Conclusion

Abstract

Is effectiveness, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder? In a multilateral organisation, Inis Claude suggests that it is, and the viewpoint of the beholder is determined by how well national interests converge with the views of other member states. In the case of majoritarian and consensus decision–making processes, the interests of the majority are important, while in privilege–based organisations, it is the interests of the powerful, minilateral minority. However, this view sees the outputs of multilateral organisations as merely goods to be consumed by states, conferring legitimacy on, and allocating resources to, policies that are deemed favourable to a national government. Ruggie argues that multilateralism is much more than this; it is a generic institutional form that has been present in the modern Westphalian state system from the beginning in some expression or another. In assessing the EU’s capacity to promote effective multilateralism, we must distinguish between effective multilateral outputs congruent with EU interests on the one hand, and EU policies that are congruent with effective decision making in multilateral organisations on the other hand.

Viewed from the minority position, effectiveness is a euphemism for majority domination. From the vantage point of the majority, the protective tactics of the minority represent perverse obstructionism. In the present international system, states are not so much committed to supporting or opposing a strong and active United Nations, or the majoritarian principles of the United Nations, as to enhancing their ability to promote international action favourable to their interests, and to prevent action unfavourable to their interests.

‒Claude 1984: 139