Minilateralism Revisited: MIKTA as Slender Diplomacy in a Multiplex World

The increasing prevalence of minilateral diplomacy in today’s global order can be a costly business for governments. Over the past decade, minilateral diplomatic mechanisms—arrangements including only a limited number of countries—have proliferated to handle emerging problems of deepening global interdependencies. New venues have been sought to solve old problems outside traditional multilateral avenues, which have become increasingly deadlock prone and anachronistic.1 This means that the number of international organizations, partnerships, and initiatives that diplomats can possibly attend has increased in tandem with the fragmentation and layering of global governance.