Multilateralism is a term in international relations that refers to multiple countries working in concert on a given issue.

International organizations, such as the United Nations (UN) and the World Trade Organization are multilateral in nature. The main proponents of multilateralism have traditionally been the middle powers such as Canada, Australia, Switzerland, the Benelux countries and the Nordic countries. Larger states often act unilaterally, while the smaller ones may have little direct power at all in international affairs aside from participation in the United Nations (by consolidating their UN vote in a voting bloc with other nations, for example). Multilateralism may involve multiple nations acting together as in the UN or may involve regional or military alliances, pacts, or groupings such as NATO.

The converse of multilateralism is unilateralism in terms of political philosophy.

One modern instance of multilateralism occurred in the nineteenth century in Europe after the end of the Napoleonic Wars where the great powers met to redraw the map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna. The Concert of Europe, as it became known, was a group of great and lesser powers that would meet to resolve issues peacefully. Conferences such as the Conference of Berlin in 1884 helped reduce great power conflicts during this period, and the 19th century was one of Europe's most peaceful.^{[citation needed]}in

Robert O. Keohane (born 1941) is an American academic, who, following the publication of his influential book After Hegemony (1984), became widely associated with the theory of neoliberal institutionalism in international relations. He is currently a Professor of Political Science at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.

Keohane was born at the University of Chicago Hospitals. His education through the fifth grade was at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. When he was 10, the family moved to Mount Carroll, Illinois, where he attended public school and his parents taught at Shimer College. After the 10th grade, Keohane enrolled at Shimer through the school's early entrance program, which since 1950 has allowed selected high school students to enter college before completing high school. When later asked to compare his undergraduate education as an early entrant at Shimer with his graduate work at Harvard, Keohane remarked "it is not clear to me that I have ever been with a brighter set of people than those early entrants."

Francis Gurry (born 17 May 1951) is an Australian national and the fourth and current Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). He is also Secretary-General of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). Gurry previously served as a Deputy Director General of WIPO from 2003 to 2008.

Gurry graduated in 1974 from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Laws and was admitted as a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia in 1975. He worked in Melbourne as an articled clerk and solicitor at Arthur Robinson & Co. (now Allens Arthur Robinson) and earned a Master of Laws degree from the University of Melbourne in 1976. From 1976 to 1979, Gurry was a research student at the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, from which he was awarded a PhD in 1980 for his thesis dealing with breach of confidence.

Before joining WIPO, Gurry was a senior lecturer in law at the University of Melbourne and, for one year, a solicitor at Freehills, Melbourne. He was also a visiting professor of law at the University of Dijon, France.

Sir James Plimsoll AC, CBE, KStJ (25 April 1917 – 8 May 1987) was an Australian diplomat and Governor of Tasmania.

Plimsoll was born in Sydney and educated at Sydney Boys' High School (1929-33). He graduated with a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Sydney 1938 and was appointed to the Bank of New South Wales as an economist. In 1941 he graduated as Bachelor of Arts, also from the University of Sydney.

With the outbreak of World War II, he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Forces in 1942. During the War he was attached to the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs. In 1945 he was a member of the Australian delegation to the Far Eastern Commission, established to oversee the Allied Council for Japan, which was responsible for the Japanese occupation. At the end of the war, he was on the staff of the Australian School of Pacific Administration, then with the rank of Major. was appointed a First Secretary of the Department of External Affairs in 1948.

He was appointed the Australian representative on the United Nations Commission for Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea (UNCURK) in 1950, during the Korean War. When UNCURK was established in October 1950 the war was expected to conclude quickly. However, by the time of its first meeting in Seoul in November, China had intervened and unification and rehabilitation was no longer possible. While other UNCURK delegates wanted to leave Korea, Plimsoll persuaded them that it was important that a high-level civilian presence should remain in Korea. UNCURK then moved to the southern city of Busan, along with the Government of the Republic of Korea and played a valuable role in communicating between the Korean Government, the UN military Command and the United Nations in New York. It also observed Korean elections.