The Battle in Seattle

Abstract

The nearly unanimous view among scholars and participants alike was that the Third Ministerial Conference under the WTO held in Seattle, its regularly scheduled meeting, was a disaster. The trade ministers from 134 member states had come with a loose agenda to set the foundations for a new round of negotiations that would expand the substantive areas covered by the WTO agreements and fine-tune them. Because of the increased visibility of the organization and because it was venturing into more publicly sensitive areas, literally hundreds of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) flocked to Seattle to try and influence the direction in which the WTO agreements were headed.