ABSTRACT
As already indicated, following the Commonwealths’ helpful con-
tribution to global decolonization in general and invaluable role in
ending apartheid in Southern Africa in particular, by the last decade
of the twentieth century there was apprehension that its shelf-life had
become limited. However, despite the momentary euphoria of the end
of bipolarity, around the start of the new century the Commonwealths’ utility now seems set for some time to come as it extends its
reach toward advancing human security as well as human develop-
ment and human rights. Arguably, this implies going beyond familiar
sectors like democratic governance and small island states into new
relatively unfamiliar and uncharted territory such as inter-racial com-
munication and the management of globalization. Clearly, this entails
an element of risk, but a limited and worthwhile one given the debili-
tating, corrosive effects of 7/7 along with 9/11. This chapter suggests that the Commonwealths may have emerged
from being the core of an epistemic community in the 1970s and
1980s, as we saw in Chapter 2, to aspiring to become a center for new
multilateralisms in the new century; i.e. non-as well as inter-state
coalitions. It identifies and analyzes partnerships around distinctive
CGF and CBC over (athletic and economic, respectively) competi-
tiveness, along with Commonwealth Plus coalitions around more the
familiar Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and Kimberley Process (KP) for human development and human security.
In so doing it adopts and extends the Commonwealth ‘‘governance’’
triangle of state/non-state relations presented in Chapter 1. Given the
range of unanticipated Commonwealths’ initiatives in the twenty-first
century, it is apparent that they have become more than a sum of their
parts.
