Sören Stapel

• Ph.D.
• Senior Lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin

Regime complexity, which is characterized by overlap between international organizations (IOs) concerning both policy competencies and member states, has been increasing over time. It is a defining feature of today’s international system. As the regime complexity literature points out, overlaps between IOs carry potential negative effects, such as...

Regime complexity, which is characterized by overlap between international organizations (IOs) concerning both policy competencies and member states, has been increasing over time. It is a defining feature of today’s international system. As the regime complexity literature points out, overlaps between IOs carry potential negative effects, such as...

Regime complexity, which is characterized by overlap between international organizations (IOs) concerning both policy competencies and member states, has been increasing over time. It is a defining feature of today’s international system. As the regime complexity literature points out, overlaps between IOs carry potential negative effects, such as...

Regime complexity, which is characterized by overlap between international organizations (IOs) concerning both policy competencies and member states, has been increasing over time. It is a defining feature of today’s international system. As the regime complexity literature points out, overlaps between IOs carry potential negative effects, such as...

Regime complexity, which is characterized by overlap between international organizations (IOs) concerning both policy competencies and member states, has been increasing over time. It is a defining feature of today’s international system. As the regime complexity literature points out, overlaps between IOs carry potential negative effects, such as...

Regime complexity, which is characterized by overlap between international organizations (IOs) concerning both policy competencies and member states, has been increasing over time. It is a defining feature of today’s international system. As the regime complexity literature points out, overlaps between IOs carry potential negative effects, such as...

Regime complexity, which is characterized by overlap between international organizations (IOs) concerning both policy competencies and member states, has been increasing over time. It is a defining feature of today’s international system. As the regime complexity literature points out, overlaps between IOs carry potential negative effects, such as...

Regime complexity, which is characterized by overlap between international organizations (IOs) concerning both policy competencies and member states, has been increasing over time. It is a defining feature of today’s international system. As the regime complexity literature points out, overlaps between IOs carry potential negative effects, such as...

Regime complexity, which is characterized by overlap between international organizations (IOs) concerning both policy competencies and member states, has been increasing over time. It is a defining feature of today’s international system. As the regime complexity literature points out, overlaps between IOs carry potential negative effects, such as...

Scholars and pundits focusing on the changing international order and its possible fragmentation often pay little attention to the manifold relationships between international organizations (IOs). Neglecting inter-organizational relationships, we argue, biases discussions towards doomsday predictions and reinforces the perception of global fragment...

Multilateral cooperation in international organisations is characterised by regime complexity. The literature usually adopts a policy-focused perspective studying the properties, effects, and dynamics within given regime complexes for different policy areas. Yet few accounts of why states drive regime complexity have been provided in the literature...

Foreign aid to regional international organizations (RIOs) has increased tremendously in recent decades. The vast differences between RIOs give rise to the question of why some RIOs attract considerable amounts of aid while others attract much less, or even nothing at all. To address that question, this article sets out and examines a set of hypoth...

The chapter compares trajectories of regional cooperation in North America as well as in South America with three other regions: Africa, Asia and Europe. It draws on a novel database, the Regional Organization Comptencies datset (ROCO), which covers the development of 75 regional organizations (ROs) between 1945 and 2020. The chapter shows that reg...

Sweden has adopted a comprehensive and multidimensional approach to cooperation with Africa in the field of peace and security, which is based on the view that peace, security, development and human rights are closely intertwined. While Swedish cooperation with Africa involves diplomatic instruments and support for peacekeeping and stabilisation mi...

Regime complexity characterizes the international system, as many international organizations (IOs) overlap in membership and competencies at the same time. Unmanaged overlaps endanger the effectiveness of IOs. Inter-organizational cooperation can mitigate such negative consequences. However, a novel dataset reveals that not all overlapping IOs coo...

Regional cooperation often leads to the establishment of regional international organizations (RIOs). Due to the increasing number of RIOs, their growing membership size and their broadening policy scope, RIOs frequently overlap with each other with regard to membership and mandate. Overlaps may lead to conflicts amongst affected organizations and...

