Developing countries in global trade governance: comparing norms on inequality in the WTO and GSP schemes

Clara Weinhardt and Deborah Barros Leal Farias

Review of International Political Economy, 2025, vol. 32, issue 4, 1239-1265

Abstract: Global power shifts have led to pressure to adjust the rules of global trade governance to new realities. In this context, we look at changing norms on how to deal with inequality between countries in global trade governance. Treating countries in different economic conditions differently has been a common feature of the world trade regime since the mid-1960s, classifying countries either as ‘developed’ or ‘developing’. This paper asks how the normative underpinnings of differential treatment of developing countries have changed in the trade regime in light of global power shifts. Existing studies focus exclusively on World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and neglect other cases of global trade governance. To counteract this bias, we compare (possible) changes in differentiation in the multilateral WTO and in selected unilateral Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) schemes (1995–2020). Based on our conceptual framework that captures four possibilities of normative change, we show that norm resilience prevails in the WTO and norm modification in the GSP case. This suggests that while norms on how to deal with inequality in global trade governance are changing in light of global power shifts, these changes remain uneven and differ across negotiation venues.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2025.2455504

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