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The Rise of International Regime Complexity
Abstract
The signature feature of twenty-first-century international cooperation is arguably not the regime but the regime complex. A regime complex is an array of partially overlapping and nonhierarchical institutions that includes more than one international agreement or authority. The institutions and agreements may be functional or territorial in nature. International regime complexity refers to international political systems of global governance that emerge because of the coexistence of rule density and regime complexes. This article highlights insights and questions that emerge from the last 15 years of scholarship on the politics of international regime complexity, explaining why regime complexes arise, what factors sustain them, and the range of political effects regime complexity creates. Our conclusion explains why, in a post-American world order, the trend of greater international regime complexity will likely accelerate.
... In many issue areas of world politics, international cooperation is governed by a dense network of overlapping institutions (Dorussen & Ward, 2008;Greenhill & Lupu, 2017;Ingram & Torfason, 2010). Issues, such as climate change, global health, and trade, once governed by relatively disconnected international rule sets, are today governed by a plethora of agreements and organizations that intersect with one another in multiple ways (Alter & Meunier, 2009;Alter & Raustiala, 2018;Raustiala & Victor, 2004). Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) are at the core of this networked governance architecture and their creation, design, and performance is shaped by the institutional context in which they are embedded (Kahler, 2021). ...
... We introduce a new measure of institutional overlap in global governance, anchored in the regime complexity literature (Alter & Raustiala, 2018;Raustiala & Victor, 2004;Urpelainen and Van de Graaf 2015;Young, 1996). We conceptualize this measure as the overlap of IGO memberships, governance tasks, and issue areas. ...
... More recent studies also highlight intersecting governance tasks, i.e. institutional functions, as a central dimension of overlap (Hofmann, 2011;Urpelainen and Van de Graaf 2015). In the regime complex literature, task overlap among the constituent elements of a complex is identified as one of the key characteristics that make the strategic environment of regime complexes distinct from situations governed by integrated regimes (Alter & Meunier, 2009;Alter & Raustiala, 2018;Raustiala & Victor, 2004). Yet, no existing quantitative measure of overlap in global governance incorporates this critical dimension of intersection between IGOs. ...
How does the increasingly dense network of overlapping institutions in global governance affect the design of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)? We argue that institutional overlap can unleash mimicking dynamics whereby states design new IGOs using the design of existing organizations that engage in similar issue areas and perform similar governance tasks for similar member states as templates. Using design templates from the reference group of overlapping institutions is a strategy for boundedly rational designers in situations of complexity because it reduces uncertainty and lowers the costs of identifying suitable institutional solutions. Overlap therefore increases the design similarity between new and pre-existing IGOs, specifically where pre-existing organizations have institutional designs that made them endure. Introducing a new measure of institutional overlap in global governance and new data on the design and governance tasks of the 534 IGOs from the Correlates of War Project, we corroborate our argument using regression analyses. Our results hold important lessons for theories of institutional design, regime complexity, and global governance more broadly.
... After World War II (WWII) and again after the end of the Cold War, multilateral cooperation in institutionalized arenas increased, bringing about a growing number of IOs that cover a broad array of different policy fields. Thus, we are now living in a world characterized by regime complexity ( Alter and Meunier 2009 ;Drezner 2009 ;Orsini, Morin, and Young 2013 ;Alter and Raustiala 2018 ;Pratt 2018 ), which is defined as an "array of partially overlapping and non-hierarchical institutions governing a particular issue-area" ( Raustiala and Victor 2004 , 279). Scholars often examine implications of regime complexity for state actors as well as effectiveness and legitimacy of global governance more generally (e.g., Raustiala and Victor 2004 ;Betts 2010 ;Nye 2014 ;Zelli et al. 2020 ). ...
... Only few scholars expect positive effects of regime complexity, such as a higher chance that a new issue gets addressed the more IOs cover an issue area ( Orsini, Morin, and Young 2013 ), an increase in discourse and justification that adds to the legitimacy of global governance ( Faude and Große-Kreul 2020 ), or its problem-solving capacity ( Keohane and Victor 2011 ;Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Westerwinter 2021 ). The bulk of research considers regime complexity to undermine the effectiveness of global governance, that is, a race to the bottom with respect to policy outcomes, noncompliance, or instability ( Helfer 2004 ;Busch 2007 ;Alter and Meunier 2009 ;Betts 2013 ;Margulis 2013 ;Morin and Orsini 2013 ;Orsini, Morin, and Young 2013 ;Urpelainen and Van de Graaf 2015 ;Russo and Gawrich 2017 ;Alter and Raustiala 2018 ;Panke and Stapel 2018b ;Hofmann 2019 ). This research argues that states have fixed interests and therefore strategically select the international arena in which they expect to best pursue their preferences when negotiating outcomes ( Busch 2007 ;Sykes 2008 ;Helfer 2009 ;Beyers and Kerremans 2012 ;Murphy and Kellow 2013 ;Hofmann 2019 ). ...
... which dynamics and coping strategies this brings about, and to what effects (e.g., Drezner 2009 ;Oberthür and Stokke 2011 ;Betts 2013 ;Morin and Orsini 2013 ;Orsini, Morin, and Young 2013 ;Alter and Raustiala 2018 ;Pratt 2018 ). This work usually ignores the fact that ROs, whose policy scopes have increased tremendously over time, contributing to a multitude of regional and international coexisting organizations, today do cover similar policy issues and overlap with respect to some of their member states (e.g., Panke and Stapel 2018a ; Panke, Stapel, and Starkmann 2020 ). ...
The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is an important milestone in reducing the illicit trade of arms but was highly unlikely to be negotiated and passed. Major powers and states exporting and importing arms were not keen on universally binding regulations, leading to political stalemate in the initial negotiation arena, the Conference on Disarmament. This article investigates under which conditions regime complexity had a positive influence on the ATT negotiation dynamics and result. We distinguish between two types of regime complexity, each providing states with a distinct window of opportunity during international negotiations: horizontal regime complexity can allow states to overcome negotiation gridlock by changing the institutional conditions for passing an agreement. Vertical regime complexity can allow regional organizations to turn into agents of change by bringing in experiences gained on the regional level to the international negotiation table. Our empirical analysis of the ATT negotiations revealed critical scope conditions under which both forms of regime complexity function properly, allowing the negotiations to overcome negotiation gridlock and resulting in the passing of the accord beyond a lowest common denominator. The article contributes to the rich and vibrant scholarship in regime complexity and global governance complexes by making a novel analytical distinction between horizontal and vertical regime complexity and by identifying the opportunity structures under which regime complexity can have positive effects on the negotiation and outcome of international treaties.
... 1 Scholarship is well advanced in explaining and understanding how states deal with complexity, for instance through forum-shopping (Hafner-Burton, 2009) and chess-board politics (Alter and Meunier, 2009). However, the literature is less developed in understanding the motivations and opportunities of states to foster regime complexity in the first place (exceptions include Alter and Raustiala, 2018;Benvenisti and Downs, 2007;Faude and Fuß, 2020;Panke and Stapel, 2021;Raustiala and Victor, 2004). To contribute to knowledge on states as drivers of regime complexity, this section draws on regime complexity scholarship and also includes approaches on international cooperation more generally. ...
... According to Alter and Raustiala (2018) organisations forming a regime complex can be functionally or territorially defined. The literature usually addresses functionally-defined organisations in a particular policy field. ...
... In line with hypothesis 5, the disappearance of deeply-rooted geopolitical cleavages increases both dimensions of complexity. These findings suggest that the development of regime complexes can best be understood when not only substantive motivations (Alter and Raustiala, 2018;Benvenisti and Downs, 2007;Faude and Fuß, 2020;Raustiala and Victor, 2004), but also geopolitical opportunity structures are taken into account. ...
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. Therefore, we adopt a state-focused perspective and observe how states differ in the extent to which they foster complexity through overlapping memberships and policy competencies in international organisations. In order to explain this variation, we extract state motivations from the regime complexity literature, but also incorporate the role of geopolitical opportunity structures for complexity as well as interactions between both elements. The empirical analysis reveals that the power to pursue self-interests leads to duplicated policy competencies, whereas duplicating international organisation memberships by creating new international organisations or joining existing ones is costly and a less favoured route towards pursuing substantive gains. The motivation to gain external reputation also positively influences the overlap in membership and policy competencies. Moreover, the number of neighbouring states and the disappearance of deep-rooted ideological cleavages are important opportunity structures for states furthering complexity. Opportunity structures also reinforce the positive effect of power to pursue self-interests and external reputation motivations on complexity. Thus, we contribute to regime complexity research in showing that not all states equally foster regime complexity and this relationship is dependent on a specific context.
... En cuanto a la lucha contra las drogas, se encuentra el principio de corresponsabilidad, entendiéndose que "[…] el problema de la producción y fabricación ilícitas de estupefacientes y sustancias sicotrópicas suele estar relacionado con problemas de desarrollo y que esa relación requiere, en el contexto de la responsabilidad común y compartida, una estrecha cooperación […]" (ONU, 2014). De esta manera, se puede decir que, claramente, el desarrollo y la lucha contra el problema mundial de drogas se afectan mutuamente, por lo cual estas dos preocupaciones son inextricablemente vinculadas e interactivas, como resultado político de un complejo de regímenes internacionales (Alter & Raustiala, 2018). ...
... Los principios (creencias) y las normas (estándares de comportamiento) son la base esencial de las instituciones internacionales que sustenta la gobernanza global de la actualidad. Ambos fueron pilar de la definición canónica de régimen internacional en las Relaciones Internacionales, planteada por Stephen Krasner (1982), y a partir de la cual el cambio de principios y normas representa un cambio de régimen y, por ende, el intento de alterar el statu quo en un multilateralismo controvertido, impugnado, o contramultilateralismo (Keohane, 1990;Keohane, 2014), por lo cual la contienda es una respuesta normal a las limitaciones políticas (Alter & Raustiala, 2018). Los regímenes internacionales fueron definidos como […] principios [creencias de hecho, causalidad y rectitud], normas [estándares de comportamiento que son derechos y obligaciones], reglas [prescripciones y proscripciones específicas] y procedimientos de decisión [prácticas para las elecciones colectivas] en torno a los cuales convergen las expectativas de los actores en un determinado campo de actividades. ...
... Por otra parte, la complejidad de regímenes es consecuencia de los efectos políticos, y hace referencia a los sistemas políticos internacionales de gobernanza global como resultado de la densidad normativa y los complejos de regímenes; complejos continuos de interdependencia que pueden convertirse en un modo de cambio institucional. De esta manera, pueden diferir de los ordenamientos jurídicos transnacionales, los cuales, abarcan más que los complejos de regímenes, pues incluyen normas, actores y organizaciones -tanto actores informarles y no estatales como instituciones formales-; sistemas que pueden formar parte o no de la gobernanza mundial y pueden estructurar las interacciones globales (Alter & Raustiala, 2018). ...
