“This paper focuses on coalition building by developing countries, which is a key indicator of their overall capacity and effectiveness in the WTO. The issue is examined in the context of national trade policies and trade negotiations on other tracks, particularly free-trade agreement (FTA) initiatives. The paper is organised as follows. Section 1 provides historical context on developing countries participation from GATT to the WTO, and assesses their current involvement in multi-country coalitions. It then discusses what form the WTO might take in future and the possible role of developing country
coalitions in this process, in the Doha Round (DR) and beyond. Section 2 describes the involvement of the developing country majors (namely China, India, Brazil and South Africa)2 in negotiating coalitions/ and assesses the implications of this for the present and future of the WTO”
