'This is a must-read for anyone interested in regionalism, trade, human rights and sustainable development, and how law connects these areas. While focusing empirically on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the European Union (EU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Gammage transcends the bounderies of law, politics, economics, development studies and ethics with a truly critical and interdisciplinary account that combines various theoretical perspectives including the Habermasian paradigm of law as discourse, the Gramsian notion of hegemony, and the capabilities approach of Amartya Sen.' --Jan Orbie, Ghent University, Belgium'For the best part of two decades, the EU and ACP have been engaged in protracted negotiations, to find a successor to the Lome trade and development regime. In this important new book, Clair Gammage shows how and why these negotiations have defied common understanding of how North-South trade diplomacy actually works. Combining critical legal and international political economy scholarship with rich empirical detail, Gammage argues that the absence of equitable and meaningful deliberation during the process of the negotiations ultimately determined the outcome of these negotiations. This, in turn, explains why the EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements have, in almost all instances, fallen a long way short of original ambitious. In short, this book is an essential read for all interested in the past, present and future of EU-ACP relations.' --Tony Heron, University of York, UK