Este artículo tiene como objetivo analizar las particularidades y las debilidades en materia de poder (capacidades) y desarrollo de Colombia y Perú para la consolidación de sus estrategias de erradicación de cultivos ilícitos en el marco de sus agendas de paz, dado el complejo de regímenes sobre desarrollo y lucha contra las drogas. Gran parte de las debilidades en sus estrategias de la lucha contra el narco- tráfico y sus agendas de paz radica en la baja capacidad para garantizar los medios para el bienestar, el progreso y el desarrollo, ante sus restringidas capacidades semimateriales, como consecuencia de su patrón de desarrollo —rentista y financiero—, que limita la cohesión interna con la provisión de servi- cios públicos y prosperidad. Así, los paradigmas de desarrollo y lucha contra las drogas responden a la lógica top-down, inscrita en la agenda temática de sus políticas exteriores, en contraposición a una lógica bottom-up que dé paso a la democratización y la politización resultante de las necesidades domésticas en la relación Estado-sociedad.
... W. Abbott & Snidal, 2021). IR scholars also shifted attention from single issue regimes to 'regime complexes' -the interplay and overlap between large numbers of issue areas and the international agreements that seek to govern them (Alter, 2022;Alter & Raustiala, 2018;Orsini et al., 2013). In parallel, domain-specific regimes particularly focused on the environment, reached a stage of maturity that enabled more conclusive studies of their long-term effectiveness (Andresen, 2013). ...
Professional education operates in a tension between its two key institutional homes-universities and professional bodies. Curriculum governance-the structures and processes for making decisions about the curriculum-is embedded in higher education but influenced by professional accreditation. This multiple paper thesis explores the implications of a worldwide shift in engineering towards outcomes-based accreditation. The study is framed by a comparative case study methodology, and empirical data is drawn from 78 interviews across the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, and South Africa. All four countries are signatory to the Washington Accord, a mutual recognition agreement that has been influential in helping to spread outcomes-based accreditation. This study is theoretically grounded in Bernstein's pedagogic device, from the sociology of education, and regime theory, from international relations. At a global level, the key findings are that the Washington Accord has evolved into an explicit regime that shapes the behaviour of its 20+ signatories, as well as countries thinking about applying. From a power perspective, the regime disproportionately benefits its founding members, while newer signatories are scrutinized iii before being admitted. From a cognitivist perspective, the regime is under threat from a subtle shift in its purpose, from mobility to quality assurance. Drawing on the pedagogic device, the thesis finds meaningful differences across countries in the structure of the 'recontextualizing field'-comprised of the official field which sets accreditation policy, and the pedagogic field which interprets and implements the policy. Four archetypes, based on the four countries, are shown to explain some of the differences in uptake of outcomes-based accreditation. Within the 'field of reproduction', curriculum governance structures are shown to differ according to the type of university. Research-intensive universities are less invested in accreditation, more decentralized, and centrally control the curriculum less. Teaching-intensive universities depend on accreditation for legitimacy and invest more in a centralized approach to curriculum governance. Overall, this study highlights the importance of power differences between old and new signatories, between research-intensive and teaching-intensive universities, and between central faculties and their departments. These tensions represent an important area of research within professional education at large.
... A defining feature of regime complexity is increased overlap between international institutions with authority for a given policy issue and thus a greater choice of venues at which states may pursue their interests (Alter & Raustiala, 2018;Hofmann, 2019;Raustalia & Victor, 2004). The extant literature generally predicts that actors will select the institution that they expect to be most favorable for achieving their objectives. ...
Scholars have long observed that states play off overlapping international institutions against one another in an effort to advance their policy objectives. This article identifies a strategy utilized by the EU in response to regime complexity that I term “backdoor bargaining.” Unlike forum-shopping, regime-shifting, and competitive-regime creation strategies, which states use to move multilateral negotiations to an institution that they expect will produce a more favorable outcome, backdoor bargaining involves a state using negotiations within one institution to gain an advantage in negotiations taking place at another distinct institution in a regime complex. I demonstrate the plausibility of backdoor bargaining by showing that the EU used the renegotiation of the Food Aid Convention as a strategy to gain bargaining leverage in the agriculture negotiations at the World Trade Organization. The article also offers insights into the potential consequences of international regime complexity for the EU as a global actor and the coherence of its foreign policies.
... 76 Third, AHCs speak to organizational choice and organizational strategies in global governance. 77 Much of the research in this field starts from recognition of the impact of institutional overlap, both in membership and in policy orientation, on the strategic options that states have to undertake multilateral action. 78 Building on insights from the forum-shopping literature, this research programme has led to the identification of a range of strategies, including among others competitive regime creation, regime shifting, 79 hostage-taking and brokering. ...
Ad hoc coalitions (AHCs) are an indispensable but scantly conceptualized part of global governance. In recent years, several typologies and classifications of global governance arrangements have been provided, mostly differentiating them based on their organizational design features of degree of formality and membership composition. These do not capture AHCs and the role they play in global governance. In this article, we not only provide a conceptualization of AHCs, but also propose ways in which AHCs fit within the broader global governance architecture. We argue that what sets AHCs apart is not so much their (in)formality or membership, but rather their short-notice creation, their task-specific purpose and their temporarily circumscribed existence. We therefore define AHCs as autonomous arrangements with a task-specific mandate established at short notice for a limited time frame. We then develop a research agenda on the nature and future of AHCs, including their short- and long-term relationship with other multilateral arrangements in the global governance architecture. This is important, as we do yet not know how AHCs complement, compete and impact on international organizations and international crisis response.
... This study aims to fill the lacuna and empirically evaluate the relationship between the IMF and a RFA by focusing on surveillance, an overlapping task in which ideas play a crucial role. In doing so, we evaluate a problem of coordination between global and regional organizations, which has attracted acute interest from several strands of international relations research (Alter & Raustiala, 2018;Gehring & Faude, 2014;Johnson & Urpelainen, 2012). ...
Institutional proliferation in the global financial order raises concerns about a failure of coordination between global and regional organizations and the resulting confusion and conflict. One area of concern is macroeconomic surveillance, which is crucial for the detection of financial crises as a task subject to institutional overlaps. The existing literature does not provide systematic evidence on the extent and determinants of such coordination. To fill this lacuna, we compare the International Monetary Fund and the ASEAN Plus Three Macroeconomic Research Office, a surveillance agency in East Asia, using their country reports as outcomes of their surveillance of East Asian countries. We conduct dictionary-based text analyses to assess the usage patterns of key terms concerning particular economic ideas. The results demonstrate substantial similarities between the country reports as well as some residual differences. These findings suggest that they engage in informal coordination based on focal-point effects through the use of general and regional economic ideas for multifaceted surveillance. They further suggest that informality permits them to exercise discretion in deciding policy categories for aligned and autonomous actions, thereby providing an efficient solution to an autonomy–coordination dilemma. Through these discussions, our study suggests important implications for researchers and member governments.
... La gobernanza mundial del agua es definida como un sistema de gobernanza que modela, controla y gestiona el acceso al agua y el saneamiento que se solapa con los sistemas políticos, sociales, económicos y administrativos establecidos para el desarrollo y la gestión de los recursos hídricos y la provisión de sus servicios hacia los diferentes grupos de la sociedad (Bayu et al., 2020, p. 2). Como punto de partida, resulta importante considerar la imbricación de los aspectos aludidos dado que las dinámicas internacionales referidas a los asuntos hídricos se insertan en un contexto internacional denso de instituciones e instrumentos que condiciona todas las prácticas de cooperación subsecuentes (Alter y Raustiala, 2018). Por lo tanto, para determinar si el acceso al agua y el saneamiento representa un complejo de regímenes en sí mismo o un régimen elemental dentro del complejo de regímenes más amplio del agua dulce, salud o desarrollo, o bien ambas posibilidades, se propone indagar acerca de tres aspectos principales: la trayectoria de la agenda global del agua y el saneamiento; los principales actores internacionales involucrados en la temática; y el contenido normativo de los principales instrumentos adyacentes a la materia del agua y el saneamiento como un derecho humano. ...
El propósito del presente artículo de reflexión teórica consiste en poner en evidencia el modo en el que puede representarse la problemática del agua y el saneamiento desde la perspectiva teórica de los complejos de regímenes. Específicamente, lo que se intentará indicar, mediante una metodología de investigación cualitativa, es si el presente caso de estudio opera como un régimen elemental dentro de un complejo de regímenes más amplio o si, en cambio, este representa un complejo de regímenes en sí mismo que involucra un solapamiento parcial de instituciones no jerárquicas. La relevancia del presente estudio de caso se manifiesta en la conjugación de las implicancias teóricas con las pragmáticas, puesto que se espera que la profundización del andamiaje conceptual de la teoría de los complejos de regímenes contribuya a sistematizar la operatividad de las instituciones multilaterales abocadas al agua y saneamiento en la práctica. Como principal conclusión que debe ser considerada, se advierte que la materia del agua y saneamiento, al detentar un rol transversal con importancia en múltiples dimensiones del desarrollo y al posicionarse como precondición básica para el cumplimiento de un amplio conjunto de derechos humanos, se ubica en una frontera porosa y de solapamiento de arreglos institucionales en el ámbito multilateral. En tal sentido, esta oscila, por una parte, entre ser considerada como una temática estrechamente vinculada con diversas áreas temáticas de la agenda global —que, por lo tanto, es inescindible de ellas—, y, por otra, representar un asunto que merece un tratamiento específico acorde con sus propias particularidades. Se argumenta que dichas consideraciones solamente pueden ser dilucidadas a partir de la aplicación del aparato conceptual de la teoría de los complejos de regímenes.
... Te tendency to interpret the evolution of the world order as a mere interplay between the goals and interests of the most infuential countries and country blocks remains strong. However, a nonlinear science of networked international relations [26] is much more appropriate to deal with the complexity of international relations [27], especially so in response to major, unexpected shocks. We can conceptualize the world order as a multilevel network of alliances between countries, whose structural characteristics critically impinge upon its resilience. ...
The governance of the political and economic world order builds on a complex architecture of international treaties at various geographical scales. In a historical phase of high institutional turbulence, assessing the stability of such architecture with respect to the unilateral defection of single countries and the breakdown of single treaties is important. We carry out this analysis on the whole global architecture and find that the countries with the highest disruption potential are mostly medium-small and micro countries. Political stability is highly dependent on many former colonial overseas territories that are today part of the global network of fiscal havens, as well as on emerging economies, mostly from South-East Asia. Economic stability depends on medium-sized European and African countries. Single global treaties have surprisingly less disruptive potential, with the major exception of the WTO. Our results suggest that the potential fragility of the world order seems to be more directly related to global inequality and fiscal injustice than commonly believed and that the legacy of the colonial world order is still strong in the current international relations scenario. In particular, vested interests related to tax avoidance seem to have a structural role in the political architecture of global governance.
... Moreover, a state-centric focus omits the agency 10 Colgan, Keohane, and Van de Graaf 2011; Keohane and Victor 2011; Van de Graaf 2013a. 11 Alter and Raustiala 2018;Victor 2004. 12 Alter andMeunier 2009;Drezner 2009. ...
