THE INTERNATIONAL TRADE REGIME: LIBERALISM AND EMBEDDED LIBERALISM.

• Author: Skogstad, Grace
• Position: Response to article by Anne Orford in this issue, p. 1

1. INTRODUCTION II. THE INTERNATIONAL TRADE REGIME: EMBEDDING LIBERALISM OR EMBEDDED LIBERALISM? III. LIBERALISM AND EMBEDDED LIBERALISM? I. INTRODUCTION

   Anne Orford (1) begins her ambitious inquiry into the connection between the international legal and economic order regime and food security by explaining its "immediate impetus" was the food price crisis of 2006. Aside from a humanitarian concern provoked by the risk posed by rising and volatile food prices to as many as a billion food-vulnerable people, her project has been stimulated by how the food price crisis has grabbed the attention of international institutions. Most notably, efforts to deal with the issue of food security extend beyond international institutions, like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that has historically dealt with food security. They include the World Trade Organization (WTO), the international institution mandated to establish and enforce rules for global trade in goods and services. As the global food context has shifted from one of food surpluses and falling commodity prices to one of anticipated food shortages and rising prices, this international attention is almost certain to continue.

   The heightened international attention to food prices and food security, as Orford observes, has not been accompanied by a consensus--regarding either the causes or solutions to food insecurity--in the policy community of international institutions, engaged academics, and civil society organizations that has mobilized around food security issues. This policy community, like WTO members, is divided on whether food security solutions require more or less liberalization of world trade. Although they are by no means the only issue to do so, differences in how to deal with food insecurity have derailed the progress of the WTO Doha Round since its launch in 2001. A coalition of 33 countries, led by India, has demanded the right to intervene in domestic agricultural commodity markets in order to deal with domestic food insecurity. More specifically, they have sought to gain more leeway for governments to purchase food from low-income producers at administered (above market) prices for the purpose of public stockholding for food security purpose. By late 2014, their efforts had paid off with provisions in the Bali Agreement to allow them to do just that. (2)

   Notwithstanding the 2014 Bali Agreement and whatever evidence it provides of responsiveness on the part of WTO members to the food security concerns of developing countries, Orford is correct to link the food security debate within the WTO to a broader debate about the respective roles of the state and the market in constituting the international economic and legal order. Arguing that WTO free trade agreements contribute to food insecurity, she sees the failure to conclude the Doha Round negotiations as evidence of a challenge to the liberal principles embodied in WTO agreements. (3) The solution she offers to both food insecurity, and the "crisis" it has engendered to the international project of market-oriented reform, (4) is to recalibrate the market-state relationship in favour of the state. Governments, she argues, need to recapture the capacity to pursue social policy goals like food security.

   There is much to praise in Orford's paper. I am impressed by the long historical sweep of her inquiry into the origins of the current international legal regime for food. I also find admirable her comprehensive approach to defining this regime: that is, as one constituted by international agreements and laws that extend beyond those specific to agriculture, to include, for example, laws with respect to intellectual policy and financial liberalization. Her analyses are timely and relevant, tapping as they do into a widespread perception that the WTO agreements are lopsided when it comes to serving the needs of people in developing countries to the same degree they do those in developed countries. This perception certainly goes a long way to explaining the part developing countries, now better organized than they were during the Uruguay Round negotiations, have played in the failure to conclude the Doha Round negotiations. Her view that securing an appropriate balance between states and markets is necessary also taps into an influential strain in international political economy that argues that international regimes must find avenues to reconcile the tensions between goals of liberalization and domestic social purposes.

   Nonetheless, Orford's central proposition--that the international legal framework for regulating food production, consumption and distribution has contributed to food insecurity--is provocative, not least because of the methodological challenge of substantiating this proposition. Establishing such a causal link between the international food regime and food insecurity is highly...