This essay aims to assess the prospects of a larger role for multilateral assistance in world development. It does not attempt to review the familiar, often extreme, arguments made in favor of either bilateral or multilateral aid. It rejects the notion that the realizable possibilities of the many multilateral institutions and programs treated in detail in the other essays in this volume can be assessed as a unitary whole. The effort here will be to identify the specific kinds of multilateral aid which have especial potential of political support from aid-giving countries in the near future. As for the more distant future the reader is forewarned that the domestic politics of assistance, at least in this decade of stagnating support of aid of all kinds, recognizes no significant distinction between multilateral and bilateral aid. The web of will to help others develop is finely and infrangibly woven.
