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and
Tourism. Table 15 traces real dependence of missions beyond their sources of
salary or other cases of hybrid dependence.
Table 15. Missions’ dependency
Source: Ministries’ websites and interviews in Geneva. Made by the author.
It can be seen that missions depending on economic-related ministries
are still the minority. Three types can be observed within this group: missions
reporting to ministries exclusively dedicated to foreign trade (Costa Rica and
Ecuador); missions reporting to an exclusively trade ministry or one in which
trade is a major responsibility (Colombia, Honduras, Panama); and missions
reporting to ministries of “economy”, in which trade is one among several
responsibilities (El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico). The major group are the
Country Depends on Comment
Costa Rica Ministry of Foreign Trade
Ecuador Ministry of Foreign Trade
Colombia Ministry of Trade, Industry and Turism
Honduras Secretary of Industry and Trade
Panama Ministry of Trade and Industry
El Salvador Ministry of Economy
Guatemala Ministry of Economy
Mexico Secretary of Economy
Cuba MFA but there is a Min. Of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment
Peru MFA but there is a Min. of Foreign Trade and Turism
Brazil MFA but there is a Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade
Dominican Rep. MFA but there is a Ministry of Industry and Trade
Haiti MFA but there is a Ministry of Trade and Industry
Nicaragua MFA but there is a Ministry of Development, Industry and Trade
Paraguay MFA but there is a Ministry of Industry and Trade
Venezuela MFA but there is a Ministry of Trade
Argentina MFA there is no Ministry of Trade or Equivalent (Ministry of Economy does have a trade division)
Bolivia MFA there is no Ministry of Trade or Equivalent
Chile MFA there is no Ministry of Trade or Equivalent
Uruguay MFA there is no Ministry of Trade or Equivalent
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missions reporting to ministries of foreign affairs, and three different types can
be observed within this group: countries in which nonetheless there exist
ministries dedicated to foreign trade but do not hold the chain of command
(Cuba, Peru); ones in which trade-related ministries exist but do not hold the
chain of command either (Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua,
Panama, Venezuela); and the ones in which the equivalent of a trade ministry
does not exist (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay). In fact, there is a quite
defined geographical distribution of these types of dependency. The closer the
countries are to the United States, the more likely the countries have a trade-
related ministry, and the more likely the missions depend on them.
By crossing dedication and dependency of missions, Figure 10 makes
an institutional typology of diplomatic missions to the WTO. It can be seen that
while most dedicated WTO missions report to trade-related ministries, Brazil,
Chile, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay have dedicated missions that still
report to MFAs. Besides, in the cases of Chile and Uruguay, such institutional
choice appears as the single alternative as there is not the equivalent of a trade-
related ministry that could take over these functions, that is, no other institution
really ‘competes’ against MFAs for foreign trade leadership.
If missions take orders from a single source in the countries’ capitals—
normally a division within the ministry from which they depend and,
ultimately, from the ministers in charge—it is these divisions and the ministers
that must decide the positions and priorities that missions are to advance in the
WTO. It follows that they are also in charge of the inter-ministerial
coordination that backs this single position and, by doing all that, they also
decide, somehow indirectly, the degree of autonomy the ambassadors will have
to attend their work and conduct negotiations.
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Figure 10. Missions’ typology: dedication vs. dependency
Source: made by the author.
Arguably all ministries and high-level government agencies related
with a country’s economy are interested in shaping the national position vis-à-
vis the WTO. Depending on the country, some interested may include the
ministries of finance or of economy, ministries of trade and/or of industry when
they exist, and ministries or agencies of national planning. Some of these, such
as the ministries of agriculture and industry, can also act as brokers between
the government and specific sectorial interests (both producers and consumers)
that also want to have a say in the formulation of the foreign trade policy.
Subsequently, the overall coordination is due to conciliate often conflicting
interests among participants and define the country’s trade priorities. This
inter-ministerial coordination led by the ministries in charge of missions is
Brazil Colombia
Chile Costa Rica
Dominican Rep. Ecuador
Uruguay El Salvador
Guatemala
Honduras
Mexico
Panama
Argentina
Bolivia
Cuba
Haiti
Nicaragua
Paraguay
Peru
Venezuela
Ded
icat
ion
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ministry of Trade or Economy
Chain of Command
WTO
Mis
sio
nG
ener
al-P
urp
ose
Mis
sio
n
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generally made through regular meetings in which interested ministries have a
seat. The degree of institutionalization of this coordination varies across
countries. In some, these meetings are erected as National Commissions for
trade policy formulation. In any case, given that the complexity of the
coordination is proportional to the number of institutions involved, one might
expect that missions depending directly on trade ministries hold a significant
advantage compared with missions depending on MFAs, especially when
countries do have a trade-related ministry whose functions may overlap those
of the MFA division. The case of Peru might be emblematic as the country has
a ministry mainly dedicated to foreign trade (MFT), yet its general-purpose
mission depends on the MFA. Only a close inter-ministerial partnership and an
ever-renovated effort to maintain the mission-MFA-MFT dialogue fluid can
compensate the undergoing institutional inertias.
Testimony from delegates indicates that a fluid and committed
coordination from the capital is one important factor for promoting a good work
by missions in the WTO. Clear instructions and frequent follow-up from the
capital facilitates the missions’ work. When this ‘back-office’ counts with good
quality of data about the country’s trade as well as technically-capable
personnel committed to follow from the distance the pace of Geneva work, the
mission is in a more comfortable position for an active participation. This is an
ideal rather than the general practice. In some countries, the national services
of statistics and economic data (customs data, among others) are not well
developed and delegates find themselves partly blind to make decisions. In
other cases, the capital do not respond rapidly enough to mission’s requests
about positions to take, forcing the mission to remain inactive or to take its own
initiative. It also can happen that the nature of certain requests implies to
subsequently contact other ministries involved, causing longer delays.
Sometimes the request to a ministry of trade or to a ministry of agriculture is
urgent, yet the mission is bound to inform it through the regular channel of the
ministry of dependency first. “I try to copy important requests also to the other
ministries involved, so I can accelerate the reply,” an ambassador declares. Yet,
this permission to shortcut the chain of command is neither advised nor
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tolerated in all countries, nor in all cases. Differences in the time zone also add
difficulty, especially when coordination has to be urgent. The position of the
American continent in the globe makes that missions in Geneva are always
between 4 and 7 hours ahead of their capitals depending on the country. This
makes that morning work runs always without on-time feedback, and that some
coordinated work with the capital (like conferences and phone calls) has to be
scheduled in the evening till midnight, out of normal work hours.
The issue of the over-specialization of delegates in Geneva must also
be taken into account. It can happen that officials in the capital—even if they
are meant to be experts on trade—are not always able to grasp what it is at stake
in some specific junctures of the negotiations. When delegates in Geneva turn
into a foreign tribe of inaccessible jargon and ministries lack the human capital
to fully interpret what they inform, sound feedback can become more difficult
and scarce. For instance, when the turnover of officials is high in the ministries,
or when their appointments follow a political rather than a technical logic, this
phenomenon is more likely to happen. In any case, ministries truly interested
in what is happening in Geneva, and looking forward to update instructions
clearly and quickly, are a privilege that not all missions have.
Another factor that influences an adequate coordination with the
capital is whether the government is able to maintain former delegates who
finish their tenures in Geneva within the circuit of the foreign trade officials in
the capital. As they know the frontline well, they are able to foster capacity-
building in the capital and to better help to adapt the ‘back-office’ to the needs
of the missions. At times neither salaries nor new positions are sufficiently
attractive to retain the officials, and they go to the private sector or to the circuit
of international organizations. This emerges as a difficult challenge for
knowledge transfer within the government. In Latin America, Costa Rica is an
emblematic example of these difficulties, as it is known that in the two-decade
period not a single delegate working for the mission has ever returned to the
capital to reinforce the back-office. Such patterns create middle and long-term
institutional weaknesses. As one delegate sharply concludes: “institutional
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capacity is nothing but us, the people. It’s nothing but the knowledge we have.”
Another one refers to the importance of keeping the communication channel
with former delegates open, in order to receive high quality advice in critical
moments. “I still ask questions to the functionary that used to have my role in
Geneva,” he acknowledges, even after more than three years of being
appointed. This kind of long term communication is more difficult or even
inexistent when governments are not able to retain former delegates within the
circuit of government institutions.
Connected to this, the quality of knowledge management practices
varies considerably across missions. These practices involve the
documentation of events, the production of documents and archives for internal
use, a proper circulation of them throughout the mission and with the back-
office, and its conservation for the future generations of delegates. The
missions with better institutional practices have key details documented and
delegates are meant to follow this practices regularly. In other missions, in
contrast, new delegates appointed do not find systematic documentation to
follow. They are to define whether to perpetuate the weak practices or to
improve them. There are many incentives for perpetuation of bad practices. The
less documented the work is, the more indispensable the functionaries become.
Lack of documentation can turn into a strategy for labor security. This implies
that not only adequate rules about the treatment and documentation of
information are needed. Labor certainty after the Geneva appointment, for
instance, with clear and adequate alternatives in government ministries and
agencies, also creates positive incentives for delegates to comply with these
practices. Regardless of the quality of rules, all delegates constantly face the
dilemma to document or not and to what extent to do it. A delegate who favors
documentation practices recognizes the trade-off it involves: “You ‘decalcify’
the individual in order to ‘calcify’ the institution.” ‘Decalcifying’ the individual
through bureaucratic practices of knowledge transfer can be understood, under
Neumann’s categories (2005; 2012), as one more facet of the self-effacing
script that diplomats are due to follow. They are meant to reduce their
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protagonism and indispensability in order to strengthen the government
institutions they represent.
In any case, even if missions depend on a structured chain of command
in their capitals, they need some degree of autonomy if they are to be fully
operational. Or, to use Jönsson and Hall’s (2005) terminology (see Chapter 2),
imperative mandate hinders work whereas some degrees of free mandate may
facilitate it. Moreover, geographical distance on its own guarantees certain
level of independence, and delegates require autonomy to effectively deal with
the minutiae of negotiations, and to take initiatives in other domains. The
degrees of autonomy of the missions—and particularly of the ambassadors—
are different depending on the country and on many other circumstances. When
commenting on multilateral diplomacy conducted in New York and Geneva,
Rana (2011, 103) suggested that ambassadors generally count on a high degree
of autonomy, which makes peer-to-peer interaction more fruitful. One former
ambassador coincided with this view: “it would be silly if the government does
not trust the advice of its soldier in the trench, who knows the field better.” On
this respect, two thumb rules could be derived from the interviews conducted.
First, the more delicate the issue, the less the autonomy. Second, the more the
experience and seniority of the ambassador in charge, the more his credibility,
and therefore the more his autonomy as well as the trust in the capital on his
judgements.
Finally, it is important to mention that, regardless the types of
dependence or the specificities of the inter-ministerial coordination processes,
the missions’ relations with their home countries are practically limited to the
executive government and mainly to the regular chain of command. On the one
hand, as specialized government agencies abroad, missions are not meant—or
made—to undertake relations with private actors at home. Normally they are
not receptors of sectorial requests by private companies, trade unions or
representatives of the civil society. The executive government in the home
country—namely, the ministries—, parliaments, and political parties are the
common institutions where private lobby takes place. Many delegates do
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acknowledge that in unusual moments of negotiations when a specific input or
consultation is required, missions can establish contact with some of these
private actors. However, this happens under strict authorization and
supervision by the ministries in the capital. On the other hand, the legislative
power in the region does not exercise close control of the missions yet. Drawing
on delegates’ observations, the conduction of trade policy in the WTO is not
among the main priorities of parliaments and congressmen. They scarcely get
involved or ask for requests. An ambassador stated: “Only once I have been in
congress reporting on the mission’s activities. I wanted to let them know what
we are doing. But I did it on my own initiative in a trip to my country. Nobody
there was asking me to do it.” Fluid and constant relations with missions in the
WTO remain, therefore, an almost exclusive prerogative of the executive
power. This underlines the fact that missions are a sort of offshore branch of
governments whose limited resources must be dedicated exclusively—or
mainly—on their terrain of action.
In Geneva
If relations with home countries are limited to less than a small number of
actors, the same happens with relations that missions establish in Geneva, if
not in number at least in type. Beyond the WTO and the other IOs with which
they hold official representation, diplomatic missions basically relate with one
other—a feature characteristic of the governing and of the functioning of the
WTO—, and, occasionally, with trade-related institutions such as private law
firms and NGOs. The latter can be addressed first.
When countries initiate a dispute in the Dispute Settlement Body
(DSB), or when they are drawn into it by another complainant, they sometimes
resort to specialized law firms for help. These law firms can bring in-depth
legal assistance to back the countries’ position for the ongoing litigation. Such
cases naturally entail contact and cooperation between firms and governments,
involving home-based ministries as well as the mission in Geneva. This type
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of relations are case-specific, based on service contracts, and expire as soon as
cases reach their ends in the DSB.
Missions can also establish relations with non-governmental
organizations and other inter-governmental organizations. These institutions
can bring technical assistance and general advice so missions can better defend
their countries’ interests in the multilateral trading system. Missions from
developing countries, because of the shortage of personnel and lower technical
capabilities, rely more often on this kind of institutions in order to complement
their resources and boost performance in the system. While this practice is
widely encouraged and the WTO Secretariat itself has become more open to
dialogue with other international organizations and with NGOs over the years,
resorting to this kind of support is not always free of consequences for the
missions and their delegates. All depends on the institutions they look for
support. Receiving legal assistance from the ITC or others of the like is
perceived as part of the game. Yet, that is not the case with other NGOs that
bring assistance but whose discourse is more critical (at times obstructive) of
the system. Some countries coincide with these more contesting visions, and
their missions engage openly and actively with such NGOs. But very often
delegates are jealous of the independence they have as official representatives
of their countries. For many, therefore, it is very important to make clear that,
whatever the positions of their country in the WTO, these positions are
independent. When national positions, as well as statements, only mirror a
particular rhetoric of a certain NGO, the assistance it brings can nonetheless
jeopardize the mission’s credibility vis-à-vis its peers. Even in small missions,
many delegates are thus very cautious on this issue as true independence
increases peer-reputation and ultimately bargaining power. This is one more
example of the ‘invisibility regime’ that non-state experts and actors endure in
the diplomatic community, as discussed by Badaró (2011).
More relevant, then, are the relations with missions from other member
countries. Missions certainly relate with one another regularly under the frame
of formal gatherings and procedures of the WTO. For instance, complains in
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the DSB, meetings of the Trade Policy Review Body (TPRB), or of the General
Council, among others, are all situations that put missions in contact. However,
as explored in the previous chapter, missions also relate directly with one
another. The common reasons for these relations are the joint definition of
yearly chairs for the governing bodies of the WTO, and the search for
cooperation and common positions in trade negotiations.
Blocks and coalitions are the crystallized version of relations among
missions but informal and more fluid contacts among them are equally
common. Such informal and fluid contacts are more difficult to trace, yet they
have an impact on negotiations and on the daily functioning of the WTO
organs. For instance, ideological affinities between governments in home
countries can promote waves of joint cooperation among their missions in
Geneva. As explored in Chapter 5, personal affinities of ambassadors can also
promote cooperation among missions, at least during the time these
ambassadors remain in charge or until those affinities last. Dispute cases from
one member against other in the DSB—among other ordinary events—do not
necessarily endanger or break these links of cooperation, but they do add an
element of tension to the relations.
By blocks, or forums, it must be understood the groups that exist
outside WTO purposes but which can be active among missions, be it for
simple coordination or also to bring common positions on a specific issue. The
Group of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (GRULAC), which follows
the regional divisions established by the UN, holds regular meetings and is led
by all members through a yearly pro tempore presidency exercised in
alphabetic order. The GRULAC has not been relevant for building up common
positions in negotiations but is an important tool of coordination when
members must reach consensus for proposing regional representatives to the
highest bodies of the WTO. Additionally, regional trade agreements (RTAs)
can induce bloc relations in the missions. In the region, MERCOSUR was
particularly active in previous years, as well as ALBA missions in more recent
years. Still, it is not always the case that RTAs derive into tight cooperation at
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the missions’ level or into common positions in the trade negotiations. Others
examples of active blocs in the WTO are the African, Caribbean, and Pacific
countries (ACPs) with agricultural preferences in the European Union; the
African Group, composed of African members of the WTO; the Least
Developed Countries (LDCs), which have the lowest income per capita in the
world; and the Group of Ninety (G-90), composed of the members of the ACPs
plus the African Countries plus the LDCs.
Coalitions have a different nature. Existing only under the frame of the
multilateral trade system, these groups of countries normally have common
interests in specific sectors, which make them join forces in order to gain
leverage in negotiations. Although coalitions are a common device of
developing countries so to reduce asymmetry in negotiations with developed
ones, they are in fact used by all types of countries. A trademark of WTO
groupings is that rivals in one issue of the negotiations are often allies in a
different issue. This relativization of rivalry fostered by WTO coalitions has
been considered a strength of the system, and is meant to bring cooperation
among all members in the long-term. Blocks and coalitions, and their member
countries, are all well known in scholarship and media; anyway, it is important
to bring them here in order to complete the profile of the missions of the region.
Table 16 sums up some of the most important blocs and coalitions in the Doha
Round of trade negotiations in the WTO, counting the total number of members
and those from the region. Dividing coalitions by sector and into aggressive
and defensive, Table 17 shows the profile of Latin American missions
according to their participation into blocks and coalitions.
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Table 16. Blocs and coalitions in the Doha Round
Source: based on
http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dda_e/negotiating_groups_e.htm. Retrieved on
20-8-2014.
Group Description Members LA Members
ACPAffrican, Carribean, and Pacific countries with agricultural preferences in the European
Union60 14
LDCs Least developed countries 34 1
G-90 African Group + ACP + LCDs 91 14
SVEs - AgricultureSmall, vulnerable, economies. Emerging countries that, although not LDCs, due to their
size are consired vulnerable to foreign trade, especially in agriculture15 10
SVEs - NAMA 20 16
SVEs - rules Fisheries subsidies 15 10
Recent new members
(RAMs)
Recently acceded members (RAMs), ie, countries that negotiated and joined the WTO
after 1995, seeking lesser commitments in the negotiations because of the liberalization
they have undertaken as part of their membership agreements. Excludes least-developed
countries because they will make no new commitments, and EU members
19 2
Cairns Group of agricultural exporting nations lobbying for agriculture trade liberalization 20 10
Tropical products Developing countries seeking greater market access for tropical products 8 8
G-20 Developing countries looking for ambitious agricultural reforms in developed countries 23 12
G-33Friends of special products. Developing countries pressing for flexibility to undertake
limited market opening in agriculture46 23
NAMA-11 Developing countries seeking flexibilities to limit market opening in industrial goods trade 10 3
Paragraph-6
Countries with less than 35% of non-agricultural products covered by legally bound tariff
ceilings. They have agreed to increase their binding coverage substantially, but want to
exempt some products. (In paragraph 6 of the first version of the NAMA text, later
paragraph 8.)
12 2
Friends of Ambition Seeking to maximize tariff reductions and achieve real market access in NAMA. 35 0
Friends of A-D Negs. (FANs) Coalition seeking more disciplines on the use of anti-dumping measures 15 5
Friends of Fish (FoFs) Informal coalition seeking to significantly reduce fisheries subsidies. 11 5
W52 sponsors
Sponsors of TN/C/W/52, a proposal for “modalities” in negotiations on geographical
indications (the multilateral register for wines and spirits, and extending the higher level
of protection beyond wines and spirits) and “disclosure” (patent applicants to disclose the
origin of genetic resources and traditional knowledge used in the inventions).
109 18
Joint proposalSponsors of TN/IP/W/10/Rev.4 (intellectual property), proposing a database that is
entirely voluntary20 11
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Table 17. Country profiles according to coalitions
Source: extract based on appendix 3.2 in VanGrasstek (2013), pages 115-9.
(*): The Dominican Republic is in the ACP, what makes it a sponsor of W52, but it is
also a sponsor of TN/IP/W/10/Rev.2 on geographical indications.
Significant insight can be drawn from these figures. First, it can be
seen that most countries in the region—as well as most countries in the
organization—participate simultaneously in aggressive and defensive
coalitions. Still, Colombia and Uruguay only make part of aggressive coalitions
whereas the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Honduras, only make part
NAMA Agriculture Other NAMA Agriculture Other
Colombia Cairns Trop FAN FoFs W52
Uruguay G20 Cairns
Argentina G20 Cairns FoFs NAMA-11 Joint
Bolivia G20 SVE-N G33 SVE-Ag
Brazil G20 Cairns FAN W52 NAMA-11
Chile G20 Cairns FAN FoFs Joint APEC
Costa Rica Cairns Trop FAN Joint
Cuba G20 W52 Parag. 6 G33 SVE-Ag SVE-Ru G90 ACP
Ecuador G20 Trop FoFs W52 Joint RAMs
Guatemala G20 Cairns Trop SVE-N G33 SVE-Ag Joint
Haiti W52 G33 G90 ACP LDC
Mexico G20 FAN Joint APEC
Nicaragua Trop SVE-N G33 SVE-Ag SVE-Ru Joint
Panama Trop G33 RAMs
Paraguay G20 Cairns SVE-N SVE-Ag Joint
Peru G20 Cairns Trop FoFs W52 G33 APEC
Venezuela G20 NAMA-11 G33
Dominican Rep. [W52]* SVE-N G33 SVE-Ag SVE-Ru Joint G90 ACP
El Salvador SVE-N G33 SVE-Ag SVE-Ru Joint
Honduras SVE-N G33 SVE-Ag SVE-Ru Joint
China G20 W52 G33 RAMs APEC
EU Amb W52
India G20 W52 NAMA-11 G33
Indonesia G20 Cairns W52 NAMA-11 G33 APEC
Japan Amb FAN G10 Joint APEC
Korea FAN G10 G33 Joint APEC
Nigeria G20 W52 Parag. 6 G33 G90 AfriG ACP
Switzerland Amb FAN W52 G10
United States Amb FoFs Joint APEC
Coalitions based on shared interests
Offensive interests Defensive interests
Blocks
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of defensive ones. Second, no country in the region makes part of Friends of
Ambition, which seeks a wider liberalization in the NAMA and is led by
developed countries. Third, while Bolivia, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua,
Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Honduras have joined the
coalitions of Small, Vulnerable Economies (SVEs), Costa Rica, Ecuador, and
Panama have not despite their size. Ecuador and Panama are indeed covered
by RAMs, which is not Costa Rica’s case. Fourth, most countries in the region
have aggressive interests in agriculture, but not all them advance these interests
in the same way. Colombia and Costa Rica belong to the Cairns Group without
making part of the G-20, which contains some defensive elements for
developing countries. In contrast, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, and
Venezuela make part of G-20 without belonging to the Cairns group. Fifth, the
Caribbean islands work under a quite different logic than the rest of countries
in the region as they make part of the ACPs and, therefore, of the Group of
Ninety. Haiti, additionally, is the only LDC in the group. Sixth, belonging to
regional trade agreements—be it MERCOSUR, the Andean Community or any
other—does not imply holding the same positions regarding multilateral
negotiations. More patterns can still be found in these rich condensed figures,
but the sectorial reasons behind these positions in every country are beyond the
interests of this research and of the assessment to the work of missions that is
pursued here.
However, if the picture of coalitions is already complex, the views of
delegates turn it even more messy. Interviews indicate that not all members are
equally active in coalitions, not only because they may have different technical
capabilities to back the common cause but also because individual positions
can be diverging even among countries with broadly (or apparently) common
interests. Some enthusiasms for coalitions fade as individual positions ranging
at the extremes are due to accommodate to the average position of the rest of
the group. “Coalitions give you, but they also take from you”, an ambassador
states, meaning that what it can be gained in negotiation leverage, thanks to
more members, comes in exchange of giving up the really initial positions of
many countries regarding specific issues. Additionally, at times an eventual
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triumph of a coalition or a bloc can have a negative impact in some of its
members. For instance, if the bulk of countries seeking for more market access
finally obtain it, the members that already enjoyed some access through
preferential agreements or through a more favorable geographic position vis-à-
vis a big market will suffer due to higher competence. Potentially conflicting
interests can lead to country inaction within it or to abandoning a group. Even
if delegates are normally well aware of this frequent dilemmas between the
national interests and the interests of groups, external observers can still
perceive these groups as monolithic, single-minded actors. And they are not.
As a matter of fact, delegates tend to cite three different reasons to join a
coalition. The first reason is to advance the common position of the group by
means of the bigger number of actors, increasing legitimacy and negotiation
leverage. Not surprisingly, the second reason to join the coalitions is to try to
influence the group’s common position so it better fits the individual needs of
the country. And, finally, the third reason to join these groups is simply because
their meetings are an important source of information about what the other
missions are doing and planning to do. It is just reasonable that missions pursue
such various interests simultaneously when joining coalitions. Yet the outcome
is that coalitions might actually be more polyphonic and difficult to coordinate
than what they look like on paper.
Conclusions
Drawing on ethnographic work and archival research, this chapter has helped
to illustrate the real functioning of Latin American diplomatic missions to the
WTO, presenting their main characteristics. Observing diplomatic missions as
comparable organizations, with their own practices, amount of resources, set
of responsibilities, and web of external contacts, sheds light on how the
participation of member countries in the WTO really works. Indeed, not only
the countries in themselves and their characteristics are important to explain
the outcomes of their participation in this organization and the outreach of their
influence. Rather, the resources they deploy in the missions, human and
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otherwise, and the practices with which they run these missions are to become
an essential factor to assess outcomes and achievements. With a few
exceptions, this has been commonly neglected by scholarship and by external
observers. When any situation involving countries X or Y and the WTO is
considered, the typical narrative runs as if countries or governments were
related with the organization ‘as a whole’, discounting the real mechanisms
through which institutional relations are established. By paying close attention
to context, delegates, and missions, the last three chapters of this dissertation
have called for a non-conventional venue for research, informing of factors that
forcibly condition the success of country participation in this international
organization.
