| Book Title | Cultural Products and the World Trade Organization |
| Book Author | Tania Voon |
| Bibliographic Information | Cambridge University Press, 2007, 110, ISBN 0521873277 |
Short review
Cultural Products and the World Trade Organization. By Tania Voon. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. 306. $110.
Reviewed by Franziska Sucker, Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, Germany.
Questions concerning trade-and-culture have been discussed for a long time. However, the new scale of international trade has made cultural homogenisation a more significant public concern in the globalisation debate. This fear results from the need for growing interconnectedness and from the faster rates of change in life. Conflicts between trade and culture are therefore reflected at many levels. In this context, Voon’s study seeks to contribute to the debate with respect to one particular aspect: cultural products in the WTO.
The book is divided into two main parts. Part I explains how conflicting views of the WTO Members about trade-and-culture led to the current stalemate in the WTO regarding cultural products, and Part II evaluates options for resolving it.
Chapter 1 provides an introductory overview of the culture-and-trade problem embodied by cultural products and the relationship between the two. Here, Voon focuses on the controversies within and outside the WTO. However, she refrains from attempting to define “culture,” despite its being one of her main subjects. This chapter as a starting point shows that one of the problems in addressing cultural products in the WTO consists in separating the current treatment of these products from the normative question of how they should be treated. In Part I both perspectives are discussed. As such, one of the most significant contributions is her careful parsing of the arguments for and against cultural policy measures, taking into account the objectives of trade liberalisation and cultural protection and promotion (Chapter 2). Voon suggests that promotion and protection of culture are legitimate regulatory objectives and most convincingly makes use of the ‘public good argumentation’ in support thereof. Although the cultural industry is a business like any other, cultural products do have noncommercial features that distinguish them from other tradable products such as audiovisual products. Voon assesses the assertion that sales of local cultural products in the marketplace may not adequately reflect the cultural value of those products for the wider community. She insightfully explains this market failure and clarifies why some WTO Members support heightened protection for such products. She successfully takes an interdisciplinary approach, which is, on this issue, still largely lacking in international legal scholarship, apart from the fact that she argues from the consequences (US dominance) to the reason (market failure). The more logical reasoning would have been the other way around. From this analysis Voon tries to identify certain guidelines for the treatment of cultural products in the WTO.
In Chapter 3 she assesses the extent to which these guidelines are already being followed and demonstrates that the current treatment of cultural products in the WTO – namely in the form of WTO provisions negotiated at the end of the Uruguay Round and as the object of negotiations in the current Doha Round – is no longer tenable and is also unsustainable. The current provisions, she argues, do not promote or ensure a balance between cultural objectives of members and liberalization of trade. But negotiations in the sector have come to a stalemate because negotiators cannot agree on a balance between continued trade liberalisation and exceptional cultural protectionism.
The remaining chapters of Part II evaluate three main options for resolving the stalemate. Chapters 4 and 5both demonstrate likely outcomes of the trade-and-culture problem if WTO Members cannot resolve the issue through negotiation.
First, in Chapter 4, Voon examines a possible judicial solution, namely whether the WTO dispute settlement mechanism could lead to a compromise on the understanding of the relevant WTO provisions. But nevertheless this mechanism is likely to be limited and cannot deal with all the current problems regarding cultural products, due to the fact that for instance dispute settlement cannot rewrite the WTO treaties or eliminate the gap between the treatment under GATT and GATS.
Next, Chapter 5 looks at the new UNESCO Cultural Diversity Convention adopted in 2005 as a possibility, separate from existing WTO agreements, either for dealing with the relationship between trade and culture or as a justification for and delimitation of a particular status for cultural products. Voon focuses on the discussion within UNESCO as well as on the conduct of WTO Members and the possible application of the Convention in a WTO dispute. The Convention entered into force in March 2007 when the book had already been published. Thus, Voon does not give the Convention the amount of attention it now deserves, although she does provide a useful overview. She concentrates on the dispute settlement aspect entirely from the WTO perspective, dealing neither with the new UNESCO Convention’s dispute settlement provisions nor with the possibility to solve conflicts with general principles of international law. Nevertheless in this regard there are many unresolved problems (e.g. the potentially profound and unpredictable influence of the Convention on the negotiating position of WTO Members that are also members of UNESCO), and therefore there will be much to discuss in the future, for which this section provides a highly instructive description of the forthcoming challenges.
In Chapter 6 Voon proposes wide-ranging amendments to the WTO treaties that could improve the current treatment of cultural products, recalling the guidelines articulated in Chapter 3. To some extent, this chapter rehashes debates that took place during the Uruguay Round. However, the Doha Round offers a renewed opportunity for WTO Members to reach agreement in this difficult area. Voon considers some possibilities that are being discussed in the Doha Round and sets out certain other proposals that may fall outside the scope of the Doha negotiations. Voon also presents and evaluates solutions suggested by certain other authors in this area. The valuable contribution is that she suggests a solution for the trade-and-culture dilemma. In doing so she argues for a diplomatic solution within the WTO system; only if this fails should recourse be had to other forums where trade liberalisation isn’t the main aspect. Therefore, she offers an optimistic view, which, for instance, calls for harmonising the treatment of cultural products as goods and services and subjecting them to the requirements of most-favoured-nation, national treatment and market access, tempered by clearly defined exceptions such as discriminatory subsidisation. She suggests that these changes could be effected through an annex on cultural products along the lines of the annexes on air transport services and financial services. Some doubts still remain as to whether this very interesting approach can be realized in practice, particularly with regard to the previous negotiations concerning trade-and-culture.
Finally, Chapter 7 draws together the conclusions from earlier chapters and reassesses the Doha negotiations in this light, thereby helping the reader to appraise the detailed information in a larger context.
Books about trade-and-culture often promote one of the aspects, either the trade or the culture side. However, Voon avoids preferring one side of the debate and instead provides a balanced and thoughtful view of the highly complex issues surrounding the challenge of protecting and promoting culture and cultural diversity, while at the same time pursuing the goal of further trade liberalisation among Member States. Ultimately, the greatest merit of the very comprehensive and insightful book is that it proposes a clear solution to the stalemate in the trade-and-culture debate.
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