As universal institutions struggle to overcome vetoes, stalled dispute settlement and geopolitical rivalry, smaller coalitions are emerging as instruments of practical cooperation. For India, their value lies in delivering results without creating permanent alliance obligations.
Research note: Developments, institutional data and treaty-status assessments in this article reflect records available up to August 2026.
Kolkata: Contemporary global governance has reached a point of structural friction. Universal multilateral institutions, many designed in the mid-twentieth century to preserve international stability, are increasingly strained by geopolitical polarisation, institutional inertia and widening economic differences. Yet the systemic challenges of the twenty-first century—from maritime insecurity and vulnerable technology supply chains to climate disruption and food shortages—require sustained and agile coordination.
States are consequently moving away from the false choice between institutional paralysis and universal consensus. What is emerging instead is a multi-tiered architecture of international cooperation in which multilateral institutions coexist with smaller, purpose-driven coalitions.
Minilateral and plurilateral arrangements are not necessarily replacing universal institutions. In many cases, they supplement them by allowing a limited number of countries to pursue specific outcomes when broader agreement is difficult. For India, these flexible arrangements offer opportunities for practical cooperation without the constraints of permanent alliances or collective-defence commitments.
Establishing the Multilateral Impasse
Universal governance is not completely paralysed. Its core institutions continue to perform important administrative, diplomatic and legal functions. Their decision-making capacity, however, becomes severely constrained when disputes directly involve the interests of major powers.
Within the United Nations Security Council, paralysis is episodic rather than absolute. It is concentrated principally in conflicts involving the strategic interests of one or more of its five permanent members. The veto can prevent the adoption of a resolution even when it has otherwise secured the required support.
The United Nations’ record of Security Council vetoes demonstrates how permanent-member disagreement can prevent collective action on contentious security questions. At the same time, the council continues to renew peacekeeping mandates, maintain sanctions regimes and address conflicts in which permanent-member interests are less directly opposed.
The problem, therefore, is not the disappearance of multilateral activity. It is the uneven ability of universal institutions to respond when geopolitical stakes are highest.
A comparable institutional blockage exists within the World Trade Organization. The WTO continues to administer agreements, monitor national trade policies and conduct dispute-settlement proceedings at the panel stage. Its appellate process, however, remains unavailable because of vacancies.
The Appellate Body lost the quorum required to hear new appeals in December 2019. The term of its last sitting member expired on November 30, 2020. The WTO now states that the body is unable to review appeals because all seven positions remain vacant. WTO Appellate Body record
This creates the possibility of an “appeal into the void”: a panel report may be appealed when no functioning body is available to hear that appeal, preventing the dispute from reaching the normal final stage.
In response, a group of WTO members established the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement, or MPIA, in April 2020. Based on Article 25 of the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Understanding, the arrangement provides an alternative appellate mechanism for disputes in which the relevant parties participate.
The MPIA is an important example of plurilateralism operating within a multilateral legal framework. It does not abolish or formally replace the Appellate Body. Instead, a subset of WTO members uses provisions already available under WTO law to preserve appellate review among themselves while the broader institutional impasse continues.
Defining the Terminology
The terms multilateral, minilateral and plurilateral are frequently used interchangeably, but they refer to different forms of cooperation.
Multilateralism involves coordination among a broad group of states on the basis of shared principles, rules or institutions. Multilateral bodies do not necessarily rely on formal majority voting: their decision-making systems vary, and several operate substantially through consensus. The Charter of the United Nations, for example, establishes distinct membership, voting and decision-making arrangements for different UN organs.
In his academic study, “Multilateralism with Small and Large Numbers,” published in International Organization in 1992, Miles Kahler examined how the number of participating states influences bargaining, institutional design and international cooperation.
Drawing on this framework, minilateralism may be understood as cooperation among a limited and selectively constituted group of countries created to address a particular strategic or functional problem. Its appeal lies in lower negotiating costs, narrower objectives and the possibility of faster coordination.
Plurilateralism generally involves a subset of countries agreeing to pursue particular rules, commitments or institutional arrangements without requiring participation by every member of the wider system. The MPIA is a clear illustration: it operates among participating WTO members but remains anchored in the WTO’s legal architecture.
A coalition’s economic focus does not by itself make it plurilateral. I2U2—comprising India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United States—is best understood here as a minilateral grouping because of its limited membership and targeted cooperation on food security, energy, water, transportation, health, space and investment.
