While the GATT rules negotiated in the 1960s and 1970s provided for
      various forms of preferential treatment for developing countries,
      including enhanced access to industrialized countries’ markets and less
      rigorous application of rules and disciplines, the new environment of the
      WTO is much more demanding. It sometimes obliges them to shoulder burdens
      that are not shared by other countries that joined in earlier decades.
           This chapter reviews the evolving character of GATT and WTO
      accessions, as well as the changing approaches taken towards developing
      and transitional economies in the global trade regime. It does so by
      examining the shifting emphasis upon three distinct dimensions of the
      system: the height of global tariff walls and other border measures, the
      width of country membership in the system, and the depth of issues that
      fall within its jurisdiction. It is my argument that after the major
      industrialized countries had all joined the GATT their policies regarding
      the width of the regime (i.e., accession) were largely determined by their
      priorities along the other two dimensions. Concerns over the height of the
      tariff wall dominated trade negotiations among the industrialized
      countries from the 1950s through the 1970s, and depth has been their main
      concern since the 1980s. Accession was relatively easy back when height
      was the chief concern, and the small markets of the developing countries
      attracted little attention. Quite the opposite is true today, now that new
      issues are under debate and the major players miss no opportunity to set a
      precedent. This desire to set precedents can greatly complicate the
      accessions of new countries. The demands made in each successive
      negotiation tend to increase, irrespective of the specific status or
      conditions of the acceding country.
           While the WTO is approaching universal membership, its approach
      towards accession is far different from that of most other international
      organizations. These institutions generally operate under a principle by
      which, in the absence of truly egregious political problems or especially
      intractable diplomatic difficulties, all sovereign states have a
      presumptive right of membership. There may be agreements to sign, dues to
      pay, and other obligations to meet, but the process of accession is
      neither burdensome nor lengthy. It will generally involve little or no
      formal scrutiny of the country’s existing laws and policies, and even
      fewer demands for changes in these laws and policies (at least as an
      initial condition of membership). Examples of such universalist
      institutions include the United Nations, the International Labor
      Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the
      World Health Organization. By contrast, the WTO operates more like a club
      to which countries can claim no presumption of membership, and must
      instead meet whatever standards and demands might be set by the existing
      members. In this respect it is more akin to the Organization for Economic
      Cooperation Development. Even the club metaphor may be too gentle from the
      perspective of acceding countries’ diplomats, for whom accession to the
      WTO can sometimes seem more like the hazing rituals of college
      fraternities. Perhaps the only international economic body that places
      higher demands on prospective members is the European Union, which
      generally requires major realignments of a country’s laws, policies, and
      institutions, that can take more than a decade to negotiate.
           The process of acceding to the WTO is a deliberately one-sided
      affair, with all of the requests and demands coming from the existing
      members and the full burden of adjustment falling on the acceding country.
      The applicant is not entitled to request additional benefits or
      concessions in excess of those stipulated in the WTO agreements, nor can
      it seek tariff concessions or services commitments from the existing
      members. WTO Article XII and its GATT predecessor (Article XXXIII)
      establish a framework within which accession negotiations are conducted.
      The deliberately spare language of this article provides that “any state
      or separate customs territory possessing full autonomy in the conduct of
      its external commercial relations ... may accede to this Agreement, on
      terms to be agreed between it and the WTO.” The provision does not specify
      the precise commitments expected from acceding countries, nor does it
      establish clear standards for which compliance is sought or identify the
      scope and extent of demands that could be made. The rules are marked by
      ambiguities that place the entire accession process in a negotiating
      context. This ambiguity is in some sense positive, insofar as it allows
      for a degree of flexibility, but — for reasons discussed below — the
      leading members of the institution are much less inclined to employ that
      flexibility now than they were in decades past.
           Put this way, one might rhetorically ask why countries are willing to
      subject themselves to such a process. The costs and benefits of acceding
      to the WTO can be properly understood only if one views the advantages of
      membership in their larger context. It can be somewhat misleading and even
      disheartening to employ the common terminology of trade negotiators, in
      which the commitments that countries make are deemed to be “concessions”
      and hence imply that the country is surrendering something of value. These
      unfortunate terms seem to cast trade relations in a zero-sum,
      neo-mercantilist framework in which any one country’s gain can come only
      at another country’s loss. The ultimate objective of accession is to
      enhance a country’s competitiveness within a global economy that —
      notwithstanding the archaic terminology that negotiators employ— offers
      opportunities for mutually beneficial trade and investment. One may,
      however, legitimately question whether the current approach adequately
      balances the needs of the regime with the capacities of the acceding
      countries, and whether it encourages or complicates the process of
      economic reform.
