A New Politics of Confrontation? Brazil and India in Multilateral Trade Negotiations∗

Particularly in the North–South confrontation at the Cancun Ministerial Conference in 2003, developing countries seemed to be presenting a unified stance of resistance against the developed world. These developments were greeted with considerable surprise in the scholarly as well as policy communities, not least because many theorists of International Relations had predicted increasing homogenisation and policy convergence by developing countries around liberal solidarist norms. In this paper, we analyse the apparent revitalisation of the Third World, and evaluate the policies of developing countries at and around Cancun to assess the claims that this heralds a more activist and less accommodating period in North/South relations. We buttress this general analysis by probing further into the policies of two of the major players, namely Brazil and India. We argue that recent policy changes can be explained by learning and adaptation by developing countries within the specific institution of the World Trade Organisation. We examine this adaptation along four planes: coalitions, insider activism, negotiation strategies, and transnational coalitions. Domestic politics in both our country cases play, at best, a supportive role. We also investigate the extent to which these shifts in trade politics might be seen as broader shifts in foreign policy.     

Ascertaining The Corporate Objective: An Entity Maximisation and Sustainability Model

Public companies play crucial roles in today's world, and it has been acknowledged that ascertaining the objective of such companies is a critical issue. However, there remains great uncertainty as to what that objective should be. This article examines the two predominant theories of the corporate objective, namely the shareholder primacy and stakeholder theories. This is followed by an explanation of and the case for a new model, the entity maximisation and sustainability model. This model focuses on the company as a separate legal entity and maintains that the objective of the company is to maximise the wealth of the entity as an entity and, at the same time, to ensure that the company is sustained financially.