The Name and Nature of Minilateral: a brief review of the club phenomenon in multilateralism studies

In recent world politics and international relations, it is evidently popular that a particular club cooperation form has received more attention. This form appears to employ quite distinct strategies, such as reducing the scale of the agenda, bringing together actors who share similar values, and limiting the number of participants, in order to better realize the interests of all parties. There are many words to describe this phenomenon or thing, but not all of them are suitable. Behind the abuse of concepts may be hidden inaccurate cognition of things. It is pressing to backtrack existing literature to examine the usages and step towards a definitive understanding.