This Factsheet looks at the forms of partnership within the multilateral trading system which are multi-layered and very complex, requiring highly skilled negotiation techniques. It attempts to explain why such partnerships can take on two forms at the same time. For instance the World Trade Organisation (WTO) can be described as an example of an enforced partnership, which can under certain circumstances be a form of distributive partnership. On the other hand, the Cotonou Agreement between Europe and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) (see Factsheet 10) countries is a form of structured partnership and yet the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) see (Factsheet 23) that creates a trading relationship between Africa and the United States an example of enforced partnership. On the other hand, the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) (see Factsheet 22), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Common Market of East and Southern Africa (COMESA) are forms of integrative partnerships, which however are caught up in a web of enforced and structured relationships from which it is virtually impossible to escape in the short run.

Typology of Partnerships
There are thus several types of partnerships, but the most relevant in international economic and political relations, are the following four:

• Integrative partnership
• Distributive partnership
• Enforced partnership
• Structured partnership
Integrative partnership
In business relations an integrative partnership is one where the partners have compatible interests. There is no conflict. No partner gains at the expense of another. The resultant outcome of negotiation between integrated partners, using the language of Game Theory, is a “zero sum”. In zero sum negotiations no party loses; it is a win-win outcome for both/all partners.

Ideally, international trade should be an integrative type of partnership between equal or unequal partners (symmetry is not necessary in integrative partnerships where everybody gains and nobody loses). It is a win-win situation for all. Applying the argument of the trade theorist, Jagdish Bhagwati, international trade should be based on the principle of "first differences" reciprocity, i.e. the pairing of mutual concessions. These are:

• If I get you to liberalise whilst I liberalise myself, I gain twice over;
• If there are "second-best" macro-economic considerations, such as short-term Balance of Payments difficulties from trade liberalisation, the mutuality of liberalisation should generally diminish them;
• Mutuality of concession suggests fairness and makes trade liberalisation politically more acceptable to domestic losers;
• Foreign concessions to our exporters create new interests that can counterbalance losing interests. In short, mutuality of concessions (reciprocal concession) offers some definite, practical advantages to all, and it contradicts the popular notion that trade liberalisation is a cost, not a gain.

Distributive partnership
However in reality, trade negotiations are rarely zero-sum, win-win situations. Increased trade may benefit all nations, but on the other hand, it may not. As the famous saying goes: “It all depends.” (see below). In the contemporary global condition, the main motive forces driving trade negotiations are competition and protectionism, where each country seeks to protect its own advantages whilst using all in its power and skill to remove the protectionist barriers of the partner states. Thus, for example, the European Union provides massive subsidies (amounting to US $ 365 billion in 2002) to its agriculture and the United States vigorously protects its steel industry, using both tariff and non-tariff barriers, at the same time that they seek to induce the developing countries to remove their trade barriers, arguing that free trade is “good for them”.

This is the second type of partnership – distributive partnership – where the gains of partnership are unequal. It is a non-zero sum partnership. Other examples of distributive partnership are:

• Labour-capitalist negotiations where the profits of the capitalist increase at the cost of the workers;
• Boundary dispute negotiations where one nation gains territory at the expense of the other;
• Price negotiations between the buyer and the seller where one gains at the expense of the other.

Enforced partnership
An enforced partnership is one where one partner is subjected to the dictate of another largely because of an asymmetrical power relationship. Theoretically, there is the possibility for the weaker partner to walk out of the negotiations. Practically, however, this may be impossible because of a “locked-in” situation, where walking out of negotiations may be even more costly than a bad bargain.
Classically, the colonial relationship was an enforced partnership. The colonised people put up resistance but they had little choice in the ensuing outcome. The same can be said of the “partnership” between the United States and the people of Afghanistan or Iraq in contemporary times. Enforced partnerships are usually power-based (see below for the Cotonou Agreement and AGOA as examples).

Structured partnership
Structured partnership is a sub-set of enforced partnership where the outcome is determined not by negotiations, but by historically created conditions or institutions in which asymmetry is built into, or embedded in the very nature of that relationship. It is a structured relationship.
Thus, for example, in the decades when the Europeans colonised Africa it was an enforced partnership that was yet to be structured. Once the institutions of industry, trade and governance are put in place, the relationship – or partnership – becomes structured. The structured relationship may include not only institutions, but also social groups (that emerge in the process of production and trade), ideological modes of thought, and even a certain kind of psychology (for example, subservient), that the imperial power creates within the colonised society.
At independence some aspects of the structured partnership may change, while others remain. The most visible change is in the personnel who occupy the institutions of governance. However, the rules of governance may already be structured, or ingrained in the system in a manner that continues to give the former colonial power ideological leverage over the formally independent state. More resistant to change are the embedded economic relations in which the structures of industry and trade (including banking, shipping, insurance, services, etc.) remain largely intact. Even more resistant are the ideological and knowledge structures (educational institutions, professional conduct and certification, etc.) that continue to reproduce themselves. What ensures the reproduction of structured partnership above all, is the social groups that are created, not only during the colonial period but also during the course of the struggle for independence, that acquire vested interests in the perpetuation of the structured partnership. This does not mean that structured partnerships are immutable, unalterable. But that is another story.

Some Examples of Partnerships
Some existing partnerships relating to Africa are:

The New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)
The Cotonou Agreement
Africa Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA)
The World Trade Organisation (WTO)
SMART Partnership under the Commonwealth
Partnership under G77 and G15 countries
Southern African Development Community (SADC)

Each of these partnership is analysed in terms of the types of partnership relation it imposes or implies, on the countries involved.

