The Fragmentation Thesis Revisited

Over the past decade, a growing body of scholarship has argued that the multilateral trade order established after the Second World War is fragmenting into competing regional and bilateral regimes, driven by great-power rivalry, industrial policy resurgence, and the erosion of dispute-settlement mechanisms. This review essay assesses four recent books and a cluster of associated journal literature that advance versions of this "fragmentation thesis," evaluating the strength of their empirical claims and the coherence of their theoretical frameworks. It argues that while the descriptive account of institutional strain is well supported, much of the literature underestimates the adaptive capacity of existing multilateral institutions and overstates the coherence of emerging regional blocs as substitute governance structures. The essay proposes an alternative reading centered on layered governance, in which multilateral, regional, and bilateral arrangements coexist and interact rather than displace one another, and suggests directions for future research on institutional overlap and forum-shopping behavior among states.