The Political Economy of Global Multilateralism

Many conservatives (at the least the subset who are classical liberals) approve of global multilateral trade agreements and allied agreements that keep global capital markets open. Conservatives, however, tend to be openly skeptical of other global multilateral agreements, be they environmental accords, human rights conventions, military pacts, or an agreement on an international criminal court. In this paper I offer the beginnings of a framework of sound political economy that justifies these divergent intuitions and shows that they are rooted in more than just a reflexive liking for trade combined with a disdain for the environment, human rights, criminal justice, and world peace. I begin with an important caveat. This paper offers an account of global multilateralism at a necessarily high level of generality, given the space limitations for the essays in this collection. It does not seek to defend or critique the actual operation of particular global multilateral treaties, although it occasionally uses some treaties as examples. Specifically, it does not defend the particular structure of the World Trade Organization ("WTO") or criticize particular environmental or human rights treaties.1 I also recognize that the guidelines it offers for global multilateralism may be too pristine for the world of practical politics where compromise is frequently necessary. But before we begin the necessary task of compromising, it is useful to get our theoretical baselines right. This paper thus presents a sketch of what a Kantian would call "a regulatory ideal"-a model by which we should inform the concrete practices of global multilateralism. I. THE PROPER GOALS OF MULTILATERALISM The first step in assessing the proper scope of global multilateralism is to define it as a set of globally-based mechanisms of governance to change in some formal way the conduct of nations and through these effects change the behavior of their citizens.2 Viewed from this perspective, global multilateralism is a constitutive mechanism that can be justified, like any constitutive mechanism, only if it improves the well-being of the citizens of the participatory nations. Thus, one's view of the appropriate scope of multilateralism depends on one's general approach to constitutionalism. That approach in turn must be grounded in one's assessment of human nature. It is beyond the scope of this short paper to offer a complete description of the appropriate goals of constitutionalism in light of the realities of human nature. But here is a beginning. Humans, like many other animals that live in groups, have two modes of gaining resources-both backed by a set of instincts.3 One is exchange by which they provide goods and services in return for other goods or services (or, in the modern economy, money). The other is hierarchy, by which they gain goods and services on the basis of their position and status in the social order. If exchange is the prevalent mode of acquiring resources in society, wealth increases because individuals gain incentives to create what others want. If hierarchy is the prevalent mode of acquisition, wealth dissipates because individuals fear to create what others can take by virtue of their position in the social hierarchy. Hierarchy also breeds conflict, because it increases pressure to displace others in a fixed pecking order. Moreover, it is natural for each citizen in a hierarchy to regard his fellow citizens either as sources of wealth he can seize or as threats to his property.4 The prospect of acquisition through hierarchy thus sows suspicion and division. Accordingly, for moral as well as economic reasons, constitutive structures of government such as multilateralism should aim at promoting exchange and constraining hierarchy.5 Expanding the market across national boundaries obviously promotes the exchange mode of gaining resources because the market is itself an important form of exchange. …