The article shows the role that business interest group and worker unions had in building up the Brazilian position for the Third Ministerial Summit of WTO, in Seattle, 1999. It argues that that role should be explained by considering two factors: the internationalization of Brazilian economy since the 90's - making the society more sensitive to the events developing in the external environment - and the domestic political structures - filtering the preferences of the representative organizations of the private sector. On one hand, the economic liberalization and the development of a more interventionist system of international trade regulation prompted the mobilization of the interest groups; on the other hand, the formulation of Brazilian position was concentrated in the Executive branch where ties between the business sector and the governmental bureaucracy were set up helping for the convergence of their preferences. The worker unions acted through transnational coalitions and their preferences were not included in the country negotiation position. These findings point out that the domestic structures for multilateral trade negotiations were not inclusive. The article ends up stressing that the participation of Congress in trade negotiations by ex-ante mechanisms could make the Brazilian position more representative as well as its external credibility.
Multilateral Trade Negotiations; Domestic Structures; Interest Groups; World Trade Organization
