Introduction

The word ‘transparency’, which could be described (only partly in jest) as the most opaque in the trade policy lexicon, has become so widespread that it could be described as the buzzword of ‘diplolingo’. In the lingo of the WTO, ‘internal transparency’ refers to the nature of the decision-making processes of the institution while ‘external transparency’ deals with the relationship between the WTO and non-governmental institutions such as business, unions, farmers, academics and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). While there is no agreed definition of the term, it includes access to information as well as the nature of participation in the policy-making process.

The policy process of trade is usefully conceived as a ‘two-level game’ involving negotations among interest groups – or stakeholders – at the national level and negotiations among country representatives at the international level. The idea of the two-level game was formulated by Robert Putnam, as a theoretical approach to the interweaving of domestic and international policies, in a seminal article in 1988. The concept stemmed from an analysis of the 1978 Bonn Summit which involved coordination producing a complex outcome linking domestic policies in the Summit countries to support jointly determined international economic strategies.