You say multilateralism, I say minilateralism… let’s call the whole thing off

Wise and benevolent overlord of the entire foreign policy realm FP editor-in-chief Moises Naim has an essay in the latest issue of Foreign Policy about the need for "minilateralism" in global governance. 

The pattern is clear: Since the early 1990s, the need for effective multicountry collaboration has soared, but at the same time multilateral talks have inevitably failed; deadlines have been missed; financial commitments and promises have not been honored; execution has stalled; and international collective action has fallen far short of what was offered and, more importantly, needed. These failures represent not only the perpetual lack of international consensus, but also a flawed obsession with multilateralism as the panacea for all the world’s ills.

So what is to be done? To start, let’s forget about trying to get the planet’s nearly 200 countries to agree. We need to abandon that fool’s errand in favor of a new idea: minilateralism.

By minilateralism, I mean a smarter, more targeted approach: We should bring to the table the smallest possible number of countries needed to have the largest possible impact on solving a particular problem. Think of this as minilateralism’s magic number."

It’s hard for me to disagree with my master someone making global governance arguments similar to my own, but agreement is boring, so here goes: 

• Even though Naim sets it up this way, I don’t think this is an either/or question. There can be minilateralism within multilateralism. Indeed, there has to be a more exclusive club inside universal global governance structures for any decision-making of consequence to take place. The IMF and World Bank have their decision-making bodies, and the WTO has its own green room. 
• Naim might be underselling the benefits of multilateral organizations.  They are cumbersome and slow, but they do confer legitimacy benefits that are real even if very difficult to measure. 
• Fortunately, minilateral and multilateral approaches often complement each other — or, rather, minilateral approaches generate attractors, which leads to multilateralism. See: the GATT/WTO system, origins of. 
• Whether they have benefits or not however is kind of besides the point. The thing is, they’re not going away.  As hard as the Bush administration tried, they couldn’t wish away the U.N. process on global warming. As much as China and Russia would like to rejigger global economic governance, they can’t make the IMF disappear. 
• One last point, which Moises acknowledges but needs to be stressed again — the best governance design in the world does not amount to anything if the great powers have radically different preferences.  Institutions matter, but so do power and ideas.