EXCERPTED FROM

International
Organizations:
The Politics and Processes
of Global Governance
FOURTH EDITION

Margaret P. Karns,
Tana Johnson, and
Karen A. Mingst

Copyright © 2024
ISBN: 978-1-68585-979-4 pb

1800 30th Street, Suite 314

Boulder, CO 80301 USA
telephone 303.444.6684
fax 303.444.0824

This excerpt was downloaded from the

Lynne Rienner Publishers website
www.rienner.com
 Contents

List of Illustrations xi
Preface xiii

1 Why Global Governance? 1

What Is Global Governance? 2
Why the Growing Need for Global Governance? 4
Actors in Global Governance 9
Processes of Global Governance: Multilateralism Matters 21
The Varieties of Global Governance 27
The Politics and Effectiveness of Global Governance 38

2 Theories of Global Governance 45

Liberalism 46
Realism 55
Social Constructivism 59
Critical Theories 61
Theories of Organizational Interactions 67
IR Theory and Global Governance 71

3 International Organizations and the Foundations of

Global Governance 73
The State System and Its Weaknesses:
The Process of International Organization 73
Early Governance Innovations:
The Legacy of the Nineteenth Century 75
The UN System 85
The Expansion of Functional and
Specialized Organizations 86
International Courts for Adjudication and
Dispute Settlement 104

vii
viii Contents

4 The United Nations: Centerpiece of Global Governance 109

The UN Charter and Key Principles 110
The Principal Organs of the United Nations 112
Persistent Organizational Problems and
the Need for Reform 150
The UN’s Relationship to Regional Organizations 160

5 Regional Organizations 163

The Roots and Dynamics of Regionalism 164
Europe’s Regional Organizations 172
Regional Organizations in the Americas 197
Asia’s Regional Organizations 207
Africa’s Regional Organizations 219
Regional Organizations in the Middle East 227
Regionalism in the Arctic 235
Assessing the Consequences of Regionalism 238
Moving Beyond Regionalism: Transregional Organizations 239

6 The Critical Role of Nonstate Actors 241

The Range of Nonstate Actors 241
The Growth of NSAs 251
NSAs and Policymaking 257
Issues with NSAs 262

7 Seeking Peace and Security 269

Case Study: Somalia, the Continuing Challenge 269
Wars as the Genesis for Security Governance 273
Mechanisms for the Peaceful Settlement of Disputes 283
Collective Security, Enforcement, and Sanctions 289
Peace Operations 304
Arms Control and Disarmament 332
Countering Terrorism as a Threat to
Global Peace and Security 347
The Challenges of Human Security 357

8 Pursuing Economic Well-Being 359

Case Study: Okonjo-Iweala as Director-General of
the World Trade Organization 359
Global Economic Governance: Key Ideas and Events 361
Governance of Trade 373
Governance of Finance 386
Governance of Development 398
Multinational Corporations:
From Regulation to Partnering 418
The Challenges of Economic Governance 422
 Contents ix

9 Protecting Human Rights 423

Case Study: Documenting War Crimes in Ukraine 423
The Roots of Human Rights and Humanitarian Norms 425
The Key Role of States: Protectors and
Abusers of Human Rights 430
International Human Rights Institutions and Mechanisms 431
The Processes of Human Rights Governance 442
Global Human Rights and Humanitarian
Governance in Action 467
The Globalization of Human Rights and the Role of
the United States 478

10 Preserving the Environment 481

Case Study: Climate Change and the Youth Movement
for Climate Justice 481
The Evolution of Climate Science 482
General Challenges in Environmental Governance 489
UN Environmental Conferences, Commissions,
and Summits 491
Components of Global Environmental Governance 496
Regional Environmental Governance 513
Global Environmental Governance and Issues of
Compliance and Effectiveness 520

11 Promoting Human Security 527

The Concept of Human Security:
An Expanded View of Security 528
Human Security and the Governance of Health 529
Global Governance, International Organizations,
and Food Security 543
International Organizations and the Global Refugee
and Migration Crisis 551
The Challenges of Protecting Human Security 565

12 Challenges in Global Governance 567

Why Global Governance Is Difficult 567
Contributions of Global Governance Actors 569
Activities That Are Difficult for Global Governance Actors 574
Challenges for the Future: Beyond Effectiveness 578
The Need for Global Governance 585

List of Acronyms 587

References 595
Index 641
About the Book 671
 1
Why Global
Governance?

THE GROWING EVIDENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE, THE DISRUPTIONS CAUSED

by the global Covid-19 pandemic, the increasing challenges of migration in
several parts of the world, the rapid emergence of China as a superpower,
and the shock of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine have brought home to
people around the world the urgency and complexity of the global gover-
nance challenges we face today. Against this backdrop remain the persistent
issues of nuclear weapons proliferation, large-scale humanitarian crises
affecting global food supply, deep poverty and economic inequality in
many parts of the world, and continuing threats to basic human rights and
human security. Confronting these seemingly intractable challenges are a
variety of international actors, institutions, and processes that over more
than a century now have come to form what we call global governance.
None of these problems can be solved by sovereign states acting alone.
All require cooperation of some sort among states and the growing number
of nonstate actors; many require the active participation of ordinary citi-
zens; some demand the establishment of new international mechanisms for
monitoring or negotiating new international rules; and most require the
refinement of means for securing states’ and other actors’ compliance.
Many contemporary problems also call for new types of partnerships—
some between existing organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and
the African Union (AU) in the Sahel; others involve public–private partner-
ships such as the one between the UN and the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation to address various international health issues. In short, there is
a wide variety of cross-border issues and problems that require governance.
Sometimes the need is truly global in scope, as with pandemics and climate
change. In other cases, the governance problem is specific to a region or
group of countries, as with the need to manage an international river or
regional migration surge. Sometimes, a problem cannot be neatly classified,

1
2 International Organizations

as with the Arctic, where the nexus of issues posed by climate change
affects not just states, species, and peoples but significant parts of the
whole world. As Bruce Jentleson (2012: 145) has noted, “The need for
global governance is not an if question. It is a how question.” But what do
we mean by global governance?

What Is Global Governance?

In 2005, two international relations scholars noted that the idea of global
governance had attained “near-celebrity status” (Barnett and Duvall 2005:1),
but almost two decades later its meaning is still contested. Sometimes the
term global governance has been used as a synonym for international organ-
izations. More often, it is used to capture the complexity and dynamism of
the collective efforts by states and an increasing variety of nonstate actors to
identify, understand, and address various issues and problems in today’s tur-
bulent world. In 1995, the Commission on Global Governance, an independ-
ent group of prominent international figures, published a report on what
reforms in modes of international cooperation were called for by global
changes after the end of the Cold War. The commission defined governance
as “the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and pri-
vate, manage their common affairs. It is a continuing process through which
conflicting or diverse interests may be accommodated and cooperative
action may be taken. It includes formal . . . as well as informal arrangements
that people and institutions have agreed to or perceive to be in their interest”
(Commission on Global Governance 1995: 2).
But what is the relationship between governance and government?
While clearly related, the two concepts are not identical. As James Rosenau
(1992: 4) put it:

Both refer to purposive behavior, to goal-oriented activities, to systems of

rule; but government suggests activities that are backed by formal author-
ity, by police powers to insure the implementation of duly constituted
policies, whereas governance refers to activities backed by shared goals
that may or may not derive from legal and formally prescribed responsi-
bilities and that do not necessarily rely on police powers to overcome defi-
ance and attain compliance. Governance, in other words, is a more encom-
passing phenomenon than government. It embraces governmental
institutions, but it also subsumes informal, nongovernmental mechanisms
whereby those persons and organizations within its purview move ahead,
satisfy their needs, and fulfill their wants.

Thus, global governance is not global government; it is not a single world

order; there is no top-down, hierarchical structure of authority, but power
and authority in global governance are both present in varying ways and to
varying degrees. Reviewing the evolution of the concept, Thomas Weiss
 Why Global Governance? 3

and Rorden Wilkinson (2014: 211) conclude, “We understand global gover-
nance as the sum of the informal and formal ideas, values, norms, proce-
dures, and institutions that help all actors—states, IGOs, civil society, and
TNCs [transnational corporations]—identify, understand, and address trans-
boundary problems.” It therefore encompasses international law and inter-
national organizations created by states, but goes well beyond them. It is
“the collective effort by sovereign states, international organizations, and
other nonstate actors to address common challenges and seize opportunities
that transcend national frontiers. . . . [It is] an ungainly patchwork of formal
and informal institutions” (Patrick 2014: 59).
To some, global governance is only linked to the post–Cold War inter-
national order; others speak of patterns of governance in different historical
orders; still others conceive of it as an evolving set of institutions, rules,
patterns of interaction, actors, and processes. For some scholars, global
governance only includes institutions, processes, and policies that are truly
global in scope. Others, most notably Amitav Acharya (2016a) argue that
global governance includes not only formal and informal global intergov-
ernmental institutions and policies, but also regional and multistakeholder
ones with local and domestic politics in states often playing a key role in
influencing states’ willingness and ability to commit.
Analyzing the varieties of global governance and the actors in the poli-
tics and processes that have shaped them is the central purpose of this book.
We show why, if one wants to understand collective global efforts to solve
those “problems without passports,” it is no longer enough to look just at
international organizations created by states. Although states retain their sov-
ereignty and still exercise coercive power, global governance increasingly
rests on other bases of authority. Thus, the study of this phenomenon requires
exploring not only the forms it can take, the politics and processes by which
it has developed, the actors who play various roles, and the relationships
among them but also the forms and patterns of both power and authority. As
the title of one book conveys, “Who governs the globe?” is an essential ques-
tion to answer, as are the questions of “who gets what?,” “who benefits?,”
and with what consequences (Avant, Finnemore, and Sell 2010b).
Part of the value, then, of the concept “global governance” is how it
enables us to look at the long-term process of organizing collective efforts to
deal with shared problems—that is, the process of international organization—
past, present, and future (Claude 1964: 4).
Global governance is incredibly complex, and no single book can cover
it all. For the sake of manageability, we focus primarily on interstate varieties
of global governance, particularly on global and regional intergovernmental
organizations (IGOs), while also showing where and how various types of
nonstate actors (NSAs) play important roles. We introduce networks, forms
of private governance, and public–private partnerships, but leave these
4 International Organizations

largely to others to elaborate. Because global governance is dynamic, we

identify changes in governance needs and approaches over time.

Why the Growing Need for Global Governance?

The emergence of the concept of global governance in the 1990s accompa-
nied the growing awareness of a number of systemic changes happening in
the world, the rapid proliferation of new issues and actors, and the inade-
quacy of existing international organizations (particularly the United
Nations) to address many problems. These changes have included global-
ization, technological advances, the growth of transnationalism, changing
relations among the great powers, the growing awareness of global environ-
mental problems, and the proliferation of NSAs. Separately and collec-
tively, they have fundamentally altered global politics and contributed to
the increased need for global governance.

Globalization
In the 1990s, what initially appeared to be simply growing interdependence
among states and peoples became something much more fundamental—a
complex multidimensional process of economic, cultural, and social change.
Particularly noticeable was the rapid pace of change, the compression of
time and space, and the scale and scope of interconnectedness. There are
many definitions of globalization. Some focus on political, societal, and
cultural integration, whereas others point more specifically to the economic
integration of markets through trade, capital flows, and flows of technology
and workers. By the early 2000s, most observers agreed that globalization
had become unprecedented in the degree to which markets, cultures, peo-
ples, and states had become linked, thanks to changes in technology, trans-
portation, and communications that sped up the movement of ideas, goods,
news, capital, technology, and people.
Globalization has spurred proliferating networks of nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) and financial markets, linking like-minded people
and investors, as well as the unwelcome, often illegal actors—terrorists and
drug traffickers. It has contributed to the homogenization of culture with
the global spread of ideas and popular culture.
Globalization has also led to the reassertion of ethnicity and national-
ism in many parts of the world. The ways global events can have local con-
sequences and local events can have global consequences mean that crises
in one region can affect jobs, production, personal savings, and investment
elsewhere. Civil wars and conflicts in some of the world’s poorest regions,
such as Yemen, Afghanistan, and Mali, ripple outward through the flows of
asylum seekers and migrants to richer countries.
The effects of globalization change the significance of borders of states
and the very nature of world politics. They mean that states no longer have
 Why Global Governance? 5

a monopoly on power and authority. They increase the recognition of

transnational problems that require global regulation in some form. The
consequence has been a huge growth in transnational, regional, and global
forms of public and private rulemaking and regulation since the early
1990s. This includes expanded jurisdiction of existing IGOs like the Inter-
national Maritime Organization; networks of cooperation among govern-
ment agencies, such as the Financial Action Task Force, that link govern-
ment experts on money laundering; and private standard-setting initiatives
such as that by the Forest Stewardship Council.
Although globalization affects all spheres of human activity, not all are
equally affected. It has deepened global inequality between the haves and
have-nots, especially those living on less than $1.90 a day—the UN’s 2022
benchmark for extreme poverty. It has created winners and losers between
countries and within countries. As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted
in 2000, “The central challenge . . . is to ensure that globalization becomes
a positive force for all the world’s people, instead of leaving billions of
them behind in squalor” (2000: 6).
Increasing globalization is not inevitable, however. In the 2020s, there
is growing discussion of the possibility of decreasing globalization or even
deglobalization. In some areas, populism has risen in response to globaliza-
tion with a rejection of traditional elites, a turn toward authoritarianism,
and decreased support for international cooperation. During the Covid-19
pandemic, people in many parts of the world became aware of how globaliza-
tion had created complex global supply chains between producers of various
goods in different parts of the world, the manufacturers dependent on those
goods, and consumers. When those supply chains were disrupted by the clos-
ing of national borders, the health of people and nations was jeopardized.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 severed many economic and other links
between that country and the rest of the world, showing that country’s vulner-
ability as a result of its integration in the global economy. The war in Ukraine
also revealed the high global dependence on grain and fertilizer from Russia
and Ukraine and, hence, the war’s severe effects on food security.
Although globalization now appears to be evolving in unpredictable
ways, it is closely linked to the revolution in global communications and
transport which owes much to technological changes.