While many have observed a regime complex for global clean energy governance, research has not yet accorded sufficient attention to the interplay of multiple streams of politics that have led to the structuring of overlapping governance initiatives and, ultimately, the articulation of a set of norms that hold this regime complex together. To understand these dynamics, this article argues that with the visibly increased agency of transnational actors and international organizations, four mechanisms together are likely to shape regime complexity: divergent state preferences, the agency of transnational actors, practices of intergovernmental organizations, and interorganizational recognition and normative legitimation. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of policy documents and interviews, and a social network analysis, it studies global clean energy governance from 1980 to 2014 to illuminate these dynamics. The findings suggest that the combination of these four mechanisms can explain the evolution from a nonregime to a loosely coupled governance system for clean energy.
... It shows that many issue areas of global politics, such as trade, climate change, and global health, that were once governed by relatively distinct rulesets and few organizations, are today regulated by multiple institutions that overlap and interact with one another in various ways. Consequently, the evolution and effectiveness of international institutions are fundamentally shaped by how they relate to other institutions operating within their policy domains (Raustiala and Victor 2004;Alter and Raustiala 2018;Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Westerwinter 2022). ...
Contemporary global governance is characterized by a diversity of institutions. The European Union (EU) interacts with these institutions in multiple ways. Despite their importance, the interactions of the EU with different types of global governance institutions have remained underexplored in EU scholarship. The papers in this special issue address this research gap. They map the EU’s interactions with different types of global governance institutions. They also explore the factors that explain patterns of interactions. In this introduction, we develop a common analytical lens that unites the contributions to the special issue and identify our main research questions. We map different types of global governance institutions and discuss the ways in which the EU interacts with them. We also bring together the main insights from the individual contributions and discuss avenues for future research. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
... This may be seen as an microcosm of broader trends in the politics of regime complexes, relevant across a variety of policy areas (seeAlter & Raustiala, 2018).Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved. ...
Why do some developing countries obtain more official finance from China vis-a-vis Western sources? This study finds borrower transparency significantly affects which governments borrow more from China. From a supply side perspective, Chinese lending agencies have incentives to lend more to untransparent borrowers. From a demand side perspective, untransparent borrowers have incentives to use Chinese finance to avoid Western pressure to become more transparent. These findings and explanations have three implications. First, they help explain variation in external debt composition across developing countries using official credit. Second, they have implications for the international political economy of developing countries’ financial ties to China. Third, they imply the use of Chinese finance may allow untransparent governments to remain so, an important implication for the political economy of development.
... Yet, the scholarship on how IOs work together is remarkably thin. Scholars have recognized the density of global governance organizations and have focused increased attention in recent years on important issues like the functioning and institutional overlap of regime complexes, IO orchestration, and complex governance, all of which touch upon the issue of collaboration in different ways (Raustiala & Victor, 2004;Alter & Raustiala, 2018;Kahler, 2016;Abbott et al., 2015;Gehring & Faude, 2013;Henning & Pratt, 2021). This reflects the desire of scholars to theorize and better understand how the many actors that populate global governance interact with one another and how that interaction impacts their ability to confront shared global problems (Kahler, 2022;Lipscy, 2017). ...
Why and how international organizations (IOs) collaborate, cooperate, and coordinate (the 3Cs) is an important but understudied issue in international political economy today. The three terms are rarely defined in the IR literature or by the IOs themselves and are often used interchangeably. However, the differences matter in terms of when, how, and why staff of different IOs are expected to work together, and whether and how such efforts contribute to IO performance. This paper develops the concepts of the 3Cs, drawing from work in the public administration, management, and organizational design fields. It illustrates ways in which the differences matter by examining the history of efforts by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to work together. The two Bretton Woods siblings were explicitly designed to be complementary partners at the apex of the post-World War II global economic order. I argue that formal collaboration efforts between the Fund and the Bank took place through at least 25 attempts by the two institutions to define how to work together, and may be categorized into four different, sometimes overlapping approaches, from basic information sharing to fully engaged joint initiatives. What they have called ‘collaboration’ is in fact a range of engagement. Efforts by the Fund and Bank to work more closely together have been an ongoing struggle, driven by unavoidable institutional overlap, which intensified at times of systemic change and external shock. This case is important to the study of how IOs work together, given these institutions have a unique relationship and may be seen as a most-likely case of successful collaboration.
... However, Hayward Alker and William Greenberg (1977) introduced a similar concept of the same name earlier. More recent scholarship has focused on regime complexes (Alter & Raustiala, 2018). would provide the condition of cyber peace in the absence of a single authoritative ruler. ...
The international community is too often focused on responding to the latest cyber-attack instead of addressing the reality of pervasive and persistent cyber conflict. From ransomware against the city government of Baltimore to state-sponsored campaigns targeting electrical grids in Ukraine and the U.S., we seem to have relatively little bandwidth left over to ask what we can hope for in terms of 'peace' on the Internet, and how to get there. It's also important to identify the long-term implications for such pervasive cyber insecurity across the public and private sectors, and how they can be curtailed. This edited volume analyzes the history and evolution of cyber peace and reviews recent international efforts aimed at promoting it, providing recommendations for students, practitioners and policymakers seeking an understanding of the complexity of international law and international relations involved in cyber peace. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
... Instead, migration is subject to intersecting trade, human trafficking, refugee, labour, and human rights regimes. This creates regime complexity, yielding a set of overlapping and even clashing institutions that lack a clear hierarchical decision-making processes(Alter and Raustiala 2018;Pécoud 2021). Each regime advances different connections and claims to protect public interests(Barnett and Finnemore 2005). ...
Full text: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4062679. Abstract: Global governance has created a complex web of public, private and hybrid actors that assert power, claim legitimacy and affect public interests. This process has generated diverse forms of governance authority. The standard dichotomy of public vs. private authority sometimes struggles to capture this pluralisation. To address this conceptual gap, the “Multiplication of Authorities in Global Governance Institutions” (MAGGI) research group analyses the constitution and exercise of authority using a conceptual framework that unpacks authority in relation to power, legitimacy and public interests. This triadic governance concept opens up an intermediate third space capturing actors which assume both public and private or hybrid roles. To further elaborate this third space, MAGGI investigates the authority of non-governmental organisations and business actors, transnational city networks, interest groups, and international organisations, paying particular attention to the United Nations and the European Union as governance hubs. Linking the empirical studies, MAGGI aims to conceptualise governance authority with an encompassing, yet detailed pattern that captures the plurality of governance actors and their roles. This allows for the investigation of their empirical forms and normative underpinnings as well as the tracing of their effects on democracy in a globalised world.
... They vary in many ways including in their compliance mechanisms, state party membership and the political dynamics that accompany their implementation. This regime is extremely complex, comprising autonomous, non-hierarchical and partiallyoverlapping institutions, agreements, and authorities (Alter and Raustiala 2018); and despite the number of legal instruments and institutions, marine biodiversity and ecosystem health have continued to decline (UN 2020). The international regime for marine environmental governance is facing a host of new challenges, including physical changes such as ocean acidification and warming, and challenges to the fitness and capacity of the governance regime itself. ...
Marine ecosystems and their associated biodiversity sustain life on Earth and hold intrinsic value. Critical marine ecosystem services include maintenance of global oxygen and carbon cycles, production of food and energy, and sustenance of human wellbeing. However marine ecosystems are swiftly being degraded due to the unsustainable use of marine environments and a rapidly changing climate. The fundamental challenge for the future is therefore to safeguard marine ecosystem biodiversity, function, and adaptive capacity whilst continuing to provide vital resources for the global population. Here, we use foresighting/hindcasting to consider two plausible futures towards 2030: a business-as-usual trajectory (i.e. continuation of current trends), and a more sustainable but technically achievable future in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We identify key drivers that differentiate these alternative futures and use these to develop an action pathway towards the desirable, more sustainable future. Key to achieving the more sustainable future will be establishing integrative (i.e. across jurisdictions and sectors), adaptive management that supports equitable and sustainable stewardship of marine environments. Conserving marine ecosystems will require recalibrating our social, financial, and industrial relationships with the marine environment. While a sustainable future requires long-term planning and commitment beyond 2030, immediate action is needed to avoid tipping points and avert trajectories of ecosystem decline. By acting now to optimise management and protection of marine ecosystems, building upon existing technologies, and conserving the remaining biodiversity, we can create the best opportunity for a sustainable future in 2030 and beyond.
... The tendency to interpret the evolution of the world order as a mere interplay between the goals and interests of the most influential countries and country blocks remains strong. However, a nonlinear science of networked international relations [26] is much more appropriate to deal with the complexity of international relations [27], and especially so in response to major, unexpected shocks. We can conceptualize the world order as a multilevel network of alliances between countries, whose structural characteristics critically impinge upon its resilience. ...
The governance of the political and economic world order builds on a complex architecture of international treaties at various geographical scales. In a historical phase of high institutional turbulence, assessing the stability of such architecture with respect to the unilateral defection of single countries and to the breakdown of single treaties is important. We carry out this analysis on the whole global architecture and find that the countries with the highest disruption potential are not major world powers (with the exception of Germany and France) but mostly medium-small and micro-countries. Political stability is highly dependent on many former colonial overseas territories that are today part of the global network of fiscal havens, as well as on emerging economies, mostly from South-East Asia. Economic stability depends on medium sized European and African countries. However, single global treaties have surprisingly less disruptive potential, with the major exception of the WTO. These apparently counter-intuitive results highlight the importance to a nonlinear approach to international relations where the complex multilayered architecture of global governance is analyzed using advanced network science techniques. Our results suggest that the potential fragility of the world order seem to be much more directly related to global inequality and fiscal injustice than it is commonly believed, and that the legacy of the colonial world order is still very strong in the current international relations scenario. In particular, vested interests related to tax avoidance seem to have a structural role in the political architecture of global governance
... Our study has further implications for the effectiveness and legitimacy of global governance more generally. First, in particular, in contexts of high regime complexity (Alter and Raustiala, 2018;Hafner-Burton, 2009), subsidiarity in arena-selection can matter. Working through regional instead of global IOs can positively affect the problem-solving ability and legitimacy attributed to an organization. ...
The performance of individual international organizations (IOs) has received considerable scholarly attention, not in the least because their importance for global governance. This paper adds to this body of work by adopting genuine comparative lenses. Based on a novel survey, it assesses the attributed performance of 49 IOs over two important dimensions: problem-solving effectiveness and legitimacy of outputs. This reveals variation between IOs with respect to both components. We derive hypotheses from international cooperation and IO design. The quantitative analysis reveals that except deliberative diplomatic practices many factors increasing attributed legitimacy differ from the ones increasing the attributed problem-solving effectiveness. Most notably, autonomous secretariats increase the problem-solving effectiveness attributed to IOs. Legitimacy attributions increase when IOs are regional instead of global in nature and when non-state actors have access to IO decision-making.
