Rise Of Plurilateralism In A Fragmented World Order

Plurilateralism has gained significance as consensus-based multilateralism faces deep stress. Global institutions such as the World Trade Organization are struggling with rule-making deadlocks, geopolitical rivalry, unilateral tariff actions and new governance challenges. In this setting, smaller groups of countries are increasingly using issue-specific arrangements to cooperate in trade, technology, energy, security, finance and supply chains.

Understanding Plurilateralism

• Basic Meaning: Plurilateralism refers to a governance approach in which a subset of countries within a wider multilateral setting negotiates agreements on specific issues. These agreements are binding only on the countries that choose to participate.
• Difference from Multilateralism: Multilateralism involves all or most members of the international community, such as arrangements under the World Trade Organization or the United Nations. Plurilateralism is narrower and more targeted, while multilateralism is more inclusive but often slowed by the need for broad consensus.
• Middle Path in Global Cooperation: Plurilateralism stands between rigid multilateralism and unstructured bilateralism. It enables countries with shared political, social, economic or strategic interests to cooperate without waiting for universal agreement.
• Key Characteristics: Plurilateral arrangements are valued for flexibility in participation, speed in decision-making and focus on specific issues. They are especially useful where wider multilateral negotiations stall because countries have divergent interests.
• Coalition of the Willing: Plurilateralism often operates through coalitions of willing countries that are ready to move ahead on common priorities. This has made it relevant in areas such as digital trade, investment facilitation, critical minerals, clean energy and security cooperation.
• Joint Statement Initiatives: Joint Statement Initiatives have become a modern route for plurilateralism within the World Trade Organization. They are used to bypass consensus deadlock on new-age issues such as digital trade.

Why Plurilateralism Is Rising

• Consensus Deadlock in Multilateral Bodies: Large multilateral institutions often struggle to reach agreement because they involve many members and complex agendas. Plurilateral formats reduce the number of negotiating parties and make agreement easier.
• Need for Faster Rule-Making: New-age sectors such as digital trade, artificial intelligence, critical minerals, renewable energy and cybercrime require faster and more specialised cooperation. Traditional multilateral systems often move too slowly to create timely rules for such areas.
• Response to Geopolitical Shifts: Countries are increasingly forming smaller alignments to respond to strategic uncertainty, supply-chain risks and great-power rivalry. These arrangements allow states to cooperate without relying entirely on universal institutions.
• Frustration with Institutional Stalemate: The slow pace of World Trade Organization rule-making and the paralysis of its dispute settlement mechanism have encouraged countries to look for alternative forms of cooperation. Plurilateral arrangements are seen by many countries as one way to keep rule-making alive.
• Functional and Targeted Cooperation: Plurilateralism allows states to focus on concrete objectives instead of entering broad and highly complex frameworks. This makes it attractive where participating countries already share clearly defined goals.
• Bypassing Multilateral Stalemates: The failure of the Doha Round pushed countries toward regional and plurilateral arrangements. The Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arrangement was also created as a response to the dysfunction of the World Trade Organization Appellate Body.