Treaty-based organisations must also be distinguished from informal forums. The former derive their legal mandates and obligations from formally adopted international agreements. The latter usually operate through political declarations, shared intent and flexible working arrangements without treaty-based collective obligations.
India’s Portfolio of Flexible Coalitions
India participates in several smaller coalitions, each serving a different diplomatic or economic purpose.
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue brings together India, Australia, Japan and the United States. Although frequently viewed through the lens of strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific, official Quad declarations cover a wider agenda that includes maritime-domain awareness, humanitarian assistance, health security, critical technologies and resilient infrastructure.
The Quad Foreign Ministers’ Joint Statement of July 29, 2024 reaffirmed the grouping’s commitment to a free, open, inclusive and rules-based Indo-Pacific. The Quad remains an informal diplomatic arrangement rather than a military alliance: its declarations do not create a treaty-based obligation requiring members to defend one another.
I2U2 has a different functional character. Its inaugural leaders’ meeting concentrated on food security and clean energy, with its members identifying six areas for cooperation: water, energy, transportation, space, health and food security. I2U2 Leaders’ Joint Statement, July 14, 2022
India’s participation in BRICS and the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum serves broader developmental and governance objectives.
The 2024 Kazan Declaration records BRICS’ support for reforming global governance and increasing the representation of emerging and developing economies. IBSA, meanwhile, connects three large democracies of the Global South through sectoral cooperation and diplomatic coordination. Its foundational New Delhi Agenda for Cooperation and Plan of Action
was adopted in March 2004.
These platforms are neither identical nor interchangeable. India uses them to pursue different interests across maritime security, development finance, technology, infrastructure and reform of international institutions.
The Delivery Test
The credibility of smaller coalitions cannot be measured by the number of summits they hold or declarations they issue. Their effectiveness must be assessed through identifiable implementation and measurable outcomes.
In the maritime domain, the Quad announced the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness at its 2022 leaders’ summit. IPMDA is designed to use commercially available technology, including satellite-based radio-frequency data, to improve awareness of activities occurring within participating countries’ maritime zones.
An official Australian government overview of IPMDA describes it as a technology-and-training initiative intended to provide regional partners with near-real-time maritime information. It is also designed to connect existing regional information centres rather than establish a single centralised intelligence system.
The initiative nevertheless remains dependent on national technical capacity, data-processing systems, institutional trust and the ability of participating countries to convert commercial information into enforceable maritime action. Announced capabilities must therefore be distinguished from uniformly demonstrated operational outcomes.
The same test applies to I2U2. Its 2022 declaration announced plans for integrated food parks in India and a hybrid renewable-energy project in Gujarat. These were significant investment proposals, but the publicly accessible official documents reviewed for this article do not establish the final completion of the food-parks initiative. Announced capital commitments should not be presented as completed infrastructure.
The New Development Bank offers a more measurable institutional record. According to its published project figures, the bank had approved approximately $42.9 billion in financing across 139 projects as of December 31, 2025.
“Approved financing” is the appropriate measurement. It should not be confused with disbursement, physical completion or verified development impact, each of which represents a separate stage in the project cycle.
The delivery test consequently requires at least four distinctions: announcement, financing approval, implementation and completed outcome. Minilateralism cannot be considered inherently effective merely because negotiations among fewer countries are easier.
Advantages for Indian Foreign Policy
Flexible coalitions offer India diplomatic speed, functional adaptability and strategic leverage. They allow New Delhi to work with selected partners on discrete issues—such as maritime surveillance, critical minerals, food security, clean energy and emerging technologies—without entering permanent alliance structures.
This approach is compatible with India’s longstanding pursuit of strategic autonomy. India can participate in the Quad while retaining relations with Russia; work within BRICS while deepening technology partnerships with Western countries; and cooperate with Israel, the UAE and the United States through I2U2 without converting that arrangement into a regional military bloc.
Some analysts describe India as a “systemic balancer” in this context. This is an interpretive description of New Delhi’s attempt to navigate competing strategic groupings, influence discussions across forums such as the Quad and BRICS, and retain the freedom to cooperate or dissent according to its national interests.
Such flexibility can also improve India’s negotiating leverage. Participation across different coalitions prevents its diplomatic agenda from becoming dependent on a single institutional platform or major-power relationship.
