Multilateralism and the Shrinking of Global Politics

This paper argues that the space for transformative politics has shrunk at the global level since the beginning of the 20th century. Contrary to conventional wisdom, which portrays global governance as ever-expanding and IOs as responsive to the demands of the Global South, our account argues that the institutional environment of global governance, especially the consolidation of state multilateralism, generated firewalls against transnational mobilization challenging the status quo interests of the Global North. Using the cases of racial justice and minority rights movements, we show how states used international organizations to seize these politics away from transnational contention. The mechanisms of institutional closure and capture, we argue, led to relative dilution of radical political demands for greater justice at the global level. Our analysis of institutions such as the UNDHR, CERD, and UNDRIP, sheds light on why some issues today are viewed as central to global politics while others, such as racial justice, get “domesticated” and are largely absent from global governance