How do external actors promote regional international organisations (RIOs) through their regional foreign aid? Whereas most leading theo-ries of regionalism stipulate that RIOs are designed and shaped by intra-r egional actors from ‘within’, this study develops a novel framework for exploring donor involvement in RIOs during various stages of the f...

The number of regional organizations in Europe has increased in the aftermaths of the Second World War and the Cold War. Whenever regional organizations share member states and are equipped with identical policy competencies at the same time, regime complexity comes into play. Unmanaged regime complexity has not only increased over time but can als...

Regionalism is essential for understanding politics in Africa, and to some extent even the everyday lives of many people on the continent. Yet regionalism in Africa is often conceived too narrowly. Existing research focuses extensively on the African Union and a limited set of established regional organizations (ROs) – such as the Economic Communit...

Motivation Regionalism in Africa is to a large extent financed from the outside, which has given rise to a deep‐seated ownership problem. African actors and donors struggle with whether the ownership deficit derives from unequal donor–recipient relationships or recipient‐related weaknesses. This study goes beyond these debates and adds new insights...

Over the past 50 years, regional international organizations have adopted several treaties on human rights. By ratifying them, member states can signal their commitment to the norms codified in the respective documents. Yet ratification patterns vary greatly across both states and treaties. Extant studies of commitment to human rights focus on the...

This chapter puts a focus on external donor funding as example of asymmetric relations between Europe and Africa. To contribute to a more nuanced debate about the role of external actors in the promotion of regionalism, both authors go beyond the EU as self-proclaimed key supporter of global regionalism and draw attention to a variety of external a...

This volume offers systematic research on regionalism in Africa and explores the role and impact of external partners on the dynamics, institutional design, and performance of regional integration projects. It acknowledges and elaborates the multilevel and multidimensional nature of regionalism, with its variety of cooperative institutions and poli...

This paper explores the role of regional organisations (ROs) in achieving the African Union (AU)'s Agenda 2063, the continent's master plan for development. We map the number and types of ROs on the continent, explore how their mandates correspond to Agenda 2063 priorities, look at which ROs have overlapping mandates, and propose ways to deal with...

In conclusion, Chapter 8 provides a summary of the major findings and discusses which types of ROs should be expected to be formed in the first place and why not all types are equally likely to emerge. It also discusses when to expect which shifts from one RO type to another. The chapter ends by pointing to avenues for future research.

Chapter 3 adopts a global perspective and maps RO creation and dissolution as well as membership developments and policy competencies for all ROs in general and for each of the four regions separately. It shows that there are two waves of regionalism at the global level, one in the aftermath of WWII and one after the end of the Cold War. Initially,...

Chapter 2 introduces the conceptual framework of the book as well as the dataset used and accompanying measurement decisions. The first part explains why the focus on policy competencies and membership can have important ramifications for the operation of ROs as these characteristics affect the potential reach of RO activities and decisions as well...

The Organization of African Unity (OAU) and its successor, the African Union (AU), have adopted democracy and rule of law standards comparatively late in the end of the 1990s and early 2000s. The leadership of a few states and their interests and demands informed the evolution of regional institutions. Yet, the OAU/AU has been heavily influenced by...

The Organization of American States (OAS) is one of—if not the—pioneering regional organizations for the adoption and design of regional democracy and rule of law institutions. The OAS started to adopt and design regional institutions by the end of the 1980s. Within a short period of time, the OAS has developed an impressive set of standards and in...

The conclusion revisits the empirical and causal arguments that make up the book’s framework. Regional organizations have become prominent actors in the quest to promote and protect democracy, human rights, and the rule of law around the world. In their efforts to establish regional institutions, demands and diffusion processes shape decision-makin...

When, how, and why do regional organizatiosns provide democracy, human rights, and rule of law institutions? The chapter introduces the reader to the repertoire of regional institutions to promote and protect fundamental governance standards in member states of regional organizations. It argues that demands and diffusion explain the adoption and de...