In abstract terms, an ideal mission seems to be one that is exclusively
dedicated to economic organizations in Geneva and mainly to the WTO. This
way it makes more sense for governments to appoint a head of delegation with
well-developed technical skills on trade, who could be subsequently fully
dedicated to that sphere. Additionally, missions should have a sizable personnel
so they can cope with the busy agenda of meetings and a sound preparation for
them. Size of missions should be proportional to country needs, according to
the size of its foreign trade or of the economy as a whole, but also proportional
to the WTO agenda, which has increased over the years. Missions should also
exhibit good practices of turnover, by means of which institutional memory
remains strong throughout the years and delegates have enough time to deploy
their full potential in their positions. However, a fair balance between strength
and renovation must be found, so there is never the risk that delegates lose
touch with the realities of the country in the one hand, and that their fluid return
to the capital becomes a powerful tool to build technical capabilities at home.
A clear trend would suggest that missions work better when they depend
directly from ministries dealing with trade or foreign trade, instead of MFAs.
Still, what is sure is that regardless of the chain of command, the work of
missions is boosted when their back-offices in the capitals are actively engaged,
when processes of inter-ministerial coordination are fast and cooperative, and
when missions have enough credibility and support in the capital to undertake
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initiatives and to shortcut regular channels of contact in times of urgency. It
seems clear that, regardless of the dependency of missions, personnel should
rotate positions between back-offices and missions. If personnel circulates
around these two poles as in a ring, the mission guarantees technical
capabilities in their delegates while the back-office profits from the delegates
returning home to strengthen technical capabilities. The results of all these
practices ought to be observable in actual participation of member countries in
the key issues of the WTO, something yet to be assessed in the following
chapters.
The chapter has also shown that the Latin American missions are
widely diverse in terms of dedication, size, turnover practices and home
dependency, and has documented the evolution of some of these factors during
the first two decades of existence of the WTO. Countries are slowly moving to
the two-mission scheme of diplomatic representation in Geneva, but many still
maintain general-purpose missions, including some of considerable size, such
as Argentina, Peru, and Venezuela. Country size does seem to influence the
size of missions, but as a single explaining factor it falls short, as Chile,
Guatemala, or Uruguay exhibit more constant a presence than what would be
expected by their size. Turnover practices differ widely. Long average stays of
delegates seem more common in dedicated missions than in general-purpose
ones, but Ecuador and Argentina are important exceptions in every case.
Besides, the political instability of certain countries—considering the periods
of presidential mandates—are often mirrored in the missions by shorter periods
of ambassadors. Missions such as Mexico, Uruguay, Colombia, and Chile stand
out due to their critical mass and good indicators of turnover, whereas Brazil
exhibits by far the biggest mission of the region, but with surprisingly high
turnovers. On the other hand, most Central American missions are
extraordinary examples of how smaller countries can devote more attention to
the WTO, but in exchange they exhibit extremely and awkwardly low
turnovers. Ministries of Foreign Affairs still hold the chain of command of
most missions, but trade-related ministries hold power in some, especially in
the northern part of the region, that is, from Mexico to Colombia. While some
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countries still do not have the equivalent of a ministry of trade, which still
makes the case for missions to be linked to MFAs, in a few others such
institution does exist, which could make the processes of inter-ministerial
coordination more complex.
The chapter therefore shows that Latin American countries face
different asymmetries of resources in the Geneva frontline. Yet, it shows that
these asymmetries do not always correspond with the distribution of relative
power in the region. The missions’ capacities follow institutional logics that
are relatively independent from country weight. For instance, the periods of
instability that some missions exhibit take place while countries’ relative power
remains more stable. The same can be said about most of transitions from
general-purpose to dedicated missions during the two-decade period, which are
expected to have an effective impact in representation capacity. More complete
assessments can be made when mission capacity can be contrasted with actual
participation.
As much as sources and methodological symmetry have permitted in
this research, the ‘stage’ has been settled, the ‘actors’ revealed, and their
‘companies’—the missions—depicted. It is now time to check the actual
outcome of the ‘play’, and to compare the results of their two-decade
performances.
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Part 3:
The Play
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Chapter 7:
Act 1: Participation at the Pillars
The aim of Part 3 of this dissertation is to assess the activity of Latin American
diplomatic missions in the multilateral trading system. To work towards the
first step of that undertaking, the objective of Chapter 7 is to assess the activity
or participation of the missions in what can be considered the regular work at
the WTO. In particular, this chapter will focus on the three pillars or main areas
of WTO work. These pillars are trade negotiations, the Dispute Settlement
Body (DSB), and the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM). In other
words, the capacity and willingness of missions (1) to participate in ongoing
multilateral trade negotiations, (2) to litigate against members that are not
honoring trade agreements previously signed, and (3) to remain vigilant,
monitoring the trade policy of all members so that inappropriate behavior can
be prevented. This chapter builds and presents participation indicators of for
every one of these pillars describing the active performance of missions. It
allows to compare levels of activity in different areas. Equally relevant, the
chapter allows to analyze the relations between the missions’ capacities and
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organizational practices, which were presented in Chapter 6, and their actual
participation in the system. Additionally, as in the previous chapters, the
information presented here must be interpreted bearing in mind the working
hypothesis of this dissertation, that is, analyzing whether country weight
corresponds to country participation in the system or not.
It is important to remark two big challenges that emerge when one tries
to assess the participation of missions in the WTO, which were mentioned in
the methodological chapter (Chapter 3). The first challenge is that it is
impossible to document a great part of the delegates’ activities associated with
WTO work. A great extent of that work consists of a mission’s internal
coordination or a mission-capital coordination, from which there is naturally
no public record. More importantly, a great part of the delegates ‘external’
duties consist of assisting to informal meetings from which records are not
kept, such as doing networking with their peers and with staff officials. Chapter
5 revealed that this type of work is as crucial as—and at times even more crucial
than—official, regular work, even if it cannot be measured. This means that no
matter how extensive an account of ‘objective’ participation might be, it will
always remain an approximation to total work. Yet, although approximate,
such an account is indispensable and unavoidable; it is the only way to move
beyond the anecdotal testimony of actors to check if accounts match reality.
Besides, it is very likely that activity in regular work is to a certain extent
correlated with activity in informal settings. This counts as one more reason to
take a look at indicators of objective participation.
Comically enough, the second challenge sounds contrary to the first
one, since it deals with the abundance of information about member countries
and about the presence of missions in the WTO. Reports and minutes of
virtually all official meetings are public, and most of this information can be
found in the WTO website and in its public database. There are also extensive
records about specific activities such as the Dispute Settlement Body,
notifications, among others. While some indicators are easy to trace as they are
summarized in certain reports and statistics, others require the effort of
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examining document by document in order to find valuable information. In this
line of thought, carefully studying the presence and behavior of 20 members of
the WTO in the more than two dozen bodies of this organization for a period
of 20 years is an endeavor that goes beyond the aspirations of a doctoral thesis.
On the other hand, such an undertaking might not only risk being inefficient
(because it cannot assess the informal part anyway) but would very likely be
redundant. The degree of participation is likely to follow common patterns in
several areas, so better to select a few number of areas only, in a way that it
brings us the general picture of the missions’ activity in the organization.
Following a similar logic, analyses of content and quality of content
are indeed relevant in a study of mission participation in the WTO. For
instance, studying delegates’ statements in official meetings or assessing the
importance and contexts of a specific dispute. However, such an approach is
more suitable for a case study of a single member, or in a comparative analysis
of two members, or in a cross-member analysis in a single period or meeting.
A study of 20 members during 20 years inherently constrains the analysis to a
more reduced set of elements and to more aggregated data.
The approach of this chapter is, therefore, to take a look at a smaller
set of indicators that give an adequate overview of participation in the three
most important areas of WTO work: negotiations, DSB and TPR. Practitioners
and scholars generally agree that these are the pillars of the organization. What
follows next is an explanation of the functioning of these pillars, how missions
specifically engage with each pillar, the indicators chosen to monitor
participation, and the analysis of those indicators.
Negotiations
As trade negotiations is the branch of the WTO that depends more heavily on
informal consultations, it is the area where it is more difficult to study
participation through objective data available. Additionally, there have been
several initiatives of negotiations in the WTO in its first two decades,
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involving, for instance, issues of implementation and plurilateral agreements,
and not all Latin American members take part of those. A safe route that allows
cross-country comparison under equal terms it to study participation in the
Doha Round, which was launched in 2011 in the ministerial meeting in Qatar,
as all the members are meant to engage with it.
The Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), the WTO body in charge
of the Doha Round, traditionally chaired by the Director-General himself and
which reports directly to the General Council, held 35 official meetings in the
period 2002-2014. When negotiations stalled, between 2009 and 2011, only
one of these meetings took place (in 2010). The TNC was particularly active in
the period 2002-2006, when at least 4 meetings took place each year, and a
total of 7 took place in 2005.
TNC meetings tend to follow a predictable course. The number of
participants is reduced to heads of delegation or heads of delegation “+ 1” (who
tends to be the mission’s minister counselor), the Director-General, the four
Deputy Directors-General, and a few key members of the WTO staff, including
the Committee’s secretary. The agenda starts with reports by the TNC Chair
(the DG) and by the chairpersons of the subsidiary bodies about the state of
negotiations. These bodies under the TNC have been ten: the Negotiating
Group on Market Access, the Negotiating Group on Rules, and the Special
Sessions for Trade and Services; for TRIPS; of the DSB; on Agriculture; on
Trade and Environment; and on Trade and Development; and the Permanent
Committee on Trade Facilitation, which operated until the Bali agreement was
reached. After these reports, the floor is open for the interventions of individual
members and for groups of members whose coordinator, or at times simply the
spokesperson for the event, speaks on their behalf. Over time these coalitions
became more structured and have gained more protagonism in the meetings,
and normally their spokespersons make their statements right after the reports
of the chairs and before the words by individual members. After the round of
statements, the meeting is closed by the Chair, asking for the continuation of
informal consultations among members.
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The minutes of TNC meetings keep record of all the statements made.
Yet, as it is always the case, minutes do not indicate if the members that did
not make statements were actually present or absent. Still, whether members
wrote and read a statement is worth observing: even if it does not necessarily
reveal the technical fondness of the positions advanced, it does imply an
important amount of preparation in writing the statements, as well as plain
participation in the negotiations and the willingness to be visible by the rest of
the membership.
Asked about the relevance of these official meetings, a delegate
observes: “It is not there where true negotiations occur; these take place in
informal consultations instead. But the official meetings are fundamental to
know where we are, to do the ‘mapping’ of the current situation.” Through the
general reports by the DG and by the chairs of the TNC bodies, members can
sense the progress or the lack of it. And through the subtleties of the individual
statements, members can check the evolution of the discourse by the actors,
whether they move towards rigidity or flexibility, whether they lie on
previously known arguments or on new ones, and so forth. On the other hand,
however, an ambassador acknowledges: “sometimes the most constructive way
to participate is by not saying anything.” As TNC meetings are long and time
pressure is high, participants are grateful when statements are short and when
they do not repeat what the coordinators of the coalitions they belong to have
already said on their behalf. The aim of missions, therefore, is not to make a
statement in every meeting but rather to maintain a constant yet modest
participation. Although visibility counts it does not imply to use the right to
speak at every opportunity. In this sense, a frequent participation in the TNC
meetings signals active engagement in the negotiations as a whole (regardless
of technical capacity); yet, a total race for who intervenes more is certainly out
of the question.
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The data
Table 18 shows the participation of Latin American delegates in the official
TNC meetings from 2002 to 2014 ordered by degree of activity. What is more
striking in this table is the huge variety of participation from members.
Participation ranges from only 3 statements in the Committee, the equivalent 9
percent of the total, to 29 statements, equivalent to 88 percent. Mexico, Brazil,
Colombia, Chile and Cuba are the top 5, producing statements in 79 percent of
the meetings or more; whereas Haiti, Panama, Dominican Republic and
Nicaragua produced less than 10 statements in the same period. As a matter of
comparison, no member has a participation of 100 percent. The United States
and the European Union, by far the most crucial players in the Doha Round,
produced 24 and 26 statements respectively, the equivalent of Costa Rica or
Chile. Canada, another key developed country, produced 16 statements in the
period, the equivalent of Ecuador. Australia made 29 statements, just as
Mexico. Norway and Iceland, small developed countries, made 17 and 12, just
like Bolivia in the second case. Key developing countries such as India and
China made 28 and 25 respectively. Considering these examples, if the number
of statements is inferior to one third of the meetings (around 11) they can be
considered extremely low.
Interestingly, being a small country with an economic system that is
not oriented towards the market, Cuba proves to be very active in the TNC. A
historical reason might be behind this fact: Cuba was a founder member of the
GATT and the treaty that was meant to create the International Trade
Organization (ITO) was signed in Cuba in 1948 at the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Employment—the Havana Charter, as it is called. At
least in trade negotiations, this legacy is taken very seriously by Cuba and
translates into high activity. Moreover, despite Cuba’s conflicted bilateral
relations with the United States, which predictably undermines its outreach in
the system, its mission is treated with especial deference by many delegates
from all corners because of its historical significance.
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Table 18. Participation in TNC official meetings (statements)
(0 = 0%, 5 = 50% of meetings by year)
Source: Tabulated from TN/C/M/1 to 35. Meetings 2 (14-Mar-02) and 33 (23-Sep-13)
were excluded due to an unusual participation of 3 statements. In the rest the number
of statements were superior to 14, with an average of 36 statements per meeting.
Indeed, as the Cuban case shows, the relation between the economic
weight of the countries and the number of statements produced in the TNC is
not strong: although Mexico and Brazil are the most active members, Colombia
or Chile perform very similarly despite the distance in weight. Costa Rica or
Cuba attain higher participation than Argentina or Peru, which are bigger
Year 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
N. of meetings 4 6 4 7 4 1 2 0 1 0 1 1 2 % Stms.
Mexico 10 7 8 10 8 10 10 10 10 10 10 88% 29
Brazil 8 10 8 6 8 10 10 10 10 10 10 82% 27
Colombia 10 8 8 6 8 10 10 10 10 10 10 82% 27
Chile 10 10 10 10 3 10 5 0 0 10 5 79% 26
Cuba 10 10 5 7 10 10 10 10 0 0 5 79% 26
Costa Rica 8 7 5 6 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 76% 25
Argentina 10 8 0 4 8 10 10 0 10 10 10 67% 22
Paraguay 8 5 3 6 5 10 10 0 10 10 10 61% 20
Uruguay 8 2 5 9 5 10 10 10 0 10 5 61% 20
Venezuela 5 5 3 4 8 10 10 10 0 0 5 52% 17
Ecuador 8 5 3 4 5 0 10 10 0 0 5 48% 16
El Salvador 0 3 0 7 8 10 5 10 0 10 0 42% 14
Peru 8 3 3 6 0 0 5 10 0 0 10 42% 14
Bolivia 3 3 0 7 0 10 10 10 10 0 0 39% 13
Honduras 3 2 0 4 0 10 10 10 0 0 10 33% 11
Guatemala 3 0 0 3 0 10 10 10 10 0 10 30% 10
Nicaragua 8 3 0 1 3 10 5 0 0 0 0 27% 9
Dominican Rep. 0 0 0 3 3 10 5 0 0 0 5 18% 6
Panama 3 2 0 0 0 10 5 0 0 0 0 12% 4
Haiti 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 10 0 0 9% 3
Totals
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economies. Despite the big income disparities between Haiti and Panama and
the difference in size of their economies, both exhibit equally low participation.
Mission type does not appear to have the direct influence in TNC statements
either: although most dedicated WTO missions are very active (e.g.: Mexico,
Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica), Haiti, Panama and the rest of Central American
missions remain low. Change of mission type does seem to have played a role
towards more active participation for Guatemala in the second part of the
period, but that is not the case for the Dominican Republic or El Salvador. On
the other hand, not only Cuba but also Argentina, Paraguay and Venezuela, all
with general-purpose missions, exhibit considerable participation. Likewise,
mission size is not completely correlated: although bigger missions do tend to
have bigger participation, there are important exceptions. Among dedicated
missions, two cases are El Salvador and Honduras, which count with about the
same size of Colombia during that period (5 delegates) but only attain half of
its participation. Among general-purpose missions, Argentina and Peru have
similar average of mission size (about 8 delegates) yet the former is
significantly more active.
The colored cells in table 18 indicate that in such cases the head of the
mission was also the chair of one of the subsidiary bodies of the TNC. This is
another element to take into account to assess participation and, as it can be
seen, chairmanships go together with an active presence, as it is usual that
chairs do not only speak on behalf of their countries but also report to the
committee the state of negotiations of their subsidiary body, something that
they do ‘on their personal capacities’, the in-house formula to clarify that they
do not act on behalf of their countries but of the whole membership.
As it will be further discussed in Chapter 8, the appointment to chairs
of WTO bodies, and particularly those of negotiations, constitutes a major
honor for the ambassadors and their missions. This implies that the whole
membership trusts them as mediators for advancing the negotiations. Such an
appointment is, therefore, a sort of official credential to the ambassador and to
his mission about their involvement in WTO work and in the negotiations in
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particular, and about his individual skills not only as negotiator but also as
mediator or broker between his peers. Their qualities of discretion and a
constructive spirit in the negotiations are revealed ipso facto. But simpler than
that, holding a chair of a TNC body automatically implies that the mission and
the ambassador are fully involved in the negotiations, and that they are present
in the key informal consultations as much as in official meetings. An important
detail about TNC chairs is that, contrary to most of the chairs of WTO bodies,
which last only 1 year, TNC chairs tend to be held by longer periods, what
gives more continuity to the negotiating efforts.
Table 19 shows the members holding TNC chairs for the period 2002-
2014. As it can be seen in the table, only 8 out of 20 members of the universe
of study held chairs in this period. Chile was the only member of the region to
enjoy representation since the beginning of the negotiations (Trade and
Services, and Trade and Environment for a short period), and it was later
followed by Uruguay (Rules) and Mexico (half a year in Rules and later
Services). Costa Rica and Guatemala also enjoy a long participation (DSB and
Trade Facilitation) starting in 2006 and 2007 respectively, and finally Panama
(TRIPS), Colombia (Trade and Services) and Honduras (TRIPS) had a late
presence in the chairs of negotiations. It also can be seen that the Special
Session for Trade and Services always was in Latin American hands, operating
in practice as a sort or regional quota, what stands as an irregular case. Some
TNC bodies tend to be allocated on a developing/developed basis: Market
Access is traditionally chaired by developed countries or Trade and
Environment by developing countries, but there are no regional monopolies
over specific chairs.
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Table 19. TNC bodies under Latin American chairs
Source: Tabulated from “WTO Chairs”, www.wto.org
Table 19 shows that active participation, when measured by the
representation in the chairs, does not depend neither on country size nor on
mission size. If Mexico, with a mission of 8 to 10 members (the second biggest
in the region) held a chair, the rest were also able to do the same with middle-
size missions. Even Panama was able to hold a chair for a short period of time
with a minuscule mission, although this seems to be a rather unusual case. In
contrast, the most evident constant of these members is that they always have
dedicated WTO missions in the periods when they are appointed to the TNC
chairs. Having an ambassador fully dedicated to the WTO emerges as a
condition for an active participation at this level.
In any case, members not only rely on individual statements for
representation in TNC meetings; joint statements consolidated as a frequent
practice after the outset of negotiations. These joint statements are made
through coalitions for the negotiations (as seen in Chapter 6), regional groups
and other, more ephemeral, groupings. The result is that the total representation
that most members have in the committee surpasses their individual presence.
Figure 11 shows the total representation of members based on
individual and joint statements in the TNC. The graph illustrates well how less
active missions quickly multiply their presence in the committee through their
groupings. Instead of Mexico and Brazil being the most active missions, if total
Members 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Chile Env.
Uruguay
Mexico Rules
Costa Rica
Guatemala
Panama TRIPS
Colombia Serv.
Honduras TRIPS
NG Rules
SS Services
SS DSB
P. Com. Trade Facilitation
SS Services
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statements are counted it is Cuba (80) and Haiti (67) the two most active
missions, followed by Bolivia (56), Guatemala (53), and Dominican Republic
(53). Haiti is the member that increases its leverage most spectacularly among
Latin American countries (represented by 64 joint statements), but as its
individual presence is so low it only ranks second behind Cuba. On the other
hand, the members that benefit less from joint statements in the TNC are Costa
Rica (9), Colombia (10), and Mexico (11). As their individual presence is so
constant it can be said they depend less from the additional leverage of
groupings than most of the region. Finally, Panama ends up as the member with
the lowest presence, represented only by 26 total statements, quite below the
rest.
Figure 11. Individual and joint statements in the TNC
Source: Built from the minutes of the TNC.
Table 20 zooms in the joint statements, showing the groups and
coalitions that produce them. The table shows that among the groups involving
Latin American members, the group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) has
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been the most active one, increasing Haiti’s representation. It is followed by
the African-Caribbean-Pacific group (ACP), boosting Cuba, the Dominican
Republic, and Haiti. MERCOSUR has been the only Latin American regional
bloc producing a joint statement in the TNC, in the first meeting in February
2002, but the bloc never released a joint statement again. Moreover, the
coalitions on agriculture (G-33, G-20, Cairns Group) have been very active,
with an important effect in all the Latin American membership. The Caribbean,
Central American countries and Bolivia and Paraguay are boosted on their own
thanks to the group of Small and Vulnerable Economies (SVEs), which started
making joint declarations since 2007.
Table 20. Origin of joint statements
Source: Tabulated from the minutes of the TNC.
In the representation of joint statements Brazil is the country in the
region with the best performance. As coordinators of the G-20, Brazilian
delegates spoke 9 out of 10 times on behalf of this group. The Dominican
Republic, El Salvador, and Guatemala spoke once on behalf of the SVEs each,
Panama once on behalf of the Recently Acceded Members (RAMs), and
LDCs ACP Mercosur G-33 G-20 Cairns SVEs
NAMA-
11 RAMs LLDCs G-90
Mexico 29 10 1 11 40
Brazil 27 1 10 8 2 2 23 50
Colombia 27 8 2 10 37
Chile 26 10 8 3 21 47
Cuba 26 21 14 10 7 1 1 54 80
Costa Rica 25 8 1 9 34
Argentina 22 1 10 8 2 2 23 45
Paraguay 20 1 10 8 7 2 1 29 49
Uruguay 20 1 10 8 1 20 40
Venezuela 17 14 10 2 2 28 45
Ecuador 16 10 7 1 18 34
El Salvador 14 14 7 4 25 39
Peru 14 14 10 8 1 33 47
Bolivia 13 14 10 8 7 2 2 43 56
Honduras 11 14 7 4 25 36
Guatemala 10 14 10 8 7 4 43 53
Nicaragua 9 14 7 4 25 34
Dominican Rep. 6 21 14 7 1 4 47 53
Panama 4 14 7 1 22 26
Haiti 3 28 21 14 1 64 67
Total
Statements
Groups
Member
Individual
Statements Others
Additional
Leverage
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Paraguay twice on behalf of the Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs),
since 2013, acting in practice as the coordinator of the group. These are the
most relevant cases. The Dominican Republic was also very active in the
coordination of the informal group of developing countries in the last years of
the Doha Round, although its production of joint statements and positions was
less important.
The difficulty with coalitions is that, although delegates and internal
observers broadly know which members are more active within the groups, it
is harder for external observers to make an assessment out of objective data.
Coalitions not only increase the leverage in the negotiations through fusing a
significant number of membership votes behind a specific position but also
operates as a mechanism to better increase the technical outcome of scarce
human resources in the missions and in the capitals, which is particularly
critical for small developing countries. However, free-riding is a common
practice. While some delegates in the groups take on their shoulders all the
technical work, the representation in informal meetings and the writing of the
joint statements and proposals; others simply ‘lend’ the name of the country to
the grouping, without greater cooperation. Both lack of resources as well as
inertia may explain this behavior. Yet, this is perfectly tolerated because, for
the active members of a coalition, having more members is already a gain even
if this does not add more technical strength to the group. On the other hand,
certain active delegates prefer to work in trade negotiations through coalitions
only. Either because of the national politics of their countries or because their
Geneva missions have not yet achieved particular notoriety in the system, they
judge their proposals would not have wide acceptance if they act on their own.
“If I make a proposal on behalf of my country no one will listen, it doesn’t
matter how good it is”, a delegate claims, “but if [my proposal] is presented by
a group, the rest will pay more attention.” Both practices of ‘under-work’ and
‘over-work’ through the coalitions make more difficult to distinguish the total
participation of members in trade negotiations.
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In sum, the participation of Latin American missions in the Doha
Round has been highly diverse. Generally speaking, bigger missions and WTO
dedicated missions seem to be more active in individual statements in the TNC,
as chairs of TNC bodies, and as coordinators or spoke-persons of coalitions.
However, several general-purpose missions (like Cuba or Venezuela) get as
much participation as some developed members in terms of individual
statements. When the representation through coalitions is also considered, the
ground of negotiations looks more even for all members of the region. Many
who are not active individually are widely represented by the groups they
belong to, regardless of the efforts delegates are able to do for their groupings.
This results in that the whole membership is ‘present’ in the negotiations, at
least nominally speaking.
Dispute Settlement Body
The three ways in which members participate in the DSB are: (1) initiating a
dispute against another member, that is, as ‘complainants’; (2) being involved
as observers in the disputes of other members when they consider their
commercial interests could also be affected, that is, as ‘third parties’; and (3)
as the ‘accused’ or receivers in disputes initiated by others, that is, as
‘respondents’. The third case is one of passive participation, as members are
forced to make use of the system by someone else’s initiative. The first and
second cases, by contrast, are proof of a proactive behavior in the system. These
are therefore the ones that deserve more attention for the purposes of this
chapter.