NEPAD is a call by African countries for a new partnership with the developed countries, based on mutual recognition that all cultures have something to contribute to human civilisation. NEPAD argues that Africa has made its contribution by providing the birth place of the human race, and in the form of ecological and natural resources. In return Africa asks the developed world to come to Africa’s assistance (mainly in the form of capital and technology) to lift the continent out of centuries of backwardness and marginalisation. However, NEPAD, advocates a further voluntary integration of Africa into the inherited structured partnership with the West, from which it sees no escape. It concedes defeat in the face of the overwhelming power of the Empire even before the battle begins.

Cotonou, the ACP-EU Partnership Agreement, signed in Cotonou in June 2000, is essentially a continuation of the historic relationship between Africa and Europe. Nothing about this relationship has fundamentally changed.. Thus it falls squarely under the typology of structured partnership (one from which it is difficult to escape, at least in the short run). By and large, Africa continues to perform the historic role of the producer of raw materials for European industries, as well as a market for European goods and investments. Indeed, with the inclusion of a “comprehensive and integrated approach for a strengthened partnership based on political dialogue, development co-operation and economic and trade relations", backed by sanctions that can only be imposed on the ACP countries by Europe, (the reverse case of sanctions being out of the question), the structured relationship has, if anything, deepened and intensified even further. Under the Cotonou Agreement, the ACP countries are supposed to sign Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the European Union.

AGOA is a unilateral, fast-track offer by the United States to open its market, tariff-free, to African products, provided the qualifying countries undertake to meet certain U.S. economic, political and military conditions. Among these are the following: market access to the US is open only to those countries that secure a "certificate of eligibility" from the US; conform to the WTO and Structural Adjustment Programmes; bring domestic legislation into conformity with the WTO; and eliminate barriers to all US trade & investments. Furthermore, they must not engage in any act that undermines US national security & foreign policy interests.
The offer is in obvious competition with the EU, and has yielded immediate results for a few African countries. But unlike Cotonou, which is a structured partnership, AGOA is more like an enforced partnership. The US can unilaterally withdraw the offer any time, and there is nothing an African country can anything about it. You are in or out as the US decides.

The WTO is a multilateral trading organisation with teeth. Violations of its agreements can lead to sanctions, which in effect, only the powerful can apply against the weak. In theory, these agreements are made by consensus but in practice, the so-called Quad countries – namely, the USA, the European Union, Canada and Japan – make them in “green rooms” from which most developing countries are excluded. The Uruguay Round of Agreements (URAs), which created the WTO, were largely a product of negotiations between the Quad countries. Under a “single undertaking” principle the Developing Countries (DCs) had no choice but to accept the whole set of agreements. They are therefore an example of an enforced partnership that locked the DCs into an existing structured relationship from which it is virtually impossible to escape, except when the DCs are able to act in unity. Thus, the WTO is also a form of distributive partnership, where provided the DCs act in unity and play by the game, they can secure some distributive gains within the framework of the multi-lateral trading system.

The SMART Partnership under the Commonwealth (a voluntary association of some Commonwealth countries of the South to generate South-South economic relations) and the Partnership under the G77 and G15 countries (offshoots of the Non-aligned movement), are examples of integrative partnerships. The partners are developing countries that have sought to form a kind of “trade union” made up of the less privileged members of the international community, to protect themselves against enforced and structured forms of partnership with the Empire. Although these are puny efforts against the power of the Empire, they are not insignificant and like the non-alignment movement of the cold war era, they can sometimes provide space for the South to express their dissatisfaction with the dominant system, as well as offering an alternative means of organising South-South partnerships.

The SADC is an example of an attempt at integrative partnership at the regional level within Southern Africa. However, its members are locked into various enforced and structured partnerships with the North (such as the Cotonou Agreement, the South-Africa-EU Free Trade Agreement, and AGOA), and so SADC has very little chance (indeed none) of integrating to become an effective regional organisation. Besides, South Africa offers a base for international finance capital to penetrate the rest of the African region (for example, the takeover of national breweries of these countries by the dominant player, the South African Breweries), creating further layers of enforced partnerships within the overall structured and enforced relations with the Empire.

The Art of Negotiations within the Context of Multi-layered Partnerships
The above paints a sombre picture. But the situation is not as hopeless as it appears. The struggle for liberation by the peoples of the South is part of a very long historical process. The securing of political independence was a major milestone in this struggle. As the contradictions within the Empire sharpen (as, for example, between the Anglo-Saxon and European segments of the Empire and between the equity-conscious peoples of the North and their Corporate-driven governments); and as their dominance creates further resentment and resistance (as is bound to happen in, for example, the Arab world), these structured and enforced “partnerships” are likely to be strained. In the meantime, the leaders of the South have to be careful not to provoke the Empire (as Saddam Hussein managed to do), while taking a united stand in the multilateral trading system (as the South was able to do at the Seattle meeting of the WTO, in December 1999), and creating regional trading blocs in the South as best as conditions allow.

Successful negotiations within the complex web of multi-layered partnerships described above requires the vision of an Nkrumah-like figure, the patience and resilience of Gandhi and the skill and audacity of a Mahathir Mohammed-like negotiator.

Selected Reading List
The New Partnership for Africa's Development - NEPAD, October 2001
The New ACP-EU Partnership Agreement, European Centre for Development Policy Management Centre, ECDPM, Cotonou Infokit, 2001
Towards An Alternative Development Paradigm, Y.Tandon SEATINI, 2002

Jagdish Bhagwati, The World Trading System at Risk, Princeton, 1991