Technological Changes
Globalization would not have been possible without major technological
changes in transport and communications that allow the movement of peo-
ple and goods rapidly over great distances and move information, images,
written words, and sound by telephone, Internet, television networks, and
various forms of social media. Today’s container ships and tankers carry
many times the tonnage faster and at lower cost than ever before. The ease
and lower cost of contemporary jet travel have contributed to the flow of
6 International Organizations

international tourists. In 2012, the number of tourists worldwide passed the

1 billion mark for the first time; it reached 1.5 billion in 2019 according to
the World Tourism Organization. The figure was just 25 million in 1952.
Technological advances in communication from the mid-nineteenth-
century development of the telegraph to the telephone, radio, film, televi-
sion, photocopying, satellite communications, faxing, cell phones, the inter-
net, email, and social media have had an enormous impact on global
politics and governance. In 2021, the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU) reported that an estimated 63 percent of the world’s popula-
tion was using the internet—an increase of 17 percent since 2019. The
number of cell or mobile phone subscriptions in the world reached 8 billion
in 2021, and the ITU noted that no technology had ever spread this rapidly,
especially among the rural poor. Transnational communications allow citi-
zens all over the world to exchange ideas and information and to mobilize
like-minded people in support of a particular cause in real time. The cas-
cade of events from Tunisia to Egypt to Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco,
Libya, and Syria during the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 owed much to
people’s use of social media and the inability of authoritarian governments
to block the flow of images and information. A similar cascade of events
and worldwide mobilization occurred in 2019 with the Black Lives Matter
protests that started in the United States. Both the transportation and com-
munications revolutions have aided the formation of transnational networks
and social movements.

Expanding Transnationalism
Among the effects of globalization across issues and technological changes is
the growth of transnationalism—the networks and connections through which
individuals and various types of nonstate actors work together across state bor-
ders. It is exhibited in the activities of global civil society, international NGOs,
transnational advocacy networks, and transnational social movements.
Beginning in the late 1980s and 1990s, the spread of democracy bolstered
the growth of civil society in countries where restrictions on citizens’ groups
were lifted. Civil society groups created coalitions from the local to the global
across a wide range of issues, including the environment, human rights,
economic development, and security. The result has been a dramatic rise in
transnational activities and corresponding demands for representation in
processes of global governance. Various types of transnational groups are dis-
cussed further in Chapter 6, but it is important to note that the democratization
trend was reversed in the second decade of the twenty-first century, and the
consequences for transnationalism remain to be seen as of this writing.

Changing Great Power Relations

Finally, transformations in the international political system, most notably
changing great power relationships, are responsible for the increased need
 Why Global Governance? 7

for global governance. Beginning with the collapse of Soviet-supported

communist governments in Central Europe in 1989 and 1990 and the disin-
tegration of the Soviet Union itself in 1991 into fifteen separate, independ-
ent states, the end of the Cold War marked the beginning of a new era. The
international system shifted from a bipolar structure to a post–Cold War
structure that was simultaneously unipolar, dominated by a single super-
power (the United States) and a nonpolar, networked system of a globaliz-
ing world. For a brief period of time, US hegemony reasserted itself. But
that period also saw the end of superpower support for many weak states in
Asia and Africa, unleashing a string of deadly conflicts and related human-
itarian crises in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and else-
where. These produced increased demands for new forms of conflict reso-
lution, including UN peacekeeping and postconflict peacebuilding. The
system changes opened new political space for states and NSAs—space for
pursuing new types of cooperation in ending those conflicts, expanding the
scope and reach of human rights norms, pursuing ambitious goals for devel-
opment, and governing growing trade and investment flows. In short, it
produced a series of new governance challenges and possibilities for devel-
oping new forms of governance.
Thirty years after the Cold War’s end, the world has a new global
superpower that is challenging the dominance of the United States. The
rise of China is nothing short of remarkable, including its dramatic eco-
nomic growth to become the world’s second largest economy and its
expanded investment in its military capabilities. With its greater self-
confidence under the leadership of President Xi Jinping since 2012,
China has played a much more assertive international role, competing
with the United States for influence and global leadership more broadly.
Through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China is supporting major
infrastructure projects in many countries and regions. It also created the
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which is seen as a rival to
the World Bank, and it has become far more active within the UN system,
seeking top positions in a number of UN agencies and other international
organizations. China sees itself as a model for many developing countries,
but also wants to assume a greater role in international organizations and
become not just a “rules-taker” but a “rules-maker” (Economy 2022: 172).
In various ways, China has been using both soft and hard power to follow
through on Xi Jinping’s pledge for China “to lead in the reform of the global
governance system” while continuing to assert the primacy of the sover-
eignty and noninterference norms that allow all countries to determine
their political and economic paths. While arguing the need for change—
especially to give China and other emerging economies more say in inter-
national institutions and norms—China is mindful that it owes much to the
US-led systems of international norms, rules, and institutions for its own
rise (Economy 2022: 172).
8 International Organizations

The growing competition between the United States and China has
major implications for the future of global governance. Complicating the
picture, however, is Russia—the former superpower—which shares China’s
antipathy for the United States and whose 2022 invasion of Ukraine vio-
lated one of the fundamental rules of the post–World War II US-led inter-
national order: the rule against using military force to change borders.
Whether these geopolitical shifts portend something like a new Cold War or
renewal of the original one (some asserted it never fully ended) or some-
thing else again will undoubtedly influence the future shape of global gov-
ernance. The need for governance that can manage these geopolitical shifts
and competition is significant, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for
example, has triggered new demands to address the fundamental inade-
quacy and unrepresentativeness of the UN Security Council. The makeup of
the council and the provision for five permanent members with veto power
was realistic in 1945 as the only way to ensure that both the United States
and Soviet Union accepted the creation of the United Nations. The makeup
of the Security Council has long been unrepresentative of the UN’s full
membership and demands for change, especially from countries in the
Global South, are hardly new, as is discussed in Chapter 4.
Other needs for global governance arise in relation to specific issues
and problems, such as growing numbers of humanitarian crises and com-
plex intrastate conflicts like in Yemen and the Sahel; demands to address
gender inequality and gender-based violence; surges in numbers of
refugees, displaced persons, and migrants in many areas of the world; an
epidemic (Ebola in West Africa in 2014) and a global pandemic (Covid-
19) within six years of each other; and the existential challenge of climate
change. As Acharya (2016a: 4–5) argues, “Global governance institutions
and processes are what their demanders make of them. New areas of
demand . . . explain not only the creation of new norms and institutions,
but also add diversity to the overall architecture of global governance.” He
further asserts that there is a relationship between demand and the design
of elements of global governance, including membership, scope, mandate,
and decision-making rules.
The six issue area chapters of this book examine the changing nature of
each issue area, the relevant key global and regional IGOs, and other types
of governance structures, the roles of state and nonstate actors, and the evo-
lution of key aspects of governance. The increased need and demand for
global governance magnify the importance of multilateralism as a core
process and the importance of leadership and different strategies used by
states and nonstate actors. One key way multilateralism has changed is with
the expansion of the number and kinds of actors participating. As Deborah
Avant, Martha Finnemore, and Susan Sell (2010c: 7) note, “knowing global
needs is rarely enough to explain how and why a particular governance out-
 Why Global Governance? 9

come was chosen.” Yet the expansion in the numbers and types of actors,
along with the number of different governance structures and the varying
agendas of different actors can make the complexity of global governance
difficult to sort out.

Actors in Global Governance

The complexity of global governance is a function not only of its many
forms but also of its many actors. To be sure, states are central actors in IGOs
and in many other forms of global governance, but IGO bureaucracies, treaty
secretariats, NGOs, multinational corporations (MNCs), scientific experts,
civil society groups, international credit-rating agencies, think tanks, major
foundations, networks, public–private partnerships, private military and
security companies, as well as transnational criminal and drug-trafficking
networks are among the many NSAs (see Figure 1.1). As Dingwerth and
Pattberg (2006: 191) put it, “In essence, global governance implies a multi-
actor perspective on world politics.” Still, “the novelty is not simply the
increase in numbers but also the ability of nonstate actors to take part in
steering the political system” (Biermann and Pattberg 2012: 6). Thus, study-
ing actors in global governance means examining the nature and degree of
various actors’ participation in different issue areas, their relative power and
authority, and in some cases their domestic politics and institutions.

States
States continue to be key actors in global governance. States alone have sov-
ereignty, which has historically given them authority over their own territory
and people and over the powers delegated to international institutions. To
be sure, today’s reality is that sovereignty is compromised by the weakness
of many states; by globalization, the Internet, and social media; by condi-
tionality on international aid; and by the influences of international norms
and NSAs such as banks, global finan-
cial markets, and NGOs. Tradition-
ally, states have been the primary Figure 1.1
Actors in Global Governance
sources of IGOs’ funding and military
capabilities for multilateral peace- • States and their subnational and
keeping and peace enforcement. They local jurisdictions
create international law and norms and • IGOs and their bureaucracies
determine their effectiveness through • NGOs and civil society groups
their compliance or failure to comply. • Experts and epistemic communities
States are still also a primary locus of • Networks and partnerships
many people’s identities. • Multinational corporations
Because the more than 190 states • Private foundations
in the international system vary so
10 International Organizations

dramatically, however, their relative importance in global governance

varies. Large, powerful states are more likely to play greater roles than are
smaller, less powerful states. Yet small states and middle powers can also
be sources of important global governance initiatives, the classic case being
Malta, whose permanent representative to the UN in 1967, Arvid Pardo,
made his tiny island nation’s mark by getting the General Assembly to
adopt the norm of the seabed and other global commons areas as “the com-
mon heritage of mankind.” With significant shifts in the relative power of
major states now under way, patterns that have prevailed in the past are
changing, making the future difficult to predict.
Historically, the United States used its dominant position after World
War II to shape much of the structure and rules of the postwar international
system, including the liberal international economic order. Because it used
its hard material power and its soft power of attraction and persuasion to
promote the principles of multilateralism and compromise and to promote
liberal ideas, scholars refer to US hegemony in characterizing the US role.
IGOs offered a way to create structures compatible with American notions
of political order and through which to promote US political and economic
interests as well as ideas and values. Although domestic support for such
institutions was not necessarily ensured, governmental and public commit-
ment have generally been strong in the United States and many other
countries. The predominance of Americans in many IGO secretariats and
the relatively large share of operating and program funding contributed by
the United States has reinforced US influence over the policies and pro-
grams of many IGOs.
Nonetheless, the history of the United States and international commit-
ments is a mixed one, as shown by the US rejection of membership in the
League of Nations in 1921, of the proposed International Trade Organiza-
tion in 1948, of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982, and of
the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty in 1998. Since 1972, the United States has used its veto in the UN
Security Council more than any of the other four permanent members. The
US Congress withheld full payment of dues to the UN from 1985 to 2000
and held up reform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) between
2010 and 2015.
To be sure, US hegemony was challenged throughout the Cold War by
the Soviet Union and its allies and by the rise of nationalism among states
in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean that gained their independence from
European colonial rule in the 1950s and 1960s. It has also been challenged
by the country’s own quasi-imperial overstretch and wars in Vietnam, Iraq,
Afghanistan, and the global war on terror, which have drained resources
and cost the United States legitimacy among friends and allies. Still, the
international order that US hegemony created persists.
 Why Global Governance? 11

