The global governance complexity cube : varieties of institutional complexity in global governance

Abstract

Recent decades have seen a proliferation in the number, depth and span of international institutions regulating different domains of global politics. Issues like global health, intellectual property rights, climate change and many others that were once governed by relatively distinct rulesets are today regulated by multiple institutions with intersecting mandates and memberships. As a result, the creation, evolution and effectiveness of international institutions are fundamentally shaped by how they relate to other institutions operating within their policy domains. Yet, global governance complexes—that is, clusters of overlapping institutions and actors that govern specific policy issues—differ widely. The number and types of rulesets and actors involved, the degree of overlap between them and the extent to which overlapping rules conflict vary markedly across governance complexes and over time. The same is true for institutional responses to regulatory conflict. The broad trend towards growing institutional complexity in global governance is thus subject to important variation.