THE PRACTICE OF GENUINE MULTILATERALISM: THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION

Abstract

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization(SCO) is a typical case of genuine multilateralism practised by China, Russia, the five Central Asian states, India and Pakistan. To study the institutionalization and membership expansion process of the SCO, this paper preliminarily selects four variables, namely crisis management, common interests, international coordination and collective intention, and explores how the actors, which are full of competition and conflict at different levels, reach consensus and finally form a new organizational form. This paper assumes that in the international community, countries build collective intentions through international interaction or coordination based on common interests and the needs of crisis management. After reaching the collective intention, it continues to construct the international system through international interaction. We believe that international interaction runs through the process of institutionalization or system construction, and the institutionalization of multilateral consensus is the process of constructing a multilateral system by the common ideas of all countries. Therefore, with the enlargement and deep institutionalization of the SCO, genuine multilateralism will be more fully practised and developed.