1 - Multilateralism’s Rise and Fall
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
Summary
As much as people talk about economic “multilateralism,” it remains very much an elusive term, in part because it is used loosely to denote two similar though distinct concepts. At its simplest, multilateralism often is described as cooperation between three or more countries. Still, most legal scholars tend to equate multilateralism with the forms of cooperation that have dominated the postwar story of international cooperation – highly ritualized “global” forums of cooperation where heads of state sign treaties that memorialize certain economic relationships, usually under the auspices of a formal international organization.
But before the mid-seventeenth century, countries rarely cooperated in the sense in which we are familiar today. This is in part because the very idea of a “state” was very much under construction. Countries did not always have the sophisticated governmental infrastructure, or even the territorial integrity, that we know today. Moreover, with poor communication and limited interactions among emerging nations, sophisticated economic arrangements were not always feasible. Instead, they became more popular only over time, as countries came into closer and more sustained contact with one another.
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- Information
- MinilateralismHow Trade Alliances, Soft Law and Financial Engineering are Redefining Economic Statecraft, pp. 22 - 52Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014