Conclusions

Abstract

Abstract Conceptually, whereas the book assesses the recovery of Bull’s analysis on the patterns of institutional design, and on the privileging of concertation as a putative fundamental institution, as highly valuable for addressing the core features played out in contest over institutional design, it judges the contribution of the entire body of institutional international relations (IR) to this core debate far more critically. Operationally, accentuated by the intensification of tensions between China and Russia, the debate over concertation has become fractured, with a number of partial (and polarized) notions of institutional concert types in play in line with some possible revival. Conversely, the chapter illuminates that, given that the death of the Group of Twenty as an institutional concert format is not totally out of the question, it is far more likely that this plurilateral summitry process will continue to evolve towards what institutionalist IR depicts as a focal point. Although continuing to be stigmatized, the concertation impulse will continue to be recalibrated.