Minilateralism How Trade Alliances, Soft Law and Financial Engineering are Redefining Economic Statecraft

Economic diplomacy is changing. The multilateral organizations that dominated the last half of the twentieth century no longer monopolize economic affairs. Instead, countries are resorting to more modest 'minilateral' strategies like trade alliances, informal 'soft law' agreements, and financial engineering to manage the global economy. Like traditional modes of economic statecraft, these tools are aimed at both liberalizing and supervising international financial policy in a world of diverse national interests. But unlike before, they are specifically tailored to navigating a post-American (and post-Western) world where economic power is more diffuse than ever before. This book explains how these strategies work and reveals how this new diplomatic toolbox will reshape how countries do business with one another for decades to come.

Introduction: rethinking cooperation in a multipolar world; 1. Multilateralism's rise and fall; 2. Playing the numbers in trade; 3. Soft law in international finance; 4. Hedging bets in the monetary system; 5. Managing minilateralism.

Chris Brummer is Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, C. Boyden Gray Fellow on Growth and Finance at the Atlantic Council, and Senior Fellow at the Milken Institute. Professor Brummer lectures widely on finance and global governance, and has taught or visited at the University of Basel, the University of Heidelberg, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Soft Law and the Global Financial System (2012).