The need of member countries to enter disputes depends very much on
the amount of the exports, on the diversity of the export basket, and on the
number of destinations of goods and services exported. However, the process
is not automatic. Beside the actual violation of WTO agreements by some
commercial partner, which is not always easy to perceive and often lies in
specific interpretations of the agreements, the will to litigate also derives from
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other factors. It can derive from the strength of the lobby of the private sector—
particularly from the industries involved in a specific concern—; from the
technical capacities of the ministries of trade or their equivalents in the capital;
from the missions’ technical capacities and critical mass in Geneva; and finally
from the resources available to finance the litigation process, which is generally
carried out by law firms specialized in international trade and which are
considered to be expensive. Acknowledging, thus, that the bigger countries are
likely to use the DSB more frequently—some delegates even describe the DSB
simply as a “battleground of big powers”—every single member, no matter
how small it is, has reasons to remain vigilant at the trade policy of its
commercial partners, and to be ready to take measures to protect its rights. Poor
action or lack of it would reflect problems of capabilities rather than absence
of need to use the system, particularly after the two decades of existence of this
mechanism under the WTO. Besides, the costs of carrying out disputes have
been decreasing over the years thanks to the creation in 2001 of the Advisory
Center on WTO Law (ACWL), an independent institution funded by the WTO
for the benefit of developing countries in the membership, and because several
law firms are offering more frequently their services under pro-bono schemes.
It is important to remark that the involvement of law firms and the
arguably higher involvement by the national level in the request of disputes—
in addition to the leadership of the private sector in these issues—do not deny
the protagonism of diplomatic missions throughout the process. Delegates in
Geneva are important for the coordination of the rest of the actors and for the
official representation of their countries in the DSB meetings. The formal
process in the DSB (when a member “requests consultations” with a
commercial partner) is generally preceded by informal consultations between
the implicated parties, in which the work of delegates is fundamental at all
levels: reputation in the system, technical capacity, and negotiating skills. The
same goes for the formal consultations that take place after the dispute is filed
and before the panel that studies the case is established. Delegates play a crucial
role there, and if they succeed in their consultations, the process does not take
further steps. Moreover, active delegates can also be relevant in detecting
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violations, subsequently giving warning to the capital and asking for
authorization and support to act. In the case of members participating as third
parties in disputes, the protagonism of their missions is even more obvious.
Normally it is the delegates’ duty to monitor the DSB and to take the initiative
when cases demand it, and the participation in the dispute meetings as
observers is also carried out by them.
The interviews with delegates show that some members deliberately
rely more than others on informal consultations as the means to solve
commercial issues before going to the dispute phase. The costs of the disputes
would not be the only factor of consideration but also the style or reputation
delegates are trying to build for the mission they represent. A delegate judges
that the informal, bilateral path his mission privileges “produces less noise, and
is more effective.” In general terms, it is considered that about 80 percent of
commercial disagreements are solved through these channels, with no need to
enter the dispute phase. Yet, one may argue, the informal channels may not be
equally effective for all members. An important factor is that the threat by
offended members to start disputes look credible to the eyes of their
commercial partners. For these threats to be credible it is important that
delegates build a reputation of high technical capacities, but it is equally
important to create a historical record of involvement in the DSB, both as
complainants and as third parties.
An anecdote by a delegate from a small country illustrates this well.
His mission insisted several times in solving an issue through bilateral
consultations with one of their most important commercial partners. Although
there was never a negative response from their commercial partners, the
mission did not find any solution to their concern, while time kept passing. To
break the impasse of the informal bilateral consultations, the mission decided
to file a dispute in the DSB. As a result, the concern was solved smoothly in
the following days without the need to establish a panel. Since the perception
from the offenders was that the smaller mission would never dare to enter the
dispute phase, there was no hurry to meet their claims. By making the threat
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real, the mission solved its concern and won credibility for future issues. Its
delegate concludes: “now whenever we have a new problem [with the same
member] we only need to make a phone call and the issue gets solved.” This
case shows that the gains from using this mechanism are not only punctual,
solving the issues of concern, but also systemic, increasing the experience of
delegates in dealing with these issues and multiplying their credibility in future
informal bilateral consultations (which, due to their nature, are not possible to
trace here). In this sense, the numbers of mission participation in the DSB can
also be read as an approximation to the effectiveness that members might have
in the informal consultations that precede—and prevent—disputes.
The data
Table 21 shows the number of disputes Latin American countries have filed as
complainants in the period 1995-2014, ordered from highest to lowest. Once
again, there is big diversity in the participation of the region in this field. Brazil,
Mexico, and Argentina lead the ranking with 27, 23, and 20 disputes in the two-
decade period. With 10 disputes of distance, Chile leads the second group of
moderately active members that go as far as Costa Rica, with 5 disputes in the
same period. Ecuador and Peru had initiated 3 disputes each. Subsequently, 6
members had initiated only 1 dispute; and 3 members, Bolivia, Haiti, and
Paraguay, had not started a single one. Numbers from other members help to
complete the comparison. In the same period, the United States and the
European Union had filed 107 and 95 disputes respectively. Among developed
countries, Japan had started 19 disputes, Canada 34, Australia 7, Norway 4, and
Switzerland 4. India counted with 21 disputes, Korea with 17, and China
(member since 2001) with 12. By the standards of the membership, Brazil,
Mexico, and Argentina are among the biggest players in the DSB, and Chile,
Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, and Costa Rica have a significant
participation in the system.
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Table 21. Participation as complainants, 1995-2014
Source: Tabulated from the DSB section, www.wto.org.
There are also considerable differences in the capacities to handle
disputes simultaneously. Brazil has filed up to 7 disputes in a single year (2000)
and between 4 and 5 in 3 other occasions; Argentina up to 4 and 5; Mexico and
Chile up to 3; and Honduras, Panama, and Colombia up to 2. Among the
frequent players, there are two different trends of activity through time: while
Brazil, Chile, Honduras, and Colombia were significantly more active in the
first decade, Mexico, Argentina, or Guatemala have a more scattered activity,
exhibiting an even participation in the second decade as well. Among the less
active ones, it is interesting that Uruguay and Venezuela filed their single
disputes very early, in 1995, and then did not make use of the system again in
Members 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 Total
Brazil 1 4 1 7 4 5 1 1 1 1 1 27
Mexico 2 3 3 1 1 3 2 1 1 3 1 2 23
Argentina 1 1 1 1 4 1 5 1 3 2 20
Chile 1 1 1 3 2 1 1 10
Guatemala 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 9
Honduras 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 8
Panama 1 1 1 2 1 1 7
Colombia 1 1 2 1 5
Costa Rica 1 1 1 1 1 5
Ecuador 1 1 1 3
Peru 1 1 1 3
Cuba 1 1
Dominican R. 1 1
El Salvador 1 1
Nicaragua 1 1
Uruguay 1 1
Venezuela 1 1
Bolivia 0
Haiti 0
Paraguay 0
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the rest of the two-decade period. In the opposite side, El Salvador, the
Dominican Republic, and Cuba appear as late users.
As it can be seen in the table, there are several behaviors that can be
considered remarkable. Argentina has shown an outstanding participation
given the size of its economy, and given that it has a general-purpose mission.
It has to be mentioned, though, that its number of delegates fully dedicated to
the WTO (between 6 or 7) is significant in the region. Chile’s activity is also
outstanding considering its size. The intense activity of Guatemala, Honduras,
and Panama are even more remarkable, all of them small Central American
countries that at some point switched to WTO dedicated missions. The case of
Panama is very interesting having filed 7 disputes, 2 more than Colombia or
Costa Rica, despite the small size of its Geneva mission, and in stark contrast
with its low participation in the Doha negotiations, as seen in the previous
section. Conversely, the participation of Peru and Venezuela is more than timid
considering the size of their economies as well as the regional average.
Table 22 helps to move a step further by showing the regional
participation in the SDB as third parties. The regional distribution is not too
different from the former table but it is clear that most of the region exercises
well its rights as third parties. In general terms, the participation is higher as
third party than as complainant. As comparison, in the same period the United
States was third party 123 times and the European Union 80 times. Among
other developed countries, Canada was third party 18 times, Australia 15, Japan
15, while Switzerland, New Zealand, and Norway have never been. Korea was
third party 14 times, China 32, and India 22. The Latin American participation
is therefore impressive as a whole, with Honduras surpassing India, for
instance, the Dominican Republic ranking above developed economies such as
Switzerland, or Brazil surpassing the European Union.
Interestingly, some members that did not excel at filing disputes prove
to be very active in following the rest. The best example is Colombia, which
only filed 5 disputes, and 4 of them in the first decade, but that has involved as
third party constantly, making for 44 cases. The lower level notwithstanding,
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that is also the case of Ecuador (from 3 disputes to 31 as third party), Peru (from
3 to 19), Nicaragua (from 1 to 17), and Uruguay (from 1 to 13). Thus, since
acting as third party also counts as accumulated experience for delegates
regarding the DSB process, it can be concluded that the countries that remain
really vulnerable in this area in the region are Bolivia and Haiti. The same can
be said of Venezuela for at least the last quarter of the period.
Table 22. Participation as third parties, 1995-2014
Source: Tabulated from the DSB section, www.wto.org.
Trade Policy Review
The TPR is the central mechanism of transparency in the WTO. All WTO
members are committed to periodically undergo through the scrutiny of their
Members 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 Total
Brazil 1 3 4 3 3 1 11 7 5 2 8 1 7 6 3 2 10 9 8 94
Mexico 3 6 3 1 5 12 6 3 2 5 4 3 6 4 3 3 5 1 75
Argentina 2 1 2 1 1 5 2 2 3 6 6 6 1 1 7 7 2 55
Colombia 2 1 1 1 1 2 3 5 3 2 6 7 1 5 3 1 44
Chile 1 1 3 3 4 5 1 3 6 4 2 3 2 2 40
Guatemala 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 3 2 5 9 4 34
Ecuador 1 1 2 1 1 2 2 1 5 1 9 5 31
Honduras 1 1 4 1 3 1 1 5 1 3 5 26
Peru 1 2 1 1 3 2 6 3 19
Cuba 1 1 1 9 1 1 3 1 18
Paraguay 1 2 2 5 4 1 1 2 18
Nicaragua 1 1 2 1 1 2 4 3 2 17
El Salvador 2 1 1 1 4 4 1 2 16
Venezuela 2 1 1 10 1 1 16
Costa Rica 3 1 3 1 1 3 3 15
Uruguay 1 1 3 2 3 2 1 13
Dominican R. 1 1 1 1 2 2 8
Panama 1 1 4 1 1 8
Bolivia 1 1
Haiti 0
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trade policies by the Secretariat and by the rest of the membership. The
examination is based on two reports. One is an auto-evaluation by the member
under scrutiny, normally written by its ministry of trade or the equivalent, and
the second report is written by the Secretariat staff, namely the Trade Policy
Review division, in cooperation with the local authorities of the member, and
is aimed to be independent. These documents are the input for a sequence of
two meetings of the Trade Policy Review Body in Geneva. Although the
meetings have the format of a trial, the purpose is only informative with no
further consequences for the member under review. In the first meeting the
member under review makes a statement about the state of its economy and
about its trade policy, and subsequently hears the comments and criticism of
the rest of the membership. In the second meeting, which normally takes place
two days after the first one, the member under review responds to the
membership about the main concerns that were risen, and members have the
chance once again to take the floor to comment or complain in case they want
it. Additionally, members have the right to send specific questions in advance
to the meeting regarding trade policy, and the member under review is
compelled to answer them all in a brief period. A key actor in these meetings
is the ‘discussant’: it is a delegate from one of the missions (normally an
ambassador) that is to take the leading voice in examining in-depth the trade
policy. He acts on his personal capacities, has more time to talk, and takes the
floor in both meetings right after the member under review speaks and before
the rest of the membership can comment.
The WTO conducted 291 blocs of TPR meetings in its first 2 decades.
The average of TPRs a year was 14. The minimum number was 8 TPRs in 1995
and 1997, and the maximum has been 20, in 2012. The frequency of TPRs for
each member is scheduled according to its share of world trade. The first four
members in the ranking are reviewed every 2 years, the following 16 members
every 4 years, and the rest every 6 years although in practice it can take longer
for the last group. This means that the number of TPRs carried out by a member
is not a measure of proactive participation in the system. Besides, the quality
of the trade policy reports written by the governments would speak more about
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the technical capacities of the capitals than those of the missions themselves,
which are generally in charge of coordination issues only when the two reports
are being prepared.
Instead, what is more interesting to study from the point of view of this
dissertation is the TPR meetings themselves and, in the meetings, the
participation missions in the reviews of the rest of the membership. This
participation is purely formal and members can skip it with no negative
consequences, and it happens that many members do so. Nonetheless, having
an active participation in these meetings is considered a way to strengthen the
system and the system’s transparency. When members make a statement in a
TPR meeting they are saying to the member under review: ‘you exist to me’.
They are also saying ‘I am watching you closely… so you better do things
right’. If there is a body where it can be said that preventive peer-to-peer
vigilance starts in the WTO, that body might be the TPRB. While action
through the DSB is the means to solve factual problems of bilateral trade,
participation in the TPRB can be seen as a subtle yet basic regular measure to
prevent at least a few of those problems from happening.
Generally, the main factor that attracts participation in TPRs is the
amount of bilateral trade among the member represented and the member under
review. It therefore follows that the biggest economies drag a higher number
of statements from the rest of the membership. The review of the United States
in December 2014, for instance, attracted 39 questions in advance and 51
statements. In contrast, the review of Mongolia in September that same year
only produced 13 questions and 17 statements. It also follows that each TPR
tends to attract participation from neighboring countries and from members
from the same region, as these tend to be important commercial partners for the
member under review. A TPR of Thailand, for instance, normally has a strong
East-Asian participation and a TPR of Nigeria a strong presence of African
members. It also happens that even if bilateral trade with the reviewed member
is low or inexistent but there is ambition to increase exports toward that market,
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this also motivates participation in the TPR as studying its trade policy can bear
future fruits.
However, bilateral trade is not the only reason to participate in TPRs.
The second reason to go to the meetings is to cultivate relations with the
mission of the member under review. TPR meetings are, to a great extent,
events of public relations in themselves. The member under review generally
sends a numerous delegation from the capital, commonly led by the minister of
trade or its vice-minister, who acts as the spoke-person in the sessions in the
company of his ambassador and the rest of the delegates from the mission.
Through the presence of his peers and the tone of their statements, the TPRs
represent a great opportunity for the ambassador to show to his bosses from the
capital the effects of his diplomatic work and the interest he creates for his
country within the membership. From the opposite perspective, delegates that
attend are automatically showing interest not only for the country,
commercially speaking, but for the mission, its delegates, and its role in the
system; increasing sympathy as a result. And this also counts for delegates who
need to use the meeting to express trade concerns as long as they are able to
craft good diplomatic language, which is usually the case. When both missions
are strong allies in one or several coalitions in trade negotiations, that also
creates a reason to participate in the meeting, even if bilateral trade is marginal.
The nature of the event explains why it is not irrelevant who within the mission
goes to the meeting: statements produce different effects if they are read by
ambassadors, by minister-counselors, or by lower-ranking delegates regardless
of who were the real delegates who wrote them. Moreover, the presence of the
delegation from the capital is a natural opportunity for many to discuss bilateral
trade issues out of the TPR agenda, including Free Trade Agreements, one
more reason to be part of the meetings as a sign of minimal formality. Beyond
its main purpose, therefore, it is also an event ‘to see and to be seen’. In fact,
TPRs not only depict the economic situation of a member country, its
government policies, the profile of its trade policy, its flaws and so forth, but,
through the statements of the membership, through checking who goes and who
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does not go, they reveal quite well the system of alliances and the outreach of
influence of the mission in a given moment.
Statements tend to follow a similar pattern. First they make a comment
about the country’s economic situation and the government policies
(congratulating when performance is good, expressing sorrow when it is not).
Then they discuss the evolution of bilateral trade and the good health of
bilateral relations if that is the case. There are comments about the reports
prepared for the review. When there are concerns about the country’s trade
policy they are risen here, usually making reference to the questions sent in
advance. Usually delegates save brief room at the end to express sympathy for
the mission staff and their contribution to the multilateral trading system, again
depending on the case. And finally the statements wish success for the rest of
the review.
The quality, tone, and length of the statements vary significantly.
Some are short and spin around a too general level, some have a sizable length,
well-detailed and rich of sources. Peer pressure plays a role in maintaining the
quality of statements relatively high as the image of the delegates is at stake;
but this does not work in every case. In general terms, the statements of TPR
meetings have improved in quality through time but as side-effect the meetings
have become more rigid. Eventually, in 2009, the minutes of the meetings
changed of format from summary and third-person style to verbatim. In the first
format poor statements were better hidden by the summarizing and narrating
skills of the WTO staff in charge of the minutes. The new format boosted the
quality of the interventions of several missions as everything will be ‘on the
record’. The recently introduced rule of 7 minutes as the maximum time for the
statements, a device that prevents a day-long meeting to get out of control, has
also added to the rigidity of the meeting.
Above all, participating in TPRs is a time-consuming effort for
delegates; the benefits it brings are too intangible compared with other areas of
work. They are not in the top priorities of the agendas and that is precisely why
they are important to trace. About the matter, a delegate from a small mission
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comments: “If I have a technical meeting and a TPR meeting simultaneously,
I go to the technical meeting.” Despite its great importance, participation seems
quite dispensable when the agenda is tight. In this sense, participation in TPR
meetings becomes a measure of ‘ease’ or ‘comfort’ in the system. By showing
a sort of ‘buffer-capacity’ of missions, both in a technical and in a diplomatic
sense, it indirectly speaks about the strength of missions in the rest of the areas
of WTO work.
The data
Table 23 shows the total outcome of TPR participation for Latin American
countries in the first 2 decades of the WTO. The first column counts the total
times missions sent questions in advance to members under review (regardless
the number of questions sent), which is a measure of participation and an
indirect indicator of the mission’s technical capabilities and coordination
capacity with the capital. The second column counts the times mission’s
representatives make a statement in the meeting, which is the simplest and most
important measure of participation. As a general rule, missions that send
questions in advance always make statements in the meetings. But, as it can be
seen in the numbers, many missions participate only through statements. As a
matter of comparison, the European Union ranks first in the whole membership
with 268 questions and 282 statements, and the United States is second with
267 questions and 282 statements. Both missions have therefore been present
in 97 percent of the TPRs of other members. Among other developed countries,
Canada has made 278 statements, Australia 188, and Switzerland 143, for
instance. Among developing countries, India has made 259 statements, China
(member since 2001) 133, Thailand 86, and Egypt 43.
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Table 23. Total questions in advance and statements in TPR meetings,
1995-2014
Source: Tabulated from the minutes of TPRs.
Brazil’s participation appears as outstanding in the region. 215
statements make for participation in 74 percent of the TPR meetings.
Curiously, Brazil is not followed by Mexico, which has the second biggest
economy and the second biggest mission in the region, but by Colombia,
Argentina, and Chile. Missions with lowest participation are Haiti, Nicaragua
and Panama, with 18 statements each, in average less than 1 statement per year.
An important outcome of that table is the considerable distance among
dedicated WTO missions and general-purpose missions. Argentina is the only
Member Questions Statements
Brazil 165 215
Colombia 131 160
Argentina 118 155
Chile 104 123
Mexico 96 108
Uruguay 14 95
Ecuador 49 79
Honduras 8 77
El Salvador 18 72
Costa Rica 60 69
Dominican R. 26 59
Peru 49 56
Cuba 6 51
Guatemala 18 48
Venezuela 9 48
Paraguay 9 23
Bolivia 10 22
Haiti 0 18
Nicaragua 4 18
Panama 7 18
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exception of general-purpose mission achieving a considerable global
participation in the TPR. On the other hand, in the lowest two thirds of the
group there are big differences regarding technical capacities. Panama was able
to send 14 questions in advance while Haiti none at the same level of statement
participation. Costa Rica is slightly behind other Central American missions,
but appears far more solid regarding the number of questions. Something
similar can be said of Ecuador and Peru in contrast with Uruguay, Honduras,
or Cuba.
Tables 24 and 25 move one layer deeper, showing the evolution of
participation through time, both in statements and questions. It can be seen that
most members have increased the participation progressively, Brazil being the
best example, whose presence was timid in 1995 but then was almost absolute
in the last decade. Mexico’s case is interesting not only because it is relatively
low given its size but also because how late the presence started. Mexico was
absent in the TPRB in 1995, which happened to others, but also in 2001, 6 years
later. It took 7 years for Mexico to start sending questions in advance while 6
other members in the region where doing it since 1996. The case of Uruguay is
also atypical, being traditionally active regarding its size, the split of its
general-purpose mission does not appear to have a big effect in the
participation. Uruguay always participated through statements only but in the
period 2000-2002 there was exceptional interest in sending questions too. The
creation of dedicated missions does not have an automatic effect for other
members either. The Dominican Republic does increase participation after
2010, year of the mission separation, but participation was already increasing
in precedent years. El Salvador’s dedicated mission appears in 2009, but the
participation in the TPR only starts 3 years later with statements and 4 years
later with questions. The same happens with Guatemala. Panama and Haiti
being some of the smallest missions in the region, the effects of change in
mission type do not reach as far as TPR participation.
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Table 24. Statements by year (5 = 50% of total TPRs possible; 10 = 100%)
Source: Tabulated from the minutes of TPRs.
It is also evident that there are different levels of efficiency in the
participation and/or cooperation with the capital considering the personnel
available in the mission. Colombia significantly increased its presence in the
TPR in the second decade without increasing its mission staff (always 5
delegates). Uruguay, Chile and Guatemala, while being dedicated missions,
have had bigger staff than Colombia (Uruguay 9 delegates in 2006-2007, Chile
6 and 7 during most of the period, Guatemala 7 in the last years) yet the
presence in the TPR is not equivalent or higher. Among general-purpose
missions the story is similar: Peru and Argentina have similar patterns of staff
and yet Peru’s presence is only a third of Argentina’s, and remains inconstant
Member 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Brazil 1 4 6 3 3 4 2 7 8 8 10 10 10 10 10 9 10 10 10 10
Colombia 0 5 5 2 3 3 1 5 5 6 4 9 9 10 6 4 7 7 8 8
Argentina 4 6 4 1 2 5 2 5 6 4 4 6 6 8 4 5 7 9 9 5
Chile 0 5 1 3 3 5 1 5 1 3 4 3 6 6 5 4 8 7 7 5
Mexico 0 1 3 1 2 2 0 4 3 3 5 4 4 5 6 5 6 7 6 5
Uruguay 1 1 4 0 3 8 3 7 4 2 3 2 4 3 2 1 1 4 7 5
Ecuador 0 1 0 0 1 2 0 3 0 1 1 3 5 6 4 2 4 6 6 5
Honduras 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 2 1 2 1 2 4 6 8 4 2 4 7 5
El Salvador 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 2 1 4 6 4 4 3 5 5 6 4
Costa Rica 1 0 0 1 2 0 1 2 2 3 1 2 2 3 3 4 5 6 4 4
Dominican R. 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 3 3 1 4 3 2 5 6 4
Peru 0 3 3 0 0 3 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 3 4 5 3 5
Cuba 0 1 4 3 3 1 1 3 1 3 3 1 0 1 2 1 1 2 3 2
Guatemala 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 1 1 1 3 2 4 3 3 2 1 5 4
Venezuela 1 3 4 0 1 1 1 0 5 5 1 1 1 1 3 1 2 3 3 0
Paraguay 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 1 1 0 3 1 3 3
Bolivia 0 0 1 0 1 3 0 1 0 0 1 2 3 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
Haiti 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 2 2 2 0 1 0 2
Nicaragua 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 2 3 1 1 0 0 0 0 1
Panama 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 1 1 1 3 2 0 1 0 3
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until 2003. Venezuela’s peaks of staff in 1998-2001 and in 2005 (8 members)
do not translate into higher participation in the TPR, and the average remains
lower than Cuba’s, despite the fact that Cuba always had a more reduced
mission.
Table 25. Questions by year (5 = 50% of total TPRs possible; 10 = 100%)
Source: Tabulated from the minutes of TPRs.
It is also interesting to observe the participation of the region in
specific TPRs. Being the Unites States the biggest economy in the world and
the major trading partner of most of the region, there is arguably no reason to
miss its TPR. Table 26 shows the Latin American presence in the Unites States
TPRs. The table shows that participation here follows a similar pattern than the
Member 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Brazil 0 1 1 0 1 2 1 3 6 6 10 8 8 10 8 8 8 7 9 9
Colombia 0 1 0 1 2 1 0 3 4 5 4 7 9 9 5 4 7 7 7 8
Argentina 0 1 0 1 0 2 1 3 6 4 4 6 7 8 4 5 5 8 6 5
Chile 0 0 0 1 1 3 1 4 2 3 3 4 6 6 4 4 8 6 7 5
Mexico 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 1 3 5 3 4 5 8 5 7 7 6 5
Uruguay 0 0 0 0 0 5 1 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Ecuador 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 3 4 2 3 4 7 5
Honduras 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 2
El Salvador 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 2 2 2 3 2
Costa Rica 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 3 1 2 2 3 3 4 5 5 5 3
Dominican R. 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 2 2 4 6 2
Peru 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 3 3 4 4 5 2 5
Cuba 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1
Guatemala 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 2 2 0 0 1 2
Venezuela 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Paraguay 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 2 2
Bolivia 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Haiti 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Nicaragua 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Panama 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0
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general participation only with a few exceptions: Costa Rica is more constant;
Cuba never misses a meeting despite (or because of) the blockage and lack of
bilateral relations; Paraguay and Bolivia are even less active. Mexico, which
has the most dependent economy to the United States in the region, surprisingly
missed the TPRs of 1999 and 2001.
Table 26. Questions and statements in the TPRs of the United States (“1”
means participation)
Source: Tabulated from the minutes of U.S’ TPRs.
96 99 01 04 06 08 10 12 14 96 99 01 04 06 08 10 12 14
Brazil 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Colombia 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Argentina 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Chile 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Mexico 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Uruguay 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Ecuador 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Honduras 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
El Salvador 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Costa Rica 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Dominican R. 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Peru 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Cuba 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Guatemala 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Venezuela 1 1 1 1
Paraguay 1
Bolivia 1
Haiti 1 1 1
Nicaragua 1 1
Panama 1 1 1 1
MemberQuestions Statements
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Like in the former case, Table 27 shows the participation in the TPRs
of China, starting in 2006, which could be understood as a measure of ambition
for emerging markets. Here the participation is more even for the leaders
Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and Mexico, as they start in a time when they
seem quite adapted to the exercise of these reviews. Costa Rica also appears
equally constant. By 2014, already China consolidated as the second biggest
economy in the world, El Salvador, Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, Haiti,
Nicaragua, and Panama were not using their rights to participate in its TPR.