... Over the next ten years, the scholarship on international regime complexity expanded, mostly offering maps of international regime complexes and theories emerging from case studies or small N analysis. In 2018, Alter and Raustiala tried to consolidate and take stock of the burgeoning literature, summarizing what we had learned while clarifying conceptual muddiness that had arisen (Alter & Raustiala, 2018). The international regime complexity conversation then gained new energy as a number of scholars sought to create generalizable expectations for when one outcome was more likely than another. ...
As the world becomes more complicated, so too does global governance. The political consequences of the rising density of institutions, policies, rules and strategies to address global phenomena has been a central focus of the scholarship on international regime complexity. This conclusion to a special issue grapples with the promise and perils of theorizing about international regime complexity in a constantly evolving world. It discusses the special issue contributions while uniting the different conversations about the increasingly complex global governance space we refer to as international regime complexity. The goal is to bridge existing debates about global governance, to expand the scholarly conversation by drawing from and better connecting to IR debates, and to ensure that we can address practical and pressing global governance challenges.
The emergence of military ad hoc coalitions (AHCs) in Africa as a tool for conflict management outside established institutional frameworks brings about a number of questions: are they undermining existing security structures such as the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) or are they contributing to further regime complexity? In order to answer these questions, the article applies the logic of functional differentiation as it is used in the literature on regime complexity and inter-organisational studies. Scope conditions are developed exploring when and how functional differentiation operates and what consequences it brings about for interacting institutions. Empirically the example of military ad hoc coalitions in the Lake Chad Basin and Sahel is at the centre of analysis. It will be argued that ad hoc coalitions are part of a functionally differentiated system response within the African Security Regime Complex and not in direct competition to the APSA.
The international tax system is a pillar of the post-war economic order, but it faces major challenges with the rise of global value chains, digitalization, and tax avoidance. Debates over international tax reform usually occur within a small epistemic community of experts and technocrats. In this article, we step outside this restricted circle to assess the sources of bottom-up legitimacy and support for the rules that govern where multinationals must report profits and which governments are entitled to tax those profits. We conduct survey experiments in Brazil, France, and the United States to assess mass attitudes toward the allocation of the tax base across countries. We find that people’s views clash with the core principles of the current regime, but are aligned with reform proposals that allocate more taxing rights to market jurisdictions. These findings are strikingly consistent across three countries and three distinct studies. At first glance, the consistency of attitudes across countries could spell good things for international cooperation in this arena. However, we also find a significant level of “home bias” in the public’s views on tax allocation. These results shed new light on the legitimacy of tax reform and on the prospects for cooperation in a key area of international economic relations.
La importancia que tiene la contaminación química antropogénica como una de las principales amenazas para la salud humana y el medio ambiente ya se advirtió en la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Medio Ambiente Humano de 1972. Cincuenta años después, los esfuerzos de la comunidad internacional para reducir la generación de estos productos y su impacto en la salud humana y el medio ambiente parecen haber sido, hasta ahora, insuficientes. Tres tratados internacionales, en particular, abordan la gestión de los residuos y de los productos químicos: el Convenio de Basilea de 1989 sobre el control de los movimientos transfronterizos de los desechos peligrosos y su eliminación, el Convenio de Rotterdam de 1998 sobre el procedimiento del consentimiento fundamentado previo aplicable a la exportación de ciertos plaguicidas y productos químicos peligrosos objeto de comercio internacional y el Convenio de Estocolmo de 2001 sobre contaminantes orgánicos persistentes. La primera parte de este trabajo analiza estos tres instrumentos desde la perspectiva de sus objetivos y su ámbito de aplicación, en la medida en que, siendo tres acuerdos autónomos adoptados en momentos distintos y con finalidades específicas diferentes, comparten un mismo objetivo global de protección de la salud humana y el medio ambiente. En segundo lugar, se revisan diversos aspectos que ilustran las dificultades que encuentran los Estados Parte para mantener su compromiso de priorizar dicho objetivo común de proteger el medio ambiente y la salud pública frente a las exigencias del comercio multilateral. Así, se señala la existencia de algunas puertas abiertas que permiten a las Partes escapar de la aplicación rigurosa de la letra y el espíritu de sus disposiciones, lo que puede reducir, a la larga, la capacidad operativa de estos instrumentos. En tercer lugar, se examina cómo, a fin de dotar este sector de un enfoque más coherente y global, estos tres acuerdos internacionales han llegado a constituir un auténtico cluster normativo para la gestión de los residuos y los productos químicos, mediante el denominado proceso de sinergia que, habiendo producido importantes avances en las negociaciones que tienen lugar en el seno de estos tres instrumentos, no está exento de algunos cuestionamientos.
This book analyzes the politics of global governance by looking at how global policymaking actually works. It provides a comprehensive theoretical and methodological framework which is systematically applied to the study of three global policies drawn from recent UN activities: the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, the institutionalization of the Human Rights Council from 2005 onwards, and the ongoing promotion of the protection of civilians in peace operations. By unpacking the practices and the values that have prevailed in these three cases, the authors demonstrate how global policymaking forms a patchwork pervaded by improvisation and social conflict. They also show how global governance embodies a particular vision of the common good at the expense of alternative perspectives. The book will appeal to students and scholars of global governance, international organizations and global policy studies.
Global antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is currently governed by a decentralized regime complex composed of multiple institutions with overlapping and sometimes conflicting principles, norms, rules, and procedures. Such a decentralized regime complex provides certain advantages and disadvantages when compared to a centralized regime. A pandemic instrument can optimize the regime complex for AMR by leveraging the strengths of both centralization and decentralization. Existing climate treaties under the UNFCCC offer lessons for achieving this hybrid approach.
This chapter focuses on China’s engagement in international regulation of geographical indications (GIs). In the context of international GI regime complexity and power contestation, China developed three independent GI protection systems, two following the sui generis model from the EU and one following the trademark model from the US. After domestic GI systems were consolidated following its WTO accession, China supported developing-country proposals in post-TRIPS negotiations and included GIs in its FTAs. Adopting both models has led to domestic legal fragmentation and regulatory competition. While efforts have been made recently to address both problems, the 2020 agreements with the EU and the US, respectively, may further trap China in a compliance dilemma where complying with one agreement means breaking the other.KeywordsGeographical indicationTrademark
Sui generis
Wines and spiritsGI ExtensionGI RegisterMutual recognitionLegal fragmentationRegulatory competition
The imposition of sanctions by the UN Security Council (UNSC) is notoriously selective. Many crises have qualified for UNSC sanctions by endangering peace and security, yet the UN has imposed sanctions in only a few. Selectivity in UNSC sanctions is conventionally explained by conflict intensity or the interests of the Council’s permanent members. Complementing these accounts, we document a third explanation: pre-existing sanctions by regional organizations. We argue that the UNSC has incentives to sanction countries which are already under sanctions by regional organizations because regional sanctions embody neighborhood consensus on the legitimacy of these sanctions and reassure the Council about implementation. Statistical analyses of original data, text analyses, a case study, and interviews strongly support our argument: regional sanctions increase the likelihood of UNSC sanctions adoption, particularly when these are enacted by regional organizations composed of neighboring states. This study advances research on sanctions, conflict resolution, and regime complexity.
This chapter focuses on strategies that China has used either to achieve one of the principles or to reconcile two contesting principles. It identifies two groups of strategies that China has used in its global IP engagement: forum and agenda-related strategies and principle-related strategies. Forum and agenda-related strategies concern where and how to advance an agenda, which consists of multi-forum engagement, dissembling, and more cohesive responsive engagement. Principle-related strategies are those to achieve a certain principle and manage contesting principles. China modelled IP systems that it deems more advanced in the last four decades. Meanwhile, balancing is used to reconcile potential contestation between IP instrumentalism and foreign policy principles. After analysing the strategies individually, it further discusses the potential effects of deploying these strategies.
Das nachfolgende Kapitel beschäftigt sich mit der Analyse von Global-Governance-Systemen (GG-Systemen). Zu Beginn des ersten Unterkapitels wird definiert, was unter einem GG-System zu verstehen ist. Dabei rückt der problemlösende Charakter von GG-Systemen ins Zentrum. In diesem Zusammenhang werden auch die einzelnen Strukturelemente eines GG-Systems behandelt, um anschließend drei unterschiedliche Formen von GG-Systemen zu betrachten: GG-Systeme mit integrierter und mit speziellen Aufgaben betrauter IOs, GG-Systeme mit Sekretariaten, die über geringe delegierte Autonomie verfügen (Regimetyp) sowie GG-Systeme, die netzwerkförmig organisiert sind, wobei die Knotenpunkte häufig von privaten Akteuren (Organisationen) gebildet werden. Die Leistungsfähigkeit (Steuerungsfähigkeit) von GG-Systemen hängt von zahlreichen Faktoren ab, von denen für jeden GG-Typ die jeweils wichtigsten untersucht werden. Dabei sind Steuerungsdefizite von GG-Systemen vor dem Hintergrund der von ihnen zu bewältigenden Aufgaben zu beurteilen.
Im Zentrum des nachfolgenden Kapitels stehen die für die Untersuchung von GG-Systemen basalen Konzepte von Legitimität und Macht. Dabei werden die beiden Konzepte aus jeweils unterschiedlichen Perspektiven analysiert. Global-Governance-Institutionen (GGIs) handeln in einem Konfliktfeld, das sich aus legitimatorischen und delegitimatorischen Komponenten speist. Es werden verschiedene Dimensionen von Macht untersucht, über die GG-Systeme verfügen. Beide Konzepte werden an Beispielen illustriert. Weitere analytische Merkmale von GG-Systemen sind deren Effektivität sowie deren Wandlungsfähigkeit. Bei der Analyse von GG-Systemen darf auch nicht die Perspektive von unten vergessen werden und die Beantwortung der Frage, welche Folgen Global Governance für Betroffene hat.
Article VII of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) requires states to provide emergency assistance in the case of a deliberate bioweapons attack on any state party to the convention. Since no operational mechanism defining how to request or provide such assistance has yet been established, the painful lessons of the 2014–2016 West African Ebola crisis returned this topic to the agenda of the BWC. This study uses multiple streams analysis to investigate the impact of the Ebola crisis on the considerations of Article VII. While it revived the three streams of the debate—problem, policy, and politics—and opened a policy window, nevertheless, no political entrepreneur was able to couple the streams to produce policy output. As this window of opportunity begins to close, the Covid-19 pandemic seems to be the next focusing event shaping the BWC discourse on emergency assistance.
