The WTO-led system of global governance: tactical options and strategic debates amongst civil society organisations worldwide

The ‘Mobilisation against Globalisation’ that caught world public attention in Seattle drew on old and new, local, national, regional and international actions and campaigns on many issues over many years and included representatives from African countries. However, the major powers and the WTO secretariat quickly recovered their equilibrium. What is disturbing about the detailed description the overt manipulations of the proceedings and the participants was how susceptible African governments are to divisive tactics and pressures.

This study examines the aims and implications of a wide range of tactical approaches being pursued within the diverse organisations engaged on these global institutions and issues. Some of the more significant strategic challenges posed by such tactical approaches are identified, ‘forward linkages’ are drawn out along with the logic propelling such tactical engagements towards broader and more proactive strategies. The paper begins by analysing the immediate, limited question of the institutional reform of the WTO itself.

The paper concludes that:

• in order for organisations critical of the current global system to be consistent with their own analyses and principles, they are drawn towards an ever-wider set of strategic challenges and broader perspectives
• political analyses and engagements ‘on the ground’ should at the outset actually invert the process of relating immediate and limited tactics to longer-term strategic aims
• complex relationships exist between immediate tactics and broader strategic aims
• a genuine multilateral rules-based system is certainly desirable and necessary because it can provide protection for the weak against the strong
• not challenging and changing the currently dominant global economic system will lead to worse than ‘anarchy’
• creating an alternative requires conviction about the necessity for change, together with incisive investigation and analysis, effective interventions, and united or co-ordinated actions by ever-expanding global peoples movements