The promise of plurilateralism
Fortunately, models for such multilateral cooperation already exist. Informal groups of ‘like-minded’ countries have improvised solutions to global problems in many policy areas, including international migration,16 global health,17 internet governance18 and arms control.19 The label frequently applied to this style of cooperation – ‘plurilateralism’ – underscores its informality and the diversity of forms it may take. Membership in these groups tends to be issue-specific and heterogeneous, with some being comprised solely of states and others including non-governmental actors, from corporations and private foundations to advocacy networks. As Stewart Patrick notes, ‘governments have taken to operating in many venues simultaneously, participating in a bewildering array of issue-specific networks and partnerships whose membership varies based on situational interests, shared values, and relevant capabilities’.20
Below, this paper describes three recent examples of plurilateral cooperation. Each highlights a different way in which mid-sized states can work together to sustain key elements of the liberal order. Specifically, such initiatives can help (1) to devise solutions to problems that have paralysed existing international institutions, (2) to renegotiate international agreements that seem destined for the ash heap of history, and (3) to sustain or expand multi-stakeholder campaigns to address significant global problems.
Dealing with paralysis: WTO reform
In October 2018, the Canadian government convened what it termed a ‘working group of like-minded nations’ – comprising 12 members of the WTO, including Australia, Brazil, the EU, South Korea, Singapore and Japan – to explore possible solutions to problems that threaten the organization’s future. The WTO’s last significant round of trade liberalization was in the 1990s. Its rules have failed to keep pace with emerging areas of practice – including the expanded participation of state-owned enterprises in international trade, new types of financing arrangements, and barriers to digital trade – in part because changes to the rules require a consensus of WTO members, which has been elusive. The failure of many countries, including major economies like China, to comply with reporting obligations has made it even harder to reach agreement.21 The organization’s dispute settlement mechanism is also at risk. If the US does not stop blocking the appointment of new judges to the WTO Appellate Body, it will soon have too few judges to hear new cases. Without a means of adjudication, international trade disputes will go unresolved – or, what is worse, they will be decided through a raw contest of wills.
The WTO’s rules have failed to keep pace with emerging areas of practice
The middle-powers initiative organized by Canada, known as the Ottawa Group on WTO Reform, has initially focused on improving the functioning of the WTO’s committees, but it also aims to tackle harder issues, including the reform of the dispute settlement system. The hope is to find a formula that will persuade the US to resume the appointment of judges, at least as an interim measure. Longer-term fixes will be more challenging. Although many countries share Washington’s concern that the dispute settlement process is too slow and that judges have a tendency to overreach in their decisions, achieving consensus among all WTO members on far-reaching reforms seems unlikely. Alternatively, a subset of members could agree on the creation of a new mechanism that would be open to all states that agree to its terms. Similar plurilateral approaches may unlock solutions in other areas of concern, including rules on subsidies and state-owned enterprises, clearer standards for determining which countries are designated ‘developing states’, and stronger requirements for reporting national policies.
Renegotiating and reviving agreements: The Trans-Pacific Partnership
In 2015, 12 countries – Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam – concluded seven years of negotiations on a trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which sought to reduce tariffs and to establish common standards on intellectual property, digital commerce, labour and environment regulations, and dispute resolution, among other things. The administration of US President Barack Obama saw the TPP as a vital trade-opening and rule-setting initiative for a strategic region. ‘If we don’t write the rules, China will write the rules out in that region. We will be shut out’, Obama asserted in 2015.22
When Donald Trump signed an executive order in the first week of his presidency withdrawing the US from the pact, many observers thought the deal was dead. How could it proceed without its principal and biggest sponsor? At Japan’s urging, however, the remaining 11 members revised the terms of the agreement and brought it into force. Renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), it now covers approximately 13 per cent of the global economy and 500 million people. Importantly, the countries that launched the CPTPP did so not in spite of the US, but in the hope that the US would eventually rejoin the agreement. Other countries are reported to be exploring the possibility of membership: these include South Korea, Colombia, Indonesia, Thailand, and even the UK (following its planned withdrawal from the EU). Some observers speculate that China might one day consider joining, too, but doing so would require Beijing to accept the imposition of rules on sensitive issues – including intellectual property, technology transfer and labour rights – that it has hitherto resisted in WTO discussions.23 Mounting trade tensions between China and the US make it even less likely. Nonetheless, with or without China, the CPTPP could eventually develop into a multiregional economic zone, open to any country willing to embrace its rules.
