ABSTRACT
In mid-December 2005 the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) primary decision-making body – the ministerial conference – met for only the sixth time since the organisation’s creation just a decade earlier. The venue for this biennial meeting was Hong Kong; and the task at hand to inject energy into an increasingly delayed and periodically fractious Round of trade negotiations – the so-called Doha Development Agenda (DDA). Hong Kong was to be the first time trade ministers had gathered for a full conference since the collapse of the Cancún meeting a little over two years earlier; indeed, prior to the ministerial, two out of the WTO’s first five ministerial conferences had broken down and, in the current Round, only the conference launching the DDA (in Doha in November 2001) had ended successfully. Given this backdrop it was understandable that many approached Hong Kong with some trepidation. Few relished a repeat of the heightened political contestation that caused the breakdown of the Seattle (1999) and Cancún meetings and the consequences that a collapse in Hong Kong might have on the DDA.
