Policy makers routinely diagnose global agriculture negotiations as grid-locked by North–South distributional conflict, yet continue to
prescribe the same package of incremental tariff-cuts, export subsidy bans and modest domestic-support disciplines that has failed
to resolve the impasse for two decades. This paper asks why the treatment remains unchanged even as the diagnosis of stalemate
becomes more sophisticated. Using an original dataset of 1,127 formal submissions, 64 semi-structured interviews with negotiators,
and process-tracing of three critical bargaining episodes (2008, 2013 and 2022), we find that the disjuncture is sustained by (1) an
epistemic community that privileges quantifiable trade-distortion metrics over food-security and livelihood externalities, (2)
institutional rules that equate “progress” with legally binding tariff commitments regardless of their practical impact, and (3)
reputational incentives that reward incrementalism and punish norm-breaking proposals. These mechanisms jointly generate
“diagnostic escalation without therapeutic innovation”: negotiators refine ever more granular diagnoses of distributional asymmetry
while recycling the same market-access prescriptions. The study contributes to IPE and negotiation theory by identifying a path-
dependent mismatch between problem representation and policy response that is distinct from bargaining power asymmetries or
preference divergence. We conclude with design principles—issue-based coalitions, re-framed metrics of success, and sunset
clauses for negotiating modalities—that could realign diagnosis and treatment in future agricultural talks.