Policymakers routinely diagnose global agriculture negotiations as gridlocked 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.

Methodology and findings:

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:

An epistemic community that privileges quantifiable trade-distortion metrics over food-security and livelihood externalities;

Institutional rules that equate “progress” with legally binding tariff commitments regardless of their practical impact; and

Reputational incentives that reward incrementalism and punish norm-breaking proposals.

Diagnostic escalation without therapeutic innovation:

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.

Contribution to theory:

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.

Conclusion and design principles:

We conclude with design principles—issue-based coalitions, reframed metrics of success, and sunset clauses for negotiating modalities—that could realign diagnosis and treatment in future agricultural talks.