Rediscovering the Role of Developing Countries in GATT before the Doha Round

Developing countries have been characterized as having played an essentially defensive role in the GATT, unwilling to make tariff concessions, and have focused almost exclusively on securing Special and Differential Treatment concessions. These three perspectives have become part of the conventional wisdom in the academic literature on the GATT. The paper argues that the conventional argument is not an accurate description of the role of developing countries in the ITO and the GATT.