Yet today, the United States cannot shape global governance alone. As
one journalist commented in 2011: “The United States still has formidable
strengths. . . . But America will never again experience the global domi-
nance it enjoyed in the 17 years between the Soviet Union’s collapse in
1991 and the financial crisis of 2008. Those days are over” (Rachman 2011:
63). Under the administration of President Donald J. Trump, the United
States severely undermined its power and influence in global governance
with open criticisms of the UN, withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Climate
Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Agreement, the UN Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and even the World Health Organi-
zation (WHO) during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the president’s personal
disdain for multilateralism. Although the administration of President Joseph
Biden signaled renewed support for the UN, the Paris Climate Agreement,
the WHO, and multilateralism in general, others’ faith in US credibility and
reliability remains severely damaged.
One of the most extraordinary shifts in world politics in recent years is
the rise of China. It is a shift that became more marked with the 2020 pan-
demic when China moved quickly to position itself as a global leader in
pandemic response. With the rapid growth of its economic importance in
the world and greater self-confidence under the leadership of President Xi
Jinping since 2012, China is now actively challenging the United States and
Western dominance in many global institutions. In the UN, for example,
China has rapidly increased the number of its nationals serving in various
posts and, as of 2021, there were four UN specialized agencies headed by
Chinese nationals—more than by any other of the five permanent members
of the Security Council (P-5). As the second largest economy since 2013; a
major donor to the World Bank; a major investor in Asia, Latin America,
and Africa through its Belt and Road Initiative; the second largest contrib-
utor to the UN regular budget and peacekeeping expenses; and the world’s
largest emitter of carbon dioxide, China is a key actor in global governance.
Before 2022, Russia also sought to restore its position as a major
player thirty years after the Soviet Union’s dissolution and the collapse of
Russia’s economy in the 1990s, which diminished its power. What type of
player it will be depends in part on the outcome of the war in Ukraine.
India and Brazil are assertive emerging powers. Together with China, they
blocked continuation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha nego-
tiations in 2008 on the issue of the right of developing countries to resist
liberalization of trade in agricultural products. Brazil and India are active
contenders for permanent seats on the UN Security Council. India has
long refused to participate in treaties such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty that it regards as discriminating against newer nuclear weapon
states. Likewise, Brazil resisted US efforts to create the Free Trade Area
of the Americas.
12 International Organizations

Middle-power states have traditionally played a particularly important

role in international institutions, often acting in concert in the UN and other
IGOs, taking initiatives on arms control, human rights, and other issues.
Argentina, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, and Swe-
den are known for their commitment to multilateralism, ability to forge
compromises, and support for reform in the international system. The
Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden),
together with the Netherlands have traditionally been major contributors to
UN peacekeeping operations; they have met or exceeded development
assistance targets; and they have provided about 10 percent of all UN lead-
ership positions. Although they have exemplified Western values, “their
effectiveness and reputation within the UN have rested on a perception . . .
as being different from the rest of the West (or North)” (Laatikainen 2006:
77). The essence of the role of middle powers lies in the importance of sec-
ondary players both as followers and leaders in international politics. In a
time when power and influence in the world are shifting, fostering cooper-
ation in the future is likely to require leadership based not only on military
capability and economic strength but also on diplomatic skill and policy
initiatives—strengths that middle and emerging powers as well as small and
developing states can contribute.
For the large number of less developed, small, and weak states, power
and influence generally come only insofar as they are able to form coali-
tions that enlarge their voices and offer opportunities to set global agendas
and link issues of importance to them. IGOs provide valuable arenas for
this and for international recognition and legitimacy. By forming and work-
ing through various coalitions, small and developing countries have
endeavored to shape the agendas, priorities, and programs of many IGOs
with varying degrees of success. The Group of 77 (G-77) has been a major
vehicle for developing countries to push their development and trade-
related interests since the mid-1960s. Similarly, the thirty-nine-member
Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) has been an important voice on the
issue of global climate change. Small and less powerful states also often
pick and choose the issues of greatest priority around which to focus their
limited resources. Given the large number of IGOs, they may seek to take
an issue of particular interest to the body most favorable to their interests—
a phenomenon known as forum shopping. By analyzing the roles of small
states in global governance, one can discover how skillful use of multilat-
eral diplomacy, coalitions, and networks can alter the power equation, lead-
ing to outcomes that serve the interests of people, groups, and states that
are not generally considered powerful.
Although states are still regarded as central to maintaining order in the
world, since 1990 a number of countries have been sources of disorder due
to their inability to perform most basic functions. Hence, problems emanat-
 Why Global Governance? 13

ing from weak, failing, and failed states have become global governance
challenges. They include spillover in the form of refugees from civil wars,
famine, and conflicts; terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda in the Maghreb that
exploit the weakness of states surrounding the Sahara; weak states such as
the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Mali that are unable
to protect their citizens and rely on UN peacekeeping operations to provide
some measure of security. State capability also includes the ability to com-
ply with international rules; track infectious diseases; take effective meas-
ures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions; limit trafficking in sex, organs,
drugs, and arms; and promote human well-being so that people do not feel
compelled to migrate elsewhere in search of a better life.
States, however, may not act with one voice in global governance.
Increasingly, provincial, state, and local governments, especially in demo-
cratic countries with federal forms of government, are involved in interna-
tional economic negotiations and in implementing environmental regulations
and human rights initiatives, acting independently and occasionally at odds
with their national governments. Mayors of large cities now meet periodi-
cally at global conferences, becoming subnational actors in global governance.
Similarly, transgovernmental networks of government officials—police inves-
tigators, financial regulators, judges, and legislators—provide a means of
exchanging information, tracking money laundering and terrorist financing,
coordinating cross-border law enforcement, expanding the reach of envi-
ronmental and food safety regulations, and providing training programs and
technical assistance to counterparts (Slaughter 2004: 2–4). Such networks
are part of the multilevel character of global governance. As Frank Bier-
mann and Philipp Pattberg (2012: 13) put it, “Global standards need to be
implemented and put into practice locally, and global norm setting requires
local decision-making and implementation . . . with the potential of conflicts
and synergies between different levels of regulatory activity.” Chapters 9
and 10 examine some examples.

Intergovernmental Organizations
IGOs are organizations that include at least three states as members, have
activities in several states, and are created through a formal intergovern-
mental agreement such as a treaty, charter, or statute. They also have head-
quarters, executive heads, bureaucracies, and budgets. Over 260 IGOs rang-
ing in size from 3 members (the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement) to more
than 190 members (the Universal Postal Union) exist. Members may come
primarily from one geographic region (as in the case of the Organization of
American States) or from all geographic regions (as in the case of the
World Bank). Although some IGOs are designed to achieve a single pur-
pose (such as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), others
have been developed for multiple tasks (such as the UN and African
14 International Organizations

Union). The majority of IGOs are regional or subregional, with a common-

ality of interest motivating states to cooperate on issues directly affecting
them. Among the universe of IGOs, most are small in membership and
designed to address specific functions. Most have been formed since World
War II, and Europe, among the different regions, has the densest concentra-
tion of IGOs (see Figure 1.2).
IGOs are recognized subjects of international law, with separate
standing from their member states. In a 1949 advisory opinion, Repara-
tions for Injuries Suffered in the Service of the United Nations, the Inter-
national Court of Justice (ICJ) concluded: “The Organization [the United
Nations] was intended to exercise and enjoy, and is in fact exercising and
enjoying, functions and rights which can only be explained on the basis of
international personality and the capacity to operate upon an international
plane. It is at present the supreme type of international organization, and
it could not carry out the intentions of its founders if it was devoid of
international personality.”
International relations scholars have long viewed IGOs primarily as
agents of their member states and focused on their structural attributes,
decisionmaking processes, and programs. After all, IGOs are formed by
states, and states grant IGOs responsibilities and authority to act. Yet
increasingly, IGOs have also been seen as actors in their own right, because
their secretariat members play key but often invisible roles in persuading
member states to act, coordinating the efforts of different groups, providing
the diplomatic skills to secure agreements, and ensuring the effectiveness of
programs (Mathiason 2007). These include senior officials such as the UN

Figure 1.2 Classifying Types of IGOs

Examples

Geographic Scope
Global United Nations, World Health Organization,
World Trade Organization
Regional Association of Southeast Asian Nations,
African Union, European Union
Subregional Economic Community of West African States,
Gulf Cooperation Council
Purpose
General Organization of American States, United Nations
Specialized International Labour Organization, World Health
Organization, World Trade Organization
 Why Global Governance? 15

Secretary-General (UNSG) and their deputy, under- and assistant secretaries-

general, and the UNSG’s special representatives (SRSGs); the directors-
general of organizations such as the WHO and WTO; the heads of UN
funds and programs, such as the executive director of the World Food Pro-
gramme (WFP) and the UN High Commissioners for Refugees and Human
Rights (UNHCR and UNHCHR); the president of the World Bank; the
executive director of the IMF; the secretary-general of the Organization of
American States; and the president of the European Commission. These
people “will generally possess an identity that is distinct from that of any
other entity and an interest in promoting the well-being of the organization
and its membership” (Duffield 2007: 13). Stories are legion about the roles
secretariat officials have played in achieving international trade agree-
ments, cease-fires in wars, governments’ agreement to revise their develop-
ment strategies to meet international guidelines, organizational reforms, and
even the creation of new IGOs (Johnson 2014).
Like other bureaucracies, IGO secretariats often do much more than
their member states may have intended. Because many (but not all) IGO
bureaucrats are international civil servants rather than individuals seconded
to a secretariat from national governments, they tend to take their responsi-
bilities seriously and work hard “to promote what they see as ‘good policy’
or to protect it from states that have competing interests” (Barnett and
Finnemore 2004: 5). IGO bureaucracies also tend to develop their own
organizational cultures—sometimes based on the professional backgrounds
of many staff members (e.g., public health, finance)—and this can influ-
ence how they define issues and what types of policy solutions they recom-
mend. They must respond to new challenges and crises, provide policy
options for member states, determine how to carry out vague mandates,
reform themselves, and formulate new tasks and procedures. For example,
the UN Secretariat created peacekeeping at the height of the Cold War and
later devised postconflict peacebuilding operations that include a wide vari-
ety of tasks from electoral assistance to police and court reform. IGOs have
resources, including money, food, weapons, and expertise. Many IGO
bureaucracies play important roles in analyzing and interpreting informa-
tion, giving it meaning that can prompt action. To some extent, IGOs “help
determine the kind of world that is to be governed and set the agenda for
global governance” (Barnett and Finnemore 2004: 7).
Thus, IGO bureaucracies are not just tools of states. They are also pur-
posive actors that have power to influence world events. Their authority,
and that of bureaucracies generally, “lies in their ability to present them-
selves as impersonal and neutral—as not exercising power but instead serv-
ing others” (Barnett and Finnemore 2004: 21). The need to be seen in this
way is crucial for the credibility of the UN Secretariat or the EU Commis-
sion, for example. But there is also significant evidence of IGOs doing
16 International Organizations

something that “wasn’t specifically tasked to them . . . [and] outside any

reasonable notion of delegated discretion” (Oestreich 2012: 11). This the-
ory of IGO agency and its implications is discussed further in Chapter 2.
To be sure, not all IGOs are alike, as we shall examine in later chap-
ters. Their authority and autonomy as actors in global governance vary sig-
nificantly in kind and degree. Like domestic bureaucracies, international
bureaucracies may use inaction as a way to avoid doing something they
oppose. IGOs may also act against the interests and preferences of strong or
weak states (and their secretaries-general may suffer retaliation as a result);
they may form partnerships with nonstate actors, other IGOs, and select
states to pursue or protect certain policies; and they may attempt to per-
suade states to change their behavior—for example, by reducing corruption,
eliminating food subsidies, or turning over war criminals for prosecution by
the International Criminal Court.
Not only do IGOs have secretariats, but so also do a large number of
international treaties, particularly in global environmental governance
where there is no strong, central IGO. The size of these secretariats varies;
that of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is quite large;
others have just a few staff members. Their roles as autonomous actors
include generating and disseminating knowledge, framing the definitions of
problems and identifying solutions, influencing negotiations through their
ideas and expertise, and helping states with treaty implementation (Bier-
mann and Siebenhüner 2013: 149–152). The autonomous influence of the
international secretariats of IGOs and treaty regimes varies widely, as it
does with all bureaucracies. A major study of environmental bureaucracies
has found that the type of problem is a key factor; people and procedures
are two other important factors (Campe 2009: 149–152).
International courts are distinctive forms of international organization but
are not necessarily seen as IGOs. They have proliferated in recent years, with
the creation of nineteen since 1990, creating what one scholar refers to as the
“judicialization” of international relations and global governance (Alter 2013).
Their roles include dispute settlement, constitutional review, administrative
review, enforcement, and providing advisory opinions to the UN in the case of
the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Two courts—the Permanent Court
of Arbitration and the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment
Disputes in the World Bank system—are specifically arbitral bodies, that is,
cases are decided by arbitration panels. As with IGOs, there are debates
over whether international courts are agents of states or “trustees of the
law” with legal and political authority as well as autonomy. Many newer
courts provide access for nonstate actors, including NGOs.

