Multilateralism: An Agenda for Research

Abstract

Multilateralism can be defined as the practice of co-ordinating national policies in groups of three or more states, through ad hoc arrangements or by means of institutions. Since the end of World War II, multilateralism has become increasingly important in world politics, as manifested in the proliferation of multinational conferences on a bewildering variety of themes and an increase in the number of multilateral intergovernmental organizations from fewer than 100 in 1945 to about 200 by i960 and over 600 by 1980.1 Bilateralism has been revived on some issues in the 1980s, particularly with regard to trade, yet the number and variety of multilateral arrangements continue to increase. In the international relations literature, multilateralism has served as a label for a variety of activities more than as a concept defining a research programme. When a scholar refers to multilateralism, it is not immediately clear what phenomena are to be described and explained. Before we can understand multilateralism, we need to think about how we should conceive of it and