This introduction questions the idea of a "crisis" of multilateralism. It first recalls that the historical advancement of multilateralism and the steady empowerment of international organizations have always been accompanied by simultaneous destabilizing crises, from the League of Nations inability to prevent World War II up to the United Nations' long paralysis during the Cold War. Multilateralism does not seem to be in a better shape today after the assaults of President Trump against its core values and institutions, the "sanitary sovereignty" displayed by States in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the failure of the UN in the "management" of deadly armed conflicts such as the war in Syria and the war in Ukraine. However, the purpose of this book is threefold: to deconstruct the diagnosis of a "crisis" of multilateralism, to consider the concept of "crisis" as a matrix of multilateralism historical dynamic, and to demonstrate the current resilience of multilateralism.

This book explores the challenges that multilateralism faces today and questions the idea of a 'crisis' of multilateral cooperation and international organizations. It accounts for the pressures on and power shifts in multilateralism in recent years - such as the war in Syria, the Covid-19 pandemic, challenges for NATO, the erosion of multilateral norms, the transition from Trump to Biden, the rise of China, the post-Brexit European Union, and the mobilization of countries from the South. The authors illustrate the resilience of multilateralism and lessons learned from the WTO, UN Women, International Organizations' Secretariats and global environmental governance. Written in part by members of the Research Group on Multilateral Action (GRAM), this volume argues that 'crisis' should not be considered a pathology but the 'matrix' of multilateralism, which is more resilient than commonly thought. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of International Relations, global governance, and international organizations.

Guillaume Devin, Professor of Political Science at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, retired in September 2022. He had been teaching international relations (ri) since 2000, after a dozen years at the Université Paris X-Nanterre (1983-1991 then 1994-2000) and an interlude at the Université de Rennes (1991-1994), where he passed the agrégation in political science with flying colors in 1991.

International relations are a sociological object like any other. Unlike the founding fathers of the discipline across the Channel and across the Atlantic, who were very attached to a dividing line between internal affairs (the quest for the good life) and external affairs (the quest for survival), Guillaume Devin does not intend to embrace a fixed theoretical reading of international reality, but to open up ways of grasping it, by mobilizing a plurality of sociological references, but also beyond. The aim of this article will be to highlight the singularities of this scientific approach, taking into account all the related disciplines that have served in part as a matrix (law, history) and emphasizing some of the methodological extensions and lessons of this approach.