Nongovernmental Organizations and Civil Society

Like IGOs, NGOs are key actors in global governance, playing a number of
roles. The growth of NGOs and NGO networks since the 1980s has been a
 Why Global Governance? 17

major factor in their increasing involvement in governance at all levels,

from global to local. Increasingly, global governance is marked by various
types of interactions between IGOs and NGOs.
NGOs are private voluntary organizations whose members are individ-
uals or associations that come together to achieve a common purpose. Some
are formed to advocate a particular cause, such as human rights, peace, or
environmental protection. Others are established to provide services such as
disaster relief, humanitarian aid in war-torn societies, or development assis-
tance. Some are in reality government-organized groups (dubbed GONGOs).
Scholars and analysts distinguish between not-for-profit groups (the vast
majority) and for-profit corporations; it is also common to treat terrorist,
criminal, and drug trafficking groups—the bad side of nonstate actors—
separately, as discussed in Chapter 6.
NGOs along with civil society groups are increasingly active today at
all levels of human society and governance, from local or grassroots com-
munities to national and international politics. Many national-level groups,
often called interest or pressure groups, are now linked to counterpart
groups in other countries through networks or federations. International
nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), like IGOs, may draw their mem-
bers from more than one country, and they may have very specific functions
or be multifunctional. The big INGOs, along with transnational advocacy
networks (TANs) such as the Coalition to Ban Landmines, that bring
together many smaller groups are among the most visible NGO actors in
global governance. Their roles have been particularly important in expand-
ing human rights and humanitarian and environmental law.
The estimates of numbers of NGOs vary enormously, although the
majority—millions—are national-based organizations. In 2020, the UN rec-
ognized over 22,000 international NGOs with an international dimension in
terms of membership or commitment to conduct activities in several states.
Of those, more than 4,000 enjoy a consultative status within the UN. Many
large INGOs are transnational federations involving formal, long-term links
among national groups. Examples include the International Federation of
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières
(Doctors Without Borders), the World Wildlife Fund, Transparency Interna-
tional (the leading NGO fighting corruption worldwide), Human Rights
Watch, and Amnesty International. The Union of International Associations
(UIA) based in Brussels maintains the most comprehensive directory of all
IOs, both NGOs and IGOs.
Most of the thousands of grassroots groups in countries around the world
are not part of formal networks but may have informal links to large interna-
tional human rights and development NGOs like Human Rights Watch and
CARE, from which they obtain funding for local programs or training assis-
tance. The links between grassroots groups and INGOs are key to activities
such as promoting population control, women’s empowerment, healthcare,
18 International Organizations

respect for human rights, and environmental protection. Because these rela-
tionships often involve large, Northern-dominated NGOs and Southern grass-
roots groups, there is a concern about the dependence they foster. Since the
early 1990s, the internet, e-mail, fax, and various forms of social media have
been valuable tools for NGO mobilization and autonomy, enabling them to
access areas that governments and IGOs may be slow to reach.
NGOs are key sources of information and technical expertise on a wide
variety of international issues, from the environment to human rights and
corruption. They are frequently key actors in raising awareness of and help-
ing frame issues. Thus, landmines came to be seen as a humanitarian rather
than an arms control issue, for example (Thakur and Maley 1999). They
lobby for policy changes by states, IGOs, and corporations; along with civil
society groups, they mount mass demonstrations around major international
meetings such as the 2021 UN conference on climate change in Glasgow.
They contribute to international adjudication by submitting friend-of-the-
court briefs to international criminal tribunals, such as those for the former
Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and to trade and investment tribunals. Many
NGOs have participated at least indirectly in UN-sponsored global confer-
ences and international negotiations, raising issues and submitting docu-
ments. In some cases, they have contributed treaty language, such as with
the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (1996) and the Rome Statute
of the International Criminal Court (2002). They also play important roles
in monitoring states’ and corporations’ implementation of human rights
norms and environmental regulations.
We explore the diversity and global governance activities of NGOs and
other nonstate actors in Chapter 6, as well as in the issue chapters.

Experts and Epistemic Communities

In a world whose problems seem to grow steadily more complex, knowl-
edge and expertise are critical to governance efforts. There is a need to
understand the science behind environmental problems such as climate
change, ozone depletion, and declining fish stocks as a basis for consider-
ing policy options. Cost-effective alternatives must be developed for fuels
that emit carbon dioxide if there is to be political support for making policy
changes and new rules. Thus, experts from governmental agencies, research
institutes, private industries, and universities around the world have increas-
ingly been drawn into international efforts to deal with various issues. For
example, in the UN’s early years, statisticians and economists developed the
System of National Accounts, which provides the basis for standardizing
how countries calculate GDP and other core statistics that serve as a means
of measuring economic performance (Jolly, Emmerij, and Weiss 2009: 42).
The technical committees of the International Organization for Standardiza-
tion (ISO), for example, are entirely composed of experts. Often experts
 Why Global Governance? 19

may be part of transnational networks and participate in international confer-

ences and negotiations, laying out the state of scientific knowledge, framing
issues for debate, and proposing possible solutions. Since 1988, hundreds of
scientists from around the world have participated on the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, whose policy-neutral reports have provided key
inputs for global climate change negotiations and sought to raise awareness
of the rapid climate-related changes taking place and their likely future
effects. Chapter 10 elaborates more on other examples of expert groups and
networks in environmental politics—knowledge-based actors that scholars
often refer to as “epistemic communities.”

Networks and Partnerships

Networks have become ubiquitous since the 1970s, when Robert Keohane
and Joseph Nye (1971) first pointed out the importance of regular interac-
tions of governmental and nongovernmental actors across national bound-
aries. Subsequently, other scholars have explored the existence of various
types of networks, and their power, roles, and policy inputs. For example,
Anne-Marie Slaughter (2004) examined the importance of transgovernmen-
tal networks of police, judges, regulators, finance ministers, and legislators
as central actors in many forms of global governance. Some scholars have
focused primarily on networks and information sharing; others were
focused on enforcement, such as with environmental regulations; and still
others have looked at how networks have solved problems related to har-
monization of regulations. Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (1998),
among others, have looked at TANs.
Analytically, networks can be examined as both actors and structures. As
actors, they may be defined as an organizational form consciously created by
any set of actors that pursue “repeated, enduring exchange relations with one
another . . . [yet] lack a legitimate organization authority to arbitrate and
resolve disputes that may arise during the exchange” (quoted in Kahler 2009:
5). Networks are distinguished by their voluntary nature, the central role of
information and learning, their ability to generate trust among participants,
and their lack of hierarchy (Sikkink 2009: 230). Networks’ success depends
on their ability to promote and sustain collective action, add new members,
and adapt. Their effectiveness will also vary by issue area, their “centrality”
to an issue, and the politics of a given issue, as Charli Carpenter’s work
(2014) on “lost causes” has shown. As noted previously, TANs are a particu-
lar form of network active in global governance, for example, in setting and
monitoring human rights standards. Illicit networks such as transnational
criminal organizations are targets of governance efforts to control money
laundering and other illegal activities; whereas transgovernmental networks
allow government officials to share regulatory approaches, provide technical
assistance, and harmonize approaches to problems.
20 International Organizations

Partnerships—particularly what are called public–private partnerships

(PPPs) such as those between various UN agencies and private foundations
or corporations—have also become increasingly common as actors and par-
ticularly as forms of global governance that Liliana Andonova (2017: 6)
describes as “a specific new organizational form” transforming multilateral-
ism in the twenty-first century. They bring together expertise and resources,
combining the public mandates of IGOs with the market or norm-based
steering mechanisms in what she sees as qualitatively different arrangements
between states and NSAs. PPPs resemble networks in that they are voluntary
arrangements and offer greater flexibility than legalized arrangements, can
change rapidly, and are also not without problems. Some, such as the UN
Global Compact and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and
Malaria have their own secretariats. Catia Gregoratti (2014: 311) notes how
partnerships between the UN and businesses have “refashioned not only
ideas of how development should be achieved and who should deliver it but
also the institutional architecture of the UN itself.” Partnerships involving
UN agencies and private corporations and foundations and have become
widespread in areas of development, health, women, and children. Their
functions range from advocacy, policy development, developing standards of
conduct, and business development to providing information, funding,
goods, and services. With the UN’s 2015 adoption of the Sustainable Devel-
opment Goals, a variety of multistakeholder partnerships have been formed
to carry out the ambitious agenda (Beisheim and Simon 2018). See Chapters
8 and 11 for further discussion of partnerships.

Multinational Corporations
Multinational corporations or MNCs are a particular form of NSA organ-
ized to conduct for-profit business transactions and operations across the
borders of three or more states. They are companies based in one state with
affiliated branches or subsidiaries and activities in other states and can take
many different forms, from Levi’s subcontracting jean production to
Nepalese factories to Royal Dutch Shell’s operations in Nigeria and Gold-
man Sachs’s global operations. By choosing where to invest (or not to
invest), MNCs shape the economic development opportunities of commu-
nities, countries, and entire regions such as Africa, where for a long time
foreign investment lagged behind that of other regions.
Since the 1970s, MNCs have “profoundly altered the structure and
functioning of the global economy” (Gilpin 2001: 290). They control
resources far greater than those of many states and have taken an active and
often direct role in influencing international environmental decisionmaking
(Biermann and Pattberg 2012: 8). Globalization of markets and production
in industries such as banking and automobiles has challenged corporate
leaders and managers to govern these complex structures and posed prob-
 Why Global Governance? 21

lems for states and local governments losing their connection to and control
of these larger corporate networks. Corporate choices about investment
have also changed the landscape of development assistance. Far more fund-
ing for development today comes from private investment capital than from
bilateral, government-to-government aid, or from multilateral aid through
the UN and other IGOs.
In short, MNCs are important global governance actors. Today they
number more than 60,000 depending on one’s definition. They are involved
in 50 percent of the world’s trade and represent about 40 percent of the
value in Western stock markets. About 10 percent of the largest MNCs gen-
erate 80 percent of the world’s total profits. In 2020, the Fortune Global
500 list showed that for the first time China had the largest number with
124 MNCs, while the United States was home to 121 (Kennedy 2020).
Given the economic power of MNCs, it is not surprising that their activities
have long raised questions. How can they best be regulated—through new
forms of international rules or codes of conduct, or through private, indus-
try-developed mechanisms? How can they be mobilized for economic
development in collaboration with international agencies and NGOs? How
can less developed countries be assured that powerful MNCs will not inter-
fere in their domestic affairs, challenge their sovereignty, destroy their
resources and environment, and relegate them to permanent dependency?
MNCs are particularly important actors in addressing trade, labor, and envi-
ronmental issues such as ozone depletion and climate change. It was in
recognition of the need to regulate corporate behavior and engage MNCs as
positive contributors to global governance that UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan initiated the UN Global Compact on Corporate Responsibility in
1999, which now encompasses more than 21,000 companies in more than
160 countries, an innovation that is discussed further in Chapter 8.

* * *

The various actors in global governance cannot be analyzed in isolation

from one another. They play varying roles, with different degrees of power,
authority, and effectiveness. Sometimes, they compete for scarce resources,
international standing, and legitimacy. At other times, their activities comple-
ment one another. Increasingly, they are linked in complex networks and part-
nerships. Subsequent chapters explore these roles and relationships further.

