Contestation Overshoot

Abstract

This chapter surveys the demands made towards the WTO during the Doha Round by rising powers and twenty of the most influential trade-related transnational NGOs. It also compares these to the demands of established powers. Using techniques from qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis, it analyses these actors’ substantive policy demands, and the argumentative justifications that they provide for their demands. It finds that while the rising powers are largely satisfied with the institutional status quo, they are strongly dissatisfied with existing policy content. Their demands reveal a social purpose that can be described as developmental liberalism. In this approach they have found allies mostly in market-critical civil society organizations.