Research project
The EU Navigating Multilateral Cooperation (NAVIGATOR)
NAVIGATOR’s main objective is to answer these questions and deliver a ready-to-use “search mechanism” and associated pathways of action that the EU and its member states can use as it seeks to strengthen a rules-based international order. To achieve this, NAVIGATOR comprises a strong, global and inter-disciplinary team of researchers who explores institutional variation on six policy issues – climate change, digitalisation, finance/tax, health, migration and security – to identify what institutional mixes that enables the EU to have optimal impact in a given policy issue. We explore variation in formality (formal to informal), accessibility (open to closed), and normativity (expressed purpose is technical to openly normative). Drawing on these data and complementing these with content analysis, social network analysis, semi-structured interviews and European and global surveys, NAVIGATOR develops a “search mechanism” that allows the EU and member states to compare strengths and weaknesses of existing multilateral organizations, determine which can be reformed and which are too costly to reform, identify and assess alternatives, and, on this basis, develop action strategies to reform multilateralism. NAVIGATOR will be very relevant to the work programme, as it will assess the effectiveness of multilateral institutions and arrangements; identify the optimal pathways of action of EU support to multilateral, minilateral, private and public-private initiatives to further global governance in a given policy domain, and provide recommendations for EU engagement strategies in the context of the war in Ukraine, threats of nationalism and anti-EU populism.
Project Manager
Participants
External
Partners: COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL UNIVERSITE LIBRE DE BRUXELLES UNIVERSITEIT MAASTRICHT UNIVERSITY OF WITWATERSRAND JOHANNESBURG UNIVERSITA COMMERCIALE LUIGI BOCCONI STICHTING VU, OPERATING VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM EUROPEAN COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS E.V. THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM TALLINNA TEHNIKAÜLIKOOL
Connected partners: UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA, UO WASEDA UNIVERSITY, WUT
Articles
title.podkast
Global governance in transition: EU–Japan perspectives
New forms of cooperation are emerging, and countries are increasingly turning to smaller, more flexible alliances to navigate uncertainty. In this...
Is the era of cooperation coming to an end?
International cooperation and the rules-based order as we know it is now at stake. The inauguration of Donald Trump in his second presidential ter...
New publications
Regional organizations, global governance and the EU
The US is distancing itself from institutions it has been central in establishing, and recent crises like COVID-19, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the Gaza conflict have raised critical questions about the future direction of international cooperation and global governance. This report sheds light on the role of regional organizations as a key component of global governance. It offers detailed analyses of the historical evolution and contemporary functioning of key regional organizations and discuss their role in fostering multilateral decision-making.
Search costs in global governance
To navigate global governance, policymakers need to adjudicate how they should allocate their scarce resources to organizations and networks that can best fulfill specific governance tasks. Given growing regime complexity, and the rise of private transnational regulatory organizations in multiple issue areas, policymakers are faced with a task that is insufficiently captured in existing research on global governance. It concerns the need to identify and assess which governance options, offered by what actors, are best suited to advance a particular set of interests. These interests are not limited to considerations of what is the most effective governance solution, but also include “political” interests in maintaining alliances and status hierarchies in terms of deciding on who to govern with. On this basis, we suggest that in addition to the conventional focus on sunk-, transaction-, and opportunity costs, what we call “search costs” are growing in importance for policymakers: Policymakers can rely less on publicly mandated intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) with control over an issue-area and must identify and assess different governance options provided by IGOs, NGOs, private regulatory actors. In so doing, both considerations of legitimacy (e.g. multilateral v minilateral models) and effectiveness (e.g. hard v soft governance models) as well as alliances and partners must be considered. We outline our search costs framework and provide examples of the hidden (search) costs of global governance and identify why it matters. For scholars, it is important to understand what increased complexity entails for states. For policy-makers it is important to strengthen awareness and develop frameworks that can aide in assessing and choosing best-fit governance arrangements that match both concerns with effectiveness and legitimacy, as well as status-concerns and alliances.
The end of multilateralism as we know it? Assessing current trends in international security
In this paper, the authors explore and analyse the changing environment of multilateral security cooperation, identifying common trend lines and suggesting policy directions for the EU to navigate the complexities of crisis-ridden multilateralism.
Working Paper on institutional landscape of global digitalisation governance
The institutional landscape of digitalization and cybersecurity has expanded and diversified significantly over the past decade. Hundreds of venues and processes are currently invested in digital and cyber policy making – some concerned with digitalization and cybersecurity in their respective areas of activity, others promoting more generalized policy approaches and yet others supporting digital growth and cyber resilience around the world. Such institutional churn is not particular to digital and cyber fields; however, it has direct implications on digital and cyber policy design and implementation. In this Working Paper, the authors make three recommendations based on the findings in the first phase of their research in the project The EU Navigating Multilateral Cooperation (NAVIGATOR).
The Institutional Dynamics of Global Governance in Hard Times: Innovation or Decline?
In the introduction to this roundtable, we argue that global governance currently faces hard times because it is affected by a set of significant developments revolving around the changing distribution of state power, the rise of nationalist populism, and the frequent occurrence of transnational crises, while seeking to facilitate collective action on complex cooperation problems. Against this backdrop, the essay identifies two major institutional dynamics of global governance in hard times: first, the drift of formal intergovernmental organizations (FIGOs) that is caused by them being gridlocked in a period of significant changes in their social, (geo)political, economic, and technological environment. Second, the proliferation of various types of low-cost institutions. To help us think systematically about how these two interrelated institutional dynamics affect global governance, the essay develops the innovation thesis and the decline thesis. The “innovation thesis” suggests that by transitioning from a rather exclusive and hierarchical system revolving around FIGOs into a more inclusive and heterarchical system revolving around institutional diversity, global governance is currently being adapted to its new environment. The “decline thesis,” by contrast, argues that the two institutional dynamics undermine rules-based multilateralism and may lead to a shift back toward traditional (great) power politics that does not respect institutional constraints.
Project Manager
Participants
External
Partners: COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL UNIVERSITE LIBRE DE BRUXELLES UNIVERSITEIT MAASTRICHT UNIVERSITY OF WITWATERSRAND JOHANNESBURG UNIVERSITA COMMERCIALE LUIGI BOCCONI STICHTING VU, OPERATING VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM EUROPEAN COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS E.V. THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM TALLINNA TEHNIKAÜLIKOOL
Connected partners: UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA, UO WASEDA UNIVERSITY, WUT