This volume presents a reconsideration of the concepts of State and political power within the evolving multilateral network of cooperation and conflict. By means of an innovating research strategy, it explains state resilience within global and regional governance while deepening the transformation of the traditional sovereign state concepts, including by emerging powers. Rather than considering the EU as an isolated case study, the book considers the EU as both a reference and a proactive player, which fosters a new research agenda both for comparative studies on regional cooperation and political theory. Lastly, in view of the currently emergent, unprecedented and asymmetrical, 'multi-polar' world, and of several forms of continent and instrumental multilateral cooperation, it considers the need for putting regionalism and democratic legitimacy at the very core of a normative and institutionalist research agenda for a ''new  multilateralism''.

Table of Contents.- List of Acrnyms.- Introduction; Mario Telò.- 1. State and multilateralism: system change, diversities and challenges.- State and Multilateralism: History and Perspectives; Mario Telò.- State, Regionalism and global governance: the theoretical debate from the opening of the Berlin wall to the economic crisis; Andrew Gamble.- Economic Multilateralism: A Search for Legitimacy and Coherence in the 21st Century; Richard Higgot.- International Responsibility, Multilateralism and China Foreign Policy; Chen Zhinim.- 2. Globalization and the Transformation of the State: The Theoretical Debate.- The State and Political Economic Change: Beyond Rational Choice and Historical Institutionalism to Discursive Institutionalism; Vivien A. Schmidt.- Globalization, Regionalization and Stateness; Thomas Meyer.- The Rise of Executive Sovereignty in the Era of Globalization; Andreas Vasilache.- Conclusion, State and New Multilateralism in a Multipolar World; Mario Telò.- Bibliography.