Minilateralism Moisés Naím

“[…] we should forget about trying to get the nearly 200 countries to agree. We need to abandon that fool’s errand in favour of a new approach: minilateralism. By this 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. ”

Naím, Moisés. (2009): Think Small to Tackle the World’s Biggest Problems, in: Financial Times.

Naím argues that while the need for effective cooperation in the face of global challenges is constantly growing, multilateral talks fail, deadlines are missed and implementations stall. Multilateralism, then, does not always work as a panacea for global problems. Instead, Naím proposes the concept of "minilateralism": The smallest possible number of states that can effectively contribute to a specific solution should come together, without involving other states merely out of considerations for representation or other non-problem-related reasonings. 

Moisés Naím (* 1952 in Libya) served as Minister of Trade and Industry of Venezuela and Executive Director of the World Bank as well as editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy and continues to write on geopolitical and economics.