      
      The Evolving Geometry of GATT & WTO Accessions
           Let us begin by reviewing the evolution of the global trading regime
      in the decades since the Second World War. The regime’s treatment of
      developing countries and non-market economies has changed markedly over
      the years, primarily in response to the changing priorities in trade
      relations among the industrialized countries. Those changes can be
      illustrated in geometric form.
           As portrayed in Figure 1, the shape of the WTO regime is like a
      three-dimensional object whose facets are analogous to the height, depth,
      and width of a cube. The first of these dimensions is the most
      traditional. It can be thought of as the tariff wall, although tariffs are
      not the only type of barrier at issue. The various border measures that
      countries impose on imports, as well as beyond-the-border measures through
      which governments intervene in markets, can be range from high (more
      restrictive or interventionist) to low (less restrictive or
      interventionist). The principal aim of most trade agreements is to bring
      down the height of this wall through tariff reductions and related
      concessions. The second dimension is the width, which measures the extent
      of WTO membership. It can be either narrow (many countries remain outside
      the system) or wide (most or all counties are in). The third dimension —
      the depth — is defined by the range of issues that fall within the
      jurisdiction of trade rules. This dimension can be either shallow (trade
      is defined solely as the cross-border movement of goods) or deep (trade is
      defined expansively to include a greater range of issues and measures).
           All three of these dimensions have changed over the course of GATT
      and WTO history. To simplify, the major focus of attention has shifted
      from the first dimension to the third. Trade policy was once devoted
      solely to the regulation of border measures, whether unilaterally or
      through international agreements. The GATT negotiations concentrated
      primarily on the height of the tariff wall, and the earliest talks made
      the most dramatic progress towards its reduction. Attention began to turn
      towards other matters by the mid-1960s, but it was not until the Uruguay
      Round (1986-1994) that the major players paid more attention to the depth
      of the system than they did to its height. Both in the early and the late
      history of GATT, however, these two dimensions mattered more to the
      leading countries than did the width of the system. The GATT started with
      less than two dozen countries that nevertheless accounted for the majority
      of trade in a world recovering from war. The countries inside the system
      have always been responsible for more trade than countries outside of it,
      and in most cases the individual applicants have been quite small. This
      smallness has had very different implications for the treatment of
      applicants at different periods of GATT/WTO history, as is discussed
below.
           When Height Mattered Most: Accession and Succession, 1949-1979
           The illustration in Figure 2 emphasizes the principal direction of
      GATT negotiations in the early years of the regime, when much of the
      protectionist and interventionist detritus that accumulated in the pre-war
      years had yet to be removed. Average tariff rates in the years immediately
      following the Second World War were much higher than they had been just
      after the First World War, and the most immediate task — in addition to
      reconstruction, the elimination of exchange controls, and the “dollar
      shortage” — was to bring tariffs below confiscatory levels. The GATT was
      more successful in this enterprise than many feared it would be, and on a
      percentage basis the tariff cuts in the first few years were much greater
      than those achieved in the ensuing decades.
           The GATT accessions during these early years were conducted as one
      might expect in a system dominated by considerations of height: The
      countries that accounted for larger shares of actual or anticipated trade
      attracted much greater attention than did the smaller states. This was
      especially true before the Kennedy Round (1962-1967) and the advent of the
      formula-cut approach to tariff negotiations. At a time when talks were
      still conducted under the labor-intensive method of request and offer, the
      rational negotiator in Geneva would be well-advised to concentrate on
      larger and wealthier countries. It was in the interests of the original
      GATT countries such as Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United
      States to set relatively high standards in the accessions of other large
      countries such as Italy (acceded in 1949), Sweden (1949), Germany (1951),
      and Japan (1955), but they had much less incentive to bargain hard with
      smaller acceding countries.
