When standards go parallel
Strategic architectures beyond WTO TBT and the Geneva‑based institutions.
Thumbnail photo by Getty Images on Unsplash.
For decades, the global standardization system rested on a relatively clear understanding of what is considered an “international standard”. Under the World Trade Organization (WTO) Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Agreement, international standards should follow six core principles: transparency, openness, impartiality and consensus, effectiveness and relevance, coherence, and a development dimension. If you’ve been following me, you will have read how ISO, IEC and ITU, all located in Geneva, became the main organizations seen as consistently operating under these principles and providing the technical backbone for global trade:
In recent years, this landscape has started to shift, with technical standards increasingly used as tools of foreign policy and strategic competition. States, alone or grouped in the form of economic or political blocs, are now building and empowering parallel architectures for standards development that coexist with, and sometimes bypass, the three Geneva‑based institutions. This is what I call “strategic parallel standardization”, a concept that this article develops and uses to examine its implications for the international standardization system.