Processes of Global Governance: Multilateralism Matters

Understanding the nature of multilateral diplomacy is essential to under-
standing how IGOs and informal groupings of states function, how nonstate
actors have become involved in governance processes, and how different
22 International Organizations

kinds of outcomes come about. Yet the practice of multilateral diplomacy

has deep historical roots, as examined in Chapter 3. What matters here is
that the Latin American states with support from the United States played
key roles in expanding the scope of who could participate, gaining recogni-
tion of the equal status and votes of states large and small, and creating a
norm of universal participation based on sovereign equality. They were also
instrumental in introducing practices of voting, majority rule, regular meet-
ings, and a secretariat to support them, which were all drawn from their
experience with a series of inter-American conferences in the late nine-
teenth century (Finnemore and Jurkovich 2014).
Multilateralism generally refers to a group of states coordinating their
relations according to certain principles, with the expectation that each will
benefit in the long run (Ruggie 1993). For example, the principle of nondis-
crimination governing the global trade system’s most favored nation princi-
ple prohibits countries from discriminating against imports from other
countries that produce the same product. In collective security arrange-
ments, participants must respond to an attack on one country as if it were
an attack on all. The process is one which in the words of Vincent Pouliot
(2011: 19) involves an “inclusive, institutionalized and principled form of
political dialogue” with inherent benefits. It is critical to global governance
because it is how “things get done. Thus, it is not just the number and type
of parties that matters. It is also the rules of conduct, openness of debate,
and greater legitimacy that come from having more participants, including
small states, marginalized groups, and all types of actors that can “help mit-
igate the discriminatory exercise of arbitrary power” (Pouliot 2011: 20).
From his perspective, multilateralism is “a functional imperative” because
of the transnational nature of contemporary problems and hence needs to
include a “host” of actors.
The question whether the practice of multilateralism is linked with US
hegemony after World War II is contentious. John Ruggie (1982), for one, has
suggested that it is, while Amitav Acharya (2014: 54) suggests that weaker
states have used multilateral approaches that are suited to their specific goals
and identities and, in the process, either excluded stronger powers or social-
ized them into locally developed norms. It is noteworthy that China under
President Xi Jinping has become a major proponent of multilateralism.
What makes multilateralism in the twenty-first century different from
multilateralism in the nineteenth century and at the end of World War II is
its complexity, numbers of participants, and diversity of voices. There are
now literally scores of participants. States alone have almost quadrupled in
number since 1945. The first sessions of the UN General Assembly now
look like cozy, intimate gatherings. Other types of actors add to the com-
plexity, as do various coalitions of states. As one observer notes: “Large
numbers . . . introduce a qualitatively different kind of diplomacy in inter-
 Why Global Governance? 23

national politics. The hallmark of this diplomacy is that it occurs between

groups or coalitions of state actors” (Hampson 1995: 4). In addition, a cen-
tral issue for many IGOs today is how to do a better job of incorporating
NGOs, civil society groups, and other NSAs into processes of global gov-
erning, since “securing agreement of government officials is not enough to
permit the smooth running of these institutions” (O’Brien et al. 2000:
208). Diplomats—the representatives of states—need to engage in “net-
work diplomacy” with this variety of players, not just with fellow diplo-
mats, with diplomacy becoming an exercise in “complexity management”
(Heine 2013: 62).
Greater numbers of players (and coalitions of players) mean multiple
interests, with multiple rules, issues, and hierarchies that are constantly in
flux. These all complicate the processes of multilateral diplomacy and
negotiation—of finding common ground for reaching agreements on collec-
tive action, norms, or rules. Managing complexity has become a key chal-
lenge for diplomats and other participants in multilateral settings. For
example, UN-sponsored conferences such as the 2021 Glasgow conference
(discussed further in Chapter 10) have several thousand delegates from 193
member countries, speaking through interpreters in English, French, Russian,
Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic. Hundreds of NGOs and numerous private citi-
zens are interested in what happens and are active around the official sessions,
trying to influence delegates.
Although the universe of multilateral diplomacy is complex, there is
actually a high degree of similarity in the structures of most IGOs and in the
types of decisionmaking processes used. We look here at key patterns in how
decisions get made in multilateral bodies including IGOs.

How Do Decisions Get Made?

Historically, because IGOs are created by states, the principle of sovereign
equality has dictated one-state, one-vote decisionmaking. Indeed, until well
into the twentieth century, all decisions had to be unanimous, as states
would not accept the concept of majority decisionmaking. This is often
cited as one of the sources of failure for the League of Nations.
An alternative principle accords greater weight to some states on the
basis of population or wealth and results in weighted or qualified voting. In
the IMF and World Bank, for example, votes are weighted according to
financial contribution. In the EU’s Council of Ministers, qualified majority
voting applies to issues where the EU has supranational authority over
member states. The number of votes for each state is based on population;
the number of votes required to pass legislation ensures that the largest
states must have support of some smaller states; and neither the smaller
states alone nor fewer than three large states can block action. Another form
of qualified majority voting prevails in the UN Security Council, where the
24 International Organizations

five permanent members each have a veto and all must concur (or not
object) for decisions to be made.
Since the 1980s, much of the decisionmaking in the UN General
Assembly, Security Council, and other bodies, as well as in global confer-
ences, the WTO, and many other multilateral settings has taken the form of
consensus that does not require unanimity. It depends on states deciding not
to block action, and it often means that outcomes represent the least com-
mon denominator—that is, more general wording and fewer tough demands
on states to act. “Pressure toward consensus,” Courtney Smith (1999: 173)
notes, “now dominates almost all multilateral efforts at global problem
solving.” Key variables in achieving consensus among multiple actors with
diverse interests are leadership; small, formal negotiating groups; issue
characteristics (including issue salience to different actors); various actor
attributes such as economic or military power or ability to serve as brokers;
the amount and quality of informal contacts among actors; and personal
attributes of participants such as intelligence, tolerance, patience, reputa-
tion, negotiating skills, creativity, and linguistic versatility. Let us look
briefly at two of these: leadership and actor strategies.

Leadership
Leadership in multilateral diplomacy can come from diverse sources: pow-
erful and not-so-powerful states, a coalition of states, an NGO or coalition
of NGOs, a skillful individual diplomat, or an IGO bureaucrat. Leadership
can involve framing an issue in a way that garners strong support for action
or coming up with a compromise that secures agreement on a new interna-
tional trade agreement; it may involve the skill of negotiating a treaty text
acceptable to industry, NGOs, and key governments. It may be the efforts
of a coalition of NGOs and college students publicizing an issue such as
sweatshops and pressuring companies to change their behavior. It may
involve a government’s (or any other actor’s) willingness to act first—to
commit monetary resources to a program or military forces for enforce-
ment, change trade laws, or commit to significant carbon dioxide emissions
reductions, as Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping did ahead of the
2015 UN climate change conference in Paris. Leadership in multilateral
diplomacy can also come from a prominent official such as the UNSG or
the UN Environment Programme’s executive director who prods various
actors to do something.
Increasingly, we see women among the leaders in global governance in
senior official positions in governments and IGOs and as permanent repre-
sentatives of their countries in the UN and other IGOs, but it has taken a
major push for gender equality in IGOs and countries for this to occur.
Although the numbers of women in official leadership positions have cer-
tainly increased, they remain relatively small but are complemented by
 Why Global Governance? 25

women exercising leadership through NGOs and social movements on var-

ious issues (Haack and Karns 2023).
Historically, the United States provided much of the leadership for
multilateralism after World War II, using its position as the dominant, hege-
monic power to shape the structure of the system, including establishing
many IGOs, such as the UN, the Bretton Woods institutions, the Interna-
tional Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the liberal international trade
regime centered first in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and
later in the WTO. This enabled the United States to use IGOs as instruments
of its national policies and to create institutions and rules compatible with its
interests and values. The wisdom of this approach as then–US Senator
Barack Obama put it in 2007 was to recognize that “instead of constraining
our power, these institutions magnified it” (Obama 2007).
As geopolitical shifts are taking place, the United States has found
itself stretched thin and less willing and able to lead at the same time. As a
result, Bruce Jentleson (2012: 141) notes, “there is much less deference to
US preferences and privileges.” Now, even more than in the past, leader-
ship in global governance may come from disparate sources, including
NSAs, or be absent altogether. Increasingly, China has sought to place its
officials in senior IGO positions, as noted earlier. It has also worked to
reframe established liberal norms on security and development particularly
with regard to peacekeeping and peacebuilding, shifting as one scholar
describes from being a “norms taker” to a “norms maker” (Alden and Large
2015). One measure of Russia’s loss of influence and potential for leader-
ship following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine was the failure of its candidate
for the governing board of the International Civil Aviation Organization to
gain enough votes for reelection. Likewise, there are increasing challenges
to the “lock” other major powers have long had on certain posts such as the
United States has, for example, on the World Bank presidency. In an
encouraging sign of greater diversity, in 2023, African women held a num-
ber of senior posts, including the executive directorships of the WTO, the
UN Fund for Population Activities, and the UN Global Compact, and Deputy
Secretary-General of the UN.

Actor Strategies
The nature of multilateral arenas means that actors cannot just present their
individual positions on an issue and then sit down. Delegates must actively
engage in efforts to discern the flexibility or rigidity of others’ positions on
particular issues. They must build personal relationships to establish the
trust that is essential to working together. Some states, NGOs, and other
actors will take a stronger interest in particular topics than others; some
will come with specific proposals, push to get them on the agenda and then
work to mobilize support; some will be represented by individuals with
26 International Organizations

greater expertise than others on a topic or more skill in drafting compro-

mise language; some will be represented by people with little or no experi-
ence in multilateral diplomacy while others have long experience and great
skill in negotiating across cultures, which is an inherent part of multilateral
diplomacy. Some actors’ positions will matter more than those of others,
because of their relative power in the international system, in a specific
region, or on a particular issue. The face-to-face interactions of the individ-
uals representing participating states (and groups) are what caucusing is all
about, even in an age of online communication. It may take place at the
back of the UN General Assembly, in the delegates’ dining room, at diplo-
matic receptions, in the restrooms, or in the corridors surrounding the official
meeting place. In short, those actors that pursue well-thought-out strategies
for taking advantage of multilateral arenas and diplomacy are more likely
to be successful in securing their aims.
One actor strategy that is a hallmark of multilateral diplomacy is the
formation of groups or coalitions of states. States can pool their votes,
power, and resources to try to obtain a better outcome than they might by
going it alone. Early in the UN’s history, for example, regional groups
formed to elect nonpermanent members of the Security Council and other
bodies. The Cold War produced competing groups under the leadership of
the Soviet Union and United States, plus the Non-Aligned Movement. Latin
American, African, and Asian states formed the G-77 in 1964 to promote
their shared interests as developing countries. In short, group diplomacy is
pervasive throughout much of the UN system and in regional organizations
and the WTO. Coalitions and groups are discussed further in Chapter 4.
Group members must negotiate among themselves to agree on a com-
mon position, maintain cohesion, prevent defections to rival coalitions, and
choose representatives to bargain on their behalf. Small states or middle
powers often play key roles in bridging the positions of different groups of
states. For example, during the Uruguay Round of international trade nego-
tiations in the early 1990s, a group of countries called the Cairns Group, led
by Canada, Australia, and Argentina, helped resolve sharp disagreements
between the United States and the EU over agricultural trade. A variation
on coalition building, especially for nonstate actors, as discussed earlier, is
the creation of networks to expand their reach and link various groups with
shared concerns and awareness that common goals cannot be achieved on
their own. Networking has been used extensively by TANs for a variety of
issues and problems, from promoting the rights of women and stopping the
construction of large dams to addressing the governance challenges of
HIV/AIDS.
The proliferation of international forums means that states and nonstate
actors can often “shop” for the forum best suited to take an issue. Although
some issues logically belong only within the relevant specialized IGO, the
 Why Global Governance? 27

increasing interrelatedness of many issues makes the neat compartmental-

ization of these IGOs often outdated. For example, a labor issue could be
raised in the International Labour Organization, the WTO, or the EU.
Health issues could be raised in the WHO, the World Bank, the UN Joint
Programme on HIV/AIDS, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Despite consensus
that African states should resolve regional conflicts in an African organiza-
tion, such as the AU or the Economic Community of West African States,
some African states have preferred to take disputes to the UN, where they
hope to gain more support for their cause.
In reality, actor strategies in global governance bear strong resem-
blance to common governance and policymaking actions. These include
framing an issue, agenda-setting, advocacy, and mobilizing support through
coalition-building. There are rich global governance-related literatures on
each of these topics that illumine the variety of actors in global governance
and the roles they play in various institutions and processes through which
some issues get attention and action and some do not, some policy options
get on the table and some do not. They show how different governance
problems are defined and potential solutions are identified and how support
for and against issues and potential solutions are mobilized. For example,
some of this work has been inspired by Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) book on
transnational advocacy networks followed more recently by Carpenter’s
(2014; Carpenter et al. 2014) work on advocacy, agenda-setting, gatekeep-
ers, issue adoption, and lost causes. Examining these actor strategies in
global governance means thinking about it in terms of policy processes, not
institutional structures or elements of governance, such as law, rules,
norms, and programs, important as these are. We discuss these processes
further in Chapter 6.

The Varieties of Global Governance

Global governance encompasses a variety of cooperative problem-solving
arrangements and activities that states and other actors undertake in an
effort to resolve conflicts, serve common purposes, and overcome ineffi-
ciencies in situations of interdependent choice. These forms include a wide
variety of international organizations (IOs), both IGOs and NGOs; less for-
mal groupings of states such as various “Gs”, clubs, and friends groups;
international rules, regulations, standards, and laws, as well as norms or
“soft law”; international regimes in which the rules, norms, and structures
in a specific issue area are linked together; ad hoc arrangements and con-
ferences; private governance arrangements; and public–private partnerships
such as the UN Global Compact and Partnerships for Sustainable Develop-
ment (see Figure 1.3). The varieties have proliferated, complicating efforts
28 International Organizations

to create neat categories. Where scholars in the past identified international

regimes governing issues such as nuclear nonproliferation, now there are a
number of “regime complexes,” that is, “networks of three or more interna-
tional regimes that relate to a common subject matter” such as food security
(Orsini, Morin, and Young 2013: 29). Let us look briefly at these varieties
of global governance.