           The first set of accession negotiations was conducted in the Annecy
      Round in 1949, when ten new countries sought adherence to the GATT. The
      applicants were obliged in their protocols of accession to accept the
      rules of the GATT, abide by additional commitments made by contracting
      parties in the Annecy round, and negotiate with existing Contracting
      parties to establish their own schedules of concessions. The accessions
      negotiated in the Annecy Round set two important precedents. In the great
      majority of the GATT accessions, the applicant’s “entry fee” was
      negotiated concurrently with one of the eight rounds of multilateral trade
      negotiations conducted under the auspices of the GATT. This eased the
      domestic politics of accessions for many countries, insofar as their
      negotiators could seek tariff concessions or other commitments from the
      existing countries as soon as their own accession negotiations were
      completed. (That same rule has not been applied in the WTO for the simple
      reason that there has not yet been a round conducted by the new
      organization.) Furthermore, the concessions made by the Annecy Round
      applicants were not particularly onerous, involving relatively small
      numbers of tariff concessions. Most of the accessions through the end of
      the Tokyo Round (1973-1979) followed a similar pattern, and were
      comparatively easy for smaller applicant countries.
           Over the ensuing half-century of GATT experience, the Contracting
      parties developed a fairly regular process for GATT accessions. The basic
      outlines of this process remain in effect today; from a purely procedural
      standpoint, the only major difference is that a wider array of issues are
      subject to negotiation in the WTO than was the case in GATT. The process
      has both multilateral and bilateral components. The multilateral aspects
      begin with the formation of a working party, composed of existing GATT
      contracting parties (now WTO members), to which the applicant country
      submits a memorandum outlining its trade policy. The working party then
      examines this memorandum and addresses a series of questions to the
      applicant. In these communications, the working party acts collectively to
      negotiate the non-tariff aspects of the applicant country’s terms of
      accession. When the working party is satisfied with the arrangements these
      are recorded in a protocol and a working party report. Taken together,
      these two documents lay out the terms under which the country accedes.
      There are also bilateral tariff negotiations conducted concurrently with
      the working party’s activities. The applicant country also negotiates a
      schedule of tariff concessions with interested Contracting parties; since
      the advent of the WTO, it has also negotiated schedules of commitments on
      services and agriculture. Once the talks are concluded, the protocol of
      accession is opened for signature by the acceding government and the
      Contracting parties. The rules formally provide that a two-thirds majority
      is required for acceptance, but in actual practice accessions — like
      virtually all other GATT decisions — are conducted on the basis of
      consensus. This meant that each of the existing members of the club has
      the ability to “blackball” any new applicant. This rule effectively
      blocked the attempted Soviet and Bulgarian accessions to GATT during the
      Cold War, and Iranian accession to the WTO is similarly prevented today.
      In all three cases it was the United States that exercised the veto
      (joined in the Iranian case by Israel).
           Accession soon became an issue only for developing and non-market
      economies, as nearly all industrialized countries had joined GATT within a
      decade of its establishment. The only laggard was Switzerland, the GATT
      host country that finally acceded in 1967. Most negotiations with
      developing countries during this period were tempered by pragmatism and
      compromise, in which the major players were accommodating to requests for
      S&D treatment. Special terms were also developed for the few non-market
      economies that acceded prior to the end of the Cold War.
           The majority of developing countries that joined the GATT did not
      actually accede, but rather succeeded to GATT status. Many of the
      countries that gained their independence from colonial powers in the
      post-war period — which included most of the Caribbean and Africa, as well
      as parts of Asia — had the option of entering GATT under the special terms
      of Article XXVI:5(c). This provision, which now has no equivalent in the
      WTO, offered a very easy route by which former colonies of GATT
      contracting parties could acquire de facto GATT status upon their
      achievement of independence. A country could then convert this de facto
      status into full GATT contracting party status by succession, a process
      that involved much less stringent scrutiny of its trade regime and fewer
      new commitments than did the ordinary accession process of GATT Article
      XXXIII. Of the 128 countries that joined GATT, fully half (64) did so
      through accession. Some countries succeeded to GATT shortly after gaining
      independence, while others waited years before taking this step.[1]
      Several of the countries that are currently negotiating for accession to
      the WTO must now regret that they did not take advantage of this option.
