The Crisis in World Order and the Challenge to International Organization

This article discusses the role and possibilities of multilateralism in the emerging `new world order'. The analysis of the challenges for multilateral organizations should be made at two levels, namely through problem-solving theory and through critical theory, including investigations of the changes in the global political economy conditioning the workings of multilateralism. The global political economy of today is characterized by a `new capitalism' which opposes any form of state or interstate control or intervention. However, the processes of market globalization, most prominent in the 1980s, have shown signs of crisis: social polarization both between different parts of the world and within societies of the North, a more autonomous role of finance in relation to production and ecological deterioration. The solution to these developments is the reregulation and repoliticization of the political economy at the global level through multilateralism. In order to seize the opportunities, multilateralism has to be dualistic — one part of it being involved in the present predicaments of the state system, another part probing the social and political foundations of a future order.