Key Structures and Mechanisms: IGOs

IGOs provide the central core of formal multilateral machinery that consti-
tutes the “architecture of global governance” (Cooper and Thakur 2014:
265). Since the late nineteenth century , more and more IGOs have been
created to perform more and more tasks. They serve many functions,
including collecting information and monitoring trends (as in the case of
the UNEP), delivering services and aid (UNHCR), and providing forums
for intergovernmental bargaining (the EU) and adjudicating disputes (the
ICJ and other courts). They have helped states form stable habits of coop-
eration through regular meetings, information-gathering and analysis, and
dispute settlement, as well as operational activities (see Figure 1.4). They
enhance individual and collective welfare. They have provided modes of
governance in the evolution of the world economy since 1850 (Murphy
1994). They also “construct the social world in which cooperation and
choice take place” and “help define the interests that states and other
actors come to hold” (Barnett and Finnemore 2005: 162). A further func-
tion of IGOs and particularly of the
UN has been the development of key
Figure 1.3 ideas and concepts about security
Varieties of Global Governance (e.g., the concept of human security)
• International structures and and economic and social develop-
mechanisms (formal and informal) ment (human and sustainable devel-
IGOs: global, regional, other; NGOs; opment). As the authors of the final
networks, and partnerships
volume of the United Nations Intel-
• International rules and laws,
multilateral agreements; customary
lectual History Project conclude, ideas
practices; judicial decisions, are among the most significant con-
regulatory standards tributions the UN has made to the
• International norms or “soft law;” world and to human progress. The
framework agreements; select UN has generated ideas, provided a
UN resolutions
forum for debate, given ideas legiti-
• International regimes and regime
complexes macy, promoted their adoption for
• Ad hoc groups, arrangements, and policy, generated resources for imple-
global conferences menting and monitoring progress,
• Private and hybrid public–private and sometimes even buried ideas
governance (Jolly, Emmerij, and Weiss 2009:
34–35).
 Why Global Governance? 29

How IGOs serve their various

functions varies across organizations. Figure 1.4
IOs differ in membership. They vary IGO Functions
by the scope of the subject and rules.
• Informational: gathering, analyzing,
They differ in the amount of resources and disseminating data
available and by level and degree of • Forum: providing place for
bureaucratization as well as in their exchange of views and
effectiveness. decisionmaking
Why do states join such organi- • Normative: defining standards
of behavior
zations? Why do they choose to act
• Rule creation: drafting legally
and cooperate through formal IGOs? binding treaties
Kenneth Abbott and Duncan Snidal • Rule supervision: monitoring
(1998: 4–5) suggest that IGOs “allow compliance with rules, adjudicating
for the centralization of collective disputes, taking enforcement
activities through a concrete and stable measures
• Operational: allocating resources,
organizational structure and a support-
providing technical assistance
ive administrative apparatus. These and relief, deploying forces
increase the efficiency of collective • Idea generation
activities and enhance the organiza-
tion’s ability to affect the understand-
ings, environment, and interests of states.” Thus, states join to participate in
a stable negotiating forum, permitting rapid reactions in times of crisis.
They join IGOs to negotiate and implement agreements that reflect their
own interests and those of the larger community. They participate to pro-
vide mechanisms for dispute resolution. They join to take advantage of cen-
tralized organization in implementing collective tasks. By participating,
they seek a voice in international debates on important issues as well as a
say on critical norms of behavior. They also frequently agree to delegate
program implementation to international bureaucrats. Yet states maintain
their sovereignty and varying degrees of independence of action.
IGOs not only create opportunities for their member states, they also
exercise influence and impose constraints on their member states’ policies
and processes. IGOs affect member states by setting international and
national agendas, forcing governments to take positions on issues. They
subject states’ behavior to surveillance through information-sharing and mon-
itoring such as the Universal Periodic Review process created by the UN
Human Rights Council in 2006 (discussed in Chapter 9). IGOs encourage
states to develop specialized decisionmaking and implementation processes
to facilitate and coordinate IGO participation. They embody or facilitate the
creation of principles, norms, and rules of behavior with which states must
align their policies if they wish to benefit from reciprocity. For example, as
described in Chapter 8, China’s admission to the WTO required extensive
governmental reforms.
30 International Organizations

Most countries perceive that there are benefits to participating in IGOs

even when it is costly. South Africa never withdrew from the UN over the
long years when it was repeatedly condemned for its policies of apartheid.
Iraq did not withdraw from the UN when it was subjected to more than a
decade of stringent sanctions. China spent fourteen years negotiating the
terms of its entry into the international trade system and undertaking
changes in laws and policies required to comply with WTO rules. Twelve
countries joined the EU between 2004 and 2007, despite the extensive and
costly changes required. The United States is one of the very few countries
that have withdrawn from IGOs to demonstrate their unhappiness with an
organization’s actions.
Although the earliest IGOs were established in the nineteenth century,
there was a veritable explosion of IGOs in the twentieth century, as dis-
cussed in Chapter 3. Since the 1960s, there has also been a growing phe-
nomenon of IGOs creating other IGOs. One study found that IGO birthrates
“correlate positively with the number of states in the international system,”
but found death rates of IGOs low (Cupitt, Whitlock, and Whitlock 1997:
16). A more recent study found that around 38 percent of IGOs have now
become so-called zombies—they continue to act but have made no progress
on achieving their mandates. Another 10 percent are essentially dead, exist-
ing in name but having no visible level of activity (Gray 2018).

NGOs
The governance functions of NGOs parallel many functions provided by
IGOs. In general, however, NGOs can be divided into service and advocacy
groups. The latter provide processes at many levels to pressure or persuade
individuals, governments, IGOs, corporations, and other actors to improve
human rights, protect the environment, tackle corruption, ban landmines, or
intervene in conflicts such as Syria’s civil war. The Geneva Conventions
delegate legal responsibility for humanitarian law to the International Com-
mittee of the Red Cross. Some IGOs, such as the ILO, the World Tourism
Organization, and the UN Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS, provide for
NGO roles in their governance. The Final Outcome of the 1992 UN Confer-
ence on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro recommended
that NGOs participate at all levels in implementation. As a result of global
trends to privatize activities previously controlled by governments, services
once provided by governments or IGOs are now often contracted out to
NGOs, which have also become critical partners for UN and other IGO pro-
grams, funds, and agencies in delivering disaster relief, running refugee
camps, administering development programs, delivering food aid to areas
of famine, and working to protect the environment. They are important
forms of global governance because of how they enable individuals to “act
publicly” (Kaldor 2003: 585). Likewise, their “voluntary, local, and issue-
 Why Global Governance? 31

specific character . . . [and the networks they create] make them a useful
link between the subnational community and national and international
communities and institutions” (Ku and Diehl 2006: 171). In this sense, they
function as transmission belts among multiple levels of governance.

Rule-Based Governance:
International Rules, Standards, and Law
The scope of what is generally known as public international law has
expanded tremendously since the 1960s. Although the Statute of the ICJ
recognizes five sources of international law (treaties or conventions, custom-
ary practice, the writings of legal scholars, judicial decisions, and general prin-
ciples of law), much of the growth has been in treaty law. At the conclusion of
the twentieth century, for example, there were a total of 82,000 publicized
international agreements, including the Vienna Convention on Treaties; con-
ventions on ozone, climate change, and whaling; law of the sea; humanitarian
law (the Geneva Conventions); human rights law; trade law; and intellectual
property law, as well as arms control agreements (Johnston 1997). By far the
largest number of new multilateral agreements deals with economic issues.
Treaty-based law is particularly valued, but customary practice persists as an
important source of new law, particularly because of the long time it takes to
negotiate and ratify agreements involving many states.
For purposes of global governance, one major limitation of public
international law is that it applies only to states, except for war crimes and
crimes against humanity. At present, only EU treaties can be used directly
to bind individuals, MNCs, NGOs, paramilitary forces, terrorists, or interna-
tional criminals. Treaties can, however, establish norms (sometimes referred
to as soft law) that states are expected to observe and, where possible,
enforce against NSAs.
Another problem in the eyes of many is the limited international
enforcement mechanisms and the role of self-interest in shaping states’
decisions about whether to accept treaties and other forms of international
rules. International law traditionally left it to states to use “self-help” to
secure compliance. Both the UN Charter and EU treaties provide enforce-
ment mechanisms, primarily in the form of sanctions, although the threat of
sanctions is not necessarily a strong motivator for states to comply with
international rules.
Even without enforcement mechanisms, as Louis Henkin (1979: 47)
concluded, “Almost all nations observe almost all principles of international
law and almost all of their obligations almost all of the time.” What
explains this mostly compliant behavior? Legal experts cite different fac-
tors: coincidence with national interest and basic efficiency (Chayes and
Chayes 1995), the value of preserving one’s reputation for law-abiding
behavior (Brewster 2013), and the value of the benefits of reciprocity. Peer
32 International Organizations

pressure and persuasion from other states and domestic or transnational

pressures from NGOs may also induce compliance (Ratner 2013).
Yet not all states comply with all international law. Noncompliance can
be explained by the ambiguity of treaty language, for example (Chayes and
Chayes 1995). For weaker and developing countries, failure to comply can
be a consequence of inadequate local expertise, resources, or governmental
capacity to do what is required for compliance. In many states, domestic
politics may play a major role in determining their willingness or ability to
comply with international law. That has certainly been a major factor for
the United States in the failure of the Senate to ratify a number of treaties.
Yet as Jana von Stein (2013) has noted, noncompliance is a spectrum not a
dichotomy. And, as Beth Simmons (2009) has shown, compliance with
international human rights treaties largely depends on the citizens of states
since they have the most incentive to hold their governments to human
rights commitments through domestic mechanisms. She also emphasizes
that actual improvements in human rights are more important than techni-
cal, legal compliance with treaties.
Global and regional organizations incorporate different levels of legal
commitments. The EU has its own legal system that lies between traditional
national legal systems and international law, with the Court of Justice of the
EU to interpret it and enforce judgments against member states. EU law is
discussed more in Chapter 5, as the EU has a high level of legal obligation
or legalization, relatively high levels of precision (rules tend to be clearly
defined), and high levels of delegation (authority granted to third parties for
implementation). Because of this, the EU has played a key role in setting
legal standards across a variety of issue areas that are followed not only in
the EU but around the world (Bradford 2020). Other IGOs and regional
integration arrangements lie between the extremes of legalization, where
actors combine and invoke varying degrees of obligation, precision, and
delegation to create varying blends of politics and law (Abbott et al. 2000).
Beyond public international law and EU law is a wide range of interna-
tional standard-setting and rulemaking, both public and private, that forms
an important part of global governance. States, corporations, and standards-
setting bodies such as the International Organization for Standardization,
which is itself a network of standards-setting bodies and discussed further
in Chapter 3, all contribute. In other examples, the WHO manages the Inter-
national Health Regulations and the Food and Agriculture Organization
oversees the Codex Alimentarius, both of which are sources of rules and
standards. Even the UN Security Council contributes through its rulemaking
on antiterrorism and nuclear nonproliferation.
The largest number of these rules and standards are outputs of private
sector bodies that create international product standards on everything from
the strength of steel and the specifications that enable nuts and bolts to con-
 Why Global Governance? 33

nect to the dimensions of cargo containers. Clearly, the major impetus for set-
ting and complying with these standards are economics and market access for
private companies (Büthe and Mattli 2011; Gadinis 2015). Since the creation
of the WTO in 1995, an added stimulus has come from the WTO Agreement
on Technical Barriers to Trade and the obligations of all WTO members to
use international standards as the technical basis for domestic laws and reg-
ulations. Also important are what one scholar has called “informal rules”
(Tieku 2019) and what others would call soft law or norms.

International Norms or “Soft Law”

Since the late 1980s, scholars have increasingly recognized the importance
of norms as another variety of global governance. Norms are shared expec-
tations or understandings regarding standards of appropriate behavior for
various actors, particularly states. They range from the norm that states are
obligated to carry out treaties they ratify (pacta sunt servanda) to the
expectation that combatants will not target civilians. Norms vary in strength
and determining whether one exists involves ascertaining whether states
perceive that a certain practice is obligatory or expected. Some norms are
so internalized in states that they are difficult to recognize unless a viola-
tion occurs. Still others are weak, contested, or “emerging.” The importance
of norms has emerged from early work on human rights and humanitarian
norms, chemical and nuclear weapons taboos, and the “polluter pays” prin-
ciple with regard to the environment. It was the work of Martha Finnemore
and Kathryn Sikkink (1998) that first explored how norms emerge and
spread through their articulation of the concepts of “norm life cycles” and
“norm cascades,” as well as “norm entrepreneurs” and “norm internaliza-
tion.” For Acharya (2004, 2014) norms take on a regional character, explor-
ing the question of why some transnational ideas and norms find more
acceptance in some locales than in others, providing important insights on
norm diffusion. Two points bear emphasizing: first, norms are works in
progress that can encompass different meanings and reflect power relations;
second, how norms are framed can be critically important to whether and
how they take hold and spread, how they are adopted in different parts of
the world, how much they matter, and whether they erode over time.
Many norms are incorporated into international legal conventions and
referred to as soft law. Examples include human rights and labor rights
norms, the concept of the global commons applied to the high seas, outer
space, and polar regions, and the concept of sustainable development. The
debate over the status of the concept of “responsibility to protect” as a
norm is discussed in Chapter 7. Other forms of soft law include codes of
conduct, world conference declarations, and certain UN resolutions such as
the 1970 General Assembly Resolution 2749 that recognized the high seas,
outer space, and polar regions as forming the common heritage of mankind.
34 International Organizations

In environmental law, we can see the evolution of norms, soft law, and
law over time. An initial framework convention often sets forth norms and
principles that states agree on, but no concrete actions are mentioned. As
scientific understanding of the problem improves, the political environment
changes, and technology provides new possible solutions leading states,
key corporations, and other interested actors may agree on specific, binding
steps to be taken. Protocols are used to supplement the initial framework
convention and form the “hard” law. Negotiations often follow to make
explicit that hard law establishing state obligations to take urgently needed
action to reduce emissions. Soft law is easier to negotiate and more flexi-
ble, and it leaves open the possibility of negotiating hard law in the future.
Soft law can also be a means of linking international law to private entities,
including individuals and MNCs, such as through codes of practice of cor-
porate social responsibility.