The message of these two tables showing participation in individual
cases is the same than in the general picture: the degree of activity only seems
to be partially influenced by country size. While mission size does influence
participation capacity (Panama cannot participate as much as Mexico) there are
different levels of efficiency in missions and/or different strategies in the
distribution of human resources (Costa Rica may equal Mexico, Argentina may
surpass it). And, again, the participation of a big number of missions is still far
from acceptable: one thing is not making use of the TPR of small members
with modest commercial importance, another thing is missing even the ones of
the most important commercial partners, with the systemic consequences this
produces for the missions’ functioning.
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Table 27. Questions and statements in the TPRs of China (“1” means
participation)
Source: Tabulated from the minutes of China’s TPRs.
06 08 10 12 14 06 08 10 12 14
Brazil 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Colombia 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Argentina 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Chile 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Mexico 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Uruguay 1 1 1 1
Ecuador 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Honduras 1 1 1
El Salvador
Costa Rica 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Dominican R. 1 1 1 1
Peru 1 1 1 1 1 1
Cuba 1 1 1 1 1
Guatemala 1 1 1 1
Venezuela 1 1 1
Paraguay
Bolivia 1 1
Haiti
Nicaragua
Panama
MemberQuestions Statements
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Conclusions
The purpose of this chapter was to unfold the participation of Latin American
missions in the three pillars of WTO work, which constitute the base of the
multilateral trade system, with the help of objective indicators that permit
cross-country comparisons. The chapter underlined the importance of these 3
areas and explained the way missions work in them, recurring to actors’
observations when it was needed. Besides revealing the strengths and
weaknesses of the missions in these areas, these data allow a contrast with
indicators of the missions’ practices and capabilities, which had been presented
in Chapter 6. The final aim was to compare the picture of the missions’ ordinary
work with that of the countries’ weight, bringing new elements to move further
along the hypothesis of this doctoral dissertation.
The chapter showed that Latin American missions exhibited a wide
diversity of outcomes when participating in the system, from the minimal levels
of activity to some of the most outstanding ones in the membership. As
expected, the relation between the degree of activity, missions’ organizational
practices and country size is complex. Bigger missions and WTO dedicated
missions generally show better performance, but there are differences of
mission efficiency, support from the capital, and the capabilities of mission
staff also influencing participation, adding complexity to the picture.
Moreover, countries distribute their resources differently among the various
areas of work, which makes that certain missions perform better in certain
areas, but less so in others.
Judging by the presence in the three pillars, Brazil is the member with
the best performance in the region: it excels with robust participation in
negotiations, disputes, and trade policy reviews; and ranks among the members
that make more use of the system world-wide. Mexico follows Brazil closely
in negotiations and disputes, but has not been so effective in TPR meetings, as
it practically neglected them during the first 6 years. Colombia, Argentina, and
Chile belong to a similar category: highly active in all areas but with different
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strengths: Colombia stronger in the TPR than the other two, Argentina and
Chile stronger in the DSB than Colombia, and Chile in negotiations.
Interestingly enough, the three countries reach this high performance through
different institutional outlooks: Colombia’s dedicated mission depends on a
ministry of trade, Chile’s depends on a ministry of foreign affairs, and
Argentina has a general-purpose mission, also depending on a MFA. No
institutional setting operated against good performance at the pillars level.
What these 3 members do have in common, however, is that they have sizable
missions with at least 4 delegates working on WTO and economic-related
issues without counting the ambassador. This is the magic number frequently
mentioned by delegates as the minimal to guarantee an acceptable presence. It
is important to add that while Argentina and Colombia have a similar economic
size—and have been the third and fourth economies in the region after Brazil
and Mexico—Chile demonstrates that active participation at the pillars level
can be achieved by smaller members as well, as long as their missions are well
run.
Beyond these top missions, there are others that have a remarkable
participation in certain areas, although their total outcome is more modest.
Although less active in the TPR, Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica have
had a significant participation in the DSB and have been protagonists of Doha
Negotiations in the last years. Uruguay’s use of the DSB is modest, but the
presence in negotiations and TPR is considerable. Cuba has privileged
participation in negotiations over the rest; Panama in the DSB over the rest.
After this group there are members whose activity is modest in all areas, but
that still make use of the system: Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Venezuela, El
Salvador, and the Dominican Republic. Finally, the indicators suggest that
Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Haiti are the weakest members in the region, with low
participation in the three pillars. While some are clearly becoming more
assertive over time, such as Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, El
Salvador—with the antecedent or the concomitance of a change of mission
type—the others have remained stable, and often inconstant, through time. The
fact that Uruguay, Honduras or Ecuador often have a number of personnel
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equivalent to that of Colombia and Chile, which perform higher, suggests that
the level of personnel’s capabilities and efficiency is diverse across missions.
Furthermore, it can be said that the WTO pillar that has been less
neglected by the Latin American membership has been trade negotiations. This
is consistent with Apecu Laker’s (2014, 98) findings about the participation of
African countries, which was also “relatively higher” than in other areas of
WTO work. She observes that “the negotiations generated excitement as the
most seductive area of work,” which seems to be the case for the region, despite
the wide differences of engagement across missions.
Above all, this chapter showed that the relation between country
weight and participation at the pillars is not automatic. Instead it is indirect, as
performance depends on the resources governments allocate to their missions
and to their backup offices in the capitals. As a matter of fact, despite its size
Chile has a presence in the system that competes well with the one of Mexico,
Colombia or Argentina. Given their size, Peru and Venezuela should arguably
have a stronger presence in the system, yet they still lag behind smaller
countries. El Salvador often enjoys a stronger presence than Panama, the latter
having a bigger GDP and population, and highest income. Nicaragua’s
presence should be at least as strong as the one of its Central American
neighbors or Bolivia should be at least as active as Paraguay.
Everyone at its level, all missions have room for improvement. For
governments willing to have a better participation in the 3 pillars of WTO work
what appears to be compulsory is to increase the mission staff to achieve critical
mass, to appoint delegates with adequate technical and communicational skills,
and to promote good organizational practices in the missions. Although the
path for improvement has mostly happened through change of mission type this
does not seem compulsory in what concerns the participation at the pillars, as
the case of Argentina proves, or even the case of Brazil, which ran a perfectly
efficient general-purpose mission for more than a decade.
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One thing, however, is participation in the daily work of the WTO, and
another thing is to achieve major influence in the system as a whole. If this
chapter was about how missions make use of the system the next chapter is
about whether missions are perceived as a central part of the system by the rest
of the membership.
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Chapter 8:
Act 2: (Soft) Power
The daily functioning of the WTO lies on a double administrative structure
whose two branches complement each other. One is the Secretariat and the
other is the set of WTO bodies that compose the organizational chart of the
institution. The Secretariat is led by the Director-General, followed by the
deputy directors-general, directors of divisions, and completed by all the
functionaries that make part of the WTO staff. Equally hierarchical and
ultimately depending on the Ministerial Conference, the WTO bodies are led
directly by Geneva-based delegates from all member countries. For
accomplishing their duties, these delegates are regularly backed by the
Secretariat staff from every key division, according to respective
responsibilities. Beside the enduring use of consensus as the convention for
decision-making, the rules and traditions that govern the appointment of the
heads of these bodies are the clearest attestation of the ‘member-driven’ nature
of the WTO. The capacity of diplomatic missions to assist the organization in
leading its governing bodies constitutes arguably one of the best indicators of
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engagement with the multilateral trading system. The aim of this chapter is to
explore the participation of the Latin American missions in this field, analyzing
the findings in light of the hypothesis of this dissertation and of the results that
were presented in the precedent chapters, namely, tracing the reasons behind
different degrees of activity.
There are several reasons for the utility of chairmanships as indicators
of participation in the system. First, chairmanships are perceived as an
acknowledgement, or even a reward, that delegates receive for their
engagement with the system. As everything else in the WTO, the decisions for
the distribution of chairs are made through consensus. This means that
delegates who have reached these positions were seen by the rest of the
membership as comparatively having the right technical capacities for them.
At the same time, these delegates were able to build consensus around their
names, what speaks of their communication skills and of the fruits of their daily
interaction with their peers. The higher the body in the organization chart the
more evident the technical knowledge and diplomatic ability of delegates.
Apecu Laker (2014, 64) arrives at similar observations when studying the
participation of African delegates as chairs of WTO bodies: “The more
technical, specialized, experienced, professionally motivated the delegates (in
a delegation), the higher the share of chairmanships.”
Second, being appointed to chairs implies the investment of an
important amount of time in what could be described as a duty of ‘international
civil service’, working directly for the system, on behalf of the whole
membership and not on their delegation only. Spending time in this ‘civil
service’ is a luxury that only well-established missions can afford. Missions
that are on the limit of their capacities to assume responsibilities of
representation can seldom renounce to human resources on behalf of the
membership. This therefore means that participation in chairmanships is
another measure of ‘ease’ for the missions in the system.
Third, delegates manifest a serious interest in holding chairmanships.
This is considered a major honor, particularly at the top positions of the
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organization chart. It is perceived to be important for their personal careers and
for the prestige of their missions and member countries. Within the boundaries
of the “discreet leadership” imperative discussed in Chapter 5 and that governs
peer-to-peer interactions in the WTO, delegates look for these positions
actively when they consider they meet the conditions to apply.
Put simply, the delegates that reach chairmanships are the ones that
excel in communication skills and technical knowledge, and the ones that have
better adapted to the multilateral sphere described in Chapter 5. They tend to
be also the ones that have been most able to influence the system and to put
their countries at a central place in all sorts of negotiations and other matters.
Generally, the higher they reach the more they excel at these qualities, and the
more influential in the system they can become. Instead of an end in
themselves, these positions of honor are rather a by-product of adequate
involvement in the system in all areas of work, which make them the best
indirect measures available of mission participation in the WTO.
The importance of chairmanships being settled, it must be added that
chairpersons do not hold decision-making power. Their role is rather
procedural and representative. In terms of form, it is to be found in-between
the role of a judge in a court and that of a simple moderator or coordinator of a
business meeting. There are different factors that make the chairmanships
attractive. Holding chairs, particularly at the highest levels of hierarchy, situate
delegates at the center of the information flow, giving them a precious vantage
point to know what is happening in the system, which increases judgement and
decision-making capacity in the missions in all areas of work. To chair anyone
of the bodies also involves an important learning experience at a technical
level, which arguably increases the technical capacities of delegates and,
through them, of their missions as a whole. Finally, there is a symbolic
dimension in the role of chairs that lasts beyond the chairmanships finish.
Chairpersons are the leading voices of the meetings and therefore the center of
all attention. They give the floor to the rest to speak. In return, the other
delegates treat them with especial deference in all the statements they make.
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Although subtle, chairs are surrounded by a certain majesty, giving to their
holders the opportunity to multiply their personal influence in the WTO
community. In fact, the respect that the membership shows to these delegates
seems to last beyond the end of their chairmanships—which is especially true
for the chair of the General Council—making their social interaction more
effective until they finish their appointments in Geneva. If, as it has been stated
in Chapter 5, the WTO is an organization where for delegates it is important
“to be seen”, the appointment to chairs offers a singular opportunity to attract
others’ attention. Recent literature is starting to study and acknowledge the
indirect power that can be achieved in multilateral diplomacy through
chairmanships as formal positions of leadership (Odell 2005; Tallberg 2006;
Tallberg 2010; Karns and Mingst 2013, 148).
This chapter will present the WTO organization chart, the process of
chairs designation, and the major patterns that these designations have followed
in the first 2 decades of the organization. This will serve as a background for
analyzing the Latin American achievements in this area. In so doing, 3 more
indicators will be presented: data on financial arrears; chairs of the working
parties on accessions, which are WTO bodies that follow a slightly different
logic; and TPR discussants. The first is necessary to reveal the availability of
candidates for the chairs, and constitutes and indicator of negative influence in
itself. The last two are, alongside the chairs, other available indicators of social
recognition by the WTO community, as explained below. They will therefore
complement the picture of the missions’ relative influence in the system.
Chairs of WTO bodies
As observed in the WTO organization chart of Figure 3 (see Chapter 5), the
main decision-making body of the organization is the Ministerial Conference.
It is composed by the ministers of trade of all the membership and meets at
least once every two years. The Ministerial Conference is represented by the
General Council, which is the most visible leading body in the organization as
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it meets at a regular basis every year, and the rest of the bodies as well as the
Director-General are due to report to it. The General Council meets in two more
formats, one as Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), the other as Trade Policy
Review Body (TPRB). Every format has a different chair, and the three
conform the highest circle of power in the organization. Three councils report
to the General Council, each one administrating one of the three main
agreements of the WTO: the Council for Trade in Goods (Goods Council), the
Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Council for
TRIPS), and the Council for Trade in Services (Services Council). The 3
different formats of the General Council and the 3 Councils that administer
agreements are the 6 main permanent bodies of the WTO.
Additionally, the organization counts with 5 committees, 5 working
groups (2 of which are active), and the working parties on accessions, all of
which depend directly on the General Council. The Goods Council counts itself
with 11 committees and 1 working party, and the Services Council with 2
committees and 2 working parties, occupying the bottom of the hierarchy in
the organization. 3 additional committees administer plurilateral agreements:
the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) Committee, which depends on
the Goods Council; the Trade in Civil Aircraft Committee and the Government
Procurement Committee, which report directly to the General Council. From
the working parties up to the General Council, the WTO counts with 31 active,
permanent bodies.
Finally, since the Doha Negotiations started in 2011, the organization
created the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) as a temporal structure until
the round is completed. As explained in Chapter 8, the TNC is exceptionally
chaired by the Director-General, and its work is divided into 9 bodies: 6 special
sessions and 3 negotiating groups. Although in theory also at the bottom of the
organizational structure, the greater importance of the trade negotiations makes
that, in practice, the chairs of the subsidiary bodies of the TNC enjoy a
perceived hierarchy that is similar to that of the Goods, TRIPS, and Services
councils. Since 2002 onwards, the total number of bodies available for
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members to chair are then around 40 (depending on the year, as some
committees were inactive in certain periods) whereas in 1995 they were only
26. While the 3 committees of plurilateral agreements are restricted to the
signatories of these agreements, the rest of the bodies—around 37—are open
to the whole membership both for regular participation and for presiding them.
For the purposes of this analysis, the WTO bodies will be classified
under categories from 1 to 5 according to their importance. Category 1 applies
for the General Council only. Category 2 describes the 2 other formats of the
General Council: the DSB and the TPRB. Category 3 is for the three main
councils than depend on the General Council: Goods, TRIPS, and Services.
Category 4 is for the rest of subsidiary bodies of the General Council. Lastly,
category 5 designates the subsidiary bodies of the Goods Council and Services
Council and the committees of plurilateral agreements. Due to their special
nature, the subsidiary bodies of the TNC will be categorized with an “N”, but
their importance is equivalent to category 3 (see Figure 12). Bodies from
categories 1 to 4 are regularly chaired by ambassadors while bodies under
category 5 are chaired by non-ambassadors.
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Figure 12. Hierarchical typology of WTO bodies
Source: made by the author.
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Process
Chairmanships are conferred on a pro-tempore basis for a period of one year.
Only the subsidiary bodies of the TNC, the committees of plurilateral
agreements and a few more have been chaired by the same delegate for longer
periods. The most extreme cases were the Special Session of the Dispute
Settlement Body (Cat. N), which was presided by single ambassador for 9 years
(Costa Rica), and the Special Session of the Committee on Agriculture (Cat.
N), which was chaired by a single member (New Zealand) under 4 different
ambassadors for a continuous period of 11 years, as negotiations elongated.
Out of the TNC, though, the turnover of chairs is more regular. Only under
special circumstances—e.g.: the technical knowledge that certain bodies
demand—the periods of the chairs are prolonged 1 or 2 more years, particularly
when the bodies in question are politically less important. When delegates
holding chairs cannot finish their periods—for instance, because they were re-
appointed to their capitals—, the customs are that the entering delegate from
the same mission takes over or, if technical reasons or problems of agenda
make this impossible, the chair of the General Council appoints ad interim a
delegate from a different member until the end of the period, choosing a name
that creates consensus and trying to maintain balance of representation. Still,
incomplete periods only occurred 48 times in the first 2 decades, which
represents only 6 percent of the total appointments. Only under exceptional
circumstances delegates chair more than one body at the same time, for
instance when they are appointed to a second body ad interim to substitute a
leaving delegate. In contrast, it is usual that delegates serve several times as
chairs for single periods in different bodies, one after the other. The
accumulated experience makes them every time more suitable for climbing up
the hierarchy, gradually holding chairs of more importance.
The process to elect the chairmanships is informally carried out by the
chair of the General Council at the end of his period. Ambassadors propose
themselves and other delegates of their missions for the different bodies.
Regional groupings tend to play an important role in the phase of proposals. In
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the case of GROULAC, the pro tempore coordinator of the group (and
ambassador or deputy ambassador who holds this position according to
alphabetic order) builds the list of proposals from Latin American and
Caribbean members, and negotiates this list with the GC chair. Through
informal consultations with several missions and coordinators of regions, the
GC chair builds a single list for the incoming year. Chairmanship negotiations
are not necessarily easy in any phase of the process. There are conflicting
aspirations among missions and any one of them can object one or several
names in the lists of proposals. The final list must leave every one content. This
is why the delegates’ prestige in the system is crucial for assuring broad
consensus around them. The negative image that they project in a few missions
can be decisive against their aspirations.
By mandate as well as by tradition, the list of chairs must
simultaneously be representative of developed and developing countries, and
of all the regions of the membership. The chairs of most bodies follow a double
rotation of developing country – developed country – developing country and
so forth, and, Asia – Latin America – Africa – Asia and so forth, when is the
turn of developing countries. This rotation is especially strict for the General
Council and the DSB. In the TPRB it has been less strict, favoring developing
countries, which account more participation there. In the rest of the bodies the
rotation system is slightly more permissive, allowing more possible
permutations according with the list of proposals of a given year and the
capabilities that delegates can offer. As a special case, the Committee on Trade
and Development is always allocated to developing countries, and it has been
chaired by African ambassadors for a total of 12 years in the 2-decade period.
By the end of the first decade of the organization the membership consolidated
the tradition under which the chair of the DSB becomes the chair of the General
Council the following year. This tradition and the system of rotation are
compatible with a balanced representation of developed and developing
countries in the GC-DSB-TPRB triad; the three of them are never presided
simultaneously by developed countries only or by developing countries only
(see the appendix 1 of this chapter).
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Exceptions
All members have the right to propose their delegates as chairs of WTO bodies.
There are only 3 types of restrictions. The first type is practical: non-resident
members, that is, the ones with no permanent missions in Geneva, are virtually
excluded of the process as they do not have available delegates in the city who
can do this service on a regular basis. This is not the case of the 20 Latin
American countries studied in this dissertation (see Chapter 6).
The second type of restriction is political: several big players restrain
from proposing delegates to avoid being perceived as willing to monopolize
the system. This is the case of the missions from the United States, the
European Union, China, and India. The United States thus have a
disproportionately low participation in chairmanships, only 5 in 20 years, and
all belonging to category 5 (S&P Measures and Safeguards). China only 6, also
belonging to category 5. India’s participation is higher: 12 times. However, 10
of them belong to category 5, 1 to category 4, chaired by a non-ambassador,
and only once an ambassador has chaired a higher organ: the Council for Trade
in Goods (cat. 3) in 1996, early in the 20-year period, after which the mission
opted for a lower profile. The European Union is a special case as the EU
mission never proposes delegates (its delegates have never chaired a WTO
body), but missions of individual EU members do propose delegates and play
and important role in the system. However, the highest they have reached has
been the TPRB (cat. 3), a body they chair frequently (Ireland twice, Finland
twice, Belgium once, Sweden once, among others). They have never chaired
the General Council or the DSB. Here the pattern can be either the proof of
self-restrain or can simply denote a relatively more political nature of
individual EU missions compared to the technical capacity deployed by the EU
mission that represents the European Commission, and by other missions of the
membership. As it will be seen below, this type of restriction does not manifest
in the behavior vis-à-vis chairmanships of Brazil, the big player of Latin
America, at least not in the same degree.
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The third type or restriction to propose delegates is a financial one:
members can hold chairs only if they are up to date with their obligatory
contributions to the WTO administrative budget. These contributions have to
be paid every year by the whole membership and the amounts are calculated
according to the size of the members’ economies. The process is supervised by
the Committee on Budget, Finance, and Administration (CBFA), which is in
itself a WTO body under category 4. Members are considered to be under
financial arrears when their contributions remain outstanding after one full
year, and therefore these members are subject to administrative measures.
Beside the interdiction for delegates to be nominated to preside WTO bodies,
other measures include discontinuing the delivery of documentation by post
and blocking the access to the WTO Members’ website (after the second year
in arrears). After the third year in arrears members are considered “inactive”
and lose the right to technical assistance (see WT/BFA/W/274). Beyond the
factual, negative implications of entering the terrain of financial arrears there
is also the major inconvenience of damaging the reputation of delegates in
Geneva. Although the payments of contributions do not depend on them but on
the finance ministry in the capitals, the situation jeopardizes their image in the
diplomatic community, spoiling their majesty. This is especially true for non-
LDC members as they have less ‘excuses’ to be in arrears. The CBFA reports
periodically to the membership the list of indebted members. The list is
scrutinized by everyone and becomes subject of informal talk. Indeed, the list
of countries in financial arrears turns in practice into a list of shame. It is an
indicator of negative influence in itself as the arrears diminish the credibility
of the delegates in Geneva for all practical matters. The situation is perceived
as critical by some ambassadors. Besieged by peer pressure and by calls and
mails from the Budget Division and from the Director-General, they feel forced
to spend a considerable amount of their time in convincing capitals to pay and
in monitoring payments, instead of focusing on the crucial areas of their work.
It is important to remark that accumulated debts from the GATT era do not
generate administrative measures under the WTO due to an agreement at its
creation. However, these debts are also monitored and periodically reported by
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the CBFA, which make them equally embarrassing for the resident missions
involved.
Table 28 shows the Latin American members in financial arrears with
WTO obligations by the end of every year for the period 1995-2014. If a
member is under administrative measures (M) or inactive (I) in a given year,
its delegates are formally excluded from nominations for the following year. If
a member has pending debts from GATT times (D) its delegates can participate
in nominations but its debts still make part of the CBFA reports.
Table 28. Members in arrears, 1995-2014
Source: Made by the author from BFA reports.
The table shows that arrears have been a problem of a minority of
missions and most of them endured it only for short periods of time. Guatemala
and Bolivia inherited debts from GATT, paid them relatively quickly and were
never under administrative measures. Beside GATT debt until 1995, Haiti was
under measures for one period, in 2004. The countries with more difficulties
were Peru, under measures from 2003 to 2005; Nicaragua, which completed
GATT payments in 2000 and then had financial troubles again from 2008 to
2011; Paraguay, under measures for a 6-year period and being inactive once;
Member 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Guatemala D
Bolivia D D
Haiti D M
Peru M M M
Nicaragua D D D D D M M M
Venezuela M M M M M
Paraguay M M M M I M
Dominican R. D D D M M M I M M I M D D D D D D D D
Debt from GATT D
Administrative Measures M
Inactive I
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and the Dominican Republic, exhibiting the worst record for the region. The
Dominican Republic was not only under measures for an 8-year period, two
years of which it was declared inactive, but it took it 20 years to complete
GATT payments.
It is interesting to note that although Haiti and Bolivia are the two
poorest countries in the region (Haiti being the only LDC in the region) they
are not the ones with more difficulties to pay WTO obligations. It is equally
surprising that 2 middle-size countries, Venezuela and Peru, were in the list of
arrears for considerable periods. Another fact is that WTO dedicated missions
never were under administrative measures. The single exception is Haiti, which
had a dedicated mission by 2004. In any case, the most important conclusion
from the table is that even the most troubled member from the region had more
than one decade to exercise its right of nomination to WTO bodies.
Performance of other members
Before discussing the participation of Latin American missions, data from
other players can be helpful for comparisons. Canada has been the most
important participant in WTO chairmanships: it has chaired bodies 37 times
(almost 2 by year) and has chaired the General Council 4 times, virtually once
every 5 years. It is followed by New Zealand with 31 times although it hasn’t
held the GC chair; and by Switzerland, also with 31 times and chairing the
General Council once in 1995. Japan chaired 25 times, Norway 22, Australia
17, France 17, and Germany 7. Among developing countries, the mission of
Hong Kong, China has chaired bodies 25 times, Pakistan 21, Egypt 17, Korea
14, Mauritius 13, Nigeria 11, Turkey 9, and Morocco 4. While all developed
countries in the membership had some degree of activity as chairs of the WTO
bodies except Malta or the principalities of Luxembourg and Liechtenstein,
more than 60 developing countries have never chaired a single body. Yet,
around 3 quarters of these members were part of WTO since 1995 or 1996.
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Latin American chairs
As it occurs to the rest of the regions, the weight of Latin America in the
chairmanships remains relatively stable through time due to the double system
of regional rotation and developed/developing rotation that governs the
distribution of chairs. For the 20 countries under this study, the number of
chairs raised from 5 WTO bodies in 1995-2000 to an average of 9 bodies in
2010-2015, in consonance with the growing number of chairs to be distributed.
The proportion has remained around one fifth of the total by year. What the
regional and country type rotation do not solve, however, is which members in
the region have the honor to preside bodies and which bodies they preside. If
all 20 missions counted with similar capabilities, it would be expected that
presence in chairmanships were around 7 times and 5 nominations for each
mission in the 20-year period, or even more if the increase of capabilities
produces a subsequent increase in the regional share of chairs. Yet, as the
participation of several missions is suboptimal, the handful that exhibits the
best practices has the opportunity to amplify its overall presence.