      Some of them rejected GATT and/or the succession route on ideological
      grounds, viewing both the institution and the rule as vestiges of
      colonialism. Laos and Vietnam formally renounced their status as de facto
      contracting parties, and Algeria opted not to employ the succession route
      when it first applied for GATT accession in 1987.[2]
           The arrangements made with certain non-market economies during this
      period also demonstrated the willingness of GATT countries to adapt the
      rules to special cases. The most significant of these adaptations was the
      acceptance of countries’ non-market status. The GATT system met these
      countries halfway, but they were nevertheless obliged to make pledges that
      were outside the normal scope of commitments. When Poland acceded to the
      GATT in 1967, for example, it made an undertaking to increase the total
      value of its imports from GATT Contracting parties by not less than seven
      percent each year. Poland also agreed to a special bilateral safeguard
      clause, which permitted the other Contracting parties to maintain
      quantitative restrictions against imports from Poland during an undefined
      transitional period. Such safeguard actions would not be bound by the
      terms of the ordinary GATT safeguard mechanism, as defined  under GATT
      Article XIX. Romania made comparable commitments in its 1971 accession,
      including a pledge to increase its imports from the Contracting parties
      “at a rate not smaller than the growth of total Romanian imports provided
      in its Five-Year Plans,” and a special bilateral safeguards clause.
      Hungary was not obliged to make an imports undertaking in its 1973
      protocol of accession, but did accept a selective safeguard clause.
      Special arrangements of this sort are no longer sought from acceding
      countries, nor are accessions based on the assumption that non-market
      status is a permanent condition.
           When Depth Became Critical: Accessions Since the Mid-1980s
           In later decades the focus of GATT negotiations shifted from the
      height of trade barriers to the depth of the system. What had started as a
      contract among countries to reduce tariffs eventually became a much deeper
      regime that goes beyond border measures, covering such diverse economic
      activities as services, intellectual property rights, and agricultural
      subsidies. The proposed expansion in the scope of trade disciplines was
      not universally accepted in the 1980s, and disagreements erupted not only
      between industrialized and developing countries but also among the
      industrialized countries. Countries had once agreed on the basic principle
      that tariffs must be reduced, but bargained hard over how this principle
      should be implemented for tariffs on specific items; the new negotiating
      environment led to more profound disagreements over the principles
      themselves.
           This change had major implications for the conduct of accessions. The
      smallness of most acceding countries meant obscurity and inattention when
      the principal focus was on reductions in the height of tariff barriers and
      other border measures that restricted trade. Even a huge reduction in a
      small country’s tariff wall would have less practical effect than a
      seemingly small reduction in the tariffs imposed by a large country, and
      negotiators allocated their time and political capital accordingly. Their
      calculations are quite different in a depth-dominated system, in which the
      principal point of contention between the major players is over what
      issues will come within the scope of the regime. Put another way,
      countries that are highly unequal in their economic size will nevertheless
      enjoy a juridical equality when it comes to the precedents that they might
      set. A very small economy may account for a negligible share of global
      trade, and thus attract a commensurately small amount of attention from
      negotiators, but those same negotiators may devote a great deal of
      attention to an accession when it appears to offer a good opportunity to
      set a good precedent or block a bad one. The result is that acceding
      countries come under much more intense scrutiny, and the terms of their
      accessions are correspondingly strict.
           These new developments were further reinforced by three other
      critical developments in the 1980s and 1990s: further erosion of already
      tenuous support for the S&D principle, the end of the Cold War, and the
      establishment of the WTO. All of these developments served to elevate the
      perceived importance of accession negotiations and the demands made on
      developing and transitional countries.
