Shaping Multilateralism: Principles and Opportunities for Multilateral Cooperation in the United Nations

An unrelenting weakening of multilateralism in recent years has eroded the ability of international organizations to perform their longstanding task of seeking solutions to old and new global problems. Various initiatives to mark the 75th anniversary of the United Nations in 2020 aim to restore this vital capacity.
“Multilateralism is characterized by rules-based cooperation. But which rules and principles can serve as the basis for cooperation in a multipolar world with increasingly divided societies?” GISELA HIRSCHMANN and CORNELIA ULBERT ask in a new paper published by Bonn-based Development and Peace Foundation (sef:).
They proceed to offer answers in ‘Shaping Multilateralism: Principles and opportunities for multilateral cooperation in the UN,’ published by sef: as part of its Global Governance Spotlight series.
“The first step is to identify ways for governments and civil society to reach consensus on established principles – and new ones,” the authors affirm. The next steps are to align existing institutions to these principles and to take active countermeasures against rising populism.
Flexible coalition-building, institutional reforms and winning people over are among the key preconditions to more actively engaging governments and civil society toward revitalizing the multilateralist project. “The aim of all measures should be to show that multilateralism serves the interests of every state and all citizens, because global public goods such as protection from climate change or epidemics cannot be provided or guaranteed at the national level alone,” HIRSCHMANN and ULBERT state.
“A key prerequisite for the success of winning people for multilateralism is credibility, however: only stakeholders whose own actions visibly demonstrate a firm commitment to multilateral principles will be successful in shaping the new multilateralism.”