World Trade Organization Crisis and Plurilateral Innovation

• Ministerial Conference Fourteen: The World Trade Organization’s Fourteenth Ministerial Conference, held in Yaoundé, Cameroon, took place amid severe stress in trade multilateralism. It failed to produce a ministerial declaration outlining future work, and the so-called Yaoundé package consisted only of draft decisions yet to be finalised in Geneva.
• E-Commerce Moratorium: Since 1998, World Trade Organization members had maintained a moratorium on imposing customs duties on electronic commerce transactions. At the Fourteenth Ministerial Conference, members could not agree on extending it, and the moratorium lapsed on March 31.
• Digital Trade After the Lapse: With the moratorium no longer in force, World Trade Organization members may impose tariffs on digital trade flows. The issue is expected to return for discussion in the World Trade Organization General Council.
• Revenue and Cost Implications: The lapse of the e-commerce moratorium may allow developing countries to augment revenue through duties on digital trade. However, such duties may also increase costs for consumers and businesses.
• Separate E-Commerce Framework: Alongside the lapse of the moratorium, 66 World Trade Organization members signed a plurilateral e-commerce agreement that prohibits customs duties on digital trade among its signatories. Since it is not yet part of the World Trade Organization rulebook and binds only signatories, it creates the possibility of two parallel legal frameworks.
• WTO-E-Commerce Agreement Divide: The expiry of the moratorium creates one framework in which World Trade Organization members may impose tariffs on digital trade, and another plurilateral framework in which e-commerce agreement signatories accept a duty-free approach.
• Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Moratorium: The second moratorium, in force since 1995, barred non-violation complaints under the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. This moratorium mattered because developing countries feared that public-health laws could be challenged by developed countries as nullifying expected intellectual-property benefits.
• Non-Violation Complaint Record: Although such complaints are possible, the material notes that all 10 non-violation complaints related to trade in goods at the World Trade Organization had failed. This suggests that such complaints may be difficult to sustain in practice.
• Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement: The plurilateral Investment Facilitation for Development agreement had support from 129 of 166 World Trade Organization members. Its inclusion in Annex 4 of the World Trade Organization Agreement did not materialise because of India’s opposition.
• India’s Concern on Investment Facilitation: India opposed the inclusion of the Investment Facilitation for Development agreement partly because of the absence of legal safeguards for incorporating plurilateral agreements into the World Trade Organization acquis. The broader concern was that plurilateral agreements inside the World Trade Organization must remain open and inclusive rather than exclusive.
• World Trade Organization Legislative Crisis: The failure to include the Investment Facilitation for Development agreement deepened the World Trade Organization’s rule-making crisis. The organisation continues to struggle in framing rules for twenty-first-century trade challenges.
• Dispute Settlement Reform: Reviving the stalled appellate function of the World Trade Organization dispute settlement system remains a critical issue. The paralysis of the Appellate Body has weakened one of the central pillars of the rules-based trading system.

Multilateralism Under Stress

• United States Unilateralism: Coercive unilateralism by the United States and attempts to dilute foundational rules such as most-favoured nation treatment threaten the rules-based trading system. The use of tariffs as pressure instruments has weakened confidence in multilateral trade norms.
• Most-Favoured Nation Rule and Bound Tariffs: Arbitrary tariff impositions violate key World Trade Organization principles, including non-discrimination under the most-favoured nation rule and the obligation not to impose tariffs beyond bound rates. These principles are especially important for developing countries.
• Tariff Coercion: The United States has used tariffs as a coercive tool and has begun signing one-sided trade agreements with countries through tariff pressure. This weakens the idea of rule-based trade and promotes bargaining through power asymmetry.
• Special and Differential Treatment: Special and differential treatment recognises that all World Trade Organization members are not placed equally. Attempts to weaken this principle, especially for larger developing economies, create concerns for countries such as China, India, Brazil and Indonesia.
• Historical Parallel with United States Trade Policy: When trade multilateralism slows, American unilateralism tends to rise. A similar pattern appeared in the early 1970s when General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade negotiations faltered and the United States enacted Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974.
• Rule-Making Outside the World Trade Organization: Failure in multilateral negotiations encourages countries to create new trade rules outside the World Trade Organization. Such arrangements may preserve cooperation among willing states but can also fragment the global trading order.

Conceptual Debate on Plurilateralism

• Complexity of Multilateral Negotiations: Multilateral negotiations are difficult because they involve more parties, more issues and longer timelines. Plurilateral structures can make wider negotiations more manageable by allowing a smaller group of leading parties to move first.
• Building Block Argument: Plurilateral agreements can support the multilateral system when they remain open, transparent and compatible with wider rules. In this view, they complement multilateralism rather than undermine it.
• Fragmentation Concern: The proliferation of plurilateral agreements may weaken international trade law, marginalise developing countries and reduce the legitimacy of multilateral organisations. Institutional embedding, transparency, open participation and support for non-members are therefore important.
• Global Justice Concern: Plurilateralism can respond to slow progress in World Trade Organization negotiations and technological change, but it may also pose risks to global justice. Reforming multilateral institutions remains important for development, human rights and environmental sustainability.
• Limits on Plurilateralism: Some issues affect not only countries but humanity as a whole and require non-monopolistic access. Areas such as space-related benefits and access to the Poles cannot be left to narrow control by specific countries.
• Distinction from Preferential Trade Agreements and Informal Groups: Preferential Trade Agreements reduce trade barriers among members but may create trade diversion and fail to address global trade issues. Informal groups may influence policy debates but lack formal treaty-based obligations.
• Single Undertaking Dilemma: The rise of plurilateralism raises the question of whether global trade governance should move away from the single undertaking model toward variable geometry or critical-mass agreements. This shift requires careful negotiation among key actors.