           The decline of the S&D principle coincided with a growing
      understanding that many developing countries had been ill served by the
      trade strategies they had adopted in the 1960s and 1970s. The extension of
      special privileges was perceived to contribute to a growing free-rider
      problem in the GATT, in which developing countries were seen not only to
      be shirking their own responsibilities in trade liberalization but also to
      be isolating themselves from the benefits of a global market. Nor can the
      changing status of the S&D principle be attributed entirely to the
      declining interest of industrialized countries in granting it. In the
      early 1980s developing countries “began to perceive that the positive
      discrimination received under S&D treatment had become outweighed by
      increasing negative discrimination against their trade,” and they turned
      towards “defend[ing] the integrity of the unconditional MFN clause,
      obtaining MFN tariff reductions, and strengthening the disciplines of
      GATT.”[3] Developing countries also came to realize that in actual
      practice this principle generally produced very limited concessions that
      amounted to little more than tokenism. These views were reflected in the
      changing approach to S&D treatment in the Uruguay Round, where negotiators
      avoided special derogations and dispensations from generally applicable
      rules. They instead approved various provisions that allow longer periods
      for implementing obligations, more favorable thresholds for undertaking
      certain commitments, and greater flexibility in the implementation of
      agreements and procedures. Emphasis is now placed on the special needs of
      the least-developed countries, for whom many more exceptions are now
      provided. The principle of a single undertaking, or “package deal,”
      further reinforced this aspect of the Uruguay Round agreements. In
      contrast to prior rounds, developing countries could not avoid the
      regime’s obligations either by invoking a general principle of S&D
      treatment or by opting not to implement specific agreements that they
      considered to be incompatible with their development strategies.
           Many of the countries that acceded to the GATT during the 1980s found
      the process to be more demanding, due in large measure to a change in
      policy on the part of major trading countries. Negotiators from these
      countries — most notably the United States — grew increasingly insistent
      during the 1980s upon using the GATT-accession process as a means of
      ensuring that the country’s trade regime was consistent with the rules and
      principles of the system.
           One need only observe the Mexican example to appreciate the
      differences between GATT accession practices before and after the change
      in policy. Mexico had negotiated for accession during the Tokyo Round,
      decided in 1980 not to implement the protocol of accession that it had
      negotiated the year before, and then changed direction once again in the
      mid-1980s. The protocol of accession that was negotiated in 1985 was much
      more exacting than its 1979 predecessor. Whereas the earlier protocol
      consisted of little more than a list of tariff concessions and the
      obligatory pledge to comply with GATT rules, the latter agreement entailed
      (1) binding the entire tariff schedule at fifty percent; (2) agreeing to
      373 concessions on tariffs below this ceiling (more than half of which
      were made in response to U.S. requests), and (3) making several other
      nontariff commitments, including pledges to adhere to GATT codes relating
      to Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, Licensing Procedures,
      Antidumping, Standards, and Customs Valuation. The second protocol was
      also less permissive than the earlier document with respect to certain
      sectoral exclusions that Mexico sought.
           The negotiation of the second Mexican protocol can be seen as a real
      turning point for the GATT system. Coming a decade before the
      establishment of the WTO, which further institutionalized both the
      emphasis on depth and the decline of S&D, this negotiation set the pattern
      for the twelve developing countries accessions that were concluded during
      the Uruguay Round.[4] These accessions were more difficult than those
      conducted during the 1949-1979 period, but less comprehensive than
      accessions to the WTO. The principal difference is that the GATT regime
      had not yet incorporated the new issues that were under negotiation in
      that round, and hence the acceding countries were under no obligation to
      make commitments on services, intellectual property, and investment, or on
      agricultural issues other than tariffs. That did not, however, prevent
      some negotiators from raising these issues in the talks.  
           The end of the Cold War is another key development that coincided
      with these changes in the trade regime. The collapse of Communism had many
      direct and indirect consequences for the system, not the least of them
      being the applications for accession that soon came from Eastern Europe
      and most of the states of the former Soviet Union. The change was not
      merely quantitative, but qualitative: The operating assumption of older
      GATT accessions had been that a non-market economy was seeking a modus
      vivendi for trade with market economies, but now negotiations were
      conducted on the principle that the acceding country was in an irrevocable
      transition from non-market to market economy status. Those countries, now
      known as economies in transition (EIT), are thus required to adopt all of
      the same commitments that apply to other countries. While some temporary
      accommodations might be made to the needs of the EIT, the applicant would
      bear most of the burden of adjustment.