This Chapter analyzes IOSCO’s rulemaking processes, both before and after the 2011 Reform. The focus here is on the Organization’s two key internal bodies, the Presidents Committee—which brings together the Heads of all Full Members—and the Board—the executive and strategic arm of the Organization. The consensus method informs the internal standard-making procedures. This means that a final deliberation is based on the “general understanding”, which represents the core regulatory compromise achieved by stakeholders. Here the Chair plays an important role, by setting the tone and guiding the discussions. Subsequently, the Chapter analyzes the issue of transparency and rights of participation, highlighting the current features and, to a certain extent, gaps. Finally, the focus shifts to accountability and legitimacy. While the latter mostly revolves around input legitimacy; the former is, at the same time, internal, upwards, mutual, and bottom-up and unfolds through a circle.KeywordsIOSCOStandard-settingConsensusAccountabilityLegitimacy
This Chapter analyzes IOSCO as part of the international financial architecture, which started taking its current form after the 1990s financial crisis—in particular the 1997 Asian financial crisis—when the previous architectural models failed to predict such failures. Predominantly after the subprime-led 2008 crisis and its transboundary domino effects, IOSCO has strengthened ties with other global actors, such as its peers within the Joint Forum but also the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures, more political forums like the Group of Twenty and the Financial Stability Board, and even private standard-setters like the International Organization for Standardization. The Chapter analyzes these ties and—where feasible—draws comparisons between IOSCO and the other international institutions. The Chapter uncovers the multifaceted nature of such interactions: technical and political, peer-to-peer and hierarchical.KeywordsInternational financial architectureIOSCOGroup of TwentyFinancial stability boardBasel committee on banking supervisionInternational Association of Insurance SupervisorsCommittee on payments and market infrastructures
The ongoing negotiations for a legally binding UNCLOS (United Nations Law of the Sea Convention) Implementing Agreement for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) take place within the framework of a complex landscape of existing International Organizations (IOs) addressing different aspects of ocean governance relevant to the principles and provisions of the new BBNJ Agreement. Addressing the relationship to other instruments, Art. 4 of the current BBNJ draft text indicates that the instrument should not ‘undermine relevant legal instruments and frameworks and relevant global, regional, subregional and sectoral bodies’. This article seeks to clarify which existing ‘legal instruments and frameworks’ have such a contingent relation to the BBNJ Agreement, in which provision of the draft text they may play a role, and to formulate policy recommendations based on the observed complexity. Using ethnographic data collected during three intergovernmental conferences (IGC), we give an overview about involved IOs and their relation to the BBNJ negotiations. Acknowledging the complex interrelations and overlaps between a myriad of IOs and different provisions of the Treaty, we identify the emergence of a BBNJ regime complex. We identify a total of 53 involved IOs of which 10 are mentioned in the latest version of the draft text. We argue that IOs which policymakers perceive as relevant to BBNJ need to be considered in the implementation of the BBNJ agreement and urge negotiators to carefully define relationships with IOs to strengthen cooperation in the implementation of the BBNJ agreement.
The global financial safety net (GFSN) has become increasingly voluminous and complex. The ever-increasing capacity for crisis prevention and liquidity support of emergency financing institutions and arrangements at the bilateral, regional, and global level sums up to a total lending capacity of at least US$ 3.5 trillion (Mühlich, L., B. Fritz, W. N. Kring, and K. P. Gallagher. 2020. The Global Financial Safety Net Tracker: Lessons for the COVID-19 Crisis from a New Interactive Dataset . GEGI Policy Brief 10. Boston: Global Development Policy Center. Also available at: www.bu.edu/gdp/files/2020/04/GEGI-GDP_PolicyBrief_FInal.pdf ). This represents a more than tenfold increase to available short-term liquidity compared to before the global financial crisis of 2008/09. Yet despite this tremendous increase in resources, the GFSN remains scarcely utilized throughout the COVID-19 crisis. This article develops a framework, that builds upon concepts in economics and international political economy, to analyze GFSN inefficiencies and to evaluate the utilization of the GFSN. Combining balance of payments models with the concept of regime complexity, we analyze and compare patterns of GFSN utilization in response to COVID-19 with past usage. We ask if the current GFSN is adequately built to efficiently respond to such a crisis. We are especially interested in examining the role that the six existing RFAs between EMDEs play in the GFSN.
This article analyzes the policy options available to governments for addressing the very costly economic impacts of cybersecurity threats. It contributes to complexity thinking in public policy. Complexity involves self-organization, emergence, feedback loops, and adaptation. We show that these are present with cyberthreats. In contrast to plans that involve a series of linear steps to a specific outcome, complexity thinking recommends adaptive design, which creates processes that involve coordinated decentralized capacity for experimentation and resilience. These are illustrated with an examination of the 2007 nation-wide cyberattack on Estonia and the lessons learned from this attack.
Abstract Regional integration in Latin America and the Caribbean has seen better days. We claim recent retreat trends are related to China and Brazil acting respectively as extra-regional and regional catalysts of institutional fragmentation. Our main hypotheses propose the following conditions are necessary for increasing fragmentation in the region: advances of an extra-regional emerging power, and the absence of a regional paymaster that promotes integration. By comparing regional organizations using longitudinal data, we find that growing ties to China and shrinking ties to Brazil can be associated with evidence of institutional fragmentation in Latin America. We claim that the two factors increase competition between regional organizations through a mechanism of changing set of costs and benefits of engagement and participation promoted by China’s interest and Brazil’s disinterest on each project.
The post-Cold War era has seen an unprecedented move towards more legalization in international cooperation and a growth of third-party dispute settlement systems. WTO panels, the Appellate Body and investor-state dispute settlement cases have received increasing attention beyond the core trade and investment constituencies within governments. Scrutiny by business, civil society, academia, and trade and investment experts has been on the rise. This book asks whether we observe a transformation or a demise of existing institutions and mechanisms to adjudicate disputes over trade or investment. It makes a contribution to the question in which direction international economic dispute settlement is heading in times of change, uncertainty and increasing economic nationalism. In order to do so, it brings together chapters written by leading researchers and experts in law and political science to address the challenges of settling disputes in the global economy and to sketch possible scenarios ahead of us.
The EU participates in many international fora related to climate change (for example UNFCCC, G20, Montreal Protocol), which collectively constitute the international regime complex on climate change (IRCCC). Using the case study of negotiations on the Paris Agreement, this paper addresses the question How and why did the EU use the different fora of the IRCCC to achieve its objectives in the Paris Agreement negotiations? It finds that the EU used the IRCCC in four main ways: employing typical multilateral negotiating activities, overcoming specific issues of the Paris Agreement negotiations, creating political momentum, and ensuring cross‐fora coordination. These uses correspond with the level of political authority of participants and the level of climate‐specialization in a given forum.
With the growing density and the plethora of security organisations on the regional and international level, the research programme on interorganisational relations has received increasing scholarly attention. The complexity of European security – in light of the Ukraine conflict since 2014, Russia’s more assertive foreign policy behaviour, and on-going crisis management operations in the Africa, the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East – has revived EU-NATO cooperation. The analysis from the perspective of member states and how they can be positioned in the EU-NATO interorganisational relations, however, has received little exploration. This article, therefore, addresses the roles and positions of member states within the relations between the EU and NATO as Europe’s prime security organisations. Member states have numerous political strategies at their disposal to trigger, strengthen or obstruct interorganisational relations, ranging from forum-shopping to hostage-taking and brokering. Drawing on insights from regime theory, network analysis, organisation theory and interorganisationalism, this article proposes a typology of member states in EU-NATO cooperation. Against the backdrop of this special relationship, the typology is developed which aims to detect and illustrate member states’ positions and strategies.
This article analyses how and when institutional actors can shape overlap with other international organisations. Growing overlap either poses the threat of marginalisation to the incumbent organisation or offers opportunities for cooperation. Institutional actors should therefore be expected to try shape the relations with the overlapping organisation to protect their own. The article theorises that institutional actors can shape overlap if they possess sufficient institutional capacity and face a favourable opportunity structure. Whether institutional actors embrace or resist overlap, in turn, depends on their perception of the nature of the domain expansion of the other international organisation. Relying on 20 interviews with senior officials, the article probes the argument against the case of the growing overlap between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union resulting from the latter’s recent security and defence initiatives. Contrary to most expectations, it finds that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization actors played a consequential role in restructuring the relationship with the European Union.
Two elements define regional integration in Latin America: its extension in time and its plurality. Analyses abound regarding the drivers underlying regional cooperation, the specific institutional design, its effects, and impact. However, studies have not yet provided full answers to the question of how regional institutions emerge and change through time in Latin America. To investigate this rather underexplored issue, I contribute a dynamic analytical framework whereby interests and ideas are taken as factors that interact with each other within a specified institutional environment, thus shaping processes of institutional creation, change and development. The argument advanced is that whereas the role of states and presidents remains constant, ideas and the existing regional organisations face presidents with either limitations or resources depending on the degree of synergy and convergence between states’ material interests and regional ideas and institutions. Based on the particular ideational and institutional configuration, three patterns of change may emerge: creation, conversion, and layering. The paper draws on comparative regionalism and institutionalism studies and empirically explores more than 25 years of regional cooperation in Latin America. Focus is on the comparative assessment of the Common Market of the South and the Union of South American Nations.
Constructivist theories of norm dynamics offer a variety of analytical tools to understand the complex processes of norm emergence, diffusion, and evolution over time. As the literature has developed, though, it lacks a general framing of the interconnections between norms, norm clusters or configurations, and principles or “normativity.” This article advances a new three-dimensional model of constructivist theories of norms that emphasizes the spatial dimensions of norm meanings, legitimacy, and impact and identifies promising avenues for research progress. First, individual norms represent a primary intersubjective structural component that is both developed and contested. Second, theories of norm interrelations or norm clusters provide additional critical dimensions of structuration that may promote resiliency in the face of contestation. Third, norms exist within a larger constellation of norm structures, representing the broadest dimension in world politics. Collisions can occur in this environment, but broader normativity and institutionalization often become activated in the face of serious challenges. As demonstrated using the illustration of international responses to the Syrian civil war (2011 till present), only by attending to all three dimensions of norms can we gain a more accurate understanding of real-world circumstances of norm connections, norm collisions, and the variable effects of norm contestation. The article concludes by identifying promising research avenues building from the three-dimensional framework.
In this essay I discuss the rise in industry's participation in transnational standard setting, which implicates transnational legal ordering , and address the risks such participation generates: Economic globalization has led to increased demand for transnational standards. Yet regulators lack the expertise needed to write increasingly complex and rapidly changing standards, and turn to those that hold the expertise: industry. Thus, industry engagement in standard setting has clear benefits. Such engagement introduces, however, a problem well known from the national context: the risk of capture. In the context of standard setting, two kinds of capture are of particular importance: (i) information and (ii) representational capture. The consequence of such capture, in the transnational context, is that it may (i) undermine the global public interest, (ii) lead to unfair competitive advantages, and (iii) undermine the public interest in developing countries. I illustrate these risks with examples from health law and policy. While states have national laws to manage capture (albeit not effectively at times), at the transnational level, organizations are largely free of such legal constraints. As the “new frontier” of standard setting, transnational bodies should introduce reforms for balancing the benefits and risks of industry engagement, otherwise, they risk impairing the public interest and undermining trust in their integrity.
