ABSTRACT
Multilateral diplomacy is not new in itself. Its contemporary scale, however, is and so is its significance. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the needs of sovereign states began to include the making of transnational arrangements. The cause was the increase of governmental scope and power in the aftermath of the industrial revolution. A changing relationship between states and nonstate actors does not stop at economic issues and institutions. The shocking slaughter of the conflict brought a determination to end war after 1918, and this led to the establishment of the League of Nations—a multilateral organization created by prior and extensive multilateral diplomacy. After World War II the governments of the victorious powers established what was to have been a trio of multilateral economic institutions to manage and administer key aspects of what had become an increasingly global economy, whose mismanagement in the 1930s was held to have been partly responsible for the rise of fascism.
