Negotiations on further trade liberalization have been protracted and several WTO ministerial meetings have ended in deadlock while in others states reached only partial agreement. The causes of impasse in multilateral negotiations in which an agreement would leave bargaining parties in a better position than in its absence remains one of the enduring puzzles in the analysis of bargaining. The main claim of the paper is that the outcomes of multilateral negotiations are a function of time constraints, which are closely linked to endogenous and exogenous time rules. Endogenous time rules refer to internally imposed deadlines; while exogenous time rules are a function of the timing of the electoral cycle at the national level. The paper develops a number of hypotheses and shows that strong time constraints lead to concessions while weak time constraints do not. Empirical evidence is provided by focusing on the current deadlocked Doha round. We show that in the later term period of election cycles a successful conclusion to trade negotiations is less likely. At the same time, explicit time rules lead to more concessions only if major WTO players do not have good outside options (bilateral and regional trade agreements), thus reducing time pressure to agree at the multilateral level.