International Regimes and Regime Complexes

Since the 1980s, scholars have used the concept of international regimes to
understand governance where principles, norms, rules, and decisionmaking
procedures are linked in a particular issue area. Where international regimes
exist, such as for nuclear weapons proliferation, whaling, health, and food
aid, participating states and other international actors recognize the existence
of certain obligations and feel compelled to honor them. Because this is
“governance without government,” they comply based on an acceptance of
the legitimacy of the rules and underlying norms and the validity of the deci-
sionmaking procedures. They expect other states and actors also to comply
and use relevant dispute settlement procedures to resolve conflicts.
International regimes encompass rules and norms, as well as the prac-
tices of actors that show how their expectations converge and their accept-
ance of and compliance with rules. IGO decisionmaking procedures, bureau-
cracies, budgets, headquarters, and legal personality may be part of a given
issue area, but individual IGOs, by themselves, do not constitute a regime.
Some issues, such as nuclear accidents that trigger widespread nuclear fall-
out (e.g., the 1986 Chernobyl disaster), do not need a formal organization
that functions regardless of whether there is an accident. Ad hoc arrange-
ments for decisionmaking and taking action when an accident occurs can be
coupled with existing rules and norms. The regime for nuclear weapons pro-
liferation, however, includes the inspection machinery and safeguard sys-
tems of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the export controls of the
Nuclear Suppliers Group, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (which is observed even though it is not yet
fully in effect), the UN Security Council’s enforcement powers, and the
IAEA’s technical assistance programs to non–nuclear weapon countries for
developing peaceful uses of nuclear energy. In issue areas where regimes
exist, they constitute the core global governance.
 Why Global Governance? 35

Scholars have also identified a number of what are called “regime com-
plexes.” These are defined as “an array of partially overlapping and nonhier-
archical institutions governing a particular issue area” (Raustiala and Victor
2004: 278–279). The complexity arises from the lack of hierarchy and over-
laps in membership, mandates, and rules, which can lead to uncertainty about
which rules and interpretations of rules prevail and the potential for decisions
in one body to undermine or influence decisions in another (Alter and Raus-
tiala 2018). It can create opportunities for forum shopping, that is, for states
to seek the forum likely to be most favorable to their preferences and for con-
flicts over interpretations of rules and competing authority claims.
The global refugee regime complex, explored further in Chapter 11, is
one example. Its elemental regimes include the refugee regime centered
around the UNHCR, the human rights regime centered around the interna-
tional human rights conventions and the UN Office of the High Commis-
sioner for Human Rights, the humanitarian regime that includes the UN
Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the labor migration
regime based on International Labour Organization conventions. Because of
the complexity, what becomes problematic is not only that elemental regimes
overlap, but as Betts (2013) notes, relevant actors are in different agencies
that have different mandates, memberships, decisionmaking processes, and
dynamics with different sources of authority. Other examples include the
food security, maritime piracy, and international forest regime complexes.
The value of the regime complex concept is that it captures the reality
that “Global problems increasingly overlap and intersect. As new problems
emerge on the international agenda, they often are fit into preexisting insti-
tutions and agreements”; these arrangements “rarely occur on a blank slate”
(Alter and Raustiala 2018: 337). A regime complex is often an almost
inevitable result of broader international relations trends: the density of
international agreements and international organizations; the ease of creat-
ing something new instead of reforming something that already exists; the
inevitability of shifts in power and preferences as well as the emergence of
new problems, demands for greater representation, and some degree of con-
fusion. Indeed, regime complexity makes it harder to understand the global
governance of some issues and requires more than just mapping a complex
to discover how institutions and outcomes have evolved, how states and
other actors have adapted their strategies given the complexity, and who
have been winners and losers.

Groups and Global Conferences

As multilateralism has become the dominant practice in international affairs,
other less formal forms of global governance have emerged—some more insti-
tutionalized than others. These include various intergovernmental arrange-
ments and groups that lack the legal formality of charters or treaties such as
UN-sponsored global conferences, panels, forums, and commissions.
36 International Organizations

The first of the Gs was the G-77, formed by developing countries of

Africa, Asia, and Latin America in 1964 in conjunction with the establish-
ment of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. For
many years, it operated as a unified bloc constituting more than two-thirds
of the UN’s membership. It is still active today, but less cohesive, as mem-
ber country interests have diverged.
The Group of Seven (G-7) began in the mid-1970s when summit meet-
ings of governmental leaders were not yet common practice and major
changes in international economic relations suggested the value of periodic,
informal gatherings. These later evolved into a regular arrangement, includ-
ing annual summits, but not a formal IGO. The G-7’s agenda grew well
beyond macroeconomic policy coordination, as discussed further in Chap-
ter 8. From 1992 to 2014, Russia joined the group for noneconomic discus-
sions, thus creating the Group of Eight (G-8), which dealt with issues sur-
rounding the Cold War’s end, the rising threat of terrorism, and so on. That
ended with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
In 1999, the Group of 20 (G-20) was created as a forum for economic
policy discussions among the finance ministers and central bank governors
of advanced and emerging market countries. It includes nineteen states and
the EU, with the World Bank and IMF participating on an ex officio basis.
Today, the G-20 members represent 90 percent of world GDP, 80 percent of
world trade, and two-thirds of world population. Little known until the
2008–2009 global financial crisis, when US president George W. Bush con-
vened the first summit meeting, it now convenes annually at the summit
level. Like the G-7, it does not have a permanent secretariat. The G-20
welcomed the African Union in 2023 and is discussed in Chapter 8.
Within and outside the UN system, various ad hoc multilateral “con-
tact” and “friends” groups have been formed to harness multilateral diplo-
matic efforts to address specific problems. The first contact group was
formed in the late 1970s to secure the independence of Southwest Africa,
which was originally a German colony, then a League of Nations mandate
territory administered by South Africa, but not given independence or con-
verted to a UN trusteeship after World War II (Karns 1987). After nearly ten
years of diplomacy, it gained independence as Namibia in 1990. Other con-
tact groups have formed, for example, to aid the search for peace in Central
America in the late 1980s and in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and to
marshal assistance for Ukraine in 2022.
Another type of governance entity is the not-for-profit World Economic
Forum—an international organization (not IGO) that promotes public–pri-
vate cooperation. It hosts an annual gathering of government, business, and
other elites each year in Davos, Switzerland.
Since the 1970s, the UN has convened many global conferences and,
more recently, summits on topics ranging from the environment, food supply,
 Why Global Governance? 37

population, and women’s rights to water supplies, children, and desertifica-

tion. There was a large cluster of these conferences in the 1970s and another
in the 1990s, with a lull in the 1980s and an effort to scale back since 2000.
These conferences have spawned complex multilateral diplomacy, with
NGOs, scientific experts, corporations, and interested individuals trying to
influence outcomes, but often have been disappointing because their out-
comes represent the least common denominator of agreement among the
large number of participants, of whom only states actually have a formal say.
UN conferences like the Summit for Children (New York, 1990), the
Earth Summit (Rio, 1992), and the four World Conferences on Women
(1975, 1980, 1985, 1995) have been important global political processes for
addressing interdependence issues. Cumulatively, the conferences have also
bolstered understanding of the linkages among issues such as environmen-
tal protection, equal rights (especially for women), poverty elimination, and
participation of local communities. They are discussed in Chapter 4.

Private Governance
Private governance is a growing phenomenon that involves authoritative
decisionmaking in areas where states have not acted, or have chosen not to
exercise authority, or where states have themselves been ineffective in the
exercise of authority. A variety of private transnational regulatory organiza-
tions, for example, have been established and governed by actors from
business, civil society, and other sectors to set a wide range of voluntary
standards for corporations and other entities on issues ranging from workers’
rights to climate change. These entities also promote, monitor, and enforce
standards. Operating through markets, they rely on incentives such as con-
sumer demand, reputational benefits, reduced transactional costs, and
avoidance of mandatory regulations (Abbott, Green, and Keohane 2016: 2)
Other examples of private governance and governors include international
accounting standards set by the International Accounting Standards Board;
the private bond-rating agencies, such as Moody’s Investors Service and
Standard & Poor’s Ratings Group, whose rules can shape government
actions through a threatened drop in a country’s rating; International Chamber
of Commerce rules and actions; initiatives to establish social and environ-
mental certifications for certain products, such as the those of Fairtrade
International and the Forest Stewardship Council, through which major cor-
porations and advocacy groups collaborate; and labor standards in a single
multinational firm, such as Nike or Ford.
Private authorities are not inherently good or bad, but they have some
advantages and disadvantages. Abbott, Green, and Keohane (2016), for exam-
ple, have compared the ways private governance initiatives can more quickly
identify and fill governance gaps (and fill niches blocked by lack of agree-
ment among states) as well as provide opportunities for NSA participation.
38 International Organizations

They also find such initiatives less resilient than IGOs, vulnerable to
changes in circumstances, and less predictable.
Occasionally, however, global corporations may be more powerful
than some international organizations in their ability to “more effectively
sanction and govern network members” (May 2018: 348).

Public–Private Partnerships
Since the late 1980s, the variety of public–private partnerships involving
the UN and most of its specialized agencies, funds, and programs, includ-
ing the UN Development Programme, the World Bank, the UN Children’s
Fund, and the UNEP, has mushroomed with the recognition that such part-
nerships can contribute to achieving internationally agreed development
goals. UNSG Kofi Annan’s Global Compact initiative, created in 1999, was
an important step, as was the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Develop-
ment in Johannesburg, which called for creating partnerships for sustain-
able development. Partnerships have become a major source of funding and
have influenced ideas of how development should be achieved and who
should deliver it, as well as the architecture of the UN itself (Gregoratti
2014: 311). Some are large, institutionalized, multistakeholder arrange-
ments; others are more temporary with fewer actors. Not all are about
donating money; they may involve mobilizing corporate knowledge, per-
sonnel, and expertise to achieve policy objectives. These partnerships rep-
resent a more decentralized form of governance, one that is also networked,
flexible, and voluntary (Andonova 2017). Public–private partnerships such
as Goldman Sachs 10000 Women global initiative and the EU Directive on
gender balance in decisionmaking positions, for example, have served as
vehicles for promoting gender equality in businesses and governments
(Prügl and True 2014).
Although the newer forms of global governance vary in scope, effec-
tiveness, and durability, as discussed in later chapters, those that do not
involve states have begun to raise troubling questions of legitimacy. We
explore this issue in Chapter 12.

The Politics and Effectiveness of Global Governance

The politics of global governance reflects “struggles over wealth, power,
and knowledge” in the world (Murphy 2000: 798) and over “the global
structures, processes, and institutions that shape the fates and life chances
of actors around the world” (Barnett and Duval 2005: 7–8). Thus, although
power relationships among states still matter, so do the resources and
actions of a host of NSAs, including international organizations. Among the
central issues, then, are who gets to participate in decisionmaking, whose
voices get heard, who gets excluded at what price, and whose interests do
 Why Global Governance? 39

certain institutions privilege. Power matters, as do authority, legitimacy,

and accountability. As with all types of governance, effectiveness, or the
ability to deliver public goods and to make a difference, matters.

Power: Who Gets What? Who Benefits? Who Loses?

