Competitive Cooperation: How to Think About Strengthening Multilateralism
Multilateralism faces severe challenges in the UN’s 75th birthday year and beyond. It has become clear that great power conflicts (especially between the US and China) are again a central framework constraining multilateral cooperation. In this paper by the
Bertelsmann Stiftung, Thorsten Benner discusses the crisis of multilateralism and what can be done about it. He introduces four distinct “circles of multilateralism”: like-minded democratic multilateralism; like-minded authoritarian multilateralism sponsored by China and partly Russia; (near) universal diplomatic multilateralism, and global public goods multilateralism. He then offers the principle of “competitive cooperation” as a means of strengthening multilateralism, and introduces thoughts on how to implement this in each of the four spheres.
https://www.gppi.net/2020/10/28/competitive-cooperation-how-to-think-about-strengthening-multilateralism
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