Table 29 shows the Latin American participation in chairmanships in
the 20-year period, ordered by the highest hierarchy members have reached. It
presents the total presence of members, measured by the number of times they
have chaired a body by year, the number of nominations delegates had (to
discount the occasions when some continue presiding the same organ for more
than one period), the number of delegates that have been nominated (what
speaks of the accumulated experience of the missions and arguably of the
capital as long as a significant proportion of delegates return to the backup
office), and the number of bodies missions have been in charge of in total
(which also speaks of accumulated experience and diversity of technical
capabilities).
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Table 29. Participation in chairmanships, 1995-2014
Source: Made by the author from WTO lists of chairs, www.wto.org.
As in the case of mission participation at the pillars studied in Chapter
7, the regional performance is equally diverse in chairmanships, ranging from
total absence of activity to the top positions in the hierarchy. The 3 countries
that reached the General Council in the 20-year period were Brazil, Chile, and
Brazil 1 20 14 12 10
Chile 1 19 15 8 14
Uruguay 1 18 9 6 9
Colombia 2 15 12 8 10
Mexico 2 15 8 5 8
Costa Rica 3 18 5 2 5
Argentina 3 12 10 9 7
Guatemala 3 8 2 2 2
Panama 3 3 3 1 3
Honduras 3 3 3 1 3
Paraguay 3 2 2 1 2
El Salvador 4 4 3 2 3
Peru 4 3 3 3 3
Venezuela 4 3 2 2 2
Ecuador 5 2 2 2 2
Nicaragua 5 1 1 1 1
Bolivia
Cuba
Dominican R.
Haiti
(*): Number of times the member appears holding a chair by period.(**): Not counting the cases when chairs remained in their positions the
following year.
Member Max.
Total
Presence*
Real
nominations**
Total delegates
nominated Bodies
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Uruguay. They also enjoyed the highest presence, with 20, 19, and 18 chairs
respectively. Brazil counts with the highest number of delegates nominated
(meaning that each delegate holds 2 chairs in average during their appointments
in Geneva), but Chile remarkably has higher nominations than Brazil (15
against 14) and more diversity of bodies presided (14 against 10). They are
followed by Colombia and Mexico, which have been both in the triad of the
General Council and count with a presence of 15 chairs. Still, Colombia has
had 4 more nominations than Mexico, has accumulated more delegates
nominated and has chaired a higher diversity of bodies. After them, 6 members
have reached the third category of chairs: Costa Rica, Argentina, Guatemala,
Panama, Honduras, and Paraguay. However, there are considerable differences
of activity among them. Costa Rica and Argentina exhibit more constant
participation than the rest. Costa Rica exhibits an atypical behavior: its
extraordinary number of times presiding chairs hides a small number of
nominations and bodies, to which only 2 delegates from the mission were
appointed. Argentina is the opposite case with a more regular participation, but
in which it happened only once that a delegate chaired 2 bodies during his stay
in Geneva (10 nominations for 9 delegates nominated), and no one has ever
chaired 3 or more bodies. El Salvador, Peru, and Venezuela have chaired
bodies up to category 4 while Ecuador and Nicaragua had a more reduced
presence, only in bodies of category 5. A total of 4 members have never chaired
a single body: Bolivia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti.
There are several remarkable facts in this table. Chile, which had
already demonstrated a leading participation at the pillars (Chapter 7) proves
to be as dynamic as Brazil. Uruguay did not exhibit outstanding activity in
regular work compared with others from the region, but it appears that it has
appointed the right delegates to be a protagonist of the system. This shows a
continuation of the centrality of Uruguay in GATT times, which was
crystalized by the hosting of the ministerial meeting in 1986 in Punta del Este,
where the ‘Uruguay Round’ was launched, making the beginning of the
negotiations for the creation of the WTO. Colombia performs as high as
Mexico despite the fact it counts with less human resources in Geneva, whereas
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Argentina abandons the top positions, exhibiting a modest participation
compared to its size and participation in regular work. Costa Rica and
Guatemala do significantly better than the rest of Central America while Peru
and Venezuela have a low participation regarding their potential. Ecuador’s
low presence is particularly interesting because it had a WTO dedicated
mission since 1996.
The table shows a coincidence between low participation and financial
arrears. Still, the participation of Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti,
Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Peru appear so much below the potential, and below
the number of years available for nominations, what proves that the
administrative measures is not the only explanation for their poor activity. As
a contrast, Cuba never has problems with its financial obligations but has never
chaired a single body in the system. The antagonism with the United States is
not the only factor that can explain Cuba’s negligence. Differentiated technical
expertise derived from a state-controlled economy, the well-known hurdles of
small general-purpose missions to cope with their multiple duties, as well as
the political will to remain freer as a critical voice of the system are other
factors involved.
Table 30 expands the data of the previous table to consider the
dimension of time and summarizes the evolution of chairmanship participation
for the region. The numbers in the boxes show the hierarchy of the bodies
chaired, and there are 2 numbers when the member had chaired two bodies
simultaneously. Boxes in black show the moment when a mission achieved its
highest hierarchy in chairs. Boxes in blue or yellow describe continuity in
presiding the same body for more than one period. A detailed description of
chairs, bodies, and periods can be found in Appendix 2 of this chapter.
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Table 30. Evolution of chairmanships, 1995-2014
Source: Made by the author from WTO lists of chairs, www.wto.org.
Me
mb
ers
9596
9798
9900
0102
0304
0506
0708
0910
1112
1314
Bra
zil
2+5
15
5½
34+
54
55
55
55
55
55
5
Ch
ile
55
35
½3+
4N
NN
N+5
½N
21+
52+
55
5
Uru
guay
33
5+5
21
½N
NN
N+5
N+5
N+5
½N
+54
Co
lom
bia
25
55
44
4+5
32
54+
52
N
Me
xico
35
½N
N+5
N+5
N+5
NN
NN
N2
Co
sta
Ric
a3
44
44
44+
54
NN
NN
NN
NN
N
Arg
en
tin
a4+
54
55
5½
3+5
55
55
Gu
ate
mal
a5
NN
NN
NN
N
Pan
ama
43+
½N
Ho
nd
ura
s3
½3
N
Par
agu
ay4
3
El S
alva
do
r5
½5
44
Pe
ru5
54
Ve
ne
zue
la4
45
Ecu
ado
r5
5
Nic
arag
ua
5
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The table shows that Brazil obtained the chair of the General Council
very early. Ambassador Celso Lafer (1995-1999) (see the appendix) chaired
the DSB in 1996 and subsequently the General Council. Since then Brazil’s
participation has been more and more modest, following the pattern of big
players like the United States or China. The next two Brazilian ambassadors
chaired one body each: Ambassador Celso Amorim (1999-2002) held the
Services Council (cat 3.) in 2001 until his departure, and Ambassador Luis
Felipe Seixas Corrêa (2002-2005) chaired the Working Group on the
Relationship between Trade and Investment (cat. 4, today inactive) for two
periods. 3 more Brazilian ambassadors have represented the country since then
(see the ambassador cycles in Chapter 6) but none searched nomination to
chairs. In contrast, Brazil’s representation has remained abundant at the lowest
hierarchy. In the second decade there has always been a Brazilian chairing a
body in the organization.
Chile’s participation has been more regular and bottom-up.
Ambassador Carmen Luz Guarda (1995-2000) chaired the Committee on
Technical Barriers to Trade (cat. 5) from 1995 to 1996. Her chairmanship was
in early 1995 when Chile was about to make the transition to WTO dedicated
mission and Mrs. Guarda was still the minister counsellor of the general-
purpose mission. In 1997 she chaired the TRIPS Council (cat. 3). The following
head of mission, Ambassador Alejandro Jara (2000-2005), presided 3 bodies,
including the Special Session on Trade in Services (cat. N) during 4 years.
Subsequently, ambassador Mario Matus (2005-2014) presided 4 bodies,
including the General Council, the DSB, and the TPRB (cat. 2). Not only has
every Chilean ambassador played a role in chairmanships but, for the last two
ambassadors, there is only one year of ‘waiting time’ between their
appointment to Geneva and their first nomination to WTO bodies, which
proves their fast adaptation to the system. Additionally, the participation of
non-ambassadors in chairmanships increased in the second decade.
Uruguay’s case is especially interesting because of its richness of
contrasts. Its ambassador until 1997 (see cycles of ambassadors in Chapter 6)
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is absent from chairmanships. Subsequently, it only took one year for
Ambassador Carlos Pérez del Castillo (1998-2004) to start presiding bodies.
He presided 4 bodies, including the General Council in 2003. He was followed
by Ambassador Guillermo Valles (2004-2010), who became chair of the
Negotiating Group on Rules the very year of his appointment to Geneva,
remaining as such until 2010. It was under Valles’ ambassadorship that the
transition was made from general-purpose to WTO dedicated mission, in 2007.
It was made in order to prevent neglecting the UN sphere as its last
ambassadors were more focused on the WTO. Regularly it happens the other
way around. General-purpose missions tend to split to prevent WTO neglect.
Following Valles, Ambassador Francisco Pírez (2010- ) chairs the Committee
on Regional Trade Agreements (cat. 4), but it takes him 3 years for a
nomination after his appointment to Geneva. Likewise, Uruguay was active in
category 5 bodies only during Pérez del Castillo and Valles. Uruguay,
therefore, has had periods of low activity and hyper-activity both as general-
purpose mission and as dedicated mission, which proves that the institutional
arrangement is not the only factor that counts for good performance, but also
the instructions and priorities set by the capitals as well as the personal
capacities of the delegates appointed.
The case of Colombia is very similar to Chile’s. Although Colombia
has not held the chair of the General Council, it has been more active in
ambassadorial chairs than Chile (12 years of presence and 9 nominations
against 11 and 8 respectively). All ambassadors have been nominated to two
bodies during their appointment, and the first nomination has taken place one
year before they were appointed to Geneva. In 3 occasions they have chaired
the TPRB (Amb. Néstor Osorio (1994-2000) in 1995, Amb. Claudia Uribe
(2004-2008) in 2006, and Amb. Eduardo Muñoz (2008-2013) in 2012). In
between, Ambassador Hernando José Gómez (2000-2004) had chaired two
bodies of category 4. Finally, Ambassador Gabriel Duque (2013- ) chaired the
Special Session on Trade in Services (cat. N) from 2014 on. Colombia,
alongside Chile, is another model of constancy in its engagement with the
system.
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Mexico, like in the case of Uruguay, is an example of high activity
combined with irregularity. Its first ambassador stayed in Geneva until 2001
but neither he nor one of his delegates chaired a WTO body during that period.
This is surprising given that at the time Mexico already had the biggest WTO
dedicated mission from the region and the second biggest mission after Brazil.
Subsequently, Ambassador Eduardo Pérez-Motta (2001-2004) chaired the
TRIPs Council in 2002—only one year after his arrival—and the Negotiating
Group on Rules (cat. N) in 2004. With similar speediness, his replacement,
Ambassador Fernando de Mateo (2004- ), was nominated to preside the Special
Session on Trade in Services (cat. N) in 2006, where he stayed until his
nomination to the DSB in 2014, from which it follows that he became the fourth
Latin American chair of the General Council in 2015. It is interesting to note
that Mexico’s absence in chairmanships in the first period coincides with lack
of participation in the TPRB, following the numbers from Chapter 7. While in
the subsequent 2 periods Mexico’s behavior is closer to what could be
expected, it is also true that Ambassador de Mateo benefited from an unusual
long appointment, paving the way to the DSB nomination when it was Latin
America’s turn again.
Despite having a smaller mission, Costa Rica has been significantly
active. Although it took until 1998 to preside the first body, Ambassador
Ronald Saborío (1992-2014) was in charge of 4 different bodies and was
chairperson continuously during 17 years: first in the Goods Council (cat. 3) in
1998 and then in the Working Group on Transparency in Government
Procurement from 1999 to 2003, a body today inactive and from which
Ambassador Saborío was its last chair. In 2004 and 2005 he was in charge of
the Committee on Regional Trade Agreements (cat. 4), and subsequently on
the Special Session on the DSB (cat. N). Costa Rica’s participation is
remarkable as it has played a central role in the system for a long time. Yet it
does not have enough factors to make it a model for the rest of the region.
Beside the difficulties described in Chapter 6, namely the extremely long
periods of delegates and the country’s inability to re-enforce the backup office
in the capital with the delegates that finish their periods in Geneva, Costa Rica
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proves that a long tenure for the ambassador does not always assure presence
at the top level. 20 years were not sufficient to arrive to the General Council or
to the other bodies of the triad.
At the non-ambassadorial level (cat. 5) the participation of Argentina
is constant throughout the period and is only surpassed in the region by Brazil.
However, at the ambassadorial level it only took place in the first decade
through 2 discontinuous periods. Ambassador Juan Carlos Sánchez Arnau
(1994-1998) chaired the Committee on Trade and Environment (cat. 4) in 1995
and 1996, and Ambassador Alfredo Chiaradia (2002-2005) chaired the Goods
Council during the first part of 2004. In sum, 4 out of 6 ambassadors that
Argentina appointed during the 2 decades did not chair WTO bodies, and the
ones that did could not aspire to second or third nominations, nor to the top
bodies in the hierarchy. The case of Argentina can therefore be read
alternatively as the most successful participation of a common general-purpose
mission in WTO chairmanships, if not the truly single success in the region, or
as a lost opportunity for attaining outmost influence in the system due to the
persistence of the general-purpose model, in other words, due to the lack of an
ambassador fully dedicated to WTO matters. Yet, it has to be acknowledged
that for the case of Argentina the lower dedication of ambassadors to the WTO
has contributed to the important amount of non-ambassadorial chairs for the
country: considering the effort made to produce balance in member
representation in the distribution of chairmanships, it is more likely that a
competent counsellor or minister counsellor obtains a chair of category 5 if his
ambassador is not having any aspiration of his own in a given year.
The behavior of Guatemala in chairmanships confirms the gradual
ascension of this member in the system. Guatemala had made the change to
WTO dedicated mission in 1998 and significantly increased its personnel that
year, from 2 to 6 delegates. However, the first two ambassadors after this
change did not have nomination to chairs. The period of highest activity has
been produced under the era of Ambassador Eduardo Sperisen-Yurt (2004- ),
especially with his nomination to the Negotiating Group on Trade Facilitation
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(cat. N), a position he held for 7 years, until the Trade Facilitation Agreement
was signed in Bali in 2013. It has to be added in this case that this active
participation has benefited from his relatively long tenure.
Panama, Honduras, Paraguay, and El Salvador appear as smaller cases
of ascension in the same vein as Guatemala, but there are substantial
differences among them. Ambassador Alfredo Suescum (2009- ) of Panama
had been already ambassador in the period 1997-2002, and his previous
experienced might have played a role in his fast involvement in chairmanships
for his second tenure. Despite the constrains of the smallest WTO dedicated
mission in the region, he chaired the Committee on Regional Trade Agreements
(cat. 4) in 2003, the TRIPS Council (cat. 3) in 2013 and the Special Session on
TRIPS (cat. N) in the second part of that year, counting for 3 bodies in a single
tenure. Ambassador Dacio Castillo (1998- ) of Honduras counts with the same
and almost simultaneous achievements. Nonetheless, given the bigger size of
this WTO dedicated mission and the particularly long tenure of its ambassador
(the second longest after Costa Rica), what is surprising is that it took so many
years for this country to participate in chairmanships. El Salvador exhibits the
same behavior of Honduras, with Ambassador Alberto Lima (2003- ) chairing
the Committee on RTAs (cat. 4) in 2013 and the CBFA (cat. 4) in 2014 after a
long tenure without participation. Finally, Federico González (2009-2012) of
Paraguay, who chaired the Working Group on Trade, Debt, and Finance in
2010 and the TRIPS Council in 2011, is closer to the Argentinean case: that of
general-purpose missions (although this one is smaller) that at times are served
by ambassadors experts in trade that thus dedicate more time to WTO issues,
but in which the continuity of the participation is dubious when their tenures
end. For the case of Paraguay, it is important to underline that although the
subsequent ambassador, Juan Esteban Aguirre (2012- ), did not chaired WTO
bodies until 2014, he has been active in the coordination of the group of
Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) in the last period of the Doha
Round.
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Finally, the rest are the cases of critically low participation. Peru has
chaired 3 bodies by non-ambassadors (the last one being of category 4). The
lack of participation at the ambassadorial level is not only explained by the
mission type (general-purpose mission) but by the extremely short periods of
several of its ambassadors. Peru had 9 ambassadors in 2 decades, emerging as
the case of more instability for that position in the region (see Chapter 6).
Venezuela is a case of plain decay: after the first 5 years of regular activity the
participation vanished. Ecuador and Haiti were the only dedicated missions
with no chairs at the ambassadorial level, coinciding with irregularity in the
cycles of ambassadors, which has been particularly dramatic for Haiti, running
without ambassador for a total of 8 years. If the lack of participation of the
Dominican Republic is partially explained by its tremendous financial troubles
(despite the fact that it is not a low-income country), the cases of Bolivia and
Cuba seem more complex. Cuba exhibits great regularity in the cycles of
ambassadors, but the political factors described above seem to have played a
bigger role. Bolivia, in contrast, did have an unstable period for the cycle of
ambassadors in 2001-2005. Still, the long tenure of its last ambassador did not
produce any change in involvement.
Accessions
There is still one type of WTO body in Figures 3 and 12 that was not addressed
in the previous section: the Working Parties on Accessions. These are bodies
of category 4 that depend directly on the General Council. However, instead of
one delegate holding the chair of a specific area, division, or topic for the period
of one year as in the rest of bodies, every process of accession has its own
working party and therefore its own chairperson, who is in charge of the
coordination of the accession process with the support of Secretariat staff. Thus
the availability of nominations for presiding these groups depends on the
number of ongoing processes of accession. The amount of work they demand
depends very much of the size of the countries that have applied for accession
and on how active these candidates are in negotiating with the membership
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their conditions of entry. While negotiations can be intense for certain countries
in specific periods, it also happens that chairs do not conduct official meetings
of the working parties during years, despite being nominally in charge of them.
As the nature of this task is different, these chairs do not change of hands every
year. What is common is that delegates nominated to a chair of accessions
remain as such until the conclusion of the negotiations for accession, even if it
takes years, or until the end of their tenures in Geneva. Often missions remain
in charge of the same accession processes, simply changing of hands from the
leaving delegate to the newcomer or to a different delegate in the mission.
That said, the chairmanships of accessions are surrounded by the same
type of prestige and governed by the same traditions of the rest of
chairmanships. The working parties are also conducted by delegates from
resident missions in Geneva; members under administrative measures cannot
be nominated to the chairs; and big players opt for a modest participation.
Chairs are normally held by ambassadors, but non-ambassadors from big
missions have also been in charge of them. It is also possible that some
ambassadors, to conduct the tasks related to the chairmanships, rely not only
on the accessions division of the Secretariat but also partially on the personnel
of their missions, at least in informal activities. As these bodies are entrusted
to delegates that are perceived by the membership as having the right
capabilities to carry out the assignment and upon whom a consensus can be
reached, the participation in accessions is also a valuable indicator of
participation in the system, an indirect sign of missions’ capabilities and of the
prestige of their delegates.
Unlike the rest of the WTO bodies, however, the level of importance
of these bodies is not constant. The working parties are significantly less
preeminent than the rest of the WTO bodies except if the member under
accession has key commercial or geopolitical importance and if negotiations
for accession are in an active phase. For instance, while the working party for
the islands of Seychelles was chaired first by Madagascar and later by Oman,
the working party for China (member since 2001) was chaired by Switzerland,
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a more important player in the system and the host country of the organization.
Others examples are Russia (member since 2012), first chaired by also
Switzerland and later by Norway and Iceland; Ukraine, chaired by the United
States, Canada, and Chile; Viet Nam (member since 2007), chaired by Korea
and Norway; or Saudi Arabia (2005), chaired by Canada and Pakistan.
Table 31 shows the working groups on accessions that were
responsibility of Latin American chairs in the period 1995-2014. In grey are
the accessions that had had successful conclusion by 2015 and in orange the
processes still active. Only 6 Latin American countries have chaired
accessions. Ambassador Sánchez Arnau of Argentina chaired the group on
Algeria’s accession until the end of his tenure and was replaced by Ambassador
Pérez del Castillo of Uruguay. Ambassador Valles of Uruguay inherited the
group until the end of his tenure. After a short coordination by Belgium the
working party went back to Argentina under the chair of Ambassador Alberto
D’Alotto (2012- ). Chile chaired two groups on accessions, the only ones with
successful conclusion in the region, and Chile was the last chair of both, closing
both negotiations: Panama under ambassador Guarda and Ukraine under
Ambassador Matus. Ambassador Uribe of Colombia started the group on Iran’s
accession and it subsequently passed to the coordination of Morocco.
Ambassador Alejandro de la Peña (1993-2001) of Mexico initiated the group
for Uzbekistan, subsequently continued by Malaysia. Lastly, Ambassador Luis
Enrique Chávez (2013- ) of Peru initiated the group for Comoros Islands.
Table 31. Chairs of accessions, 1995-2014
Source: Made by the author from www.wto.org and from the Accession
Commitments Database, http://acdb.wto.org.
Member 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Chile Panama Ukraine
Argentina Algeria Algeria
Uruguay Algeria
Colombia Iran
Mexico Uzbekistan
Peru Comoros
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Overall, the participation in chairmanships on accessions corroborates
the main conclusions derived from the analysis of chairmanships of WTO
bodies. The prominent position of Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, and
Mexico are once again confirmed. Uruguay is active in accession precisely
during the tenures of the 2 ambassadors that have been more active in the
system. 3 of these cases involved ambassadors that never chaired other WTO
bodies: Ambassador de la Peña, reducing the lack of participation of Mexico
during his tenure; Ambassador D’Alotto, adding to Argentina; and
Ambassador Chávez, making more evident the rise of Peru’s participation in
last years of the second decade.
Discussants in trade policy reviews
The last indirect indicator of delegates’ influence in the multilateral trading
system is their participation as discussants in the Trade Policy Reviews of other
members. The procedures of TPRs were already described in Chapter 7. During
the two meetings that compose a Trade Policy Review, the figure of the
discussant is a counterpoint of in-depth analysis and neutrality to the dynamic
of self-promotion and defense played by the reviewed member and the bilateral
scrutiny made by the rest of delegates that participate in the exercise.
Discussants must act on their personal capacities, instead of on behalf of their
member countries. They make the longest statement of the review, which is
meant to be the leading analysis of the trade policy of the member under review
right after its representatives make the customary opening statement and before
the rest of the delegates take the floor to talk about bilateral trade and bilateral
concerns.
The work of the discussant is time-consuming due to the preparation
of the statement. It does not exclude the participation of the mission in the
scrutiny phase of the review, which is read by a different delegate in case the
ambassador acts as discussant. Actually, the preparation of the discussant’s
statement is a good input for the preparation of the official statement on behalf
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of the mission, even if it is read by someone else, and for sending questions in
advance to the member under review. Beyond this convenience, the true gain
from participating as discussant—no matter how subtle this might be—is the
visibility it permits within the membership. Discussants earn the sympathy of
members and Secretariat staff for conducting a task for the sake of the system,
potentially abandoning the priorities of the mission’s work. And discussants
can particularly earn the sympathy of the mission from the member under
review for doing such a favor. The role of the discussant is a great opportunity
for delegates to be known by their peers in a position of civic service and
intellectual authority, or to consolidate their position as part of the community,
and part of the key actors that have to be taken into account in all the matters
of the organization. It must be added that the role of discussant and that of
chairpersons are the only two opportunities delegates have to sit in the leading
table during formal meetings of the organization, with the symbolism it entails.
The process for appointing discussants differs from that of appointing
chairs. Administrative measures do not apply on them which increases the
roaster to all delegates from resident missions. In practice, only ambassadors
and senior delegates have this honor. The chair of the TPRB and the senior staff
of the TPR division compile a list of suitable delegates and the chair is to assign
the discussants for the reviews under his period in dialogue with the members
under review. Members reviewed can reject a name if they judge that the person
or the country he or she represents affect the neutrality of the review. If a name
is accepted, the chair contacts the delegate and asks for his availability. All
parties involved are interested in having a discussant with prestige in the
system, someone having adequate technical capabilities, diplomatic finesse and
communicational skills to make his presentation appealing on its own and one
more reason for other delegates to participate in the meeting. TPR staff admit
that, as these meetings are particularly dense, they try to recommend
discussants that make sessions more dynamic and agreeable, delegates capable
of digging data from unconventional sources, of making clever remarks, and of
maintaining listeners interested and attentive to his statement despite the
constrains of the rigid format. The bigger the member under review, the higher
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the technical exigence demanded to the discussant, the higher the number of
participants to the TPR meeting who will listen to him in that role, and the
higher the honor.
In the early years of this mechanism, until November 1999, 2
discussants were assigned to every review, one representing a developed
country and the other representing a developing country. Since then reviews
only have one discussant and there is a higher proportion of discussants from
developing countries than from developed ones, which derives from the fact
that they represent the majority of the membership. Only one TPR did not have
a single discussant. In the TPR of the European Union in 2000, the chairman
did not appoint a discussant, given that as the participation of the membership
is high for big players, the statements of individual missions were meant to be
illustrative enough about the trade policy so no discussant was needed. This
decision was highly criticized, particularly from India, whose representative
appealed to the importance of this figure as a guidance to make full sense of
trade policies under review, which was especially important to delegates from
developing countries with lesser technical capabilities (WT/TPR/M/72). The
figure of the discussant has maintained its place ever since.
The most active missions regarding participation as discussants in the
20-year period were Australia with 16 TPRs, Canada and Norway with 13 each,
New Zealand and Singapore with 12, and Switzerland with 11. Among big
players India has been discussant in 10 occasions, the European Union in 7,
Unites States and China in 5 each. Among other developed members, France
was discussant 4 times, Spain 4, and Japan 8. Among other developing
countries out of Latin America, Egypt was discussant twice, Hong Kong, China
9 times, the Philippines 4, Kenya 4, and Nigeria 5 times.
Table 32 shows the participation of Latin American delegates as
discussants in TPRs. The first column counts the total TPRs in which delegates
from a mission have participated as discussants whereas in the second column
the TPRs from 1995 to November 1999, which were served by 2 discussants,
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only give half a unit, to reflect the relatively less effort they demanded from
the missions and the lesser importance attached then to the figure.
