For much of the post-war period, interest in the multilateral trading system – as embodied in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) – was limited to national delegates posted to Geneva, a small number of technocrats in capitals, and a handful of academics, mostly legal scholars plus a few economists and an even smaller number of political scientists. Among politicians and the general public, the GATT was virtually unknown. During those years, a professional journal devoted exclusively to the multilateral trading system would have been hard pressed to fill its pages.