Amazon.com description: Product Description: This book examines writings on multilateralism - many-sided institutional and organizing international relations. Drawing comparisons across cultures, it demonstrates how far-flung observers enrich understanding by regarding multilateralism from vantage points unlike those which underlie the dominant American literature. Authors illustrate how political, economic and other conditions influence the concerns animating works under scrutiny, thereby elucidating the uses of theorizing. The book offers evidence for the status-of-the-state debate. Widespread patterns of pragmatism and displacement emerge from analysis of contributors' surveys.