Introduction

This chapter examines the APEC decision-making process, with particular focus on how it has worked in recent years with respect to trade issues. In studying the decision-making process, I will assess it with respect to three questions: first, where do new initiatives come from, and how are they advanced in the APEC process; secondly, how is consensus reached with respect to these initiatives, and what does that consensus mean; and thirdly, how, and how well, are decisions implemented. The analysis begins with a brief exposition of APEC decision-making institutions, and their relationship, at least in principle, to one another in a typical annual APEC cycle. I then proceed to examine how these institutions have actually functioned to generate new initiatives, build consensus around them, and implement them. On the basis of this analysis, I draw some conclusions and recommendations about the process.

The analysis of these questions draws largely from my personal experience as the U.S. representative to the Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI) in 1997–99, which also involved being one of a small team of staff to the United States Trade Representative (USTR) on APEC issues, and my experience as Chair of the Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI) in 2000 and 2001, which gave me a particularly good vantage point to be involved in and observe the staff and Senior Officials process.

In addition, I will draw on my knowledge of the decision-making process just prior to my personal involvement in APEC, during 1994–96. Since these years were particularly successful in producing significant decisions, they can help explain the institutional factors behind APEC's success. At the same time, they provide a useful contrast to the years 1997–99, which were dominated by the Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization scheme, or EVSL. The EVSL itself was one of APEC's most ambitious efforts, an attempt to build upon the heady successes of the preceding years. However, elements that made APEC successful in those years proved lacking during the EVSL period, as will be demonstrated.