Tomorrow’s developing world class consists of a debate about the WTO. We were asked last week whether we believed, at an intuitive level, that the WTO was good on balance for developing countries or not. I put up my hand along with those who thought that the organization is imperfect, but slightly beneficial on balance. As such, I was assigned to argue the opposite position tomorrow.
The odd thing is that a week of reading all the reasons for which the WTO is a raw deal for the developing world has made me much more skeptical about my original position. I am not sure if that’s just the much-innoculated ability to make a good argument, or whether my personal position has actually changed. This may represent a reasoned change of opinion through learning, and it might just be a cognitive realignment based on an assigned social role. Either way, I will put up a link to my portion of the presentation, as well as the notes from the seminar, after class tomorrow.
Another school-related note: today’s thesis seminar presentation went better than expected. People seemed very keen on the idea in general, with the only real criticism being the need to focus things reasonably tightly. Hopefully, I will meet Dr. Hurrell about it soon.
[Update: 16 November 2006] Notes on our side of the debate are now on the wiki. So too are notes from the seminar itself. One more project down.
Good luck making the WTO sound good for developing countries – it’s a task that requires not good debating skills but utter mendacity.
Lee,
We were on the opposite side: the rabble of t-shirt wearing dissidents across the table from the suit-clad WTO advocates.