           The end of the Cold War also led to accession negotiations with two
      countries of considerable size. While most of the countries that acceded
      to GATT during the 1970s and 1980s were quite small (with some notable
      exceptions such as Mexico, Thailand, and Venezuela), the same cannot be
      said for China and Russia. Together with Taiwan and Saudi Arabia, these
      are among the few acceding countries that individually represent
      significant shares of global trade. The prospect of negotiating with these
      countries may have reinforced the industrialized countries’ stance in the
      accessions of smaller countries, on the expectation that any precedents
      set with these countries — no matter how small they might be — could then
      be applied to negotiations with major trading countries such as China and
      Russia.  

           The Expanding Depth and Width of the WTO Regime
           Following the conclusion of the Uruguay Round, the array of issues in
      the system — and hence the scope for commitments in accession negotiations
      — has gone much deeper. The intensification of accession negotiations that
      began in the mid-1980s reached a new level with the inauguration of the
      WTO in 1995. In addition to being subject to the same demands that faced
      countries that acceded to GATT, applicants to the new organization are
      obliged to make commitments on intellectual property rights, services,
      agriculture, and (to a limited extent) investment.
           The width of the WTO is expanding at least as rapidly as the depth.
      Fourteen countries have acceded since the establishment of the
      organization: Ecuador and Bulgaria in 1996; Mongolia and Panama in 1997;
      the Kyrgyz Republic in 1998; Latvia and Estonia in 1999; Jordan, the
      Republic of Georgia, Albania, Croatia, and Oman in 2000; and Lithuania and
      Moldova in 2001. The accession agreements for both China and Chinese
      Taipei have been accepted, awaiting only the completion of the domestic
      approval procedures, and the final working party meeting for Vanuatu has
      been held. Another 27 countries and territories are negotiating for their
      accession,[5] and two others — Iran and Syria — have requested the
      initiation of accession negotiations.[6] All of these applicants are
      either developing countries or economies in transition. The data in Figure
      5 illustrate the relative weights of WTO members and acceding countries in
      the global trading  system. It shows that while there are four applicants
      of relatively large size, all of the other countries that have acceded to
      the WTO or are currently negotiating for their accession represent very
      small shares of world trade. For reasons discussed above, however, this
      does not mean that the existing WTO members are disposed towards giving
      these countries a “free pass” into the organization. Even the smallest
      country is important when countries make a fetish of precedent.
           The diplomacy of accession has grown more contentious, with
      applicants and recently acceding countries having raised concerns over the
      process and its consequences. In a review of the debate among member
      countries over the accession process, a note by the WTO Secretariat stated
      that —
               It was pointed out that the accession process was often lengthy
        and too demanding for certain acceding governments; the fact finding
        stage, particularly, appeared to be unduly long, inquisitorial and
        frequently repetitive. Many speakers said that many accessions were
        moving too slowly, some adding that the process should be simplified.
        Other speakers acknowledged that few accessions had taken place recently
        but said that this did not mean that the system was not working …
        However, it appeared generally agreed that the WTO should look for ways
        to expedite the current accession processes so that applicants are not
        kept waiting longer than necessary.[7]
           The process is much more time-consuming than it was in years past.
      The average WTO accession thus far has had an elapsed time of just over
      five years from the establishment of a working party to membership. This
      figure masks the considerable range of experience among acceding
      countries, where negotiations have ranged between three and ten years, and
      fails to take into account the much longer periods experienced by some of
      the countries that have not yet completed the process. The completion of
      China’s accession is a major accomplishment. But one that was fifteen
      years in the making. Algeria and Nepal have been at it since 1987 and
      1989, respectively.
           Developing country applicants are especially concerned over the
      apparent invalidation of established S&D principles in specific WTO
      agreements. Some aspects of the Uruguay Round agreements provide for
      preferential treatment for developing countries, but these rules are more
      limited in scope than the older GATT provisions. Many of the more
      substantive provisions of the WTO agreements provide for longer transition
      periods for developing countries and LDCs, but do not provide for
      permanent exemptions. Some provide for two-year transitions (the
      agreements on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and Import Licensing),
      and others for five years (the agreements on Customs Valuation,
      Trade-Related Investment Measures, and Trade-Related Aspects of
      Intellectual Property Rights). In accession negotiations conducted so far,
      however, developing and transitional countries have found their partners
      extremely reluctant to permit them to use these transitional provisions.
      The United States in particular takes the position that only original WTO
      members are entitled to use the transitional periods, while some other
      members are willing to consider transitional periods as negotiable
      possibilities.

