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Towards a post-hegemonic world: The multipolar threat to the multilateral order

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Abstract

Multipolarity, understood as a global redistribution of power among an increasing number of actors, will not necessarily lead to a strengthening of a multilateral, cooperative order. In fact, the opposite is now occurring. If anything, multipolarity is placing multilateralism on an ever more precarious footing. Thus while emerging powers will increasingly contest Western hegemony, they will not want – nor be able – to replace it. This would constitute transition without hegemony – the very definition of multipolarity.

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Notes

  1. In 2011, the United Nations had 185 members versus 45 when it was created. In 2013, the WTO had 159 members versus 23 when the GATT was created in 1948.

  2. For more on the application of Olson’s theories to international relations, see Kindelberger (1981) and Manfield (1993).

  3. This line of reasoning can also be extended to emerging powers.

  4. The Bretton Woods institutions are technically part of the United Nations system. However, in reality their operations are largely independent of the UN system.

  5. The WTO refers to ‘special and differential treatment’, and the UNFCC, to ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’.

  6. For example, he shows how in 2008 a final agreement ultimately failed basically because neither the United States nor China wanted it, even though technically the obstacles could be overcome.

  7. ‘While they develop, we die; and why should we accept this?’ asked one delegate from a threatened island, addressing India, which was accused of blocking an agreement at Durban (BBC News, 11 December 2011).

  8. This point is further developed in Pauwelyn’s (2013) excellent article.

  9. Interview in Le Temps newspaper, 13 April 2013.

  10. In 1990, the Chinese GNP only represented 10 per cent of the Americain GNP.

  11. Financial Times, 5 June 2013.

  12. The Eurozone now accounts for only 37 per cent of German exports versus 46 per cent in 2000, The Economist, 15 June 2013.

  13. Hillary Clinton, Foreign Policy Address at the Council of Foreign Relations, 15 July 2009, cited in Laïdi (2012a, 2012b).

  14. See ‘Remarks of the President in the State of Union Address’, 24 January 2012, White House. And for a critique of this view, see Bhagwati (2011).

  15. For example, the WTO–GATS agreement on the services market were ‘in practice loosely enforced’, Goudron and Jean (2013).

  16. Of the world’s 200 largest state-owned enterprises, 20 are Chinese, 30 are Indian and 9 are Russian.

  17. The Economist, 14 November 2009. However, it is important to understand that this type of statement does not reflect an abstract preference. Europe faces the lowest cost of adjustment to climate change in the world.

  18. Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data, United States Environmental Protection Agency, www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/global.html#four.

  19. At the Copenhagen conference in 2009, the EU made the 30 per cent reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions compared with 1990 conditional on its partners’ making an adequate effort. However, the initial European commitment (20 per cent) was already very high and much higher than any other country’s commitment.

  20. ‘We will have established a huge number of goods and products being produced according to a set of standards. And others who want to get into that are going to have to raise their game’, The New York Times, 12 June 2013.

  21. ‘What we’re talking about is shaping a new standard that then becomes the metric by which all future trade agreements are measured’ as explicitly stated by US Vice President Biden, Reuters, 5 April 2013 www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/05/us-usa-trade-biden-idUSBRE9340TD20130405

  22. Le Figaro, 13 June 2013.

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  1. Centre d’Etudes Européennes, Sciences Po, 27 rue Saint-Guillaume, Paris Cedex 07, 75337, France

    Zaki Laïdi

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Laïdi, Z. Towards a post-hegemonic world: The multipolar threat to the multilateral order. Int Polit 51, 350–365 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2014.13

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