Major Examples of Plurilateralism

• Information Technology Agreement: The 1996 Ministerial Declaration on Trade in Information Technology Products committed major World Trade Organization members to eliminate tariffs and other duties on a wide range of information technology products by 2000. Covering more than 80% of world information technology trade, it formed the basis of the Information Technology Agreement.
• Expansion of Information Technology Trade: The 2015 Ministerial Declaration on the Expansion of Trade in Information Technology Products committed participating World Trade Organization members to progressively eliminate customs duties on a broader range of information technology products between 2016 and 2019. It aimed to boost global information technology trade, update product coverage and encourage wider participation.
• Australia-United Kingdom-United States Partnership: The AUKUS partnership brings together Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States to support a peaceful, secure, stable, free and open Indo-Pacific. It is primarily a security and political arrangement rather than an economic one.
• International Solar Alliance: The International Solar Alliance was launched by India and France during the 2015 Paris Climate Conference as a treaty-based intergovernmental organisation initially centred on solar-rich countries between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. After the 2020 revision of its Framework Agreement, every United Nations member state can become part of the Alliance.
• Minerals Security Partnership: The Minerals Security Partnership was launched in 2022 as a United States-led plurilateral initiative involving countries including Australia, Canada, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom. It aims to secure and diversify critical-mineral supply chains.
• Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity: The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity was launched in May 2022 by the United States along with Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. It aims to promote resilience, sustainability, inclusivity, economic growth, fairness and competitiveness.

India and Plurilateralism

• India and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework: India is involved in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity but not in all its pillars. It has chosen not to join the trade pillar because many issues promoted under it do not align with India’s trade policies.
• India and the International Solar Alliance: The International Solar Alliance represents a joint India-France effort to pool resources for addressing climate change through solar energy solutions. After a 2020 revision to its Framework Agreement, every United Nations member state can become part of the Alliance.
• India’s Diplomatic Position with Rival States: India has maintained working relations with opposing sides in major conflicts while remaining vocal about war as a problem. Its engagement with Iran and Israel, and with Russia and Ukraine, reflects this diplomatic space.
• India’s Future Convening Role: India’s growing geopolitical influence and experience with the International Solar Alliance give it potential to help build future plurilateral organisations. Its invitation to Group of Seven sessions despite not being a member reflects its rising diplomatic relevance.

India’s Sectoral Plurilateral Strategy

• Strategic Rationale for India: India’s external environment is marked by a volatile United States, a structurally aggressive China and a Russia increasingly dependent on China. Dependence on either the United States or China for critical supply chains now creates sovereignty risks.
• Sectoral Plurilateralism as Backstop: Sectoral plurilateral blocs are focused groupings of countries that share concerns about coercion by major powers. They are capability-driven groupings, excluding major powers, that can function as geopolitical backstops.
• Narrow and Deep Arrangements: India must shift from broad multilateral arrangements to narrow, deep arrangements built for functional sovereignty. Such blocs can increase economic integration and create geopolitical leverage for members.
• Bubble of Trust: These blocs are built around a bounded zone of cooperation in critical sectors rather than blanket cooperation. Trust must begin small, deepen through economic ties and regulatory confidence, and expand after rules and ecosystems mature.
• India’s Role in Sectoral Blocs: India should anchor such blocs through scale, talent and market access rather than seeking domination. It must identify its competitive advantages and build policy frameworks that make cooperation materially attractive to partners.
• Phased Approach to Bloc-Building: India should pursue twelve plurilateral blocs in phases, beginning with three priority pilot blocs in space, digital public infrastructure and artificial intelligence. Once these mature, India can move into supply-chain, finance, scientific, technological, social and security groupings.
• Use of Coordination Platforms: Existing broad forums cannot provide the deep interdependence required for sectoral plurilateralism, but the Indian Ocean Rim Association, the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation and the Group of Twenty can serve as coordination tools rather than primary institutions.

