Interconnected Challenges of Global Governance Institutions

Multilateralism is a system of international cooperation in which states work together to address global challenges such as climate change, poverty, and pandemics. However, support for multilateralism seems to be waning, not only among governments but also among citizens. A vast literature in global governance has emphasized several drivers of this trend. Public discourse continues to attribute the root causes of failing global governance institutions to their design and internal dysfunctions. Research has demonstrated that institutional design and bureaucratic agency matters greatly (Abbot and Snidal 1998; Koremenos et al. 2001). Well-designed organizations at the time of their foundation can struggle in the face of novel crises (Hardt 2014; Debre and Dijkstra 2021), and through ‘agency slack’, the secretariats of IOs can attain new mandates and responsibilities despite formal design constraints (Hooghe and Marks 2015; Heldt 2017). However, more recently, different strands of political science research have identified multiple external challenges. One is the fragile public support for multilateral organizations (Dellmuth and Tallberg 2023). In many countries, public opinion is divided on the issue of multilateralism. Some people believe that multilateralism is essential for addressing global challenges, while others believe that it is a waste of money and that it undermines national sovereignty. This can make it difficult for governments to support multilateral organizations. Lack of knowledge among publics makes global governance institutions vulnerable to elite-cueing strategies. In fact, governments have actively worked to undermine public support for multilateral organizations by using them as a scapegoat for unpleasant policy decisions (Vreeland 2003; Heinkelmann-Wild and Zangl 2020). The rise of populist governments in powerful states intensifies this challenge: populists do not shy away from sowing mistrust against global governance institutions for self-profiling purposes (Copelovitch and Pevehouse 2019; Carnegie, Clark, and Kaya 2021; Kaya, Handlin, and Günaydin 2020). Finally, emerging powers challenge the legitimacy of existing global governance institutions and related narratives of mutually beneficial cooperation (Rauh and Zürn 2020; Dellmuth and Tallberg 2020). For example, according to Western views, the expanding role of non-state actors and the rise of multi-stakeholder governance offer opportunities for more effective problem-solving and participation of domestic actors in global governance (Reinsberg and Westerwinter 2021). Seen through a critical lens, however, multi-stakeholder governance can undermine the accountability of global governance institutions and make them liable to criticisms of allowing powerful domestic interest groups to exert undue influence (Taggart 2022). While lively debates have occurred within these fields, their interconnected nature has yet to be addressed. This workshop will explore the relationships between different challenges to global governance institutions. Potential research questions include: • What are the key contemporary challenges to global governance institutions? To what extent are they different from the challenges of regional organizations? • How do domestic politics—interests, ideas, and institutions—affect the policies and politics of global governance institutions? • How does domestic economic performance affect the viability of multilateral organisations? • How do geopolitical tensions affect the functioning of multilateral institutions? • How can governments overcome public opposition to multilateralism? When do citizens get heard in multilateral processes?