ABSTRACT
Since its establishment on 1 January 1995 the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has attracted considerable interest from scholars, practitioners, governments, non-governmental organisations and grassroots movements. Perhaps the pinnacle of this attention was witnessed in late November, early December 1999 at the WTO’s Third Ministerial Meeting in Seattle. The mass demonstrations that accompanied the Ministerial Meeting, not only in Seattle but also in many major cities across the globe, ensured that the Meeting and the WTO became the subject of much media attention and speculation. Yet the demonstrations and the media attention reflected, not a spontaneous outburst of popular protest, but rather one dimension, albeit the most spectacular, of a growing process of opposition to a global economic agenda seemingly devoid of social, environmental and developmental sensitivity.