The countries that launched the CPTPP did so not in spite of the US, but in the hope that the US would eventually rejoin the agreement
Sustaining global policy campaigns: climate change
Finally, efforts to combat climate change provide an example of plurilateral cooperation aimed at sustaining an imperilled global campaign. Shortly after taking power in January 2017, the Trump administration announced its intention to withdraw from the joint commitments agreed by the COP21 (21st Conference of the Parties) UN climate change conference, held in Paris in December 2015. Many observers had feared that the COP21 agreement would collapse, but most of its signatories instead reaffirmed their commitment. The 24th Conference of the Parties (COP24), meeting in Katowice, Poland in December 2018, agreed on a set of common standards to measure progress on their respective greenhouse gas emissions targets. Although many scientists believe that these targets remain insufficient to prevent the global temperature rise of two degrees Celsius that the COP21 agreement sought to avert, the fact that the COP21 negotiating parties have continued their cooperation towards its implementation despite the US withdrawal shows what might be achievable in other areas of policy.
The example of international cooperation on climate change also illustrates the benefits of involving subnational governments, private companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in these efforts.24 In September 2018, Governor of California Jerry Brown hosted a Global Climate Action Summit, bringing together local leaders, state governors, business executives and NGOs from around the world. Among the 500 or so new commitments to emerge from the event, 70 major cities pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 while 488 companies, with a combined market capitalization of $10 trillion, adopted emission reduction targets for their respective operations. This type of plurilateral activism not only leveraged the contributions from subnational and non-state actors, but crucially it also enabled them to continue participating in a global campaign that their own federal government had renounced.
16 Oelgemöller, C. (2011), ‘Informal Plurilateralism: The Impossibility of Multilateralism in the Steering of Migration’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 13(1): pp. 110–126, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856X.2010.00442.x (accessed 16 Apr. 2019).
17 Hill, P. (2011), ‘Understanding global health governance as a complex adaptive system’, Global Public Health, 6(6): pp. 593–605, doi: 10.1080/17441691003762108 (accessed 16 Apr. 2019).
18 Raymond, M. and DeNardis, L. (2015), ‘Multistakeholderism: anatomy of an inchoate global institution’, International Theory, 7(3): pp. 572–616, doi: 10.1017/S1752971915000081 (accessed 16 Apr. 2019).
19 Dolan, M. and Hunt, C. (1998), ‘Negotiating in the Ottawa process: The new multilateralism’, Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, 5(3): pp. 25–50, doi: 10.1080/11926422.1998.9673148 (accessed 16 Apr. 2019).
20 Patrick, S. (2014), ‘The Unruled World: The Case for Good Enough Global Governance’, Foreign Affairs, 93 (1): pp. 58–73, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2013-12-06/unruled-world (accessed 16 Apr. 2019).
21 Caporal, J. and Gerstel, D. (2018), ‘WTO Reform: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?’, Centre for Strategic and International Studies Interview, 23 October 2018, https://www.csis.org/analysis/wto-reform-beginning-end-or-end-beginning (accessed 16 Apr. 2019).
22 Vanderklippe, N. (2018), ‘TPP deal a way for U.S. to reassert primacy over China’, Globe and Mail, 15 May 2018, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/tpp-deal-a-way-for-us-to-reassert-primacy-over-china/article26660167 (accessed 16 Apr. 2019).
23 Zhou, L. and Wu, W. (2018), ‘Beijing ‘looking into joining trans-Pacific trade pact’ to hedge against US’, South China Morning Post, 11 October 2018, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2168147/beijing-looking-joining-trans-pacific-trade-pact-hedge-against (accessed 16 Apr. 2019).
24 Duggan, J. (2019), The Role of Sub-state and Non-state Actors in International Climate Processes: Subnational Governments, Chatham House Research Paper, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/role-sub-state-and-non-state-actors-international-climate-processes-subnational (accessed 16 Apr. 2019).