This article argues that the Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights (Malabo Protocol) re-conceptualizes the idea of transitional justice mechanisms as varying approaches meant solely to address the legacy of abuse in one nation, and proposes that transitional justice mechanisms can also encompass regional and transnational efforts to respond to mass human rights violations. It also argues that the Protocol seeks to correct for perceived biases in international criminal justice. The article illuminates the ways in which the Protocol builds on the justice cascade. It provides a brief overview of the domestic, hybrid and international criminal trials in Africa that have informed the development of the regional court, and argues that the Malabo Protocol offers the Continent an important, alternative vision of regional criminal justice. The article concludes that the regional court could arguably tailor criminal accountability to the context, needs and aspirations of the Continent.
Human rights are now the dominant approach to social justice globally. But how do human rights work? What do they do? Drawing on anthropological studies of human rights work from around the world, this book examines human rights in practice. It shows how groups and organizations mobilize human rights language in a variety of local settings, often differently from those imagined by human rights law itself. The case studies reveal the contradictions and ambiguities of human rights approaches to various forms of violence. They show that this openness is not a failure of universal human rights as a coherent legal or ethical framework but an essential element in the development of living and organic ideas of human rights in context. Studying human rights in practice means examining the channels of communication and institutional structures that mediate between global ideas and local situations. Suitable for use on inter-disciplinary courses globally.
Regime complexes are arrays of institutions with partially overlapping mandates and memberships. As tensions frequently arise among these institutions, there is a growing interest geared to finding strategies to reduce them. Insights from regime theory, science and technology studies, and social network analysis support the claim that “boundary organizations” – a type of organization until now overlooked in International Relations – can reduce tensions within regime complexes by generating credible, legitimate and salient knowledge, provided that their internal networks balance multiple knowledge dimensions. Building on this argument, this article offers an ex ante assessment of the recently created International Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Results from our network analysis of IPBES point to clear improvements compared with similar organizations, although major deficiencies remain. The contribution of this article is threefold. Methodologically, it introduces new conceptual and technical tools to assess the “social representativeness” of international organizations. Theoretically, it supports the claim that international organizations are penetrated by transnational networks and, consequently, that the proliferation of institutions tends to reproduce structural imbalances. Normatively, it argues that a revision of nomination processes could improve the ability of boundary organizations to generate salient, credible and legitimate knowledge.
This article takes stock of the current debate on regime complexes. The specific relevance of such complexes for global governance is best grasped if these complexes are understood as systems that relate and organize their elemental institutions. They emerge from activities of relevant international actors, in particular the member states of their elemental institutions, as well as from interactions among these institutions. Regime complexes establish interinstitutional competition, which may lead to open conflict and turf battles, but may also produce a well-established division of labor among the elemental institutions. As they provide forum-shopping opportunities for actors, regime complexes put overlapping governance institutions under continuing competitive pressure and they do not necessarily predominantly benefit the most powerful states. In order to increase the coherence and effectiveness of global governance efforts, the management of regime complexes will become an increasingly important task of global governance.
Recurrent food price crises, coupled with the steady deterioration of world food security over the past two decades, have prompted efforts to reform the global governance of food security. I argue that diverging rules and norms across the elemental regimes of agriculture and food, international trade, and human rights over the appropriate role of states and markets in addressing food insecurity are a major source of transnational political conflict. The article analyzes 1) the role of norms in the construction of the international food security regime; 2) the transition from an international food security regime to a regime complex for food security; and, 3) rule and norm conflicts within this regime complex. I conclude with a discussion of the impacts of diverging norms on the politics of regime complexity and its policy implications for current efforts to reform the global governance of food security.
In recent years, international lawyers have increasingly debated the normative consequences of the ‘fragmentation’ of international
law. More rarely have they studied empirically how tensions between overlapping systems of rules emerge, how conflicts are
harmonized, and with what effects. This article explains such dynamics in the case of the nuclear non-proliferation regime
(NPR) complex. Based on original archival fieldwork conducted in the private papers of American and European diplomats in
the early Cold War, it shows how Western states solved the tensions that existed between contradictory commitments contracted
in the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) Treaty and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1968 (NPT). To lessen
the tensions between regional and global orders, the Euratom control rules were used as a source of inspiration for the new
rules used to monitor compliance with the NPT at the global level. In retrospect, this outcome was puzzling, as the Euratom
Treaty was not originally concerned with non-proliferation issues. That the knowledge of the original intentions behind Euratom
was lost to the policymakers who negotiated the NPT thus had grave consequences in the future. This case shows the importance
of studying the concrete knowledge of international legal rules that gets transmitted across generations of policymakers in
order to understand how regime complexity evolves.
This article outlines the concept of Global Experimentalist Governance (GXG). GXG is an institutionalized transnational process of participatory and multilevel problem solving, in which particular problems (and the means of addressing them) are framed in an open-ended way, and subjected to periodic revision by various forms of peer review in light of locally generated knowledge. GXG differs from other forms of international organization and transnational governance, and is emerging in various issue areas. The Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances is used to illustrate how GXG functions. The conditions for the emergence of GXG are specified, as well as some of its possible benefits.
How can democracy best be pursued and promoted in the existing global system? In this article, I propose a novel suggestion: democratization should occur at the level of international regime complexity. Because each issue-area of world politics is distinct, we require tailor-made (as opposed to one-size-fits-all) responses to the global democratic deficit. I conceptualize global democracy as an ongoing process of democratization in which a set of core normative values are more or less satisfied. I explicate equal participation, accountability, and institutional revisability as those key standards. I argue that the democratization of regime complexes should occur across two distinct planes: (1) the realm of multilateral negotiations; and (2) institutional forms of democratic experimentalism between rule-makers and rule-takers. I evaluate and defend the potential of this argument by analyzing the intellectual property rights regime complex. Because intellectual property rights represent a ‘tough case’ for global democrats, we should be optimistic about the democratization of alternative regime complexes.
“Contested multilateralism” describes the situation that results from the pursuit of strategies by states, multilateral organizations, and non-state actors to use multilateral institutions, existing or newly created, to challenge the rules, practices, or missions of existing multilateral institutions. It occurs when coalitions dissatisfied with existing institutions combine threats of exit, voice, and the creation of alternative institutions to pursue policies and practices different from those of existing institutions. Contested multilateralism takes two principal forms: regime shifting and competitive regime creation. It can be observed across issue areas. It shapes patterns of international cooperation and discord on key security concerns such as combating terrorist financing, halting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and banning certain conventional weapons. It is also evident on economic issues involving intellectual property, on environmental and energy issues, and in the realm of global public health. The sources of dissatisfaction are primarily exogenous, and the institutions used to challenge the status quo range from traditional treaties or intergovernmental organizations to informal networks, some of which include non-state actors. Some institutions are winners from the process of contested multilateralism; others may lose authority or status. Although we do not propose an explanatory theory of contested multilateralism, we do suggest that this concept provides a useful framework for understanding changes in regime complexes and the strategies that generate such changes.
This research brings together studies of non-state actors (NSAs) in environmental negotiations, transnational networks, and institutional fragmentation, to shed light on the influence of NSAs on policy-making in regime complexes. It presents a new analytical framework with a series of deductive assumptions about the influence of “multi-forum” NSAs, as compared with “single forum” NSAs. Multi-forum NSAs cover several elements of a regime complex, and are thereby able to follow and potentially influence fragmented institutional processes. Focusing on two cases of fragmented environmental governance—forestry and access to genetic resources—the analysis provides a quantitative (statistics, network analysis) and qualitative (interviews) testing ground for the proposed framework. Because of their considerable material, organizational and ideational resources, and long-term engagement, multi-forum NSAs have greater access to the negotiations and may become central players. The strategies such NSAs adopt can further the integration of regime complexes when they undertake forum linking, or push towards further fragmentation when they undertake forum shopping or forum shifting.
This commentary takes up conceptual issues raised in the introduction. Discussing the contributions to this volume, we offer three points. First, the concept of fragmentation needs theoretical clarification, which can be provided to some extent by sociological differentiation theory. We suggest a typology of different types of fragmentation. Second, differentiation theory helps to improve understanding of the different causes of fragmentation. Third, a high level of institutional differentiation is an important characteristic of modernity at many levels of politics. It is not fragmentation per se, but rather the (lack of) coordination of fragmented or differentiated institutions, that is a problem for global governance.
Understanding the impact of regime complexes on global governance calls for creative policy thinking. This introduction provides a new and more precise definition of the concept of regime complex. It also suggests spe-cific tools to characterize regime complexes and analyze their impacts on global governance. The articles in this issue deepen the analytical under-standing of complexes by examining concrete examples in various domains of global governance such as piracy, taxation, energy, food security, emis-sions reduction, carbon sinks, biosafety, and refugee governance. In addi-tion to providing an in-depth description of a variety of different regime complexes, this issue is innovative on three accounts: (1) it presents com-plexes as both barriers and opportunities for global governance and gives explanations for these diverse outcomes; (2) it shows how a broad spec-trum of actors is necessary for understanding the creation and evolution of complexes; and (3) it qualifies former claims to the effect that only pow-erful actors can impact regime complexes.
The article focuses on the politicization of international authority as a thus far little understood development in world politics. We first define the concept and show that there is an empirical trend towards politicization of international institutions. We then argue that the increasing authority of international institutions has led to their politicization and we relate this hypothesis to alternative explanations. The validity of the authority–politicization nexus is illustrated by the rise of international authority in parallel to politicization. We go on to distinguish different policy functions such as rule definition, monitoring, interpretation, and enforcement in order to show that especially those international institutions with a high level of authority meet with strong contestation of their competencies. We conclude the article by exploring various avenues for future politicization research.
Recent years have seen a surge of interest in applying the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu in international studies as part of a more general sociological turn observable in both international and European studies. However, different from earlier attempts at deploying Bourdieusian sociology in the context of international law, economics, and politics, most of this new Bourdieu-inspired constructivist political science research only marginally addresses what in many ways was the cardinal point of Bourdieu’s work: his attempt at devising a reflexive sociology. This article’s basic claim is that the most significant contribution Bourdieusian sociology can make to international (and European) studies is not achieved by adaptation or transplantation of key concepts (field, habitus, and so on) to a set of research objects that remain by and large predefined by other disciplines. Instead, I contend that it is by deploying the underlying sociological practice of Bourdieusian sociology to international objects in terms of conducting a reflexive sociology of the international. To substantiate my claim, I make three more specific arguments. In the first section, I argue for the need for “objectivizing” the research object in terms of “double reflexivity” with respect to both object and researcher. In the second part, I suggest that key Bourdieusian notions are precisely tools for this scientific operation by providing a relational and integrative approach. In the third part, I compare this approach with a cross section of research on international human rights and thereby suggest how it provides a different reading of the international.
