Multilateral Institution-Building in a Neo-Liberal Era: The Case of Competition Policy

After years of discussion in working groups, competition policy became an official agenda item for world trade negotiations in November 2001 when the Doha Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) was launched. Less than two years later, competition policy was dropped from the negotiating table at the September 2003 Cancun WTO Ministerial. While most of the attention on the Cancun Ministerial had to do with North–South divisions on agriculture, the collapse of the ministerial had as much to do with the rejection by Southern countries of new disciplines in four areas (the Singapore issues), of which competition policy was one. For many trade observers, it may seem unusual for Southern countries to reject competition policy, an area of negotiations that would appear to be in their interest. Competition policy has historically been concerned with reining in the excessive market power of large corporations as manifested in cartels, restrictive business practices, and abuses of market power. Whereas international trade agreements to date have focused on restricting the capabilities of governments, competition policy could be seen as an important means of regulating the private sector at the international level. This is of particular interest given a wave of cross-border mergers and acquisitions in the 1990s.

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