The Failure to Limit Institutional Proliferation

• In Event: The Evolution of Global Governance Complexes

Abstract

This paper inquires into how governments manage global governance complexity, specifically the question of international institutional proliferation. Government officials often profess that they wish to limit institutional proliferation and the complexity to which it contributes. They cite a variety of reasons, including high administrative burdens, and costs from redundancy and contradictory mandates. Academic studies point to additional reasons why governments have incentives to limit international institutional proliferation, such as the fragmentation of power, organizational inefficiencies, and legitimacy costs. Yet, international institutional proliferation has not abated in recent decades; the number of organizations and the complexity of global governance have, if anything, increased. This paper explores what historical records reveal about the reasons governments have failed to limit institutional proliferation. It uses primary historical material from government archives in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States to examine the assumptions, claims, and conclusions of common theories of international institutions. Its principal empirical focus is a failed initiative by the Group of Seven to limit institutional proliferation. The empirical analysis supports two claims. First, governments are sensitive to the political costs that limiting institutional proliferation entails. It finds that the political costs from preventing the formation of new organizations often out-weigh the benefits governments expect from reforming existing arrangements. Second, governments embraced innovations in informal institutions to contain the costs of (formal) regime complexity and harness some of its benefits

Author

• Karl Orfeo Fioretos, Temple University