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INTRODUCTION
Multilateralism in the twenty-first century
Caroline Bouchard, John Peterson and Nathalie Tocci1
The grand narrative of twenty-first-century international relations (IR) has become notably clearer in the first years of the century's second decade. It has two fundamental features. First, much about globalisation is clearly irreversible. States face powerful new incentives to cooperate with trade, capital, ideas, people, technology, information, weapons, diseases and crime all flowing more freely than in any previous era. Moreover, transnational issues over which individual states have very limited control have become sources of conflict: global warming, migration and resource scarcity have created profound collective action problems.
A second fundamental feature of the international order is that power – especially economic power – is shifting. The rise of the so-called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) lends a new and unsettling fluidity to the international order. Historically, eras marked by the rise and fall of great powers have experienced considerable turmoil that often has culminated in armed conflict, especially in Europe (see Gilpin 1981; Layne 2006). To avoid such a return to the future, tectonic shifts in international power have, somehow, to be managed.
Naturally, one effect of these two primordial shifts in IR, and a place where their pressures converge, is in the generation of heightened and renewed interest in multilateralism. While a large body of research exists on multilateralism as a concept, it continues to be ill defined and poorly understood. The essential features and dimensions of multilateralism remain contested and ambiguous. Arguably, it does not qualify as a core concept in the study of IR as (say) anarchy or interdependence do (see Chapter 2). This book aims to make it one, or at least to consider whether it deserves such status. It does so by analysing the evolution of the concept and practice of multilateralism, examining forms, models and cases of multilateralism, and confronting debates about how it can be made durable and effective in the twenty-first century. It also focuses on Europe's contribution – especially that of the European Union (EU) – to multilateralism: past, present and future. In particular, it seeks to explore whether and how the European Union delivers on its stated goal of promoting effective multilateralism in its external action.
Scholars have increasingly bracketed multilateralism as a European-specific approach towards international security. This move is not surprising. The member states of the EU repeatedly have agreed that the logical response to new global challenges created by globalisation is more extensive and intensive multilateralism, even if they are waking up late (if at all) to the need to try to ‘govern’ shifts in power through multilateral means. In any case, European consensus on the virtues of multilateralism was clearly stated in both the European Security Strategy and the Lisbon Treaty.
in a world of global threats, global markets and global media, our security and prosperity increasingly depend on an effective multilateral system (emphasis added)
(ESS 2003: 10)
The EU shall … promote an international system based on stronger multilateral cooperation and good global governance
(Treaty of Lisbon: Article 10A, 2(h))
Multilateralism, and more specifically ‘effective multilateralism’, have become focal points for analysing the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Effective multilateralism, according to the European Security Strategy, refers to ‘development of a stronger international society, well functioning international institutions and a rule-based international order’ (European Council 2003: 10). Arguably, the EU has done more than most of its partners to address old and new global challenges through the pursuit of effective multilateralism. Nonetheless, the EU has conflicting strategies and priorities. Alongside multilateralism, it often promotes regionalism and embraces inter-regional dialogue. It increasingly seeks bilateral strategic partnerships with old and emerging great powers.
Beyond multilateralism, it also vigorously defends European interests within international organisations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), at times in line with the broader goals of the multilateral grouping in question, at times not. These conflicting strategies and priorities raise two crucial issues. First, despite the general commitment to effective multilateralism, there is little clarity about what precisely is meant by it, and thus whether and to what extent effective multilateralism is compatible with other foreign policy goals. Second, in view of conflicting strategies, matching supply to demand for effective multilateralism is a significant challenge for the European Union, not least because it has other priorities that conflict with this objective.
This book is fundamentally about multilateralism in the twenty-first century and the European Union's contribution to making it effective. It presents findings generated within MERCURY (an acronym that admittedly stretches to abbreviate Multilateralism and the EU in the Contemporary Global Order), a three-year, €2 million EU-funded research programme. It develops and investigates specific theses about multilateralism, the EU, the quest for effectiveness, and what effectiveness means. Its central research question – addressed in all chapters – is: does the EU deliver on its commitment to effective multilateralism?
The volume has two main objectives. First, to shed new light on twenty-first-century multilateralism by developing and operationalising a new, enhanced, refined, modern definition of multilateralism, while generating innovative, empirical knowledge on the practice of multilateralism. Second, to pinpoint the effects of the EU's external relations by gauging whether, how and how much Europe contributes to the building of effective multilateralism.
The chapters in this volume grapple with five main areas of inquiry:
1. How should we understand multilateralism, both historically and in contemporary terms? Is there a ‘European way’ of multilateralism that is culturally specific?
2. By what criteria can multilateralism be deemed ‘effective’? Should effectiveness be interpreted exclusively in procedural terms – i.e. focusing on the functioning of multilateral action – or does it also or primarily regard the substantive policy objective that multilateralism sets out to pursue?
3. Is the European Union – in its constitutional and institutional setup as well as its policy instruments – well tailored to promote effective multilateralism?
4. Does the EU live up to its ambitions to contribute to effective multilateralism, both in its neighbourhood and globally, and in a variety of policy areas ranging from trade, fiscal coordination and climate change to conflict resolution?
5. What policy lessons can be drawn from Europe's experience of promoting multilateralism?
Ultimately, we and our authors confront a question that no single academic work has so far explicitly answered: that is, whether, how, and how effectively, does the EU deliver on its commitment to effective multilateralism? We do so by exploring different conceptual approaches to multilateralism, as well as by testing and comparing the EU's experience in different policy areas, and distinct geographical and institutional settings, including those that are internal to the Union and in specified regions, international organisations (IOs) and bilateral partnerships. We begin by mapping how this volume seeks to achieve its aims.
