Bilateralism in multilateralism: France-Germany in Europe and the interlinking of institutional forms in Regional Order and World Politics

Abstract

Regional integration scholars have long stressed the role and importance of bilateral and other minilateral relations between states for multilateral politics in a regional organisation. However, the literature on bilateralism and multilateralism mostly evolves separately from one another, both conceptually and empirically. To bridge this divide, this article develops a tripartite differentiation of competing, coexisting and complecting relations or, correspondingly, of bilateralism or, and, as well as in multilateralism. It then scrutinises the bilateral link between France and Germany as a particularly developed case of minilateral relations mingling with the multilateral politics of the European Union. Analysing three pivotal episodes which span 50 years of European integration and different policy domains, we document why and how France and Germany repeatedly came together bilaterally to promote multilateral European polity stabilisation and development. The article contributes to an emerging but so far dispersed scholarship on bilateralism within multilateralism in Europe and beyond.