When have regional organizations (ROs) adopted democracy, human rights, and the rule of law institutions? What does the institutional design feature? This chapter examines the adoption and design of regional institutions over time. Two original data sets form the basis for the descriptive analysis. They include information about the commitment to f...

This chapter gauges the plausibility of explanatory factors regarding the adoption and design of regional institutions to promote and protect democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. In three steps, different multivariate statistical analyses are performed. This chapter first analyzes the adoption of institutions, and then turns toward the sel...

This book explores when, why, and how regional organizations adopt and design institutions to promote and protect fundamental standards of democracy, human rights, and rule of law in their member states. These regional institutions have spread globally. While their institutional designs have become increasingly similar over time, regional particula...

Regional Organizations (ROs) have become a central pillar of governance beyond the nation-state. This paper investigates why European states turned into architects of regional regime complexity: they have created and joined numerous different ROs and equipped them with a broad range of different policy competencies. Thereby, European states – some...

In January 2020, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia proposed to form a new regional bloc, occasionally referred to as the Horn of Africa Cooperation (HoAC). This article assesses which factors have contributed to making this proposal and contemplates potential effects for the complex security challenges, political tensions among the neighbours, and exi...

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution and particularities of regional organizations across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe since 1945. The authors analyze the membership dynamics and policy scopes of 76 organizations, and compare their opportunities and challenges in regional governance. They consider organizations’ co...

This book provides a valuable overview of the evolution and particularities of regional organizations across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe since 1945. The authors analyze the membership dynamics and policy scopes of 76 organizations, and compare their opportunities and challenges in regional governance. They consider organizations’ competen...

Chapter 4 focuses on regionalism in Africa. It discusses the particularities of the development of African ROs with respect to creation, membership dynamics and RO policy scope. This reveals that while some of the oldest ROs in the ROCO dataset are located on the African continent, such as the League of Arab States (AL), the general pattern shows t...

Chapter 7 discusses the trajectories of RO development in Europe. Although regional cooperation started early in Europe, it is the region with the lowest absolute number of ROs and with the highest share of ROs that have lost member states over time. Nevertheless, European ROs tend to be large in size and many of them have broad policy scopes. Euro...

Chapter 6 focuses on regionalism in Asia. Asian ROs have been created with a delay, as regionalism in Asia only took off at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s and developed incrementally over time with respect to membership size and policy scopes. Asia lacks an RO with continental reach and in some sub- regions there are no ROs at...

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution and particularities of regional organizations across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe since 1945. The authors analyze the membership dynamics and policy scopes of 76 organizations, and compare their opportunities and challenges in regional governance. They consider organizations’ com...

Chapter 5 sheds light on regional cooperation in the Americas. Two of the 18 American ROs in the dataset were dissolved but provided the grounds for future regional cooperation in new ROs. The chapter points out that many ROs have been created and cooperation has pushed forward while excluding the United States (US) not the least because the contin...

External actors have invested enormous financial resources to support African regional organisations. This chapter maps and problematises the external funding provided to the African Union (AU) and the eight Regional Economic Communities (RECs). Based on a new dataset, we show that there has been a drastic increase of security-related funding durin...

Overlapping regionalism results from the fact that states are members in multiple regional organization (RO) at the same time. This explorative paper provides the first comprehensive mapping of overlapping regionalism today and illustrates that it is not confined to Africa or Asia, but also prevalent in the Americas and Europe. Furthermore, all 62...

European states have not only joined several regional organizations (ROs) over time, but ROs’ policy competencies have also broadened in scope. As a result, states are exposed to overlapping regionalism, defined as the extent to which ROs share member states and policy competencies at the same time. First, this article identifies patterns of overla...

Studies on governance transfer by regional organizations (ROs) are on the rise. The extant literature has mainly focused on democracy and human rights (for an overview see Pevehouse forthcoming; McMahon and Baker 2006). Meanwhile, the promotion of other governance standards, such as the rule of law and the fight against corruption, have received fa...