Antigua Responds: The Commercialization of Diplomacy

Abstract

The distinguishing mark of this case is that the small island state of Antigua brought forward a WTO dispute against the United States. Instead of relying on a collective voice- or votes-based approach as part of a global solidarity campaign to defend its interests over Casino Capitalism, Antigua went one on one with the United States on its own. Such a departure from the orthodox methodology of small state diplomacy could not follow a standard script. Much has been made of the move towards the commercialization of sovereignty, whereby small states concede some components of their sovereignty via various forms of ‘flags of convenience’ in return for economic benefits (Drezner, 2001). In the Antigua-US struggles this approach was reconfigured in a manner that belied its passive or even submissive image. Ramping up the level of interaction between governments and firms, as associated with OFCs as well as shipping registries and other forms of offshore activity, Antigua and select IG firms moved towards a strategic public-private partnership — a variation of what Brian Hocking has coined ‘the privatization of diplomacy’ (Hocking, 2004) — in order to contest the United States’ stigmatization of the industry at an institutional level via the WTO.