The EU's quest for effective multilateralism
The first part of this book – Mapping modes of multilateralism – reviews competing approaches to multilateralism. Subsequent sections of the book – Multilateralism in EU policies, Multilateralism in practice: Key regions and partners, and The European Union in multilateral fora – explore empirically EU institutional and policy dynamics, regional and strategic (bilateral) partnerships, and the Union's practice of multilateralism within formal and informal international organisations.
Multilateralism may be understood as a system of interaction combining rules, institutionalised cooperation and inclusiveness. It is recognised as a distinct form of cooperation in international relations, rooted in voluntary decisions taken by the participants, involving a plurality of actors, and based upon the recognition of norms and/or standards rather than ad hoc or asymmetrical arrangements. Beyond this definition, a number of features and dimensions of multilateralism remain contested and ambiguous. The three chapters in Part I of this book – Mapping modes of multilateralism – directly plunge into debates about conceptualising multilateralism.
In Chapter 2, Peterson and Bouchard argue that conceptual and definitional confusion about what multilateralism means co-exists, paradoxically, with the EU's clear commitment to effective multilateralism. They propose a new, twenty-first-century, modernised definition of multilateralism that takes account of developments in global governance in the (now) multiple decades since seminal works on multilateralism were published. But they also look retrospectively at ebbs and flows in the development of multilateralism historically, with a view to specifying Europe's contribution to its specific advances and retreats. The authors confront squarely claims that a ‘European way’ of multilateralism is culturally specific and clashes with views about the purpose and practice of multilateralism beyond European shores.
Elena Lazarou, Geoffrey Edwards, Christopher Hill and Julie Smith examine the idea of multilateralism as doctrine and trace its development throughout the twenty-first century in Chapter 3. The EU is the principal actor that has implemented and operationalised the doctrine of multilateralism, particularly since designating ‘effective multilateralism’ a clear foreign policy priority. They argue that conceptualising a doctrine of multilateralism enriches current debates about global governance in an era of emerging multipolarity, and that developing a consensus on the basic rules and principles that guide multilateral policy-making is a prerequisite for effective action. Hence, effectiveness is applied to the actual pursuit of a given foreign policy goal, rather than simply to the functioning of multilateral means of action.
Whereas effectiveness can thus be applied to both goals and means, multilateralism itself, according to Peterson and Hill in Chapter 4, is by nature messy, disorderly and unwieldy. It also may be deemed to be effective in multiple different and incompatible ways. The authors argue that it is usually defective insofar as it rarely produces quick solutions to international problems or applies the same rules to all. But to judge multilateralism by these criteria is, they suggest, to take an inflexible, naive and even dogmatic view about what the purpose and practice of multilateralism should be. Its purpose usually is to find some kind of compromise between affected actors with conflicting interests, which in practice often requires a bending of rules. The authors offer a historical account of Europe's experience of multilateralism, challenge accepted wisdoms about the EU's commitment to multilateralism and its international persona more generally, and consider external trade policy as a case study of the Union's external action. They argue that the EU's experience of multilateralism is not typical but also not unique in IR.
Part II of the book – Multilateralism in EU policies – explores systematically how the Union's institutional machinery and policy externalisation equip it to contribute to a multilateral order. It examines the structural framework of EU external relations, including constitutional (treaty), institutional and policy change at the European level. This part of the book is concerned with evolving interactions between the Union and its member states. It also considers the causes and dynamics of the externalisation of EU policy. The two chapters in this part of the book aim to elaborate how the institutional machinery works to produce external policy, and how well equipped the EU is to act externally in multilateral frameworks.
Drawing on research on the Union's performance as an international actor, Nadia Klein, Tobias Kunstein and Wulf Reiners in Chapter 5 provide a framework for assessing the varying levels of multilateral action in EU external policies. The analysis takes into account both the legal and the living framework – the actual use of the provisions – of EU trade policy and the CFSP. The chapter's findings demonstrate that the EU is stronger in supporting international law (multilateral legal basis) than in pooling resources with other international actors (multilateral implementation).
While the European Union's identity may have normative and/or other characteristics, it is fundamentally a large single market with significant and distinct institutional features and competing interest groups. Or so argues Chad Damro in Chapter 6. Given these central characteristics, Damro suggests that the EU may be best understood as ‘Market Power Europe’ that exercises its power through the externalisation of economic and social market-related policies and regulatory measures, including in multilateral settings. The chapter provides an analytical framework for understanding what kind of power the European Union is, what the EU says as a power and what the Union does as a power.
Multilateralism in practice: Key regions and partners – Part III of this book – explores the external dimension, and in particular addresses the EU's interactions with external regions and strategic partners in the southern and eastern neighbourhoods, as well as in Africa and Asia. All are critically important regions and partners both in terms of global order and in terms of specific EU interests. A focus on key regions and partners complements the study of internal institutional and policy dynamics, providing an additional cut or perspective on EU external action. There is at least the possibility that, by focusing its efforts on regions and strategic partners, the EU undermines its own objectives of contributing to effective multilateralism.
Silvia Colombo and Nur Abdelkhaliq in Chapter 7 explore the practice of EU multilateralism vis-à-vis the Mediterranean – a key region for the European Union – by examining energy and migration policies. These two issue areas are crucial in the Union's strategy of incorporating internal policy objectives related to energy security and the management of migration flows into its external multilateral frameworks with the Mediterranean. The chapter assesses the extent to which the EU can be defined as a multilateral actor in the Mediterranean by ex...
