In the German-speaking territories of eighteenth-century Europe, Musenhof courts were sites where rulers surrounded themselves with artists and intellectuals, writers and musicians. They were a conspicuous feature of geopolitical environments where smaller courts and principalities were being fashioned into the larger cultural units of the Holy Roman Empire and Brandenburg-Prussia (later the Kingdom of Prussia). Though aristocratic in inception and genesis, Musenhof courts functioned as bridges and brokers for diverse artistic, social, and literary networks across the German-speaking world. They provided a permeable environment where overlapping social networks straddled the court and the public sphere.

This chapter juxtaposes three contrasting Musenhof courts in order to highlight their contribution as sites for cultural brokering in their regions. It considers three different models of the Musenhof, located in Weimar, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach; Königsberg, East Prussia; and the Duchy of Kurland, hosted by Anna Amalia (1739–1807), Charlotte Caroline Amalia von Keyserling(k) (1727–1791), and Dorothea von Kurland (1761–1821). Through comparison, it charts a paradigm shift in the history of the Musenhof from aristocratic spaces of (cosmopolitan) sociability and patronage to exempla for socio-political and economic reforms.

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias. (Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism, 1891) Oscar Wilde's poignant analysis suggests that three important aspects of Utopia are evident in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Firstly, Wilde recognizes the persistent ubiquity of utopian desire in human history. Utopia springs from the same impulse as the myth or the eschatological desire for a better afterlife and thus yearns to realize a condition of happiness, well-being and social harmony. Indeed, myths of the Island of the Blessed, the Land of Cockaygne, Elysium, Shangri-La and the Garden of Eden haunted philosophers, writers and travellers for centuries and paved the way for the geographical utopia of the Renaissance period and the voyage utopia of the eighteenth century which believed in the transformative quality of alterity. Wilde's aphorism also indicates that neither the genre's founder, Thomas More, nor seventeenth- and eighteenth-century followers could claim perfection and universality as invariable principles. What we therefore see, mostly later in the period, is recognition of the human restlessness that renders the classical idea of human nature and thus the ideal of static utopianism futile. Utopias are discourses on change itself rather than simply blueprints.

The World Trade Forum series was established to help spread the conviction that a multidisciplinary approach to international trade is warranted. The 10th World Trade Forum was held from 20–22 September 2006 at the World Trade Institute of the University of Berne on the theme of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The participants were in broad agreement that, in its present shape and form, GATS insufficiently promotes further liberalisation of services. But, during the conference, it became apparent that scholars, practitioners and government officials were committed to improving the way services trade is conducted. Valuable proposals for progress were tabled and researched and have led to this collection of essays viewing trade in services from a variety of perspectives, domestic and international, economic and legal, past and future. Thus, the 10th World Trade Forum could not have successfully taken place without the active involvement of the participants, many of whom contributed to the articles collected in this volume now entitled ‘GATS and the Regulation of International Trade in Services’.

Thus, we wish to thank the authors of the chapters in this collection who have worked beyond the call of duty to accommodate the guidelines and suggestions of the editors. We are also grateful for the support of the Ecoscientia Foundation, which helped to make the conference a truly engaging event for everyone involved and facilitated the in-house editing process at the World Trade Institute.

The Doha Round seeks to fulfil the mandate of progressive liberalisation inscribed in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreed to progressively negotiate market access and equal conditions of competition in more services sectors to achieve both a deepening and widening of services trade liberalisation beyond the actual status quo of commitments laid down in GATS during the Uruguay Round. Yet the main benchmark of progress against which a services trade regime will be measured post-Doha lies in formulating behind-the-border disciplines on domestic regulation, agreeing on comprehensive multilateral trade exits, such as trade remedies and temporary import relief, as well as in fostering mutually supportive relationships with services-related agreements, such as in the field of air transport, labour migration, energy and health.

This collection of essays entitled ‘GATS and the Regulation of International Trade in Services’ analyses two periods of cross-border service supply – the post-Uruguay Round era of multilateral and plurilateral liberalisation, with the associated standardisation of services regulation worldwide and development of a services-specific case law on GATS disputes, and the process, postulates and progress of the current Doha Round negotiations – and speculates on the post-Doha GATS regime.

Services trade is an insufficiently studied field in academia, yet services constitute the complex, higher-value work that affords many countries a competitive advantage on the global labour market. The value of services exports worldwide has increased substantially from US$ 17,439.9 million in 2001 to US$ 26,319.3 million in 2004.