ABSTRACT
Formally, and also largely in practice, multilateral institutions deal in the first place with states. However, in the post-Westphalian circumstance that has arisen in the contemporary globalising world, multilateral governance is not a question of the states-system alone. Since the 1970s, most of the main global regulatory agencies have experienced a major expansion of exchanges with actors in civil society. Global governance has thereby become at least a triangular affair, with complex relationships between national governments, multilateral institutions, and civic associations (see further Scholte 1997, 1999b).
