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 diver...