Overreliance on ad hoc bad, undermines institutions and empowers revisionist countries

Fourth, overreliance on purely ad hoc approaches can be ethically and normatively problematic, raising concerns and dilemmas about legitimacy, equity, and accountability. To begin with, informal multilateralism risks undercutting public international institutions that have traditionally sought (or aspired) to provide global public goods, replacing them with new governing frameworks that may restrict access to those same benefits. Since it was created in 2008, the G20 has been criticized by other UN member states—the G175, if you will—for making decisions that affect the rest of humanity. Successive G20 chairs have tried to ameliorate these concerns through elaborate outreach efforts. But the inherent tensions between effectiveness, which implies modest size, and legitimacy, which implies broad representation, persist. Ultimately, this raises an ethical quandary that the UN’s founders had sought to address in 1945 by creating the UN General Assembly: namely, how to prevent poorer countries from being excluded from global decisionmaking processes that affect them directly. A purely coalitional approach to world order risks accentuating the global inequity and injustice that already pervades world politics. Although power shapes the design and dynamics of all institutions, large-membership, treaty-based organizations typically possess some internal checks and balances. They also provide opportunities for weaker actors to have a voice, dampening the naked exercise of power and fostering bargaining and consensus building. Standing bodies also possess independent secretariats staffed by international civil servants and technocrats, creating an institutional identity distinct from member states. For all these reasons, formal multilateral organizations are better placed than narrower groupings to advance the agendas and interests of the otherwise powerless.111 Accountability is also a problem for coalitions. As hard as it can be to hold formal multilateral bodies to account, the task is even greater when it comes to minilateral ones. A comparison between the G20 and the World Bank is instructive. The lack of a robust G20 mutual accountability mechanism makes it hard to determine whether its members are fulfilling pledges made at successive summits. Meanwhile, the World Bank, which is under increased pressure from civil society groups to embrace transparency, has taken positive steps in the direction of accountability. Finally, coalitions present financial and logistical challenges. The proliferation of ad hoc groupings, with their attendant summits, work streams, and reporting requirements, tests the bandwidth of all national governments with demands on scarce personnel, resources, and time. This is true even for an institution the size of the U.S. State Department. For smaller, poorer countries, the burden is even heavier.