Bras. Political Sci. Rev.2009;3(1):129-32.
Multilateral Cooperation and Legitimacy of International Institutions: Old and New Challenges
DOI: 10.1590/1981-3855200900010006
Multilateral Cooperation
Although the essays constitute, in the author’s own words, a defence of multilateralism (p. 16), international multilateral cooperation is neither seen as a panacea, nor as easy to achieve. Hence the need to understand the limits and potentialities of multilateral institutions, especially of the UN System (p. 17), as well as how multilateral political will is formed (p. 49). On the question of multilateral political will, the author states that the greatest difficulty in consensus-building originates in the inequality between States, which is intrinsic to the international system. Here, institutions provide an important service to the international community, by forcing the exposure of the differences and contradictions between States in an organized and disciplined fashion (p. 54).
The role of international institutions and of multilateral cooperation in the international system is one of the main themes dealt with by political philosophers, as well as by International Relations theories. Although this debate cannot be reproduced in this brief review, Fonseca’s perspective may be interpreted as eclectic, inasmuch as he recognizes the values of stability and order provided by the institutions, without slipping into utopian naïveté. As the author states, experience would lead one to validate contradictory analytical arguments, such as that the UN is simultaneously realist and Grotian (p. 15). Even so, the importance the author attributes to variables such as sociological context, common values, culture and history might lead readers to believe his worldview is rather close to that of constructivist authors (as Fonseca himself recognizes on page 15) and social and historical institutionalists. It is from this viewpoint that his theoretical reflections both on multilateralism — above all as dealt with by John Ruggie (item IV, chapter 1) — and on international cooperation (chapter 5) must be read. On international cooperation, the “analytical solution” developed by the author is interesting. It is presented as an alternative to realism in explaining what regulates the level of cooperation in the international system (p. 281) and links up short- and long-term problems (p. 289).
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