Understanding the Shifting Landscape of Global Governance

In an ever-changing world, the way states coordinate and govern political issues on the international stage has undergone profound transformations. Driven by geopolitical shifts since the end of the Cold War, new intergovernmental arrangements have emerged, often overlapping or complementing the functions of pre-existing international institutions. These arrangements form what we call “regime complexes”—arrays of institutions governing specific issue areas.

Within these regime complexes, states face a multitude of institutional alternatives, each vying for authority. As a consequence of this growing density of competing institutions, many once-central and uncontested legacy organizations now find themselves in direct competition with alternative multilateral arrangements. These newcomers enter the scene with their own intentions, strategies, and goals and they reflect the diverse political ambitions and goals of their founding states.

Core Questions

The POLCON project, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG),  seeks to unravel the dynamics of these institutional power struggles within global governance. Here are key questions we aim to answer:

1. Cooperation or Competition? What are the incentives to cooperate from the perspective of legacy institutions and their newly created contenders? What motivates them to share or openly compete for resources and members? What factors influence their choices?

2. Strategies of Contender Institutions: What organizational strategies do newly created International Organizations (IOs) adopt to gain a foothold in their respective regime complexes? How do these strategies vary across different policy areas and evolve over time?

3. Political and Normative Consequences: How does the creation of new international institutions affect the political processes within pre-existing regime complexes, how do they change the behaviour of states? What are the consequences for the normative foundations of international cooperation across different issue areas?