There is no integrated regime governing efforts to limit the extent of climate change. Instead, there is a regime complex: a loosely coupled set of specific regimes. We describe the regime complex for climate change and seek to explain it, using functional, strategic, and organizational arguments. This institutional form is likely to persist; efforts to build a comprehensive regime are unlikely to succeed, but narrower institutions focused on particular aspects of the climate change problem are already thriving. Building on this analysis, we argue that a climate change regime complex, if it meets specified criteria, has advantages over any politically feasible comprehensive regime, particularly with respect to adaptability and flexibility. Adaptability and flexibility are particularly important in a setting, such as climate change policy, in which the most demanding international commitments are interdependent yet governments vary widely in their interest and ability to implement them.
The increasing density of international regimes has contributed to the proliferation of overlap across agreements, conflicts among international obligations, and confusion regarding what international and bilateral obligations cover an issue. This symposium examines the consequences of the complex of overlapping, parallel and nested agreements for subsequent politics, thus the issue of overlap and complexity as an independent variable. Our central questions are: What insights can be gained by thinking about any single agreement as part of a larger complex of international rules and agreements? Does the existence of simultaneous and overlapping agreements alter either the strategies of players or the politics of the issue itself? Karen Alter and Sophie Meunier's introductory essay identifies the mechanisms through which nesting and overlap across agreements can influence politics, and identifies six modes through which overlap as an independent variable can manifest itself. Short contributions identify how the complex of international agreements affects politics in specific issue areas: refugee politics (by Alexander Betts), trade politics (by Christina Davis), human rights and trade (by Emilie Hafner-Burton), intellectual property politics (by Laurence Helfer), security politics (by Stephanie Hofmann), and election monitoring (by Judith Kelley). Daniel Drezner concludes by arguing that the complexity of rules may well benefit the powerful more than others.
The article analyzes a growing trend in international human rights law: the submission of petitions by aggrieved individuals to multiple human rights courts, tribunals, or treaty bodies, each of which is authorized to review the petition and to determine whether the individuals? rights have been violated. Most commentators have viewed this practice of "forum shopping for human rights" as a danger to be avoided. This article questions that conventional wisdom and offers in its place a re-envisioning of the human rights petition system. Although efficiency, finality and other concerns weigh against some varieties of duplicative review, this article argues that forum shopping, if properly regulated, will enhance the development of international human rights law. Forum shopping is the only way that many aggrieved individuals can receive a complete review of the rights violations allegations in their petitions, and it serves the further salutary function of encouraging jurists on human rights tribunals to engage in a dialogue to harmonize the content of legal rules shared by more than one treaty. The article first examines the haphazard approach to forum shopping that States have adopted in various human rights treaties, and it discusses two different strands of case law that together create incentives for individuals to forum shop for a favorable human rights ruling. The article then critiques the established view that forum shopping is harmful to human rights law, and it identifies in a comprehensive way the theoretical justifications for and against the practice of forum shopping. Building upon this theoretical analysis, the article then develops a comprehensive proposal for reforming the current approach to forum shopping and discusses alternative ways in which the proposal can be implemented into practice.
The decade long trans-Atlantic banana dispute was not a traditional trade conflict stemming from antagonistic producers’ interests. Instead, this article argues that the banana dispute is one of the most complex illustrations of the legal and political difficulties created by the nesting and overlapping of international institutions and commitments. The contested Europe-wide banana policy was an artifact of nesting--the fruit of efforts to reconcile the single market with Lomé obligations which then ran afoul of WTO rules. Using counter-factual analysis, this article explores how the nesting of international commitments contributed to creating the dispute, provided forum shopping opportunities which themselves complicated the options of decisionmakers, and hindered resolution of what would otherwise be a pretty straightforward trade dispute. We then draw out implications from this case for the EU, an institution increasingly nested within multilateral mechanisms, and for the issue of the nesting of international institutions in general.
Every year, states negotiate, conclude, sign, and give effect to hundreds of new international agreements. Koremenos argues that the detailed design provisions of such agreements matter for phenomena that scholars, policymakers, and the public care about: when and how international cooperation occurs and is maintained. Theoretically, Koremenos develops hypotheses regarding how cooperation problems like incentives to cheat can be confronted and moderated through law's detailed design provisions. Empirically, she exploits her data set composed of a random sample of international agreements in economics, the environment, human rights and security. Her theory and testing lead to a consequential discovery: considering the vagaries of international politics, international cooperation looks more law-like than anarchical, with the detailed provisions of international law chosen in ways that increase the prospects and robustness of cooperation. This nuanced and sophisticated 'continent of international law' can speak to scholars in any discipline where institutions, and thus institutional design, matter. Designed for a broad audience but with rigorous theoretical underpinnings, so international law and relations scholars without a mathematical background will understand the intuition of all the hypotheses Transcends issue area divides typical in this type of scholarship and will therefore appeal to both specialists and generalists and show how various issue and sub-issue areas are alike and different Combines multiple methods and contains case studies for those who find it easiest to understand mechanisms through real-life examples but also features large-n testing that can confirm the theory.
What unites states and other global actors around a shared governance project? How does the group—what I will call an “international community”—coalesce and stay engaged in the enterprise? A frequent assumption is that an international community is cemented by its members’ commonalities and depleted by their intractable disagreements. This article critiques that assumption and presents, as an alternative, a theory that accounts for the combined integration and discord that actually characterize most global governance associations. I argue that conflict, especially conflict that manifests in law, is not necessarily corrosive to an international community. To the contrary, it often is a unifying force that helps constitute and fortify the community and support the governance project. As such, international legal conflict can have systemic value for the global order, even when it lacks substantive resolution. The implications for the design and practice of international law are far-reaching.
This essay explores why the United States is relinquishing an important source of power over the Internet, and what this means for both users of the Internet and scholars of global governance. The Internet began as a niche tool of engineers and academics, funded by the Department of Defense. Governance was loosely exercised by an insular group of enthusiasts and experts. By the 1990s, as the Internet grew rapidly, control was asserted more directly by the US government. Significant power was delegated to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California non-profit. In June 2016, the Obama administration approved ICANN’s proposal for independent management of the critical “naming and numbering” function of the Internet. ICANN — governed by a complex multistakeholder structure that incorporates many non state actors — will directly control what is essentially the address book of the Internet. By delegating more autonomy to ICANN, the US will strengthen multistakeholderism, not just for ICANN, but as a broader principle of global governance. The Internet has been, over the past two decades, a central site of struggle between multistakeholderism and multilateralism. By relinquishing its role as primus inter pares among states, the US seemingly will lose an important source of power over the Internet. And yet even as its power is diminished, the achievement of its preferences will be strengthened. This somewhat paradoxical story has important lessons not only for the exercise of state power over the Internet but also for the evolution of global governance in a time when increasing numbers of nonstate actors across a range of international issues have achieved substantial participatory roles.
This book offers a path-breaking, empirically grounded theory that reframes the study of law and society. It shifts research from a predominantly national context to one that places transnational, national, and local lawmaking and practice within a single, coherent, analytic frame. By presenting and elaborating a new concept, transnational legal orders, Halliday and Shaffer present an original approach to legal orders that affect fundamental economic and social behaviors. The contributors generate arrays of hypotheses about how transnational legal orders rise and fall, where they compete and cooperate, and how they settle and unsettle. This original theory is applied and developed by distinguished scholars from North America, Europe, and Asia in business law (taxation, corporate bankruptcy, secured transactions, transport of goods by sea), regulatory law (monetary and trade, finance, food safety, climate change), and human rights law (civil and political rights, rule of law, right to health/access to medicines, human trafficking, criminal accountability of political leaders).
Τhis chapter examines the complexity of world politics with an emphasis on global environmental issues. Concepts of game theory are reviewed and connected to international relations (IR). Game theoretic models found in IR, such as the prisoner’s dilemma, and global environmental negotiations, such as the North-South divide, are presented and discussed. The complexity of world politics, taking place on a highly interconnected global network of actors organized as agents and meta-agents, is presented and discussed as a multiplayer extension of game theory that should not be regarded as a theory alternative to realism but as a novel approach to understanding and anticipating, rather than predicting, global events. Technology, interconnections, feedback and individual empowerment are discussed in the context of the complex world of global politics. Furthermore, evolution and adaptation are related to the concept of fitness and how it may be approached for the case of actors in world politics. Finally, it is suggested that many events of world politics constitute emergent phenomena of the complex international community of state and non-state actors. The presentation is complemented with a review of research problems from the fields of social science, political science, defense, world politics and the global environment that have been successfully addressed with agent-based simulation, arguably the most prevalent method of simulating complex systems. This chapter concludes with a recapping of the main points presented, some suggestions and caveats for future directions as well as a list of software resources useful to those who wish to address global problems with agent-based models.
This 2003 book develops the idea that since decolonisation, regional patterns of security have become more prominent in international politics. The authors combine an operational theory of regional security with an empirical application across the whole of the international system. Individual chapters cover Africa, the Balkans, CIS Europe, East Asia, EU Europe, the Middle East, North America, South America, and South Asia. The main focus is on the post-Cold War period, but the history of each regional security complex is traced back to its beginnings. By relating the regional dynamics of security to current debates about the global power structure, the authors unfold a distinctive interpretation of post-Cold War international security, avoiding both the extreme oversimplifications of the unipolar view, and the extreme deterritorialisations of many globalist visions of a new world disorder. Their framework brings out the radical diversity of security dynamics in different parts of the world.
The existing literature on regime complexity has generally focused on its impact on the behavior of states; in contrast, this article explores its implications for international organizations. Many organizations within the UN system were established in the aftermath of World War II, at a time when they held a de facto monopoly in a given policy field. Gradually, however, institutional proliferation has created a range of institutional overlaps that may have complementary or competitive relationships to the referent organization of the original regime. Developing the concept of challenged institutions, this article explores how international organizations are affected by and strategically respond to growing institutional competition. Through a case study of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' response to an increasingly competitive institutional environment, it argues that the concept of challenged institutions highlights the dilemmas faced by multilateral organizations in a rapidly changing landscape of global governance.
The purpose of this article is to reveal how two organizations from the OECD system-the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Energy Agency-are maneuvering strategically to retain their focal places in the regime complexes that developed around taxation and energy, respectively. It argues that their bid for leadership and centralization is built on the comparative advantages they enjoy as institutions; namely, their historically accumulated expertise and distinct working methods, their close ties with the Group of 8, and their rapidly developing relationships with emerging powers. Notwithstanding these institutional assets, a revision of the OECD's membership could further cement and legitimize the central role of the OECD system in these regime complexes.