At one time, the politics of global governance seemed to be about US
power and hegemony. To be sure, US power and preferences shaped (and
continue to influence) many pieces of global governance, including the UN
and the liberal international economic system. Following the Cold War’s
end and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States emerged as
the sole superpower; its economy drove globalization, and democracy
seemed to be spreading everywhere. Yet beginning with the contested inva-
sion of Iraq in 2003, US power and influence in the world have substan-
tially declined. Even before then, the unilateralist policies of the George W.
Bush administration were leading small, middle-power, and larger states to
take initiatives without US participation, let alone leadership, such as with
the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol, and the convention
banning antipersonnel landmines.
Today, there are many indicators that the United States is no longer at
the center of global politics in the way it once was, and there are “more
states with more relations with one another on a wider range of issues than
ever before” (Jentleson 2012: 135). Two factors in particular stand out. One
is the rapid rise of China as a superpower competing with the United States
in ways the former Soviet Union never did. The other explanation is rooted
in US domestic politics: the impact of the Trump administration in deni-
grating the value of allies, international institutions (including the UN), and
multilateralism in general and touting “America first.” Although his succes-
sor, President Biden, announced that “America is back,” what was damaged
is not easily repaired, especially after the precipitous US withdrawal from
Afghanistan in 2021. Increasingly, global politics is being seen as multipo-
lar with Russia, China, and the United States increasingly in competition
with one another, while others such as India, Brazil, and South Africa are
declining to take sides. This all makes for a world in which the politics of
different issues and of governance is pluralized. It is also making for a world
in which multilateralism is increasingly challenged.
Global governance arrangements exist because states and other actors
create them and imbue them with power, authority, and legitimacy and
deem them valuable for performing certain tasks and serving certain needs
and interests. Yet IGOs are not just passive structures and agents of states.
As Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore (2005: 162) have argued, they
have power “both because of their form (as rational-legal bureaucracies)
and because of their (liberal) goals,” as well as the authority that derives
from goals that are “widely viewed as desirable and legitimate.” They can
40 International Organizations

exercise “compulsory power” through the use of material resources like

humanitarian relief, food, peacekeepers, weapons, and sanctions, as well as
normative resources such as naming and shaming, spreading global values
and norms such as gender equality, or inculcating “best practices.” IGO
secretariats’ set agendas of meetings and conferences, structure options for
Security Council debates, and classify and organize information, whether
on types of economies, what is a genocide, or who is a refugee. These all
constitute “institutional power.” A third type of IGO power, “productive
power,” is that of determining the existence of a problem such as internally
displaced persons (as differentiated from refugees who cross national bor-
ders), defining it, proposing solutions, and persuading other actors to accept
those solutions (Barnett and Finnemore 2005).
The power of NSAs also can be derived from various material
resources as well as symbolic and normative resources. Transnational advo-
cacy groups, civil society organizations, and NGOs of all stripes have
shown the many ways they can marshal the resources inherent in naming
and shaming to pressure MNCs and governments of targeted states to
change their behavior.
Power, whether in global or local governance, is intimately linked to
authority and legitimacy. IGOs can exercise power largely because they are
generally recognized to have legitimate authority, just as states whose gov-
ernments are recognized as legitimate are recognized by other states and
accepted as members of IGOs. Understanding the nature and types of
authority and legitimacy in global governance is part of the puzzle.

Authority and Legitimacy: Who Governs and On What Basis?

Historically, states were the only entities thought to have authority in inter-
national politics due to their sovereignty, and the only authority IGOs had
was assumed to be that delegated by states, and thus it was subject to with-
drawal. In recent years, there has been more attention given to issues of
authority and legitimacy with gradual recognition of the varied bases of
authority and legitimacy in global governance.
Many commentators agree that authority is derived from the consent of
and deference by others “based on the acceptance of a decision or an inter-
pretation because it comes from a certain source. It is a belief in certain
qualities of an authority which make subordinates adapt their beliefs and
behavior” (Zürn 2018: 38). Compliance is not automatic, though. As Bar-
nett and Finnnemore (2004: 20–21) emphasized, “Actors might recognize
an authority’s judgment as legitimate but still follow an alternative course
of action for some other set of reasons.” With their particular interest in
international organization bureaucracies, they argue that “authority pro-
vides the substance of which IOs are made . . . and bureaucracy is the
embodiment of rational-legal authority . . . a form of authority that moder-
 Why Global Governance? 41

nity views as particularly legitimate and good.” They note, however, that
bureaucracies must be able to “present themselves . . . as not exercising
power but instead serving others.”
A somewhat broader view of authority is presented by Avant, Finnemore,
and Sell (2010c) in their book Who Governs the Globe? where they posit five
bases of authority: institutional, delegated, expert, principled, and capacity-
based. The first is derived from the rules and purposes of an institution,
whether an IGO such as the IMF or a credit-rating agency such as Moody’s.
The second is the primary basis of IGO authority: delegated authority from
member states for certain tasks, such as peacekeeping. The third derives from
the need for certain tasks to be done by those with specialized knowledge
about them, for example, the medical and public health experts in the WHO.
That expertise influences how staff see the world and define issues, what pol-
icy options are considered, and the very culture of the institution. The fourth
base—principled or moral authority—reflects the fact that many IGOs and
NGOs are created precisely to serve or protect a set of principles, morals, or
values, such as peace, women’s rights, disarmament, or environmental pro-
tection. Finally, demonstrated ability to accomplish tasks such as alleviating
extreme poverty is a further basis of authority.
Yet why do the powerful and not-so-powerful actors in global gover-
nance decide to cooperate, accept, and defer to the authority of at least
some IGOs? Why do actors obey rules in the absence of coercion or change
their behavior when shamed by a transnational advocacy group or accept
the authority of the ICJ or a private credit-rating agency? The decision to
comply with rules, norms, and law fundamentally rests on legitimacy
defined as “the belief by an actor that a rule or institution ought to be
obeyed” (Hurd 2007: 30). Such a belief affects behavior, Ian Hurd adds,
because “the decision whether to comply is no longer motivated by the sim-
ple fear of retribution or by a calculation of self-interest but instead by an
internal sense of rightness and obligation.”
A key aspect of legitimacy is membership in the international commu-
nity, whose system of multilateral, reciprocal interactions helps validate its
members, institutions, and rules. As Thomas Franck (1990: 205) has noted,
“It is because states constitute a community that legitimacy has the power
to influence their conduct.” IGOs, like the UN, are perceived as legitimate
to the extent that they are created and function according to certain princi-
ples of right process, such as one state, one vote. The UN Security Coun-
cil’s legitimacy as the core institution in the international system imbued
with authority to authorize the use of force derives from the widespread
acceptance of that role, as we examine in Chapter 4.
As political theorists have long noted, flags and rituals are important
symbols of legitimate authority. Thus, UN peacekeepers’ blue helmets sym-
bolize the UN’s authority and the international community’s recognition of
42 International Organizations

their legitimacy to act. When the Security Council refused to approve the
US military operation in Iraq in 2003, it denied the United States the sym-
bols of legitimacy and affected how the mission was regarded by much of
the world. Likewise, the strong General Assembly votes condemning Rus-
sia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine were a clear signal to Russia of the world’s
opprobrium. The very first symbol of legitimate international authority was
the red cross (and later the red crescent)—the emblem adopted by the Inter-
national Committee of the Red Cross after its founding in 1863 as the first
emergency humanitarian organization.
Legitimacy is also increasingly tied to other considerations, including
whether NSAs and civil society have a voice and can participate. Yet for
NGOs, IGOs, and other actors, their legitimacy is based not only on partic-
ipation but also on their responsiveness, transparency, and accountability.

Accountability: Who Is Accountable to Whom and How?

As a result of the diffusion of domestic democratic norms into the interna-
tional arena, virtually all global governance actors have faced growing
demands for greater accountability and transparency. Some of these
demands come from NGOs and civil society groups; others come from
democratic governments, major donors, and major borrowers. There is no
single, widely accepted definition of accountability, however. At its core is
the idea of account-giving—reporting, measuring, justifying, and explain-
ing actions. For some, accountability involves a set of standards for evalu-
ating the behavior of public entities. How responsive and responsible are
they? Do they act in a fair and equitable manner? For others, accountability
is defined in terms of mechanisms that involve obligations to explain and
justify conduct (Schillemans and Bovens 2011: 4–5).
The question is, therefore, to whom, for what, and by what mechanisms
various global governance actors are accountable. Are IGOs accountable only
to their member states, for example? To their major donors? To development
aid recipients? Trying to satisfy both donors and recipients may satisfy nei-
ther. Tamar Gutner (2010), for example, showed that trying to get the IMF
involved with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals and poverty reduc-
tion was a poor fit with that institution’s expertise, reducing the ability of
anyone to hold it accountable. To whom are NGOs accountable? Clifford Bob
(2010: 200), for example, argues that advocacy groups are held accountable
in democratic states primarily by the domestic laws that regulate their activ-
ities, since dissatisfied members can simply leave the organization. What
about expert groups or private governance arrangements? The fact that many
global governance actors, including most IGOs, have multiple constituencies,
are responsible for multiple tasks, and face multiple demands and points of
view makes them vulnerable to what some scholars have called “multiple
accountabilities disorder” (Schillemans and Bovens 2011).
 Why Global Governance? 43

There are various ways through which actors may be held accountable,
ranging from hierarchical and fiscal accountability to peer and public reputa-
tional accountability (Grant and Keohane 2005). Transparency is also critical
to achieving accountability, that is, making information about organizational
actions open to public scrutiny (Grigorescu 2007: 626). For IGOs, issues of
accountability and transparency frequently hinge on whether conferences and
meetings are open to the public or closed and operating more like private
clubs. This is why some institutions have established mechanisms for
accountability, such as the World Bank’s Inspection Panel and the UN’s
Office of Internal Oversight Services. In other situations, an ad hoc body may
be created to investigate a particular problem, as in the case of the independ-
ent inquiry committee (the Volcker Committee) that investigated possible
malfeasance in the UN’s Oil-for-Food Programme in Iraq in 2005. NGOs and
member states often play key roles in pushing for such IGO accountability
and transparency. Ensuring international accountability, however, is still
relatively haphazard and less likely to constrain more powerful actors. Lack
of transparency may adversely affect not only legitimacy and compliance
but also the efficacy of all kinds of institutions. An ongoing challenge for
global governance in the future, then, is how to increase transparency and
accountability of the varieties of governance without undermining the very
conditions that enable deal-making and cooperation.

Effectiveness: How Do We Know What Works?

How Do We Measure Success and Failure?
The task of assessing effectiveness is one of the central challenges in public
policymaking. What are the outcomes of rules and actions? How are people
actually affected? Is security increased, are health and well-being
improved, is poverty reduced, is environmental degradation slowed, and
sustainable development advanced? To assess effectiveness we need to go
beyond formal compliance. Indeed, “Agreements themselves may not be
ambitious enough to provide more than temporary or cosmetic relief of
global problems” (Simmons and de Jonge Oudraat 2001: 13–14).
The key questions are: What works? For whom does it work? Who
does what to translate agreements into action, including incorporating
norms into domestic laws? Which techniques or mechanisms work best to
get actors to change their behavior, and what are the reactions to noncom-
pliance? What types of incentives or technical assistance to developing
countries will enable them to comply with environmental rules? How and
when are diplomacy or public shaming, economic sanctions, or military
force most likely to secure compliance? When are particular types of peace
operations most likely to secure, keep, or build conditions of lasting peace?
With all the advances in what Jacqueline Best (2017) calls “measurement-
driven governance” and Hans Krause Hansen and Tony Porter (2017) call
44 International Organizations

“big data,” what are the consequences? Does this narrow the focus only to
what can be counted? Does the Human Development Index or the Gender
Equality Index really tell us what is happening to the quality of people’s
lives around the world? Are states motivated by being ranked and graded as
some scholars suggest (Davis et al. 2012; Cooley and Snyder 2015)? Who
should be held accountable for the validity of such rankings as Nikhil Gutta
(2012) asks? We address these issues in Chapters 7 through 12, but despite
decades of global governance initiatives across multiple issue areas, we still
do not have answers to some of these questions.

* * *

The challenges of global governance, then, include a wide variety of inter-

national policy problems and issues that require governance, not all of
which are necessarily global in scope. Rather, what we see are multilevel,
often diffuse varieties of governance with many different actors playing key
roles alongside states. The need and demand for more global governance is
clearly rising; the processes are complex; the politics is an ongoing struggle
to influence “who gets what” and “who benefits”; and the issues of legiti-
macy, accountability, and effectiveness require constant attention. Effec-
tiveness and success depend on whom you ask. Most important, we should
not assume that all global governance is necessarily good. As Inis Claude
Jr. (1988: 142) noted many years ago, “I must question the assumption of
the normative superiority of collective policy, the view that one can have
greater confidence in the wisdom and the moral quality of decisions made
by a collectivity concerning the use of power and other resources than in
the quality of policies set and followed by individual states.”

Suggested Further Reading

Acharya, Amitav, ed. (2016) Why Govern? Rethinking Demand and Progress in
Global Governance. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Avant, Deborah D., Martha Finnemore, and Susan K. Sell, eds. (2010) Who Governs
the Globe? New York: Cambridge University Press.
Barnett, Michael, and Raymond Duvall, eds. (2005) Power in Global Governance.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Grigorescu, Alexandru. (2020) The Ebb and Flow of Global Governance: Intergov-
ernmentalism versus Nongovernmentalism in World Politics. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Johnson, Tana. (2015) Organizational Progeny: Why Governments Are Losing Con-
trol over the Proliferating Structures of Global Governance. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Weiss, Thomas G., and Rorden Wilkinson, eds. (2023) International Organizations
and Global Governance, 3rd ed. New York: Routledge.