Developing Countries in the WTO and Doha Round

From the GATT to the Doha Round Negotiations the participation of member countries symbolizes two major leanings: Fragmentation and Uniformity approaches. On many important issues, these approaches present conceptually distinct ideas regarding the legal structure of international trade. Since the level playing field between developed and developing countries varies vastly, the Fragmented approach argues that designing and applying the same set of rules (uniform rules) for both developed and developing countries would be unfair. Developing countries, often guided by the idea that uniform rules would damage their aspirations to catch up with developed countries, continually demanded fragmentation of rules between developed and developing countries. In contrast, the Uniformity approach insisted on the application of a set of uniform rules for all countries. According to this approach, the fragmented rules would engender non-reciprocal treatment with an asymmetrical legal structure in place, which could be ungainly for an effective international legal order of trade liberalization. The Uniformity approach also claims that the Fragmented approach is unhealthy even to safeguard the interests of developing countries. Against this backdrop, this paper aims at the critical examination and explanation of the strengths and weaknesses of these dominant approaches. This paper suggests an alternative approach in the form of welfare-grundnorm, which is positive in its nature and universal in its application. With the positive and universal features, this paper explicates the welfare-grundnorm as the methodology build upon the jural relations of legitimacy, authority, and validity for streamlining the effective participation of both developed and developing countries in the Doha Round Negotiations.