Priority Sectoral Blocs for India

• Tropic Arc or Equatorial Space Consortium: The proposed Tropic Arc involving India, France, Brazil and Indonesia can serve as a commercial alternative for middle space powers. It can begin with launch cooperation and later expand into communication mega-constellations, earth observation and space situational awareness.
• Space Capabilities Within Tropic Arc: India and Brazil can provide launch capabilities, while Brazil’s Alcantara equatorial location can support cheaper and fuel-efficient launches. France brings mature payload capacities, India can manufacture payloads at scale, and Indonesia can serve as an anchor customer.
• Commercial Space Alternative: The Tropic Arc could become a focused non-United States alternative for commercial space exploration. It could also include private actors from partner countries and non-United States, non-China multinational firms.
• Digital Public Infrastructure Alliance: The proposed DATA grouping, or Digital Public Infrastructure Alliance for Transformational Advancement, involving India, Brazil, Singapore, Estonia, Kenya and Australia can build open-source and interoperable digital public infrastructure. It would provide an alternative to platforms controlled by United States technology companies or the Chinese government.
• Digital Public Infrastructure Capabilities: India brings platforms such as Aadhaar, Unified Payments Interface and DigiLocker, while Brazil, Singapore, Estonia, Kenya and Australia bring experience in digital governance, identity systems, mobile-first financial access and deployment in small island contexts. Australia can also act as a link to the Pacific Islands.
• Standards for Digital Public Infrastructure: The Digital Public Infrastructure bloc can work on common technical standards for identity validation, consent management, cross-border authentication, privacy and secure data exchange. Open-source standards can make the model more attractive to other states.
• Intelligence for All Alliance: The proposed Intelligence for All Alliance involving India, France, the United Arab Emirates and Japan can create a third global artificial intelligence ecosystem. It seeks to reduce dependence on the China-United States duopoly in artificial intelligence.
• Artificial Intelligence Value Chain: France brings open-weight models and research capacity, the United Arab Emirates offers deployment capital, Japan contributes semiconductor manufacturing strength, and India provides engineering talent and market scale. The bloc can focus on shared compute, open standards and open artificial intelligence stacks.
• Artificial Intelligence Operational Agenda: The alliance could finance shared compute capacity, develop open model standards and build open alternatives to single-source technological dependencies such as Compute Unified Device Architecture and Electronic Design Automation tools. This would help reduce reliance on external providers.

Supply Chain and Finance Blocs

• Vietnam-India-Japan-Indonesia Bloc: The proposed Vietnam-India-Japan-Indonesia bloc brings together complementary strengths in the electric-vehicle supply chain. Indonesia holds roughly one-third of global nickel reserves, Vietnam offers manufacturing capability and access to Association of Southeast Asian Nations markets, Japan contributes battery technology, and India brings a 1.4 billion-person market, engineers and manufacturing firms.
• Battery Strategy for the Electric-Vehicle Bloc: The Vietnam-India-Japan-Indonesia bloc can begin with binding supply agreements and a joint battery-manufacturing facility. Indonesia can supply processed nickel, Japan can provide cathode technology, and India and Vietnam can contribute manufacturing labour and market access.
• Rare Earth Stockpile: The Vietnam-India-Japan-Indonesia bloc can also create a joint rare-earth stockpile with binding offtake agreements. This would protect members from disruptions and reduce vulnerability to China’s control over rare-earth supply chains.
• Future Rule-Setting Role: The bloc could eventually expand from batteries to full-vehicle platforms, develop Indo-Pacific charging standards independent of Tesla’s Supercharger network, and negotiate collectively in World Trade Organization disputes over electric-vehicle subsidies and carbon border adjustments.
• Group for Transnational Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient Supply: A grouping of Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, Japan and India can build supply chains for active pharmaceutical ingredients and generic and branded drugs. This would address China’s dominance in active pharmaceutical ingredients, key starting materials and auxiliary chemicals.
• Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient Resilience: The Group for Transnational Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient Supply can reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers among members and incentivise production of key active pharmaceutical ingredients. A time-bound purchase mechanism for identified active pharmaceutical ingredients, even where intra-bloc prices are initially above international prices, can reveal and promote comparative advantages among member countries.
• Finance Cross-Border Settlement Bloc: A finance bloc involving India, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and France can build alternative cross-border settlement systems. It can leverage India’s Unified Payments Interface, Brazil’s PIX, Gulf capital, Singapore’s standard-setting capacity and France’s bridge to European markets.
• Payment Autonomy: The finance bloc would not aim to replace the United States dollar as the world reserve currency. Its purpose would be to provide members with independent infrastructure and reduce exposure to dollar weaponisation or overdependence on China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System.
• Fin-Cross Operational Pathway: The finance bloc could begin with a messaging layer for high-volume corridors such as India-Gulf, India-Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Brazil-India. It could later build common Know Your Customer and anti-money laundering standards outside the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication and create non-dollar settlement mechanisms for sectors such as energy or agriculture.

