India’s coalitional diplomacy within the WTO has earned it wide appreciation. What accounts for the success of India’s coalitional diplomacy? (2018, 20 Marks)
In a multipolar trading system no developing member can shape outcomes alone. India’s answer has been coalitional diplomacy: assembling groups of like-placed members so that its position carries the weight of many. Amrita Narlikar (International Trade and Developing Countries, 2003) distinguishes bloc-type coalitions, held together by shared identity, from issue-based coalitions built around a single interest. With Diana Tussie (2004) she showed that the Cancún G-20 held together because it combined the two, and India’s wider success rests on the same mix.
India’s coalition map
| Coalition | Issue | India’s role |
|---|---|---|
| G-33 | Public stockholding, Special Products, safeguard mechanism | Leading voice and drafter |
| G-20 (agriculture), 2003 | Northern farm subsidies and market access | Co-founder with Brazil |
| NAMA-11, 2005 | Flexibility in industrial tariff cuts | Founder member |
| African Group, LDCs, Cotton-4 | Cotton, S&DT, preference erosion | Standing ally |
| TRIPS waiver coalition, 2020 | COVID-19 waiver | Co-author with South Africa |
What accounts for the success
- Shared constituency. India’s defensive interests in food security, policy space and affordable medicines are those of dozens of members. It can lead a group without having to buy members’ loyalty.
- Issue-specific flexibility. India sits in the G-33, which defends farm protection, and in the G-20, which attacks Northern subsidies, and it is Brazil’s ally there while fighting Brazil over sugar. India never asks a coalition to hold across every file, so partners need not agree on everything.
- Bridging exporters and importers. At Cancún (2003) the G-20 joined farm exporters such as Brazil and Argentina with defensive members such as India. It tabled a counter-text to the joint US–EU proposal, and this broke the old “Quad” monopoly on agenda-setting. By 2004 India and Brazil sat in the inner Five Interested Parties group.
- Technical capacity. Long-serving negotiators propose text rather than slogans: the stockholding drafts, the October 2020 waiver text and the 25-year fisheries transition proposal.
- Normative framing. India presents demands as development justice. It convened a ministerial meeting of developing members in New Delhi in May 2019, and its paper with the African Group and Cuba, later joined by Pakistan, Strengthening the WTO to Promote Development and Inclusivity (2019; fifth revision 2022), defends special and differential treatment as a treaty right, together with consensus decision-making.
- Lessons learned. John S. Odell and Narlikar showed that the Like-Minded Group’s strict distributive strategy before Doha (2001) won little and split under pressure. The later coalitions paired firmness with research-backed proposals.
- Consensus as multiplier. A coalition gives India’s objection legitimacy, and the consensus rule turns it into a decision: the 2004 dropping of three Singapore issues, the 2013–14 peace clause and the 2022 TRIPS decision.
- Credibility. As a large democracy with a visible farm electorate, India can point to binding domestic constraints; China, a giant exporter whose developing status others dispute, cannot.
Limits of the appreciation
- Coalitions of the weak are vulnerable to bilateral inducement: several Latin American members left the G-20 after Cancún when the US offered them bilateral deals.
- Success has mostly been defensive. The Special Safeguard Mechanism, a permanent stockholding solution and the therapeutics waiver remain unrealised.
- The base is thinning. At MC14 (Yaoundé, March 2026) India and South Africa blocked the Investment Facilitation Agreement against 165 of 166 members, many African partners among them. A 67-member e-commerce agreement now advances outside India’s coalitions; at the July 2026 General Council India and Pakistan could only question its interim arrangements.
Conclusion
India’s coalitional diplomacy succeeds because it is flexible, technically equipped and morally framed, and because consensus rewards numbers. It has been better at stopping outcomes than at producing new rules. The appreciation will last only if India’s coalitions start delivering agreements as well as blocking them.