      The Perspectives of the Quad Countries
           The stricter approach taken towards accession is ultimately
      attributable to a policy decision on the part of the four WTO members that
      compose the Quad. The United States is primus inter pares within this
      informal leadership group, which also includes Canada, the European Union,
      and Japan. Together with Australia and few other countries, they account
      for the great majority of the questions that are posed to the acceding
      countries and the demands that are made of them. The United States
      especially treats these negotiations in a regime context, meaning that the
      commitments that it seeks from each acceding country are viewed in the
      broader framework of the rules that the U.S. negotiators want to see
      applied uniformly to all WTO members. This sometimes lead negotiators to
      emphasize certain matters that may appear to be relatively unimportant in
      the bilateral relationship per se, but are instead of very great
      importance in U.S. relations with other countries that are either WTO
      members or are negotiating for their own accession.
           Perhaps the most difficult position in which an acceding country can
      find itself is in a dispute between Quad countries over the place of an
      issue in the trading system. France convinced Albania to withdraw
      audiovisual commitments that it had made to the United States by
      threatening to block the country’s WTO accession. French officials were
      reportedly concerned that the Albanian concession “could provide a
      back-door entry into Europe for U.S. productions.”[8] While Albania
      ultimately made commitments on cinema theater operation services and four
      other cultural sectors, it made none on cinema or television production.
           The European Union has also drawn a sharper distinction between the
      least developed countries (LDCs) and ordinary developing countries than
      has the United States. This might be partly attributable to the fact that
      five of the nine LDCs that are currently seeking accession are former
      European colonies (i.e., Cambodia, Cape Verde, Laos, Samoa, and
      Vanuatu).[9] They might have had the option of simply succeeding to GATT,
      but under WTO rules and practice they are subject to the same accession
      procedures as all other countries. Whatever the reason, the European Union
      proposed in 1999 that a “fast-track” procedure be established to
      facilitate the accession of LDCs. This proposal suggested that the
      accession of “could be expedited by agreeing with other WTO Working Party
      Members on a range of minimum criteria” and a “flexible, streamlined
      approach” that would “spee[d] up the process for them all without
      discrimination.” Under this proposal the following criteria would apply:
      ·      Industrial tariffs: LDCs could bind at a level something like 30%
      across the board over a maximum five-year period (i.e. to 01.01.2004),
      with the possibility remaining to agree a limited number of higher tariffs
      on “exceptional” products.
      ·      Agricultural sector: LDCs could aim at 40% across the board. LDCs
      should not be   export subsidies. Their commitments in these areas should
      be inscribed directly in their schedules. Any problems of specific
      products of LDCs should be addressed in a flexible manner.
      ·      Services: LDCs could be asked to make commitments in at least three
      services sectors. As far as horizontal commitments are concerned, the EC
      does attach great importance to good commitments in Mode 3 (commercial
      presence), in particular on foreign capital participation and employment
      requirements and in Mode 4 (movement of personnel).
      ·      Alignment to WTO rules: WTO Members could agree on the automatic
      applicability of transition periods agreed in the Uruguay Round for LDCs
      towards full compliance with WTO Agreements. Candidate countries would,
      however, be expected to provide a work programme for the completion of
      legislative alignment. We should intensify technical assistance efforts to
      ensure compliance is achieved.[10]
           The proposal did not get far due to opposition from the United
      States. The U.S. negotiators take the position that while other WTO
      members are free to establish their own policies toward the accession of
      LDCs, including reduced demands upon these countries, they should not be
      granted substantially easier terms of accession. The only area in which
      the U.S. negotiators seem prepared to “cut some slack” for the LDCs is in
      the number of working party meetings, which they believe can be held to
      two or three. They otherwise insist that these countries be required to
      provide all of the same information that other applicants submit, and that
      LDCs be obliged to make commitments bringing their regimes into conformity
      with WTO rules. Even in some areas where the WTO agreements explicitly
      provide for special treatment, such as the transition period for
      intellectual property rights or the exemption from commitments on
      agricultural subsidies, they are likely to request that LDCs undertake
      disciplines that go beyond the letter of the WTO agreements.
