As powerful nations turn inwards and multilateral institutions falter, alternative coalitions need to step into the breach to push for global progress. Such flexible and diverse groupings will be most effective if they are based around issues and deploy new tactics to seize every chance to shape international norms. Len Ishmael, Stephan Klingebiel and Andy Sumner explain the concept of ‘like-minded internationalism’.
The post-World War II liberal consensus, built around universalism and the leadership of powerful nations is fragmenting amid renewed nationalism and the marginalisation of international institutions.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the United States’ withdrawal from the Sustainable Development Goals in early 2025: an act that goes beyond symbolic departure and marks the deliberate dismantling of a historic global development consensus.
What is like-minded internationalism?
The question is not whether the international order is changing – but how to adapt. In a new paper, In Search of a Plan B, we argue that the answer lies, not in trying to salvage a broken universalism, but in embracing what we call like-minded internationalism: the deliberate formation of issue-based coalitions between actors who share pragmatic goals and commitments to reshaping international norms. These groupings – flexible, pluralistic, innovative – can provide a ‘Plan B’ that is neither a retreat into parochialism nor a nostalgic longing for the past, but a realistic, principled strategy of adaptive multilateralism.
Like-minded internationalism is not new. It builds on prior coalitional models, such as the Scandinavian bloc in gender policy, or the IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) Dialogue Forum What are the key features of these coalitions? We spell out five key aspects:
- Issue-driven, rather than geographically or economically defined;
- Institutionally innovative, breaking with traditional multilateralism;
- Led by coalitional leadership, often from middle powers rather than big powers;
- Inclusive, drawing on a pluralism of actors across the North-South divide and sectors (public, private, civil society); and
- Tactically opportunistic, seizing political windows and crafting ‘sticky’ narratives grounded in science and moral clarity.
Their legitimacy will arise not from universality, but shared values, interests, and urgency.
What does this look like in practice?
To illustrate what this looks like practice, we analyse two prominent cases: UNITAID and the High Ambition Coalition (HAC). UNITAID emerged in the early 2000s from a coalition led by France and Brazil, backed by Chile, Norway, and the UK. It introduced a solidarity levy on airline tickets to fund HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria responses. What made UNITAID distinctive was not only its novel financing, but also its pluralistic governance, including both donor and recipient countries, civil society, and the WHO. As we show, it was successful because of “knit-working” – building networks across interests and institutions – uniting under the moral narrative of global health equity.
HAC, by contrast, was born out of the vulnerability of Small Island Developing States. Led by the Marshall Islands, it reshaped the Paris Agreement agenda by pushing for a 1.5C limit—an outcome once thought impossible. It did this by framing ambition as an ethical imperative and mobilising bilateral diplomacy through what its architects called a “mosquito fleet” of persistent, moral persuasion. It is a model of soft power unlinked from sovereignty.
Both cases show how coalitions of the willing can build legitimacy, harness political momentum and achieve real change, even in the absence of the leadership of powerful nations.
Why now?
The urgency of building like-minded internationalism lies in the rapidly deteriorating international context. The resurgence of American unilateralism, the fracturing of development paradigms, and the instrumentalisation of development policy as a tool of national self-interest all point to a loss of faith in the traditional multilateral order. Yet this fragmentation creates opportunities: as multilateral institutions falter, alternative coalitions can step into the breach, anchored in shared values and interests.
To do so, they must seize the chance for change in moments of institutional flux, deploy evidence-based policy narratives, and cultivate legitimacy at many levels. Like-mindedness is not a romantic call to idealism but strategic realism: one that responds to the world as it is.
From norm-takers to norm-makers
In a world no longer governed by universal norms sponsored by powerful nations, states and coalitions must decide whether they will become norm-takers – reactive, subordinate, and divided – or norm-makers, finding new ways to assert themselves and shape the future of international cooperation. Like-minded coalitions offer them a route to do the latter.
This is not to say that like-mindedness can solve every collective action problem. But it can foster coalitional resilience, mitigate fragmentation and offer credible pathways for constructive cooperation around global public goods – from climate to health to digital governance. As such, we think it is more than a second-best solution: it may well be the most viable way of shaping the future of global governance.
Len Ishmael is an affiliate Professor at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, a Senior Fellow of the Policy Center for the New South, Distinguished Visiting Scholar of the German Marshall Fund of the United States of America and a Senior Fellow of the European Centre for Development Policy Management.
Stephan Klingebiel heads the research program “Inter- and Transnational Cooperation” at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS). He previously led the UNDP Global Policy Centre in Seoul (2019–2021) and the KfW Development Bank’s office in Kigali, Rwanda (2007–2011). He is also a guest professor at the University of Turin (Italy), a senior lecturer at the University of Bonn, and an Honorary Distinguished Fellow at Jindal University (India).
Andy Sumner is Professor of International Development at King’s College, London, and President of European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Society of Arts; a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Economics and Development Studies at Padjadjaran University, Indonesia; and Senior Non-Resident Research Fellow at the United Nations University, WIDER, Helsinki and the Center for Global Development, Washington DC.
Read the full paper: In Search of a Plan B: Like-Minded Internationalism and the Future of Global Development, by Len Ishmael, Stephan Klingebiel and Andy Sumner.