The transatlantic dispute over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has brought into conflict the United States and the European Union, two long-time allies and economically interdependent democracies with a long record of successful cooperation. Yet the dispute - pitting a largely acceptant US against an EU deeply suspicious of GMOs - has developed into one of the most bitter and intractable transatlantic and global conflicts, resisting efforts at negotiated resolution and resulting in a bitterly contested legal battle before the World Trade Organization. The authors investigate the obstacles to reconciling regulatory differences among nations through international cooperation, using the lens of the GMO dispute. The book addresses the dynamic interactions of domestic law and politics, transnational networks, international regimes, and global markets, through a theoretically grounded and empirically comprehensive analysis of the governance of GM foods and crops. They demonstrate that the deeply politicized, entrenched, and path-dependent nature of the regulation of GMOs in the US and the EU has fundamentally shaped negotiations and decision-making at the international level, limiting the prospects for deliberation and providing incentives for both sides to engage in hard bargaining and to 'shop' for favorable international forums. They then assess the impacts, and the limits, of international pressures on domestic US and European law, politics, and business practice, which have remained strikingly resistant to change. International cooperation in areas like GMO regulation, the authors conclude, must overcome multiple obstacles. Any effective response to this persistent dispute, they argue, must recognize both the obstacles to successful cooperation, and the options that remain for each side when cooperation fails. © Mark A. Pollack and Gregory C. Shaffer 2009. All rights reserved.
Why do states create overlapping international institutions? This practice presents a puzzle: conventional wisdom suggests that states should use existing institutions to minimize the transaction costs of co-operation. This article proposes a bargaining approach to explain the
de novo
creation of overlapping international institutions. In this model, a dissatisfied ‘challenger’ state threatens to create a new institution, and a ‘defender’ state can propose to reform the currently focal institution. Overlapping institutions are created when the currently focal institution is (1) captured by interests opposed to the challenger and (2) domestic political pressure to abandon the status quo is intense. Similar to models of deterrence, the expectation that the new institution garners support among third parties is irrelevant for the equilibrium likelihood of
de novo
creation. A comparative analysis of international bargaining over energy, whaling and intellectual property rights provides empirical evidence.
Russia's post-Soviet orientation is in serious trouble. The West does not want to see any structure in Eurasia that permits Russian hegemony, but abetting continued chaos in the former Soviet space is hardly in the West's interest. Central Asia and the Caucasus are rife with flash points that could ignite and draw in outside powers, and the presence of nuclear weapons raises the stakes even higher. The United States should support integration, not division. For its part, Russia should work with nearby countries to help unite diverse peoples in a stabler system.
Once the exclusive preserve of member states, international organizations have become increasingly open in recent decades. Now virtually all international organizations at some level involve NGOs, business actors and scientific experts in policy-making. This book offers the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of this development. Combining statistical analysis and in-depth case studies, it maps and explains the openness of international organizations across issue areas, policy functions and world regions from 1950 to 2010. Addressing the question of where, how and why international organizations offer transnational actors access to global policy-making, this book has implications for critical issues in world politics. When do states share authority with private actors? What drives the design of international organizations? How do activists and businesses influence global politics? Is civil society involvement a solution to democratic deficits in global governance?
The political strategy of forum shopping is an under-researched but highly relevant concept for understanding the dynamics of global governance. Forum shopping involves actors seeking to realise their policy objectives within preferred policy arenas on the basis of an arena’s particular governing characteristics. We examine the forum shopping behaviour of the key states, business and non-governmental groups in regard to three policy issues: labour standards, intellectual property rights, and chemicals regulation. Our preliminary analysis is centred around the questions of why actors forum shop, the circumstances in which forum shopping enables actors to succeed in promoting their interests, and the impact of forum shopping on the effectiveness of global governance. Our cases suggest an arena’s membership, issue mandate, decision making procedures and enforcement capacity are the key characteristics that shape actors’ arena preferences. Another important implication is that a multi-arena global governance system comprised of duplication and overlap in issue mandate (rather than large multilateral single issue arenas) may be beneficial for advancing actors’ policy agendas. The overarching goal of the article is to spark more systematic research into the often practiced but under-theorised phenomenon of forum shopping.
Why do institutions emerge, operate, evolve and persist? 'Institutional Choice and Global Commerce' elaborates a theory of boundedly rational institutional choice that explains when states USE available institutions, SELECT among alternative forums, CHANGE existing rules, or CREATE new arrangements (USCC). The authors reveal the striking staying power of the institutional status quo and test their innovative theory against evidence on institutional choice in global commerce from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. Cases range from the establishment in 1876 of the first truly international system of commercial dispute resolution, the Mixed Courts of Egypt, to the founding and operation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the World Trade Organization, and the International Accounting Standards Board. Analysts of institutional choice henceforth must take seriously not only the distinct demands of specific cooperation dilemmas, but also the wide array of available institutional choices.
In this article, we approach world politics through the lens of its manifold practices, which we define as competent performances. Studying International Relations (IR) from the perspective of international practices promises three key advances. First, by focusing on practices in IR, we can understand both IR theory and international politics better or differently. World politics can be conceived as structured by practices, which give meaning to international action, make possible strategic interaction, and are reproduced, changed, and reinforced by international action and interaction. This focus helps broaden the ontology of world politics, serves as a focal point around which debates in IR theory can be structured, and can be used as a unit of analysis that transcends traditional understandings of ‘levels of analysis’. We illustrate what an international practice is by revisiting Thomas Schelling's seminal works on bargaining. Second, with the help of illustrations of deterrence and arms control during the Cold War and of post-Cold War practices such as cooperative security, we show how practices constitute strategic interaction and bargaining more generally. Finally, a practice perspective opens an exciting and innovative research agenda, which suggests new research questions and puzzles, and revisits central concepts of our discipline, including power, history, and strategy.
This article looks at regime complexes from a state policymaking perspective. It develops a theoretical model in which regime complexes become denser over time while governmental policy making becomes more coherent. Under this model, interactions between global regime complexes and national policymaking are twofold. On the one hand, greater policy coherence generates negotiated mandates asking for regime connections and complex density. On the other hand, regime-complex density creates more cohesive audiences, which increase incentives for national policy coherence. This co-adjustments model brings states into the discussion of institutional interactions and critically questions the desirability and feasibility of recent calls for joined-up government and whole-of-government approaches.
The processes, problems and dilemmas generated by globalisation shape new contours of politics. They delineate some of the starkest challenges faced in the contemporary era. The first half of this article maps some of these, focusing particularly on questions of governance. Exploring the changing circumstances of politics illuminates why nationalism and statism provide inadequate political resources to meet the problems posed by a more global age. In the second half of the article, cosmopolitanism is defended as a more relevant and appropriate way of framing politics today. Four cosmopolitan principles are set out and a strategy is elaborated for cosmopolitan institution-building. In the final section of the article, cosmopolitanism is defended against possible charges of utopianism, and it is argued that cosmopolitanism is a political project for the here and now – and just as pertinent as the theory of the modern state was when it was first promulgated in Leviathan.
This article describes the rise of Venezuelan lawyers as member of the country's intellectual and social leadership, and their notable influence throughout different historic periods, from their key contribution to the consolidation of the country's political and intellectual leadership during the nineteenth century, to their emergence as power brokers bridging the public and private sectors during the economic and social expansions that took place during most of the twentieth century. This work also explains how, in spite of the radical political transition that took place in the late 1990s and which led to the disappearance of the traditional elites, the new regime created the conditions for the emergence of new networks in similar fashion to the ones that existed in the past, revealing that regardless of which particular social group is in power personal connections remain vital in making the justice system work, and the presence of lawyers is very important.
The creation and continued existence of CSDP cannot be understood without reference to the institutional environment within which it is located. To explain its emergence and design, one needs to study the institutional architecture into which this additional institution emerged. Once institutional overlap exists, it becomes a crucial independent variable explaining not only the strategies that member states have at their disposal, but also the development of international institutions occupying the same policy domain as well as the impact on the policy field at large.
Preferential trade agreements offer members an alternative to dispute settlement at the World Trade Organization. This gives rise to forum shopping, in that complainants can file regionally, multilaterally, or not at all. What explains this choice of forum? I argue that complainants strategically discriminate among overlapping memberships: on a given measure(s), some prefer to set a precedent that bears only on a subset of their trade relations, others a precedent that bears on all their trade relations, while still others prefer not to set a precedent. Thus, the key to forum shopping is not simply which institution is likely to come closest to the complainant s ideal ruling against the defendant, but where the resulting precedent will be more useful in the future, enabling the complainant to bring litigation against other members, rather than helping other members bring litigation against the complainant. I consider disputes over Mexican brooms and Canadian periodicals.For comments, I thank Vinod Aggarwal, Raj Bhala, Jane Bradley, Bill Davey, Rob Howse, Miles Kahler, Simon Lester, Rod Ludema, Ed Mansfield, Lisa Martin, Petros C. Mavroidis, John Odell, Joost Pauwelyn, Amy Porges, Eric Reinhardt, Peter Rosendorff, Ken Scheve, Ed Schwartz, Christina Sevilla, Michael Simon, Jay Smith, Debra Steger, Joel Trachtman, Todd Weiler, seminar participants in the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security (PIPES) at the University of Chicago, and two anonymous referees. All shortcomings are, of course, my own. For research support, I thank the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. For research assistance, I thank Alex Muggah, Krzysztof Pelc, and Scott Winter.
This article examines the implications of the rising density of international institutions. Despite the rapid proliferation of institutions, scholars continue to embrace the assumption that individual regimes are decomposable from others. We contend that an increasingly common phenomenon is the regime complex: a collective of partially overlapping and nonhierarchical regimes. The evolution of regime complexes reflects the influence of legalization on world politics. Regime complexes are laden with legal inconsistencies because the rules in one regime are rarely coordinated closely with overlapping rules in related regimes. Negotiators often attempt to avoid glaring inconsistencies by adopting broad rules that allow for multiple interpretations. In turn, solutions refined through implementation of these rules focus later rounds of negotiation and legalization. We explore these processes using the issue of plant genetic resources (PGR). Over the last century, states have created property rights in these resources in a Demsetzian process: as new technologies and ideas have made PGR far more valuable, actors have mobilized and clashed over the creation of property rights that allow the appropriation of that value.We are grateful for comments on early drafts presented at Stanford Law School, New York University Law School, Duke Law School, Harvard Law School, and the American Society for International Law. Thanks especially to Larry Helfer, Tom Heller, Robert Keohane, Benedict Kingsbury, Peter Lallas, Lisa Martin, Ron Mitchell, Sabrina Safrin, Gene Skolnikoff, Richard Stewart, Chris Stone, Buzz Thompson, Jonathan Wiener, Katrina Wyman, Oran Young, and two anonymous reviewers for their feedback. Kal Raustiala thanks the Program on Law and Public Affairs at Princeton for support. We also thank our research assistants, Lindsay Carlson, Lesley Coben and Joshua House.
International institutions are central features of moderninternational relations. This is true of trade, international debt andnancial restructuring, and even national security, once the exclusiverealm of pure state action. It was certainly true of the two majormilitary engagements of the 1990s, the wars in Kosovo and the PersianGulf. As international institutions have gained prominence in thepolitical landscape, they have increasingly become prominent topics forstudy. The sharpest debate among researchers has been theoretical: Dointernational institutions really matter? Missing from this debate is asustained inquiry into how these institutions actually work. We shiftthe focus by posing researchable questions about how they operate andhow they relate to the problems states face.
- Abbott KW