5 - Managing Minilateralism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
Summary
We’ve seen throughout this book that minilateralism can arise in different guises and forms, each with the objective of lubricating interstate economic relations in a world of more diffuse power. But because it provides a means to an end – and is not an end in and of itself – minilateralism can’t (or at least shouldn’t) be understood as inherently good or bad. Instead, it represents an expanded toolset of options for countries navigating a world of increasingly heterogeneous economic interests and preferences.
So it’s important to keep in mind that minilateralism provides no one magic bullet for solving all problems in international economic relations. The challenges facing the global economy are big and diverse. Not every problem can be tackled the same way, with the same partners, or with the same commitments or market-related instruments. Instead, to be effective, minilateralism inherently requires what Harvard professor Joseph Nye and humanitarian Suzanne Nossel have separately described as “smart” power – the ability to customize policy responses in ways that most effectively speak to the challenge or opportunity at hand. Unlike Nye and Nossel’s conceptions of smart power, however, which tend to involve simultaneous uses of military, economic, and cultural power, minilateral statecraft is a matter of deploying governmental and market-based instruments in the service of financial stability and growth. Nonetheless, both smart minilateralism and smart foreign policy require government policymakers to ask the same basic set of strategic questions. First, they have to determine their own preferred policy objectives. Next, they have to identify what tools are possibly available to achieve their objectives, and the likelihood of success with each. Finally, officials have to ask whether their actions will be viewed by other relevant actors and stakeholders as legitimate uses of power.
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- MinilateralismHow Trade Alliances, Soft Law and Financial Engineering are Redefining Economic Statecraft, pp. 165 - 198Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
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