Informal institutions in global governance are generally expected to favor powerful states. According to conventional arguments, procedural justice is best secured through formal institutional rules that constrain power, while informal institutions reinforce power asymmetries. This chapter revisits this position and asks, how and under what conditions can informal institutions enhance the voice and influence of less powerful or marginalized actors in global governance? The chapter argues that while informal institutions are useful to powerful states because they remove constraints to individual action, they can also be useful to less powerful states to the extent that they positively support action through social-integrative effects. Specifically, interactions within informal groups generate two types of social effects – capacity-building and coalition-building – that can enhance the voice of developing countries and increase their control over collective decisions. The chapter illustrates the arguments by profiling informal groups in the global governance of trade and finance.

At least 14 space agencies have identified ‘in situ resource utilization’ as a necessary capability for long-duration missions, including crewed missions to the Moon, Mars and deep space. Attention is focused on the potential production of rocket fuel from ice and water-bearing minerals. If fuel can be sourced in space, it will not need to be lifted, at great expense, from Earth’s surface. But while the mining of asteroids and other celestial bodies offers benefits, it will also create risks. Mining that is motivated purely by resource extraction could overlook or even destroy important scientific information, while physical interactions with an asteroid could alter its trajectory and, in some circumstances, potentially create a human-caused Earth impact risk. There are presently two competing efforts to develop widely agreed rules on space mining. The first is an industry-friendly effort in which the United States is engaging in bilateral negotiations with dozens of states, encouraging them to sign the non-binding Artemis Accords. The second is a multilateral effort that fully considers the interests of non-spacefaring states and is taking place in the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

Former Bolivian Minister of Development Planning Rene Orellana Halkyer provides the perspective of the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC), one of the most influential groups of developing-country parties in the Paris Agreement negotiations including powerful voices such as China, India, and Saudi Arabia. The chapter details the group’s ideology, key demands, and dynamics. Like a Russian doll, the group incorporates various national and sub-group positions, nested within the G77+China. Less powerful developing countries that may otherwise have had little influence were able to use the LMDC’s political clout to amplify their demands and achieve gains in the text. Orellana recount the “battles of wording” in which the mark of the LMDC can be seen in the outcome of COP 21 and reflects on the importance of normative discourse for a group that sees itself as “the representative of the voices that call for a more equitable world”. His account includes fascinating examples of how the practice of “making a wave” in plenary combines power politics and external events with mastery of the negotiation process through the medium of normative discourse to shift negotiation outcomes.

Africa has seen progress and setbacks with regard to the economic and socio-economic development after decolonization until ca. 2000. These are linked to historical and structural challenges, including the economic infrastructure the colonial powers left behind and the unfavourable geography of vast parts of the continent. In the post-colonial phase there has been much economic and trade dependence on the former colonial powers – giving rise to the dependency theory and the notion of neo-colonialism. There was often an unwillingness of the post-colonial leadership to set the course for the economies of their countries. And rentier states developed. Several initiatives – from Africa and beyond – have been proposed to deal with the economic misery, with those of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund being the dominant ones, pushing African initiatives aside.