      
      Two Perspectives for Acceding Countries
           Accession to the WTO is clearly a difficult undertaking, and — for
      reasons explained above — one that has gotten more complex and lengthy
      over time. How might the countries that are currently seeking accession
      best handle the negotiations? One approach would be to protest against the
      apparent inequities of the system, and to insist that countries that are
      undergoing major economic and (in many cases) political transitions should
      not be expected to meet all of the standards that industrialized countries
      have reached among themselves over more than half a century of
      negotiations in the GATT and WTO. While such an approach might be founded
      in justice, its grounding in reality is less certain. The more demanding
      approach that is now taken towards acceding countries is a natural
      consequence of the three-dimensional evolution of the trading system, and
      it is to be expected that precedent will be given a high priority in a
      rules-based system. Those rules are defined primarily by the larger and
      more influential countries in the system, and those countries show little
      proclivity to change course.
           It seems inevitable, therefore, that the accession process will
      remain demanding. If the acceding countries cannot expect to change the
      process itself, how might they best position themselves in it? There are
      two essential points of view that negotiators might adopt, alternatively
      approaching these talks from the perspective of a diplomat/trade lawyer on
      the one hand, or an economist/reformer on the other. While each of these
      approaches offers a valid means of assessing options and devising
      strategy, the latter perspective may be the most appropriate.
           The Diplomat/Trade Lawyer’s Approach
           One option is to treat accessions as an exercise in diplomacy and
      law, emphasizing both the political dignity and the legal rights of the
      country. Membership in this key international organization is now an
      important issue of international status, such that any country that
      remains outside of the WTO carries a taint of second-class citizenship in
      the global community. The acceding country may therefore adopt an approach
      that stresses the political necessity of early entry, while also insisting
      that its commitments be limited.
           This approach is commonly adopted by countries, often in response to
      impasses that they have reached in a negotiation over particularly
      difficult points. Trading partners sometimes hope that their disputes can
      be solved by taking matters to the highest levels of government. Quite to
      the contrary, the effort to “kick a negotiation upstairs” can work more to
      the benefit of the existing countries than the acceding country. If they
      know that their interlocutor is under strong political pressure back home
      to secure accession at any cost, the negotiators in Geneva will feel even
      more secure in setting a high price. A country might theoretically
      conclude an agreement over accession on a much faster schedule, provided
      that it were prepared to accept without hesitation or revision all of the
      requests made by the members of its WTO accession working party. The end
      results, however, might be hard for the negotiators to explain to their
      masters. The Kyrgyz accession negotiation was the quickest on record,
      taking just 34 months, but it also led to the adoption of many commitments
      that have proven difficult to fulfill.
           It is not surprising that many acceding countries approach these
      negotiations in the same manner that lawyers will approach a contract
      negotiation. When viewed through the eyes of a trade lawyer, a country’s
      accession process might be compared to negotiations over a purchasing
      contract, a divorce, or other legal proceedings in which each side seeks
      to attain maximum advantage at minimum cost. Seen from this point of view,
      the goal is to ensure that a country makes as few commitments as possible,
      and is bound by the least onerous conditions. This approach is clearly
      reflected in the terminology that trade negotiators employ, in which the
      commitments that countries make are deemed to be “concessions.” This word
      implies that the country is surrendering something of value whenever it
      agrees to a specific condition in its accession, or otherwise makes a
      commitment in a WTO-sponsored negotiation. The trade lawyer’s advice would
      be simple: Concede as little as possible to the countries with which you
      negotiate, make these concessions only after ensuring that they are
      unavoidable, and try if possible to construe any commitments narrowly.
           The principal problem with this approach is that the typical acceding
      country has little or no leverage over the existing WTO members. The
      applicant will almost always feel much greater pressure in these
      negotiations than do its negotiating partners; while the applicant may
      greatly desire to win its seat at the table, those who are already there
      perceive no urgency in setting another place. Many of the usual tools in
      the negotiator’s bag are rendered ineffective in this environment, where
      stonewalling merely means delaying the process while the price of
      admission continues to rise. 
           The Economist/Reformer’s Approach
           An alternative approach is to look past the apparently unfair nature
      of the accession process, and to concentrate more on the ends than the
      means. From this perspective, accession is an opportunity to reinforce the
      country’s economic reform