Table 32. Times being appointed discussant in TPRs, 1995-2014
Source: Made by the author from the minutes of the TPRs.
In general terms, the structure of Table 32 is not surprising. It follows
the similar patterns of participation in chairmanships only with a few
exceptions. Brazil’s frequency in appointments for discussants is much more
modest than Chile’s, Mexico’s, and Colombia’s, which are at the top, yet not
too different than China or the European Union. This can be understood as
Member Total TPRs Net TPRs
Chile 10 8
Mexico 10 8
Colombia 9 7,5
Brazil 6 5
Dominican Republic 4 4
Costa Rica 4 3,5
Argentina 4 3
Uruguay 3 3
Venezuela 3 1,5
Honduras 2 2
Peru 2 1
El Salvador 1 1
Panama 1 1
Paraguay 1 1
Bolivia 1 0,5
Cuba 0 0
Ecuador 0 0
Guatemala 0 0
Haiti 0 0
Nicaragua 0 0
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delegates of big players trying to avoid to be seen as monopolizing the system
in the same way they do it with chairmanships. Alternatively, it can be
interpreted as the inherent difficulty that big players endure—including
Brazil—to be perceived by the rest of players as neutral enough, which makes
members to avoid them for the discussant role. In either case, the top 3 in Latin
America also rank among the most active in the whole membership, and the
smaller size of Chile and Colombia compared with Mexico (both in mission
personnel and in economic weight) does not prove a hindrance to attain a
similar level of participation. There are 3 other surprises. First, the Dominican
Republic, which was totally inactive in chairmanships, was able to participate
in 4 TPRs as discussants. This might mean that the mission has counted with
skillful delegates who have actively engaged with the system, but to whom the
country’s financial arrears kept them out of the chairmanships despite their
capacities and prestige. Second, Argentina has a more modest role as discussant
than as chair. As ambassadors are the most common to be invited to act as
discussants, general-purpose missions such as Argentina have less possibilities
to exploit these occasions to increase their visibility. Third, Guatemala, which
had proven an incremental participation in the system in virtually all indicators
considered until now, has null activity as discussant in TPRs. Despite the
incremental participation, the rise of this mission is still facing a few limits.
Finally, the comparison between total TPRs and net TPRs reveals the period
when participation has occurred: before or after November 1999. For instance,
the delegates from the Dominican Republic and Uruguay were all single
discussants while delegates from Venezuela and Peru shared the floor with a
second discussant. In those cases, participation took place only before 2000, as
it will be seen in better detail in the next table.
Table 33 shows participation as discussants in detail, considering the
year TPRs took place, the member under review, and the delegate who acted
as discussant. Asterisks (*) denote discussants who were not ambassadors and
grey marks the TPRs that counted with two discussants, in which, therefore,
the participation of Latin Americans was made on behalf of developing
countries only. The participation in the first five years (the first column of the
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table) is naturally more abundant as the system was demanding twice the
number of discussants.
Table 33. Discussants in TPRs, delegate and member reviewed, 1995-2014
Source: Made by the author from the minutes of the TPRs.
It can be seen in the table the constancy of the participation of Chile,
Mexico, and Colombia: all their ambassadors have acted as discussants in TPRs
at least once. The high participation of Chile and Colombia is even more
remarkable considering the fact that Ambassador Matus was not available as
discussant in 2011 as he was the chair of the TPRB and 3 Colombian
ambassadors were not available due to the same reason in 1995, 2006, and
2011, having therefore less time during their tenures to offer the service. The
first 4 Brazilian ambassadors were also active as discussants—including
Member 1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
95, EU (Guarda) 02, Hong Kong, China (Jara) 06, Uruguay (Matus) 12, Nicaragua (Matus)
96, Dom. Rep. (Guarda) 06, Hong Kong, China (Matus)
97, Paraguay (Sáez*) 07, Canada (Matus)
99, United States (Guarda) 09, Guatemala (Matus)
95 Slovak Rep. (Barba*) 00, Bahrain (Barba*) 05, Ecuador (de Mateo) 11, Paraguay (de Mateo)
96, Colombia (de la Peña) 04, Belize & Suriname (Diego-Fernández*) 07, Turkey (de Mateo) 11, European Union (de Mateo)
96, El Salvador (de la Peña)
98, Uruguay (de la Peña)
96, New Zeland (Osorio) 03, El Salvador (Gómez) 07, European Union (Uribe) 10, Hong Kong, China (Muñoz)
97, EU (Osorio) 08, Mexico (Uribe) 14, Djibouti and Mauritius (Duque)
98, Trinidad and T. (Orozco*) 08, United States (Uribe)
96, Venezuela (da Rocha*) 03, Thailand (Seixas Corrêa) 05, Egypt (Seixas Corrêa)
96, Singapore (Lafer) 05, Bolivia (Hugueney Filho)
07, Macao, China (Estivallet*)
02, Mexico (Cuello) 08, Barbados (Hernández) 11, Jamaica (Piantini)
11, Ecuador (Piantini)
98, Jamaica (Saborío) 05, Paraguay (Saborío) 14, Hong Kong, China (Saborío)
06, Israel (Saborío)
95, Costa Rica (Niscovolos*) 02, Venezuela (Chiaradia) 13, Cameroon et al. (D'Alotto)
95, Thailand (Riaboi*)
07, Japan (Valles) 13, Viet Nam (Pírez)
14, Mongolia (Pírez)
Honduras 02, Dominican R. (Castillo) 14, Panama (Castillo)
El Salvador 12, Uruguay (Lima)
Panama 09, Guyana (Harris)
Paraguay 02, Guatemala (Ramírez)
96, Canada (Misle*)
97, Mexico (Corrales)
99, Romania (Hernández*)
96, Brazil (Paulinich*)
99, Bolivia (Voto-Bernales)
Bolivia 99, Philippines (Ávila)
Dominican
Republic
Uruguay
Venezuela
Peru
Chile
Mexico
Colombia
Brazil
Argentina
Costa Rica
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Ambassador Clodoaldo Hugueney Filho (2005-2008), who did not hold WTO
chairs—, whereas the last 2 did not participate up to 2014. On the other hand,
in the phase of single discussants (white boxes) the non-ambassadorial
delegates that have been invited to be discussants only come from Brazil and
Mexico, the biggest two missions in the region. For the Dominican Republic,
the last 3 out of 4 ambassadors were discussants: Federico Cuello (1999-2002),
Homero Hernández (2005-2009), and Luis Manuel Piantini (2009- ).
Ambassador Piantini, who participated twice, was the only one from his
country running a WTO dedicated mission. Ambassador Norman Harris (2004-
2009) of Panama acted as discussant in 2009 and Ambassador Luis María
Ramírez (1999-2003) of Paraguay in 2002, neither of whom chaired WTO
bodies. Interestingly, for Venezuela and Peru this table reflects the same pattern
that appears in participation chairmanships: moderate activity in the first 5
years and subsequent decline. Ambassadors Werner Corrales (1997-2002) and
Jorge Voto-Bernales (1997-2001) acted as discussants. However, after a short
interlude, Ambassador Voto-Bernales was in charge of the mission in Geneva
again from late 2001 to 2004 and he did not repeat the deed again, nor he
participated in chairmanships. The participation in chairmanships does show a
moderate Peruvian comeback in the last years; yet, this comeback has not
influenced yet the participation of its delegates as discussants. Finally, the
participation of Bolivia dates from 1999 and it was made by Ambassador Silvia
Ávila (1998-2000), who did not chair WTO bodies. Yet her tenure lasted only
two and a half years, not enough time to really push her mission higher into the
most important circles of influence. She is still remembered by some of her
peers as an active ambassador who “was present in everything,”, and was used
by one source as an example of how influence in the system depends less of
the country represented and more on the delegates’ capacities.
One last telling thing to observe in the participation as discussants,
especially in the single-discussant period, is the reviews in which delegates
participated. Non-ambassadors are discussants for the smallest members. The
ambassadors of the Dominican Republic, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, and
Paraguay have stayed in the area, serving to TPRs of the region only, and where
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predominance of Spanish is clear (yet the TPR of Mexico is a remarkable
achievement for Dominican Ambassador Cuello in 2002). The rest, in contrast,
collaborated with different regions as well, such as Chile in two TPRs of Hong
Kong, China; Mexico for Turkey; Colombia for Hong Kong, China and for
Djibouti and Mauritius; Costa Rica for Israel and Hong Kong, China; Argentina
for Cameroon; and Uruguay for Mongolia and Viet Nam, proving a wider
geographical influence in the membership. Only a few missions have had the
privilege to be the discussants of the biggest economies: Chile (EU and US, yet
in the era of two discussants); Mexico (EU); Colombia (EU and US); and
Uruguay (Japan). The ambassadors in charge of the big players had already
proven their strong influence in the system with their participation in key
chairmanships.
In sum, the participation of delegates as discussants in TPRs broadly
follow similar patterns of activity that participation chairmanships of regular
WTO bodies and of accessions. Bigger missions and WTO dedicated missions
have undeniable advantages for participation in this item, but the individual
interest of certain ambassadors can make a substantial difference in general-
purpose missions. Moreover, there are substantial differences of efficiency
among missions regarding their size. Mexico does not partake in more than
Colombia or Chile because of the mission’s bigger size. Central American
dedicated missions do not achieve as much as Chile or Colombia despite a
similar size either. Long tenures do benefit ambassadors as they have more
chances to be discussants—and, in general terms, more chances to maintain a
strong influence in the system—, as in the case of Ambassadors Matus of Chile
and de Mateo of Mexico. But this is relative: even longer tenures did not
guarantee a bigger and more diverse participation by Honduras, nor made it
possible to Costa Rica to reach bigger economies. In contrast, the ambassador
of an equally small country such as Uruguay was able to do more in a much
shorter period of time.
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Conclusions
In a member-driven international organization where decisions in all spheres
are made through consensus instead of voting mechanisms or clear
distributions of decision power, in an international organization where the
process of negotiations is to a great extent confidential, and where the outcomes
of these negotiations are difficult to interpret in terms of gains and losses for
the participants (as it was discussed in Chapter 5), a reasonable alternative for
external observers to analyze the individual influence of member countries is
to resort to unorthodox indicators that reveal indirectly the actual weight of
members in a given time. For the case of the WTO, the depth and frequency of
member participation in the power structure of the organization constitutes a
formidable sign of prestige, peer-recognition and technical capabilities of the
missions in Geneva. Combined with the state of the financial obligations with
the organization and the invitations to serve as discussants in trade policy
reviews—which are the other 2 indirect indicators available that apply to the
whole membership—it is possible to draw a telling portrait of the influence of
members in the system. The aim of this chapter was to depict such a portrait
for the participation of Latin American missions in the first 20 years of the
WTO.
The chapter has revealed great differences in the capacities members
have to project influence in the system. Country weight and country income
are factors that deserve consideration when analyzing disparities in
performance—as they have an impact in the government resources for trade
diplomacy—, but they are not determinant. Large sizes and high incomes are
no guarantee of influence in the WTO, and smallness and scarce resources at
the national level do not necessarily doom members to insignificance. What
matters more is the resources governments decide to deploy in their missions
in Geneva and the organizational practices they foster in these missions. In
particular, the juxtaposition of indicators of missions’ resources (as presented
in Chapter 6) and indicators of mission participation (as presented in Chapter
7 and here) shows that having a critical mass of delegates working on WTO
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issues, the preference for WTO dedicated missions, and facilitating long
enough tenures for delegates—especially for ambassadors, so they have
acceptable time to integrate into the system—emerge as key factors for
influence. Avoiding financial arrears through regular payment of member
obligations to the organization is also key, so the diplomatic work of the
missions does not get handicapped by administrative measures.
Yet these factors are neither infallible nor necessary conditions for
influence in a given moment. At the end all relies on the delegates themselves,
especially on the ambassadors, as they are the persons who embody member
representation in the system. It is they who can make the difference between
significance or irrelevance. If all conditions are fine in the mission except the
capabilities of the ambassador, the influence declines. Conversely, if the
conditions in the mission are far from ideal, but the ambassador demonstrates
adequate technical knowledge, diplomatic skills and true interest to engage
with WTO issues, the member counts to the system. That is why some small
dedicated missions do more or less well and some general-purpose missions
are more or less influential depending on the specific delegate in charge. Even
administrative measures can be bypassed by actively engaging in areas of work
not affected by them, including the role of discussants in TPRs. This
preeminence of individual delegates in the system is also why, although the
relation between participation in ordinary work (see Chapter 7) and influence
is strong, at times some not-so-active missions are able to achieve outstanding
influence (such as Uruguay or Costa Rica), only because of the delegate or
delegates in charge. Their capabilities and charisma pull them up towards the
highest circles of decision-making and information flow. Following the
concepts developed in chapters 4 and 5, although resources or capabilities in
the Geneva frontline count, differences of awareness and strategies in the
engagement with the system are equally important. Awareness and strategy can
increase the efficiency of the resources at disposal in a given time and/or
overcome high constraints. The combination of technical knowledge and
diplomatic skills is key.
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In the 20-year period under study, the Latin American members whose
influence in the WTO has proven to be greater and more constant are Brazil,
Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, and Costa Rica. Brazil, Chile,
and Uruguay are the only ones having the honor of presiding the General
Council, which is a major sign of influence in the system. Brazil was
particularly active in the first decade in the same way any active ordinary
mission would engage with the system, but then entered a phase of timidity,
avoiding formal leading positions and acting more like the rest of the truly big
players of the system. The presence of Chile and Colombia in the system is
formidable thanks to the constancy of every one of their ambassadors. Mexico
was remarkably—and surprisingly—less effective than these countries in the
first decade, although not totally absent, and eventually rose to become a truly
strong player. Quite the same could be said of Costa Rica, except that its
participation is atypical as a single ambassador was in charge of the mission,
which seems to have been an advantage for constant presence in the circles of
power but an insufficient condition to rank at the highest level. Uruguay has
seen the highest achievements, yet at a lesser level of constancy. Finally,
Argentina has not lacked constancy, but not having a dedicated ambassador to
the WTO has inhibited its potential.
Despite more timid participation, other missions are worth mentioning
due to their incremental achievements. The clearest of these cases is
Guatemala, but the same path has been followed by Panama, Honduras, El
Salvador, and Paraguay. Peru and Ecuador seem in the last years to be
recovering from a breach, although at less effective levels than the rest of the
lot, while Venezuela, which had an active start, remained at the margins in the
rest of the period. Although Cuba and Haiti are the only members in the region
whose delegates have not been nominated to any position of honor in the
system—a clear sigh of lack of participation—, the passive engagement of
Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua are equally worrying.
If this group of members were to increase their influence in the system,
an obvious outcome would be a more even distribution of chairmanships and
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other positions of honor across the members of the region. It would thereby
follow that the strongest players of the region today would reduce the
participation in chairmanships and TPRs. However, such evolution cannot be
interpreted as a decline in the engagement of the active missions. Rather, what
could happen with missions like Chile and Mexico is to some extent what
happened to Brazil at the highest level: after missions demonstrate presence
through formal means, a mix of self-restrain and the appearance of other
adequate candidates could make their participation more modest. The statement
“my country has not done it yet / my country has not been there yet” will be
always a good argument for climbing up the hierarchy of WTO bodies in the
hands of a competent, prestigious and well connected ambassador, given the
decision-making traditions of the WTO. Notwithstanding, there is a long way
of improvement to make in the organizational practices of the less active
missions before any of this can happen.
Above all, it is useful in insist on an important lesson to draw from this
chapter. Beyond missions’ practices and resources, it is delegates themselves
who play the decisive role in projecting national influence in the multilateral
system. Individual background and capabilities at all levels, and capacity to
adapt to ‘International Geneva’ and to the WTO sphere are crucial factors
behind the adequate performance of delegates in their work. Governments can
do a lot for the sake of their representation in Geneva by promoting the
adequate profiles among the roaster of capital officials that can be transferred
to the mission, and by carefully selecting the new appointments based on
technical as well as communicational skills. Delegates, in their turn, can also
do a lot by gaining awareness of the particular challenges of engaging with the
system, so that they are able to smooth and speed up their adaptation process
to the new rituals and responsibilities of their jobs. In doing so, both
governments and delegates can benefit from the recommendations put forward
in chapters 4 and 5 of this dissertation as an entry point to reflect about the
system’s characteristics and to take action.
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Finally, it is necessary to stress what the findings presented here mean
in terms of the research hypothesis of this dissertation. The accumulated
evidence of the last three chapters of the dissertation shows that state influence
in the WTO is a complex variable that depends on a wide set of factors. Relative
power is insufficient to explain influence and lack of influence. The regularities
and variations in participation exhibited by Latin American countries depend
more on institutional decisions and on personalities appointed than on bare
indicators of relative power. Events such as the underperformance of Mexico
in the first years, the inconstancy of Peru, the decline of Venezuela and
Bolivia—to cite a few cases—could not be explained otherwise. The same can
be said about the incremental rise of Guatemala, El Salvador, or the Dominican
Republic, or about the active participation of Chile, Uruguay, Honduras or El
Salvador, among others. To be sure, Apecu Laker (2014) also offered evidence
of the same sort. Drawing on her data, small African countries such as
Mauritius, Tunisia, or Rwanda managed to erect themselves as important
players in the organization alongside the big African players despite their lack
of relative power in the international system.
This dissertation has therefore discussed two sets of evidence: an
ethnography of the diplomatic community, and data about members’
capabilities and concrete participation in the system. As observed throughout
the text, both sets of evidence suggest that diplomatic representation is a
variable that should not be neglected when trying to understand state influence
in the WTO in particular, and in international organizations in general.
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Appendix 1: Chairs of the main WTO bodies, 1995-2014
De
lega
teM
em
be
rD
ele
gate
Me
mb
er
De
lega
teM
em
be
r
1995
Am
b. K
esa
vap
any
Sin
gap
ore
Am
b. K
en
yon
Au
stra
lia
Am
b. O
sori
oC
olo
mb
ia
1996
Am
b. R
oss
ier
Swit
zerl
and
Am
b. L
afe
rB
razi
lA
mb
. An
de
rso
nIr
ela
nd
1997
Am
b. L
afe
rB
razi
lA
mb
. Arm
stro
ng
Ne
w Z
eal
and
Am
b. A
kram
Pak
ista
n
1998
Am
b. W
ee
kes
Can
ada
Am
b. M
orj
ane
Tun
isia
Am
b. M
chu
mo
Tan
zan
ia
1999
Am
b. M
chu
mo
Tan
zan
iaA
mb
. Aka
o a
nd
Ab
m. B
yrn
Jap
an &
No
rway
Am
b. N
oir
fali
sse
Be
lgiu
m
2000
Am
b. B
ryn
No
rway
Mr.
Har
bin
son
H.K
., C
hin
aA
mb
. Ch
ow
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ury
Ban
glad
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2001
Mr.
Har
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H.K
., C
hin
aA
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. Far
rell
& A
mb
. Bry
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alan
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No
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Am
b. H
uh
tan
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2002
Am
b. M
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iC
anad
aA
mb
. Pe
rez
de
l Cas
till
oU
rugu
ayA
mb
. Mo
ham
ed
Ke
nya
2003
Am
b. P
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z d
el C
asti
llo
Uru
guay
Am
b. O
shim
aJa
pan
Am
b. W
he
lan
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lan
d
2004
Am
b. O
shim
aJa
pan
Am
b. M
oh
ame
dK
en
yaA
mb
. Asa
vap
isit
Thai
lan
d
2005
Am
b. M
oh
ame
dK
en
yaA
mb
. Gle
nn
eN
orw
ayA
mb
. Ste
ph
en
son
Can
ada
2006
Am
b. G
len
ne
No
rway
Am
b. N
oo
rM
alay
sia
Am
b. U
rib
eC
olo
mb
ia
2007
Am
b. N
oo
rM
alay
sia
Am
b. G
osp
er
Au
stra
lia
Am
b. H
iman
en
Fin
lan
d
2008
Am
b. G
osp
er
Au
stra
lia
Am
b. M
atu
s C
hil
eA
mb
. Aga
h
Nig
eri
a
2009
Am
b. M
atu
sC
hil
eA
mb
. Ge
roC
anad
aA
mb
. Maj
or
Hu
nga
ry
2010
Am
b. G
ero
Can
ada
Am
b. A
gah
N
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ria
Am
b. A
ran
Turk
ey
2011
Am
b. A
gah
Nig
eri
aA
mb
. Jo
han
sen
No
rway
Am
b. M
atu
sC
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e
2012
Am
b. J
oh
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mb
. Bas
hir
Pak
ista
nA
mb
. Mu
ño
z G
óm
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Co
lom
bia
2013
Am
b. B
ash
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akis
tan
Am
b. F
rie
dC
anad
aA
mb
. Re
ite
rSw
ed
en
2014
Am
b. F
rie
dC
anad
aA
mb
. de
Mat
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Me
xico
Am
b. M
d S
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Appendix 2: Latin American chairs, 1995-2014
Member Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
Argentina 95-96 Sánchez 4 Com. Tr. & Env. 1995 Mr. Ruiz 5 Com. Safeguards
98-99 Mr. Marchetti 5 Com. Specific Commitments
2002 Mr. Lunazzi 5 Com. Safeguards
2004 Chiaradia (start) 3 Coun. Trade in Goods 2004 Mr. Bosch 5 Com. Specific Commitments
2009 Ms. Chaves 5 Com. S&P Meas.
2010 Mr. Serra 5 Com. Anti-Dumping
2012 Mr. Bardoneschi 5 Com. Specific Commitments
2014 Ms. Chaves 5 Com. Agriculture
Brazil 1996 Lafer 2 DSB 1996 Mr. Do Prado 5 Com. Subsidies & C. Meas.
1997 Lafer 1 General Council
1998 Mr. da Rocha 5 Com. Subsidies & C. Meas.
1999 Mr. da Costa e Silva 5 Com. Market Access
2001 Amorim (start) 3 Coun. Trade in Services
02-03 de Seixas 4 WG Rel. Tr. & Invest. 2002 Mr. Santos 5 WP Domestic Regulation
04-09 Ms. Thorstensen 5 Com. Rules of Origin
2010 Mr. Damico 5 Com. S&P Meas.
2011 Mr. Damico 5 Com. Import Lice.
2012 Mr. do Amaral 5 Com. TRIMS
2013 Mr. Marquardt-Bayer 5 Com. Agriculture
2014 Mr. Minoru 5 Com. Subsidies & C. Meas.
Chile 95-96 Ms. Guarda 5 Com. Tech. Barriers to Tr.
1997 Guarda 3 Coun. for TRIPS
2000 Mr. Escudero 5 WP Domestic Regulation
2001 Jara (end) 3 Coun. Trade in Services
2001 Jara 4 Com. Tr. & Env.
02-05 Jara N SS Tr. in Services 2005 Ms. Novik 5 Com. Safeguards
2007 Matus (end) N SS Tr. & Envir.
2008 Matus 2 DSB
2009 Matus 1 General Council 2009 Mr. Lopeandia 5 WP GATS Rules
2011 Matus 2 TPRB 2011 Mr. Fresard 5 WP State Trading Enterpr.
2013 Mr. Sandoval 5 WP GATS Rules
2014 Mr. Sandoval 5 Com. Specific Commitments
Colombia 1995 Osorio 2 TPRB
97-99 Osorio 5 Com. Agriculture
2001 Gómez 4 Com. BofPs Restrs.
02-03 Gómez 4 WG Tr., Debt & Fin. 2003 Ms. Lozano 5 Com. Subsidies & C. Meas.
2005 Uribe 3 Coun. Trade in Services
2006 Uribe 2 TPRB
2008 Mr. Torres 5 Com. Specific Commitments
2010 Muñoz 4 Com. Tr. & Env. 2010 Ms. Jurado 5 WP State Trading Enterpr.
2012 Muñoz 2 TPRB
2014 Duque N SS Tr. in Services
Costa Rica 1998 Saborío 3 Coun. Trade in Goods
99-03 Saborío 4 WG Transp. G. Procurement
04-05 Saborío 4 Com. RTAs 2004 Mr. Fernández 5 Com. Anti-Dumping
06-14 Saborío N SS DSB
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
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Source: www.wto.org
Member Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
Ecuador 2002 Mr. Espinosa 5 Com. Anti-Dumping
2013 Mr. Jiménez 5 WP State Trading Enterpr.
El Salvador 1995 Saurel 5 WP Prof. Services
1996 Saurel (start) 5 WP Prof. Services
2013 Lima 4 Com. RTAs
2014 Lima 4 Com. Bud.Fin.Adm.
Guatemala 2006 Mr. Alvarado 5 Com. Import Lice.
07-13 Sperisen-Yurt 3 Prep. Com. Tr. Facilit.
Honduras 2012 Castillo 3 Coun. for TRIPS
2013 Castillo (end) 3 Coun. Trade in Goods
2014 Castillo N SS TRIPS
Mexico 2002 Pérez Motta 3 Coun. for TRIPS
2003 Mr. Dorantes 5 Com. Tech. Barriers to Tr.
2004 Pérez Motta (start) N NG on Rules
06-13 de Mateo N SS Tr. in Services 2006 Mr. Dorantes 5 Com. S&P Meas.
2007 Mr. Klein 5 Com. Subsidies & C. Meas.
2008 Mr. Huerta 5 Com. Anti-Dumping
2014 de Mateo 2 DSB
Nicaragua 2003 Mr. Urbina 5 WP GATS Rules
Panama 2010 Suescum 4 Com. RTAs
2013 Suescum 3 Coun. for TRIPS
2013 Suescum (end) N SS TRIPS
Paraguay 2010 González 4 WG Tr., Debt & Fin.