Security-Oriented Plurilateralism

• Counter-Terror Collective: A grouping involving India, France, the Philippines and Indonesia can respond to shared terrorism-related threats, with India’s concern reinforced by the 2025 Pahalgam terror attack. The proposed framework would address transnational terror networks that exploit digital radicalisation, informal finance channels and cross-border safe havens.
• Need for Operational Cooperation: Existing counter-terrorism mechanisms often face definitional ambiguity, lack of political will and limited real-time intelligence sharing. A smaller plurilateral format can prioritise operational trust, speed and actionable cooperation.
• Counter-Terrorism Functional Agenda: The Counter-Terror Collective can focus on intelligence sharing, disruption of terror-finance networks and coordinated diplomatic and legal responses against terrorism. It would allow members to bypass bureaucratic inertia without undermining existing regional commitments.
• Transnational Reaction Against Cyber Crime: The proposed cybercrime bloc involving India, Singapore, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia responds to cyber-enabled financial crime as a fast-growing transnational threat in Asia. It is meant to address regulatory asymmetries, uneven enforcement capacity and rapidly expanding digital ecosystems.

Social and Humanitarian Plurilateralism

• Disaster Relief and Control Team: A proposed Disaster Relief and Control Team involving India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan and Australia can respond to recurrent natural disasters in the Indo-Pacific. These countries face high human, economic and infrastructure costs from natural disasters.
• Transnational Immigration Management: A proposed Transnational Immigration Management bloc involving India, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and Australia can respond to demographic and labour-market imbalances. South Korea, Japan and Australia face labour shortages, while India, Indonesia and the Philippines have relative labour surpluses.
• Talent Pipeline Function: Transnational Immigration Management can support mobility arrangements that connect labour-surplus and labour-shortage economies. Such arrangements can also complement sectoral blocs by supplying skilled human capital.

Drawbacks and Risks of Plurilateralism

• Limited Evidence for Least Developed Countries: There is no structured proof that plurilateralism benefits least developed and under-developed countries. Larger countries may not see sufficient competitive advantage in partnering with these economies.
• Risk of Economic Asymmetry: Plurilateralism may increase asymmetry in the global economic order. This concern becomes sharper in a world already facing physical wars, tariff wars and climate-related stress.
• Sustainability Concern: Unlike multilateral organisations, plurilateral groupings may lack stable and hierarchical institutional structures. This can weaken their long-term sustainability.
• Fragmentation Risk: A shift toward variable geometry, critical-mass agreements and plurilateral approaches can create dilemmas about the future of the single-undertaking model. Fragmentation and marginalisation of developing countries remain serious concerns.
• Imperfect Substitute for Multilateralism: Plurilateralism can help willing countries act on shared interests, but it cannot fully replace multilateralism. Issues requiring truly global responses still need broader international cooperation.

Conclusion

Plurilateralism reflects both the weakness of existing multilateral structures and the search for faster, more targeted cooperation. It offers practical space for countries to address sector-specific challenges in trade, technology, energy, finance, security, mobility and supply chains. Yet it cannot be treated as a complete replacement for multilateralism. Its long-term legitimacy will depend on openness, transparency, safeguards for developing countries and its ability to strengthen rather than fracture the wider rules-based order.