ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to demonstrate that multilateralism, as an institutional form of global policy coordination according to generalized principles of conduct, continues to inform current thinking heavily about how the world is and should be governed. It outlines in more detail the conception of global governance and argues that the absence of a world government by no means precludes the provision of governance on the global level. The chapter then sketches the emergence of a growing demand for global governance, which states have initially tried to meet by taking recourse to intergovernmental, executive-multilateral institutions. It explicates how far conceptions of global governance have been and still are informed by executive-multilateralist ideas. The chapter shows what kinds of deficiencies in terms of (problem-solving) effectiveness and legitimacy arise from purely executive-multilateral global governance. It provides a description of more recent institutional innovations in numerous issue areas of world politics, signaling a change in the institutional shape of multilateralism.