2011 González 3 Coun. for TRIPS
Peru 1997 Mr. Paulinich 5 Com. TRIMS
2000 Mr. Voto 5 Com. Agriculture
2012 Mr. Rossi 4 WG Tr. & Transf. of Tech.
Uruguay 1999 Pérez 3 Coun. for TRIPS
2000 Pérez 3 Coun. Trade in Goods
2001 Mr. Ehlers 5 Com. S&P Meas.
2001 Mr. Cayrus 5 WP GATS Rules
2002 Pérez 2 DSB
2003 Pérez 1 General Council
2004 Valles (end) N NG on Rules
05-09 Valles N NG on Rules 07-10 Ms. Csukasi 5 Com. Agriculture
2010 Valles (start) N NG on Rules
2014 Pírez 4 Com. RTAs
Venezuela 97-98 Corrales 4 WG Transp. G. Procurement
2000 Mr. Hernández 5 Com. TRIMS
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
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Chapter 9:
Conclusions
On September 1st, 2013, Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo took office as the new
Director-General of the Word Trade Organization. Ambassador of Brazil to the
WTO until then, he became the first DG in the WTO era to come directly from
Geneva’s diplomatic community, a practice that used to be tradition in GATT
times. Likewise, he was the first Latin American to hold the position of
Director-General in the history of the organization. Under his steering, the
organization has reached three landmark trade agreements: the Trade
Facilitation Agreement in the Bali Ministerial Conference in 2013 (surviving a
months-long impasse that threatened the deal after Bali); the expansion to the
Information Technology Agreement (ITA); and the deal on agriculture, both in
the Nairobi Ministerial in 2015. These outcomes are slowly turning the page
on the long period of gridlock that had characterized trade negotiations in the
first two decades of the organization.
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Indeed, there is no doubt that Roberto Azevêdo’s nomination as
Director-General of the WTO is the most striking example of the influence of
Latin America—and particularly of Brazil—in the WTO in the two-decade
period. However, this dissertation has shown that Azevêdo’s nomination is
nothing but the tip of the iceberg in terms of the engagement and participation
of Latin American countries in the multilateral trade system. This participation
has grown sounder and more assertive through time and, at the granular level
of the diplomatic missions’ work, it exhibits manifold stories of good practices
and achievements.
Yet the research has also made clear that, in what concerns the
participation of diplomatic missions in the multilateral trade system, the region
has deployed a wide variety of institutional strategies, and it has obtained
equally diverse outcomes. As a matter of fact, there is not a Latin American
success in the WTO. Rather, there are some Latin American successes in the
organization. If the rise of Latin America in the world stage in the last decades
has been only partial, the materialization of this regional rise in multilateral
trade diplomacy has been partial as well. Some countries have committed to
the system with more consistency and resources, and they have seen better
results in terms of credibility and centrality in the system. Other countries had
too modest a start in their engagement with the organization, but have made
subsequent steps in the right direction and, as a result, they have become more
assertive. Still, other members of the region remain at a more marginal position
in the system. They need to follow the example of the rest if they want to take
better advantage of their WTO membership, and if they want to increase their
say in multilateral trade negotiations and in all the decision-making processes
within the organization.
Roberto Azevêdo’s nomination to the WTO’s leading position is
equally interesting because it demonstrates well that the increasing
assertiveness of Latin America in the organization still coexists with various
political and ideological divisions in the region. The failure of Latin American
candidates to the DG position in previous election processes was often
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attributed to the fact that the region was never united behind them. The informal
system of regional rotation for leading positions in the organization opened a
big opportunity in 2013 for Latin America to finally secure a winning candidate
in the DG nomination. Yet, beside the three Latin American candidates (from
Costa Rica, Brazil, and Mexico) there were candidates from other regions, too,
and the final outcome of the election was far from obvious. Indeed, not only
the membership but also the region remained divided until the end of the
election process, since the two finalists were the candidates from Brazil and
from Mexico. Latin America finally obtained the DG position, but not because
it was more united than before. Correspondingly, this work has shown that the
Latin American divisions across different blocs of integration—and within the
blocs themselves—are well mirrored in the WTO. Different to the EU or to the
ASEAN, the Latin American participation in the WTO remains ‘atomized’ in
most areas and events. Things will hardly change in this respect in the near
future. And whether the region should follow the path of more advanced
processes of integration or not—and whether there is room for policy
convergence despite conflicting trade interests across countries—clearly
remains a matter of open debate.
The observations and conclusions gathered throughout this
dissertation draw support from three methodological strengths. First, the
ethnographic component of the research was made through a long-term
involvement with the diplomatic community, which increases the accuracy of
the findings. Second, the dissertation builds, presents, and discusses a wide
variety of objective indicators in order to analyze mission performance in the
organization. And third, the research builds a bridge between the visible and
the invisible for the sake of a better understanding of diplomatic representation
in multilateral settings.
Interdisciplinary research and multi-method approaches entail many
intellectual and methodological challenges. But they bring as a reward a
richness of perspectives to the subject of study, and they make contributions to
several disciplines at the same time, as was the aim of this work.
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On the one hand, recent literature has proven the relevance of
anthropological approaches for a better understanding of diplomacy (Jönsson
and Hall 2005; Neumann 2005; Neumann 2012; Neumann 2013). This
dissertation has dialogued with that literature and has contributed to better
understand multilateral diplomacy and multilateral trade diplomacy as
distinctive cases in the area. Moreover, one work has already tried a first
ethnographical approach to study the WTO sphere (Abélès 2011a; Abélès
2011b; Badaró 2011; Dematteo 2011). This dissertation provided a new
attempt to study the WTO while focusing exclusively in the lives and work of
the diplomats appointed to the organization. Additionally, new literature in the
field of cross-cultural studies has suggested to explore new venues of research
as well as creative ways to operationalize the concept of transculturation
(Welsch 1999; Millington 2007; Burke 2009; Nakata 2009; Witte 2011;
Sánchez 2015). This dissertation has proposed the WTO and its diplomatic
community as a venue of research, and has explored processes of change in
behaviors and practices that constitute examples of transculturation.
On the other hand, a pioneer work has offered a systematic study on
the participation of African diplomatic missions in the WTO (Apecu Laker
2014). This dissertation has built on that example, proposing a systematic
analysis for the case of Latin American countries. Furthermore, several
analysists have proposed an apparent ‘rise’ of Latin America in the global stage
in the last decades (The Economist 2010; Reid 2009; Rivera 2011). This
dissertation has studied whether and how such a rise had a concrete
manifestation in terms of participation and influence for the case of multilateral
trade diplomacy. Finally, common wisdom—as well as a long tradition of
literature on international relations, IOs studies, and international trade—have
not paid enough attention to the role of diplomatic representation as a source
of state influence in negotiations and decision-making processes in the context
of global governance and international organizations (Krasner 1976; Barkin
2006; Drezner 2007). This dissertation has made a case for the relevance of
diplomatic representation alongside structural factors to explain influence and
outcomes in the WTO.
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More concretely, it can be said that the main contributions of the
dissertation fall into three basic categories. The first one could be called an
‘anthropological’ contribution, the second one an ‘empirical’ contribution, and
the third one is of a theoretical sort.
The first main contribution was the depiction of the multilateral trade
community permitted by the research’s ethnographic approach. The
dissertation has shed light on revealing aspects of the daily life and work of the
delegates in charge of diplomatic representation to the WTO. It has analyzed
their dynamics of socialization, their process of adaptation and the different
layers it has, and the challenges they face in order to fulfill their mandates and
achieve the objectives set by their governments. The various asymmetries that
delegates experience in the WTO diplomatic community were highlighted.
Beyond the power asymmetries associated with the relative power of countries,
delegates face asymmetries of resources and asymmetries of awareness in the
field when engaging with—and trying to make sense of—the diplomatic
community. Asymmetries of awareness lead to asymmetries of strategies for
participation in the system, which also explain part of the differences of
influence that they are able to project in the community. Additionally, the
dissertation shows that the process of adaptation to the diplomatic community
is heterogeneous, multidirectional and ultimately rhizomatic—and so is the
transculturation process that it fosters in delegates. Nonetheless, there are
strong vectors of convergence for behaviors and practices. Such vectors are
marked by the diplomatic nature of the community, by the rule of consensus
that governs the organization, and by the pressure for efficiency that this
specific professional milieu fosters. Importantly, the ethnography underlined
the existence of two different but complementary components of the work of
delegates: the formal and the informal. Each component has its own rituals and
formulas, and delegates are to excel in both if they want to play an influential
role in the system. The contexts of both the International Geneva and the trade
diplomatic community do matter in understanding the extent and quality of the
relations between the WTO and its members. All this might be obvious to many
practitioners, but it is definitely not obvious to all, nor is it a more common
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topic in scholarly accounts on the field. Both scholarship and would-be
practitioners can benefit from this contribution alike.
The second main contribution was the ‘mapping’ of the Latin
American diplomatic missions that this dissertation has produced. Crossing
different sources, the research has built an extensive picture of the Latin
American missions for the two-decade period, comprising the resources,
practices, concrete participation, and achievements of diplomatic
representation in the system; highlighting strengths and weaknesses, and
analyzing links between resources and performance. A basic conclusion of this
‘mapping’ is that resources and good practices do translate into more effective
member participation in the system.
At the level of the missions, practices such as adequate policies for the
promotion and appointment of delegates, sufficient economic incentives,
regular and robust tenures in terms of length, fluid mission-capital
coordination, constancy in the repatriation of delegates to strengthen the back-
up office in the capital, among others, are of outmost importance. Compared
with general-purpose missions, WTO dedicated missions have clear
advantages in the system. Yet, regardless of the mission type, missions need to
be sizable in terms of personnel for a smooth and effective participation.
Interestingly, different institutional configurations—different chains of
command, for instance—can lead to equally good results. Conversely,
institutional arrangements alone are no guarantee of assertive participation. The
human factor—the qualities of the actors—has emerged as key for explaining
member influence in the system. “Swimming” in the diplomatic community
“as fish in the water” implies for delegates the mastery of both technical
knowledge and fine communicational skills.
Brazil and Mexico, the region’s “big ones,” proved to be examples of
good practices. Yet so can be said of other members from the region. For
instance, the participation of Chile and Colombia has been outstanding in the
two-decade period, and should serve as a model for many others in the
continent. Likewise, the achievements of Uruguay, Guatemala, El Salvador,
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among others, are great examples of how smaller members can play an active
and growing role in the multilateral trading system.
A helpful complement of this contribution is the missions’ profiles that
readers can find in the annex of the dissertation. These profiles compile all the
information gathered in the thesis regarding the missions that were part of the
scope of the research. The missions’ profiles furnish quick insight regarding
member involvement in the system and allow easy cross-member comparisons.
These tables could serve as a prototype to build missions’ profiles of the full
WTO membership on a regular basis, as well as of other diplomatic missions
vis-à-vis their engagement with other international organizations to benefit
both practitioners and scholars alike.
However, a regular diplomatic missions ‘monitoring’ of this kind
should consistently be supplied by external observers. The considerations on
missions-Secretariat relations referred to in Chapter 5 must always be kept in
mind. The WTO Secretariat might be very helpful for members—particularly
for developing countries—to bring trade-related technical assistance at the
level of the capitals. However, at the level of the diplomatic community, no
matter how badly a mission is run or how ill-prepared a delegate is for engaging
with the system, missions and delegates will remain being ‘the bosses’ in the
eyes of the Secretariat. Advice about the missions’ practices could also be
judged as insulting the members the same way it is to try to induce them into
consensuses. Assessments and recommendations on the missions’ performance
should therefore continue to be produced by independent sources, in
continuation to this dissertation's work.
Perhaps, a suggestive byproduct of the dissertation is that it invites to
take a fresh, unconventional look at the functioning of the multilateral trade
system. The lack of delivery of its negotiations branch has been a great
incentive for years to the production of reflections about how to reform the
system so that it works better. And quite naturally, a common focus in
proposals for reform is the role of the Secretariat. However, when re-
considering the fact that the WTO is a member-driven organization and that
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diplomatic missions play such a central role, then it is more clear that the
system’s outcomes equally depend on how ‘fit’ missions are, and on the input
they inject into the system. Indeed, the (institutional and human) performance
of the missions systemically affects the overall outcomes of the WTO, for
better or for worse. In other words, ‘reform’ or ‘improvement’ should not be
thought of as a Secretariat’s prerogative; the diplomatic missions ought to be
equally concerned. As long as members increase their commitment to the
system and continue leveling up to their peers in their institutional practices at
the missions’ level, the multilateral trade system is likely to grow more efficient
and interactive; and ultimately to grow stronger.
Finally, the third main contribution of the dissertation is the theoretical
discussion it has proposed throughout the text. The evidence presented here
contested the traditional view under which relative power is the single, main
factor explaining influence in international organizations. Such a view can be
condensed in the expression: ‘Rule it if you are mighty’. States rule or ‘govern’
IOs if they can. They are able to project influence in IOs if they are powerful
enough per se, which is normally a given variable in the international system
in the short and medium term. In fact, that is not always the case. Diplomatic
representation is the other side of the coin that has to be analyzed for explaining
influence in the realm of international organizations. Adequate representation
can turn into effective influence without the base of hard power. Naturally, it
is evident that big powers have unquestionable advantages for participating in
the multilateral system. However, on the one hand, their weight does not
automatically bring about influence and, on the other, small and middle-sized
members are not condemned to irrelevance. IOs scholarship should therefore
consider diplomatic representation as another source of state influence in IOs
in its own right. Although structural factors are fundamental to understand the
outcomes of multilateral diplomacy, the role of agency should not be neglected.
Thus, theoretical explanations should move away from the ‘rule it if
you are mighty’ towards the ‘rule it if you want it’. When members commit to
their diplomatic representation, they reach the core levels of the concentric
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circles of influence and they obtain better results overall. It is true that
commitment to the system does depend on government budgets, but not
exclusively. Moreover, commitment is less about budget than about the way
governments set their priorities, and about the awareness they have on the short
and long-term gains of a more effective involvement in the system. Stated
simply, members actually can ‘rule’—or ‘co-rule’—the WTO if they want. The
positive results by some small and middle-sized members in the international
trade system should encourage the rest in the coming years to take more steps
in this direction.
This work has tested ethnographic research as a tool to study
multilateral diplomacy, and it has seriously considered diplomatic
representation as a ‘new frontier’ of International Organizations studies.
Diplomatic representation in multilateral diplomacy is a topic that merits
increasing attention, and the opportunities for further research are promising.
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Annex. Missions’ Profiles According to Palacio
User’s guide
For specific sources refer to chapters 5 to 8.
Seats in General Council Regular seats in meetings of the General Council
Chain of command in the capital Either Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) or Ministry of Trade or equivalent
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) Average years
Non-ambassadors Average years
Total Average years
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) Years
Max Stay Rest Years
Mission
Mission Type Either General Purpose Mission (GPM) or WTO Dedicated Mission
Ambassadors' cycle Color change between grey and white means change of ambassador. NM: Not a member. Brown: no ambassador
Size (personnel) Number of delegates appointed to the mission. 2010-13 is an average
Women Percentage of female delegates (ambassadors and non-ambassadors)
Antiquity rate Percentage of delegates with more than one year of antiquity in the mission. 2010-14 is an average. In grey the weakest years (below 50%)
Participation
TNC Meetings Percentage of meetings were statements were made. If empty, no meetings took place that year. Years with only one meeting: 2007, 2010-13
TPR Meetings (questions) Percentage of meetings to which questions were sent in advance to the member under review
TPR Meetings (statements) Percentage of meetings in which statements were made
US TPRs (questions) Blank: no TPR that year. 1 : participation. x : absence
US TPRs (statements) Blank: no TPR that year. 1 : participation. x : absence
EU TPRs (questions) Blank: no TPR that year. 1 : participation. x : absence
EU TPRs (statements) Blank: no TPR that year. 1 : participation. x : absence
China TPRs (questions) Blank: no TPR that year. 1 : participation. x : absence
China TPRs (statements) Blank: no TPR that year. 1 : participation. x : absence
Disputes as Third Party Number of disputes that started each year
Disputes as Complainant Number of disputes initiated each year
Financial Arrears Blank: None. D: Debt from GATT. M: Under Administrative Measures. I: Inactive
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) Numbers: category of every WTO body. Colors: continuity in the same body. On black: body with highest hierarchy for each member. Blank: none
Discussant of TPRs Times by year. In grey: TPRs with two discussants. * : non-ambassadors
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Argentina
Chairs in detail
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 4
Chain of command in the capital MFA there is no Ministry of Trade or Equivalent (Ministry of Economy does have a trade division)
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 3,6
Non-ambassadors 4,4
Total 4,3
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 6,9
Max Stay Rest 8
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 8 7 7 7 8 7 7 7 10 9 9 8 10 10 9 8
Women 13% 14% 14% 14% 13% 14% 14% 14% 30% 33% 22% 13% 10% 10% 22% 25%
Antiquity rate 100% 86% 43% 88% 86% 100% 57% 50% 89% 67% 63% 80% 100% 67%
Participation
TNC Meetings 100% 83% 0% 43% 75% 100% 100% 0% 100% 100% 100%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 7% 0% 7% 0% 20% 7% 33% 56% 42% 40% 56% 71% 75% 44% 53% 54% 80% 57% 46%
TPR Meetings (statements) 38% 60% 38% 14% 18% 53% 20% 47% 63% 42% 40% 61% 65% 81% 44% 53% 69% 90% 86% 54%
US TPRs (questions) x x x 1 1 1 1 1 1
US TPRs (statements) 1 x 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (statements) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (questions) 1 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (statements) 1 1 1 1 1
Disputes as Third Party 2 1 2 1 1 5 2 2 3 6 6 6 1 1 7 7 2
Disputes as Complainant 1 1 1 1 4 1 5 1 3 2
Financial Arrears
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 4+5 4 5 5 5 ½3+5 5 5 5 5
Discussant of TPRs 2* 1 1
General-Purpose Mission
8,5
24%
79%
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
95-96 Sánchez 4 Com. Tr. & Env. 1995 Mr. Ruiz 5 Com. Safeguards
98-99 Mr. Marchetti 5 Com. Specific Commitments
2002 Mr. Lunazzi 5 Com. Safeguards
2004 Chiaradia (start) 3 Coun. Trade in Goods 2004 Mr. Bosch 5 Com. Specific Commitments
2009 Ms. Chaves 5 Com. S&P Meas.
2010 Mr. Serra 5 Com. Anti-Dumping
2012 Mr. Bardoneschi 5 Com. Specific Commitments
2014 Ms. Chaves 5 Com. Agriculture
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
95, Costa Rica (Niscovolos*) 02, Venezuela (Chiaradia) 13, Cameroon et al. (D'Alotto)
95, Thailand (Riaboi*)
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Bolivia
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 2
Chain of command in the capital MFA there is no Ministry of Trade or Equivalent
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 3,1
Non-ambassadors 2,6
Total 2,7
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 9,0
Max Stay Rest 6
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 5 5 5 4 3 3 3 5
Women 33% 50% 67% 67% 33% 67% 67% 33% 40% 40% 80% 75% 100% 100% 100% 80%
Antiquity rate 100% 67% 33% 33% 33% 100% 67% 40% 100% 40% 50% 67% 33% 100%
Participation
TNC Meetings 25% 33% 0% 71% 0% 100% 100% 100% 100% 0% 0%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 13% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 17% 28% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 0% 13% 0% 9% 27% 0% 13% 0% 0% 14% 22% 33% 0% 0% 6% 8% 0% 0% 0%
US TPRs (questions) x x x x x x x x x
US TPRs (statements) x x x x x x 1 x x
EU TPRs (questions) x x 1 x x 1 x x x
EU TPRs (statements) x x 1 x x 1 x x x
China TPRs (questions) 1 x x x x
China TPRs (statements) 1 x x x x
Disputes as Third Party 1
Disputes as Complainant
Financial Arrears D D
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5)
Discussant of TPRs 1
75%
75%
4
General-Purpose Mission
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
99, Philippines (Ávila)
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Brazil
Chairs in detail
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 4
Chain of command in the capital MFA but there is a Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 3,7
Non-ambassadors 3,0
Total 3,1
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 5,2
Max Stay Rest 7
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 11 11 11 11 12 13 12 12 14 11 14 24 24 21 18 16
Women 0% 0% 18% 18% 17% 15% 25% 17% 14% 9% 21% 21% 21% 24% 17% 13%
Antiquity rate 100% 55% 100% 83% 31% 67% 75% 57% 73% 64% 33% 100% 57% 67%
Participation
TNC Meetings 75% 100% 75% 57% 75% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 7% 13% 0% 8% 21% 7% 33% 63% 64% 100% 83% 83% 100% 80% 76% 85% 70% 93% 92%
TPR Meetings (statements) 13% 36% 63% 29% 25% 36% 20% 67% 75% 82% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 94% 100% 100% 100% 100%
US TPRs (questions) x 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
US TPRs (statements) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (statements) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (questions) 1 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (statements) 1 1 1 1 1
Disputes as Third Party 1 3 4 3 3 1 11 7 5 2 8 1 7 6 3 2 10 9 8
Disputes as Complainant 1 4 1 7 4 5 1 1 1 1 1
Financial Arrears
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 2+5 1 5 5 ½3 4+5 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
Discussant of TPRs 1+1* 1 2 1*
15%
73%
17
General-Purpose Mission WTO Dedicated Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
1996 Lafer 2 DSB 1996 Mr. Do Prado 5 Com. Subsidies & C. Meas.
1997 Lafer 1 General Council
1998 Mr. da Rocha 5 Com. Subsidies & C. Meas.
1999 Mr. da Costa e Silva 5 Com. Market Access
2001 Amorim (start) 3 Coun. Trade in Services
02-03 de Seixas 4 WG Rel. Tr. & Invest. 2002 Mr. Santos 5 WP Domestic Regulation
04-09 Ms. Thorstensen 5 Com. Rules of Origin
2010 Mr. Damico 5 Com. S&P Meas.
2011 Mr. Damico 5 Com. Import Lice.
2012 Mr. do Amaral 5 Com. TRIMS
2013 Mr. Marquardt-Bayer 5 Com. Agriculture
2014 Mr. Minoru 5 Com. Subsidies & C. Meas.
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
96, Venezuela (da Rocha*) 03, Thailand (Seixas Corrêa) 05, Egypt (Seixas Corrêa)
96, Singapore (Lafer) 05, Bolivia (Hugueney Filho)
07, Macao, China (Estivallet*)
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Chile
Chairs in detail
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 4
Chain of command in the capital MFA there is no Ministry of Trade or Equivalent
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 6,5
Non-ambassadors 3,9
Total 4,3
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 9,3
Max Stay Rest 6
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 5 7 7 6 6 6 7 5 6 5 6 7 7 7 6 6
Women 20% 29% 29% 33% 17% 17% 29% 20% 33% 40% 50% 14% 14% 14% 0% 50%
Antiquity rate 71% 100% 83% 67% 50% 86% 100% 67% 100% 67% 43% 100% 86% 83%
Participation
TNC Meetings 100% 100% 100% 100% 25% 100% 50% 0% 0% 100% 50%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 0% 0% 7% 8% 33% 13% 40% 20% 33% 33% 39% 56% 56% 40% 41% 77% 60% 67% 46%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 47% 14% 29% 25% 47% 13% 47% 13% 33% 40% 33% 56% 63% 47% 41% 77% 70% 67% 46%
US TPRs (questions) x 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
US TPRs (statements) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (statements) x 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (questions) 1 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (statements) 1 1 1 1 1
Disputes as Third Party 1 1 3 3 4 5 1 3 6 4 2 3 2 2
Disputes as Complainant 1 1 1 3 2 1 1
Financial Arrears
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 5 5 3 5 ½3+4 N N N N+5 ½N 2 1+5 2+5 5 5
Discussant of TPRs 1 1 1* 1 1 2 1 1 1
25%
77%
6
WTO Dedicated Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
95-96 Ms. Guarda 5 Com. Tech. Barriers to Tr.
1997 Guarda 3 Coun. for TRIPS
2000 Mr. Escudero 5 WP Domestic Regulation
2001 Jara (end) 3 Coun. Trade in Services
2001 Jara 4 Com. Tr. & Env.
02-05 Jara N SS Tr. in Services 2005 Ms. Novik 5 Com. Safeguards
2007 Matus (end) N SS Tr. & Envir.
2008 Matus 2 DSB
2009 Matus 1 General Council 2009 Mr. Lopeandia 5 WP GATS Rules
2011 Matus 2 TPRB 2011 Mr. Fresard 5 WP State Trading Enterpr.
2013 Mr. Sandoval 5 WP GATS Rules
2014 Mr. Sandoval 5 Com. Specific Commitments
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
95, EU (Guarda) 02, Hong Kong, China (Jara) 06, Uruguay (Matus) 12, Nicaragua (Matus)
96, Dom. Rep. (Guarda) 06, Hong Kong, China (Matus)
97, Paraguay (Sáez*) 07, Canada (Matus)
99, United States (Guarda) 09, Guatemala (Matus)
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Colombia
Chairs in detail
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 4
Chain of command in the capital Ministry of Trade, Industry and Turism
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 4,8
Non-ambassadors 4,2
Total 4,3
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 5,7
Max Stay Rest 6
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 5 5 5 5 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
Women 40% 40% 40% 40% 25% 60% 60% 80% 80% 100% 80% 40% 40% 40% 20% 60%
Antiquity rate 100% 100% 100% 75% 20% 100% 60% 100% 80% 80% 40% 100% 100% 80%
Participation
TNC Meetings 100% 83% 75% 57% 75% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 7% 0% 7% 17% 13% 0% 27% 44% 50% 40% 71% 89% 94% 50% 41% 69% 74% 73% 77%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 50% 50% 21% 33% 27% 13% 47% 50% 58% 40% 88% 89% 100% 56% 41% 69% 74% 80% 77%
US TPRs (questions) x 1 x 1 1 1 1 1 1
US TPRs (statements) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x x x 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (statements) x x 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (questions) 1 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (statements) 1 1 1 1 1
Disputes as Third Party 2 1 1 1 1 2 3 5 3 2 6 7 1 5 3 1
Disputes as Complainant 1 1 2 1
Financial Arrears
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 2 5 5 5 4 4 4+5 3 2 5 4+5 2 N
Discussant of TPRs 1 1 1* 1 1 2 1 1
40%
80%
5
WTO Dedicated Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
1995 Osorio 2 TPRB
97-99 Osorio 5 Com. Agriculture
2001 Gómez 4 Com. BofPs Restrs.
02-03 Gómez 4 WG Tr., Debt & Fin. 2003 Ms. Lozano 5 Com. Subsidies & C. Meas.
