The Evolution of Global Governance Complexes

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

A growing literature in international relations focuses on the causes and consequences of institutional complexity in global governance. This panel seeks to advance current research agendas by focusing on variation in the structure and outcomes of ‘global governance complexes’– both across issue-areas and across time. Drawing on contemporary and historical data, and using a combination of qualitative and formal approaches, papers on the panel analyse and compare institutional complexity across different issue-areas of world politics, and develop theoretical arguments to explain the emergence and historical evolution (or ‘life-cycles’) of global governance complexes (GGCs).

Conceptually papers on the panel adopt a pared-down definition of a GGC as consisting of two basic components: (i) an element of overlap in the functions, mandates and/or membership of two or more institutions governing a policy domain, and (ii) the involvement of diverse institutional agents that make choices in interdependent ways. Beyond these foundational elements we treat other features commonly viewed as constitutive of so-called ‘institutional complexes’—in particular, a lack of hierarchy and an element of conflict among overlapping rule-sets—as variable features. We thus reject the customary definition of an institutional complex as consisting of inherently conflicting and non-hierarchical rule-sets (e.g. Victor and Raustialla 2007, Alter and Meunier 2009, Alter and Raustialla 2018) in favour of a novel understanding of GGCs as comprising diverse actors and rule-sets whose functions and activities overlap, but that may stand in both hierarchical and non-hierarchical, conflicting and synergistic relationships to one another. We further note that these relationships may change over time in ways that do not automatically lead towards ever-growing ‘fragmentation’.

This conceptual move allows us to pursue two related goals:

First, by moving beyond a definition of GGCs that presupposes a certain relationship between elemental institutions and actors we seek greater precision in how institutional complexity can be operationalized, measured and compared across different areas and over time. Thus individual papers will focus on how different aspects of institutional complexity—e.g., the scale of a governance complex, the degree of overlap among elemental institutions, the diversity of governing agents, or the level of conflict among separate rule-sets—can be observed and measured, and theorize the implications of variation in such features for governance outcomes. Our definition also allows us to focus attention on how GGCs change over time, due—for example—to efforts by governments and other actors to reduce or manage fragmentation through means of inter-institutional coordination and reconciliation/re-integration.

Second, by defining GGCs as comprising diverse governance agents we focus attention on the role of actors other than states and intergovernmental organizations. States and formal rule-sets are not the only, or necessarily the primary, components of GGCs. Rather, informal institutions, non-state actors and mixed type public-private actors play important roles. Our focus on diversity draws attention to different types of interconnections between actors in GGCs, including shared norms, rules or goals, shared funding structures, shared administrative practices or professional cultures, etc.

The overall goal of the panel is to move beyond relatively static ‘snapshot’ depictions of individual GGCs at specific moments in time towards comparative and historically-informed analysis, which can illuminate how GGCs vary (including over time), and how such variation in turn affects governance outcomes.

Sub Unit

• Division 17: International Collaboration

Individual Presentations

• The Arc of Complex Global Governance: From Organization to Coalition - Miles Kahler, American University

• The Failure to Limit Institutional Proliferation - Karl Orfeo Fioretos, Temple University

• Ordering Complexity: The Historical Evolution of Intl. Civil Aviation Governance - Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Cambridge University

• Bargaining Strategies for Regime Complex Games - Daniel Verdier, Ohio State University

Chair

• Oliver Westerwinter University of St. Gallen

Discussants

• Oliver Westerwinter University of St. Gallen

• Kal Raustiala University of California, Los Angeles