Limits and Contradictions
Smaller coalitions nevertheless carry important structural weaknesses.
Many lack permanent secretariats, stable financing arrangements and codified enforcement mechanisms. Their priorities may change when governments or political leaders change. A grouping that depends heavily on summit-level political attention may struggle to maintain momentum between meetings.
Power differences among members can also shape the agenda disproportionately. Smaller or less technologically capable countries may formally participate without exercising comparable influence over project design, standards or financing.
Exclusive membership raises questions of legitimacy. Countries outside a grouping may regard its rules or standards as an attempt to bypass more representative institutions. This concern becomes particularly serious when minilateral arrangements move from practical coordination to setting norms that affect non-members.
Overlapping memberships can also produce administrative fatigue. Governments may repeatedly discuss maritime security, supply chains or infrastructure in several forums without establishing which institution is responsible for implementation.
BRICS faces a different problem. Expansion increases geographic representation, but it also widens political, economic and strategic differences among its members. Greater membership does not automatically produce stronger consensus.
The Quad and I2U2 face the opposite risk: their limited membership may facilitate announcements, but their public visibility can create expectations that exceed their institutional capacity to deliver.
Supplement or Substitute?
Smaller coalitions strengthen global governance when they produce practical solutions that remain consistent with international law and can eventually be incorporated into broader institutions.
The MPIA illustrates this constructive function. It uses an existing WTO legal provision to preserve appellate review among participating members without formally abandoning the multilateral dispute-settlement system.
Minilateral arrangements can similarly test technology standards, establish common reporting formats, organise capacity-building programmes or develop crisis-response procedures before those practices are adopted more widely.
They weaken global governance, however, when they fragment rules, create incompatible regulatory systems or transfer consequential decisions into exclusive forums lacking accountability. Efficiency achieved by excluding affected states may produce faster decisions but weaker legitimacy.
Smaller does not automatically mean better. The effectiveness of a coalition depends on the precision of its objectives, the compatibility of its members’ interests and the existence of mechanisms capable of translating declarations into implementation.
A Policy Framework for India
India should approach flexible coalitions through a disciplined strategic filter.
First, it should prioritise arrangements built around clearly defined problems and achievable outcomes. Broad declarations should be supported by timelines, designated implementing agencies and regular public reviews.
Second, policymakers should distinguish systematically among announcements, financial commitments, projects under implementation and completed outcomes. This would prevent diplomatic publicity from being mistaken for delivery.
Third, India should review overlapping memberships to reduce duplication. Different forums may address similar questions, but each should have a clearly identified comparative advantage.
Fourth, India should ensure that its minilateral engagements remain transparent and consistent with its international obligations and the principles of the UN Charter.
Fifth, New Delhi must remain sensitive to ASEAN centrality and the concerns of the wider Global South. Smaller coalitions should not appear to impose geopolitical choices or create hierarchies between participating and non-participating states.
Finally, India should use these arrangements to encourage reform of universal institutions rather than abandon them. Flexible coalitions should work as laboratories, bridging mechanisms and sources of institutional pressure—not as permanent substitutes for inclusive global governance.
Conclusion
Minilateral and plurilateral coalitions represent a pragmatic response to the operational constraints of universal multilateralism. Their emergence does not mean that institutions such as the United Nations or WTO have become irrelevant. It reflects the difficulty of securing universal agreement while urgent transnational problems continue to demand action.
Smaller coalitions strengthen multilateralism when they test solutions, create technical consensus and develop practices that can eventually be integrated into wider institutions. They weaken it when they operate as exclusive geopolitical enclaves, establish competing rules or divert diplomatic attention from institutional reform.
For India, their value lies in enabling practical cooperation without surrendering strategic autonomy. But flexibility must be accompanied by discipline: precise objectives, transparent commitments, measurable outcomes and respect for international obligations.
The future of global governance will not be determined by a choice between universal institutions and smaller coalitions. It will depend on whether the two can be connected—so that minilateral speed and experimentation ultimately reinforce, rather than erode, the legitimacy of multilateral order.
About the Author: Hridbina Chatterjee is a Gen Z researcher and contributor to TheNews21. She holds a master’s degree in Political Science with International Relations from Jadavpur University and writes on foreign policy, climate security, India’s Northeast and the Indo-Pacific.