2005 Uribe 3 Coun. Trade in Services
2006 Uribe 2 TPRB
2008 Mr. Torres 5 Com. Specific Commitments
2010 Muñoz 4 Com. Tr. & Env. 2010 Ms. Jurado 5 WP State Trading Enterpr.
2012 Muñoz 2 TPRB
2014 Duque N SS Tr. in Services
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
96, New Zeland (Osorio) 03, El Salvador (Gómez) 07, European Union (Uribe) 10, Hong Kong, China (Muñoz)
97, EU (Osorio) 08, Mexico (Uribe) 14, Djibouti and Mauritius (Duque)
98, Trinidad and T. (Orozco*) 08, United States (Uribe)
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Costa Rica
Chairs in detail
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 4
Chain of command in the capital Ministry of Foreign Trade
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 22,0
Non-ambassadors 5,3
Total 7,1
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 22,0
Max Stay Rest 18
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 3 1 4 5 5 4 2 4 4 4 4 4 5 4 4 4
Women 67% 0% 0% 20% 20% 25% 0% 25% 0% 0% 0% 0% 20% 25% 25% 25%
Antiquity rate 100% 25% 80% 100% 100% 100% 50% 75% 100% 75% 100% 80% 100% 100%
Participation
TNC Meetings 75% 67% 50% 57% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 7% 20% 0% 25% 13% 22% 24% 31% 31% 35% 46% 50% 50% 31%
TPR Meetings (statements) 14% 0% 0% 14% 17% 0% 7% 20% 19% 25% 13% 22% 24% 31% 31% 41% 46% 55% 36% 38%
US TPRs (questions) x x 1 x 1 1 1 1 1
US TPRs (statements) x 1 1 x 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x x 1 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (statements) 1 x x 1 1 x 1 1 1
China TPRs (questions) 1 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (statements) x 1 1 1 1
Disputes as Third Party 3 1 3 1 1 3 3
Disputes as Complainant 1 1 1 1 1
Financial Arrears
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 3 4 4 4 4 4 4+5 4 N N N N N N N N N
Discussant of TPRs 1 1 1 1
25%
85%
4
GP Mission WTO Dedicated Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
1998 Saborío 3 Coun. Trade in Goods
99-03 Saborío 4 WG Transp. G. Procurement
04-05 Saborío 4 Com. RTAs 2004 Mr. Fernández 5 Com. Anti-Dumping
06-14 Saborío N SS DSB
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
98, Jamaica (Saborío) 05, Paraguay (Saborío) 14, Hong Kong, China (Saborío)
06, Israel (Saborío)
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Cuba
Seats in General Council 2
Chain of command in the capital MFA but there is a Min. Of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 3,5
Non-ambassadors 3,9
Total 3,8
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 4,8
Max Stay Rest 6
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 3 5 5 6 6 6 6 5 5 4 5 5 5 5 5 12
Women 33% 20% 20% 33% 33% 33% 50% 60% 60% 75% 60% 40% 40% 40% 40% 58%
Antiquity rate 20% 80% 50% 100% 83% 67% 100% 100% 50% 80% 40% 100% 100% 100%
Participation
TNC Meetings 100% 100% 50% 71% 100% 100% 100% 100% 0% 0% 50%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 7% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 17% 0% 6% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 5% 0% 8%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 7% 38% 29% 25% 13% 13% 33% 13% 33% 27% 11% 0% 13% 19% 12% 8% 20% 27% 23%
US TPRs (questions) 1 x x 1 1 x x 1 1
US TPRs (statements) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x x x 1 x x x x
EU TPRs (statements) x 1 x x 1 x 1 x x
China TPRs (questions) x x x x x
China TPRs (statements) 1 1 1 1 1
Disputes as Third Party 1 1 1 9 1 1 3 1
Disputes as Complainant 1
Financial Arrears
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5)
Discussant of TPRs
53%
55%
8,5
General-Purpose Mission
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Dominican Republic
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 2
Chain of command in the capital MFA but there is a Ministry of Industry and Trade
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 4,4
Non-ambassadors 5,3
Total 5,1
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 6,0
Max Stay Rest 20
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 2 2 3 3 3 6 6 5 4 4 11 11 11 4 4 7
Women 100% 100% 100% 100% 67% 67% 67% 80% 100% 100% 64% 64% 64% 50% 50% 86%
Antiquity rate 100% 67% 100% 67% 50% 83% 100% 100% 100% 27% 100% 100% 75% 75%
Participation
TNC Meetings 0% 0% 0% 29% 25% 100% 50% 0% 0% 0% 50%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 6% 0% 0% 6% 18% 15% 35% 60% 23%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 0% 0% 14% 0% 0% 13% 7% 13% 0% 13% 33% 28% 7% 44% 29% 23% 45% 60% 38%
US TPRs (questions) x x x x x x 1 1 1
US TPRs (statements) x x x x 1 x 1 1 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x x x x x 1 1 1
EU TPRs (statements) x x x x x 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (questions) x x x 1 x
China TPRs (statements) x x 1 1 1
Disputes as Third Party 1 1 1 1 2 2
Disputes as Complainant 1
Financial Arrears D D D M M M I M M I M D D D D D D D D
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5)
Discussant of TPRs 1 1 2
73%
67%
5,5
General-Purpose Mission WTO Mission
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
02, Mexico (Cuello) 08, Barbados (Hernández) 11, Jamaica (Piantini)
11, Ecuador (Piantini)
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Ecuador
Chairs in detail
Seats in General Council 2
Chain of command in the capital Ministry of Foreign Trade
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 2,7
Non-ambassadors 3,6
Total 3,4
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 5,7
Max Stay Rest 6
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type GPM
Ambassadors' cycle NM
Size (personnel) 1 2 2 3 3 2 2 9 9 8 6 5 5 5 5 8
Women 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 11% 11% 38% 50% 80% 40% 20% 20% 0%
Antiquity rate 0% 100% 33% 100% 100% 100% 11% 89% 63% 100% 60% 80% 80% 100%
Participation
TNC Meetings 75% 50% 25% 43% 50% 0% 100% 100% 0% 0% 50%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 7% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 8% 0% 11% 11% 25% 44% 24% 33% 35% 67% 54%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 7% 0% 0% 8% 20% 0% 27% 0% 8% 7% 28% 50% 63% 44% 24% 42% 60% 60% 54%
US TPRs (questions) x x x x 1 x 1 1 1
US TPRs (statements) x x x x 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x x x 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (statements) x x 1 x 1 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (questions) x x 1 x 1
China TPRs (statements) 1 1 1 1 1
Disputes as Third Party 1 1 2 1 1 2 2 1 5 1 9 5
Disputes as Complainant 1 1 1
Financial Arrears
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 5 5
Discussant of TPRs
8%
72%
6,5
WTO Dedicated Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
2002 Mr. Espinosa 5 Com. Anti-Dumping
2013 Mr. Jiménez 5 WP State Trading Enterpr.
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
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El Salvador
Chairs in detail
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 2
Chain of command in the capital Ministry of Economy
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 6,0
Non-ambassadors 3,6
Total 4,0
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 11,0
Max Stay Rest 12
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 2 5 5 6 3 3 3 5 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5
Women 100% 80% 80% 67% 33% 33% 33% 20% 75% 75% 50% 60% 60% 60% 60% 80%
Antiquity rate 0% 60% 67% 67% 100% 100% 40% 0% 100% 75% 80% 80% 80% 100%
Participation
TNC Meetings 0% 33% 0% 71% 75% 100% 50% 100% 0% 100% 0%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 7% 8% 0% 0% 0% 0% 6% 19% 15% 15% 33% 15%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 7% 27% 17% 13% 39% 56% 38% 38% 25% 54% 45% 60% 38%
US TPRs (questions) x x x x x x 1 1 1
US TPRs (statements) x x x 1 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x x x 1 x x 1 1
EU TPRs (statements) x x x x 1 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (questions) x x x x x
China TPRs (statements) x x x x x
Disputes as Third Party 2 1 1 1 4 4 1 2
Disputes as Complainant 1
Financial Arrears
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 5 ½5 4 4
Discussant of TPRs 1
70%
96%
5
WTO Dedicated MissionGP Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
1995 Saurel 5 WP Prof. Services
1996 Saurel (start) 5 WP Prof. Services
2013 Lima 4 Com. RTAs
2014 Lima 4 Com. Bud.Fin.Adm.
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
12, Uruguay (Lima)
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Guatemala
Chairs in detail
Seats in General Council 2
Chain of command in the capital Ministry of Economy
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 6,0
Non-ambassadors 5,1
Total 5,3
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 10,0
Max Stay Rest 11
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 2 2 2 6 6 6 6 6 6 4 6 6 6 5 6 7
Women 0% 0% 0% 67% 50% 67% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 40% 50% 57%
Antiquity rate 100% 100% 0% 83% 83% 67% 100% 100% 50% 33% 100% 100% 100% 67%
Participation
TNC Meetings 25% 0% 0% 29% 0% 100% 100% 100% 100% 0% 100%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 7% 0% 14% 0% 8% 0% 11% 0% 6% 20% 24% 0% 0% 7% 23%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 7% 7% 21% 13% 8% 7% 28% 17% 38% 27% 29% 15% 10% 47% 38%
US TPRs (questions) x x x x 1 x 1 x 1
US TPRs (statements) x x x x 1 1 1 x 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x x 1 1 x 1 x 1
EU TPRs (statements) x x 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (questions) x x x x 1
China TPRs (statements) 1 x 1 x 1
Disputes as Third Party 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 3 2 5 9 4
Disputes as Complainant 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Financial Arrears D
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 5 N N N N N N N
Discussant of TPRs
54%
88%
6,5
GP Mission WTO Dedicated Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
2006 Mr. Alvarado 5 Com. Import Lice.
07-13 Sperisen-Yurt 3 Prep. Com. Tr. Facilit.
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
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Haiti
Seats in General Council 2
Chain of command in the capital MFA but there is a Ministry of Trade and Industry
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 2,9
Non-ambassadors 4,3
Total 3,9
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 6,0
Max Stay Rest 7
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 3 3 2 2 4 4 4 2 2 2 1 2 2 6 6 3
Women 33% 33% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 17% 17% 0%
Antiquity rate 100% 50% 100% 75% 100% 100% 50% 50% 100% 0% 50% 100% 33% 100%
Participation
TNC Meetings 25% 17% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 100% 0% 0%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 0% 0% 7% 0% 0% 7% 7% 7% 0% 0% 0% 6% 19% 19% 18% 0% 10% 0% 15%
US TPRs (questions) x x x x x x x x x
US TPRs (statements) x x x x x 1 1 x 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x x x x x x x x
EU TPRs (statements) x x x x x x 1 x x
China TPRs (questions) x x x x x
China TPRs (statements) x x x x x
Disputes as Third Party
Disputes as Complainant
Financial Arrears D M
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5)
Discussant of TPRs
11%
64%
4,5
GP MissionGeneral-Purpose Mission WTO Dedicated Mission
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394
Honduras
Chairs in detail
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 2
Chain of command in the capital Secretary of Industry and Trade
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 11,5
Non-ambassadors 9,2
Total 9,9
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 15,0
Max Stay Rest 15
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 5 5 5 4 4 5 5 5 5
Women 50% 50% 50% 67% 67% 67% 67% 40% 40% 40% 50% 50% 60% 60% 60% 40%
Antiquity rate 100% 100% 33% 100% 100% 100% 60% 100% 100% 100% 100% 80% 100% 100%
Participation
TNC Meetings 25% 17% 0% 43% 0% 100% 100% 100% 0% 0% 100%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 8% 0% 6% 11% 6% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 23%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 7% 0% 0% 0% 0% 7% 20% 7% 17% 7% 22% 39% 63% 81% 44% 15% 40% 67% 54%
US TPRs (questions) x x x x x x x x 1
US TPRs (statements) 1 x x 1 1 x 1 1 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x x x 1 1 x x x
EU TPRs (statements) x x x x 1 1 1 x 1
China TPRs (questions) x 1 x x x
China TPRs (statements) x 1 x x 1
Disputes as Third Party 1 1 4 1 3 1 1 5 1 3 5
Disputes as Complainant 1 1 1 1 2 1 1
Financial Arrears
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 3 ½3 N
Discussant of TPRs 1 1
50%
80%
5
WTO Dedicated Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
2012 Castillo 3 Coun. for TRIPS
2013 Castillo (end) 3 Coun. Trade in Goods
2014 Castillo N SS TRIPS
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
02, Dominican R. (Castillo) 14, Panama (Castillo)
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Mexico
Chairs in detail
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 4
Chain of command in the capital Secretary of Economy
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 7,0
Non-ambassadors 5,4
Total 5,6
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 10,0
Max Stay Rest 12
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 7 8 8 8 7 7 7 6 8 10 9 9 9 8 8 10
Women 43% 38% 38% 38% 29% 14% 14% 17% 25% 20% 22% 22% 22% 50% 50% 40%
Antiquity rate 88% 100% 75% 100% 86% 100% 67% 38% 80% 78% 100% 89% 75% 100%
Participation
TNC Meetings 100% 67% 75% 100% 75% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 29% 13% 33% 53% 28% 44% 47% 75% 47% 69% 65% 64% 54%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 13% 29% 7% 17% 20% 0% 36% 31% 33% 47% 39% 44% 47% 63% 53% 62% 65% 57% 54%
US TPRs (questions) x x x 1 1 1 1 1 1
US TPRs (statements) 1 x x 1 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x x 1 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (statements) x 1 1 1 1 1 1 x 1
China TPRs (questions) 1 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (statements) 1 1 1 1 1
Disputes as Third Party 3 6 3 1 5 12 6 3 2 5 4 3 6 4 3 3 5 1
Disputes as Complainant 2 3 3 1 1 3 2 1 1 3 1 2
Financial Arrears
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 3 5 ½N N+5 N+5 N+5 N N N N N 2
Discussant of TPRs 1* 2 1 1* 1* 1 1 2
44%
82%
9
WTO Dedicated Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
2002 Pérez Motta 3 Coun. for TRIPS
2003 Mr. Dorantes 5 Com. Tech. Barriers to Tr.
2004 Pérez Motta (start) N NG on Rules
06-13 de Mateo N SS Tr. in Services 2006 Mr. Dorantes 5 Com. S&P Meas.
2007 Mr. Klein 5 Com. Subsidies & C. Meas.
2008 Mr. Huerta 5 Com. Anti-Dumping
2014 de Mateo 2 DSB
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
95 Slovak Rep. (Barba*) 00, Bahrain (Barba*) 05, Ecuador (de Mateo) 11, Paraguay (de Mateo)
96, Colombia (de la Peña) 04, Belize & Suriname (Diego-Fernández*) 07, Turkey (de Mateo) 11, European Union (de Mateo)
96, El Salvador (de la Peña)
98, Uruguay (de la Peña)
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396
Nicaragua
Chairs in detail
Seats in General Council 2
Chain of command in the capital MFA but there is a Ministry of Development, Industry and Trade
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 3,7
Non-ambassadors 4,4
Total 4,2
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 6,0
Max Stay Rest 13
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 6 8 7 6 5 5 5 5 4
Women 0% 0% 0% 67% 33% 33% 33% 33% 50% 57% 50% 40% 40% 40% 40% 25%
Antiquity rate 67% 67% 33% 67% 67% 100% 50% 63% 100% 83% 60% 100% 60% 100%
Participation
TNC Meetings 75% 33% 0% 14% 25% 100% 50% 0% 0% 0% 0%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 8% 0% 0% 6% 6% 6% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 13% 13% 8% 7% 18% 28% 6% 13% 0% 0% 0% 0% 8%
US TPRs (questions) x x x x x x x x x
US TPRs (statements) x x x 1 1 x x x x
EU TPRs (questions) x x x x 1 1 1 x x
EU TPRs (statements) x x x x x 1 1 x x
China TPRs (questions) x x x x x
China TPRs (statements) x x x x x
Disputes as Third Party 1 1 2 1 1 2 4 3 2
Disputes as Complainant 1
Financial Arrears D D D D D M M M
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 5
Discussant of TPRs
33%
91%
4,5
General-Purpose Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
2003 Mr. Urbina 5 WP GATS Rules
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
Page 397
397
Panama
Chairs in detail
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 2
Chain of command in the capital Ministry of Trade and Industry
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 3,4
Non-ambassadors 4,3
Total 3,9
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 5,0
Max Stay Rest 11
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle NM NM
Size (personnel) 3 2 3 2 2 2 3 3 4 4 3 2 3 3 3 3
Women 33% 100% 67% 50% 50% 50% 33% 33% 50% 75% 33% 0% 33% 33% 0% 67%
Antiquity rate 50% 67% 100% 100% 100% 67% 67% 75% 75% 33% 100% 67% 100% 67%
Participation
TNC Meetings 25% 17% 0% 0% 0% 100% 50% 0% 0% 0% 0%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 8% 0% 0% 0% 13% 13% 6% 0% 5% 0% 0%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 6% 17% 0% 6% 6% 6% 25% 18% 0% 10% 0% 25%
US TPRs (questions) x x x x x x 1 x x
US TPRs (statements) x x x 1 x x 1 x 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x x x 1 x 1 x x
EU TPRs (statements) x x x x 1 x 1 x x
China TPRs (questions) x x x x x
China TPRs (statements) x x x x x
Disputes as Third Party 1 1 4 1 1
Disputes as Complainant 1 1 1 2 1 1
Financial Arrears
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 4 3+½N
Discussant of TPRs 1
33%
73%
3
WTO Dedicated MissionGP Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
2010 Suescum 4 Com. RTAs
2013 Suescum 3 Coun. for TRIPS
2013 Suescum (end) N SS TRIPS
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
09, Guyana (Harris)
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398
Paraguay
Chairs in detail
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 2
Chain of command in the capital MFA but there is a Ministry of Industry and Trade
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 3,8
Non-ambassadors 3,8
Total 3,8
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 6,1
Max Stay Rest 7
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 3 4 4 3 3 6 5 6 5 6 4 4 4 4 4 5
Women 0% 0% 0% 33% 33% 50% 20% 17% 40% 33% 25% 50% 50% 50% 50% 0%
Antiquity rate 75% 100% 67% 67% 50% 80% 83% 80% 83% 75% 25% 100% 100% 100%
Participation
TNC Meetings 75% 50% 25% 57% 50% 100% 100% 0% 100% 100% 100%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 17% 5% 20% 23%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 0% 14% 0% 0% 13% 0% 0% 0% 0% 21% 11% 0% 6% 13% 0% 25% 5% 27% 31%
US TPRs (questions) x x x x x x x x 1
US TPRs (statements) x x x x x x x x x
EU TPRs (questions) x x x x x x x x x
EU TPRs (statements) x x 1 x x x x x x
China TPRs (questions) x x x x x
China TPRs (statements) x x x x x
Disputes as Third Party 1 2 2 5 4 1 1 2
Disputes as Complainant
Financial Arrears M M M M I M
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 4 3
Discussant of TPRs 1
22%
38%
4,5
General-Purpose Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
2010 González 4 WG Tr., Debt & Fin.
2011 González 3 Coun. for TRIPS
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
02, Guatemala (Ramírez)
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399
Peru
Chairs in detail
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 2
Chain of command in the capital MFA but there is a Min. of Foreign Trade and Turism
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 2,5
Non-ambassadors 4,3
Total 3,8
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 4,8
Max Stay Rest 7
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 4 6 6 8 9 9 4 9 10 10 9 10 10 7 8 8
Women 25% 17% 17% 25% 33% 33% 50% 44% 40% 40% 44% 30% 30% 14% 13% 50%
Antiquity rate 33% 100% 25% 89% 100% 25% 33% 90% 100% 67% 80% 90% 57% 88%
Participation
TNC Meetings 75% 33% 25% 57% 0% 0% 50% 100% 0% 0% 100%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 29% 0% 0% 0% 8% 0% 11% 18% 31% 25% 35% 38% 45% 21% 54%
TPR Meetings (statements) 0% 33% 25% 0% 0% 29% 0% 0% 6% 8% 7% 11% 12% 31% 13% 29% 38% 50% 29% 54%
US TPRs (questions) x x x x 1 x 1 1 1
US TPRs (statements) x x x x 1 x 1 1 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x 1 x 1 1 1 1 x
EU TPRs (statements) x x 1 x 1 1 1 1 1
China TPRs (questions) x x 1 1 1
China TPRs (statements) x x 1 1 1
Disputes as Third Party 1 2 1 1 3 2 6 3
Disputes as Complainant 1 1 1
Financial Arrears M M M
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 5 5 4
Discussant of TPRs 1* 1
31%
70%
8
General-Purpose Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
1997 Mr. Paulinich 5 Com. TRIMS
2000 Mr. Voto 5 Com. Agriculture
2012 Mr. Rossi 4 WG Tr. & Transf. of Tech.
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
96, Brazil (Paulinich*)
99, Bolivia (Voto-Bernales)
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400
Uruguay
Chairs in detail
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 4
Chain of command in the capital MFA there is no Ministry of Trade or Equivalent
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 5,4
Non-ambassadors 5,1
Total 5,5
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 6,3
Max Stay Rest 8
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 7 7 7 8 9 9 9 7 7 7 9 9 9 4 6 5
Women 29% 29% 29% 38% 33% 22% 22% 29% 43% 57% 33% 33% 33% 50% 33% 20%
Antiquity rate 57% 100% 38% 89% 89% 100% 86% 71% 71% 67% 100% 100% 75% 67%
Participation
TNC Meetings 75% 17% 50% 86% 50% 100% 100% 100% 0% 100% 50%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 47% 7% 27% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 13% 0%
TPR Meetings (statements) 13% 7% 38% 0% 33% 80% 27% 73% 38% 17% 27% 24% 44% 31% 19% 12% 8% 37% 67% 54%
US TPRs (questions) x x x x x x x x x
US TPRs (statements) x 1 x 1 1 1 1 1 1
EU TPRs (questions) x x 1 1 x x x x x
EU TPRs (statements) 1 x 1 1 x 1 x x 1
China TPRs (questions) x x x x x
China TPRs (statements) 1 1 x 1 1
Disputes as Third Party 1 1 3 2 3 2 1
Disputes as Complainant 1
Financial Arrears
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 3 3 5+5 2 1 ½N N N N+5 N+5 N+5 ½N+5 4
Discussant of TPRs 1 1 1
27%
75%
5,5
General-Purpose Mission WTO Dedicated Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
1999 Pérez 3 Coun. for TRIPS
2000 Pérez 3 Coun. Trade in Goods
2001 Mr. Ehlers 5 Com. S&P Meas.
2001 Mr. Cayrus 5 WP GATS Rules
2002 Pérez 2 DSB
2003 Pérez 1 General Council
2004 Valles (end) N NG on Rules
05-09 Valles N NG on Rules 07-10 Ms. Csukasi 5 Com. Agriculture
2010 Valles (start) N NG on Rules
2014 Pírez 4 Com. RTAs
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
07, Japan (Valles) 13, Viet Nam (Pírez)
14, Mongolia (Pírez)
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401
Venezuela
Chairs in detail
TPR discussants in detail
Seats in General Council 2
Chain of command in the capital MFA but there is a Ministry of Trade
Delegates turnover
Ambassadors (average years) 3,3
Non-ambassadors 3,8
Total 3,7
Max. Stay Ambassadors (years) 5,4
Max Stay Rest 10
Mission 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Mission Type
Ambassadors' cycle
Size (personnel) 5 5 6 8 8 8 8 7 7 7 8 5 5 5 6 11
Women 40% 40% 33% 38% 38% 25% 25% 57% 57% 57% 25% 20% 0% 0% 17% 27%
Antiquity rate 100% 50% 38% 100% 63% 100% 57% 57% 100% 25% 100% 80% 100% 33%
Participation
TNC Meetings 50% 50% 25% 43% 75% 100% 100% 100% 0% 0% 50%
TPR Meetings (questions) 0% 7% 13% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 19% 33% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
TPR Meetings (statements) 13% 29% 38% 0% 8% 7% 7% 0% 50% 50% 13% 6% 6% 6% 25% 12% 23% 25% 27% 0%
US TPRs (questions) x x x 1 x x x x x
US TPRs (statements) 1 x x 1 x x 1 x x
EU TPRs (questions) x x x x 1 x x x x
EU TPRs (statements) x 1 x x 1 x 1 x x
China TPRs (questions) x x x x x
China TPRs (statements) x 1 1 1 x
Disputes as Third Party 2 1 1 10 1 1
Disputes as Complainant 1
Financial Arrears M M M M M
Chairs (cat. 1 to 5) 4 4 5
Discussant of TPRs 1* 1 1*
24%
79%
8,5
General-Purpose Mission
Year Delegate R. Body Year Delegate R. Body
97-98 Corrales 4 WG Transp. G. Procurement
2000 Mr. Hernández 5 Com. TRIMS
Ambassadors Non-ambassadors
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
96, Canada (Misle*)
97, Mexico (Corrales)
99, Romania (Hernández*)
Page 403
403
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Curriculum Vitae
Juan Fernando Palacio was born in Cañasgordas, Colombia, in 1983. He
studied economics and political science with a focus on international affairs at
Universidad EAFIT in Medellín, Colombia. Juan has worked for the private
sector and as part of consultancy projects in market analysis. He has worked
for Universidad EAFIT, where he lectured courses on European Integration,
International Economic Environment, and Geopolitics. Further, he has worked
as an external lecturer of the courses International Economic Environment and
World Politics at Universidad de Antioquia and at Corporación Universitaria
San Martín in Medellín and Turbo. Juan has written a book about regional
integration in Latin America and several peer-reviewed articles on
macroeconomic analysis, economic development, history of economic thought,
geopolitics, as well as Colombian foreign policy. He has been a coordinator of
academic journals at Universidad EAFIT, a board member of the Association
of Colombian Researchers in Switzerland (ACÍS), and a board member and
part-time journalist for the Ibero-American community on-line magazine
PuntoLatino in Switzerland.
