Go back? Go forward? Take a powder and lie down?

Well…the third of these is not an option except, possibly, in Europe where dispirited WTO delegates can drift off to the beach for the summer holidays. Simon Evenett—to whose work I've recently refered—is not at the beach, it seems. He has prepared a very timely paper for VoxEU.org on the best way to manage the collapse of the Doha negotiations. It has not yet appeared but[Now posted on the VoxEU site] Simon sent me a copy that includes this observation:

During the Doha Round WTO members strived to wrap together a series of disparate accounts into a Single Undertaking that all would sign up to. In some respects this has been unfortunate as it obscures other often-more-flexible WTO agreements that can advance common goals. So-called critical mass agreements and plurilateral accords could be viable alterna- tives to agreements that require every WTO member to sign on to binding disciplines. A better understanding of the state policies and circumstances where the former approaches are more suitable is certainly worth reflecting on. This is not an easy area but riddling multilateral accords with numerous exceptions for different classes of WTO members, as has been done during the Doha Round, isn't that appealing either. Part of the deliberation exercise could be to determine formula from which a multi-track, yet coherent WTO emerges.

I agree. As I mentioned in my earlier post, Andrew Stoler at the Institute for International Trade and I have already begun a project in collaboration with leading research institutions in Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia to tease-out precisely this option.