Roundtable: Under Pressure: International Institutions and Global Power Shifts

Abstract

How states relate to each other in a globalised world is determined, at least to a certain extent, by their ability to cooperate within the major intergovernmental institutions, such as the United Nations Security Council, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, or the World Trade Organization. Perhaps with the exception of the main UN bodies, intergovernmental organisations have been dominated by powers from the global North, ever since their creation. In the last years and decades, however, the world has been witnessing major southward shifts of power from its traditional centre. Increasingly, the rising powers (especially the BRICS countries) are asking for a larger say in how rules for the world are made. The global institutions are becoming challenged from within, by states who claim to represent larger shares of the world population than the traditional powers, and who demonstrate their increasing readiness to invest their political capital into global political affairs. Will the major intergovernmental institutions be able to handle the changed balance of power across their members? Will they simply become more representative of the interests of humankind at large? Or will they turn into talking shops, stuck in endless quarrels between the traditional powers and their challengers? The answers to these questions will determine what politics in the 21st century will look like. This Roundtable brings together scholars who will comment on the problems of global governance under pressure and illustrate them with empirical examples from their respective areas of expertise.

Title	Details
Roundtable participant: Mathias Koenig Archibugi	View Paper Details
Roundtable participant: Katharina Michaelowa	View Paper Details
Roundtable participant: Jonas Tallberg	View Paper Details
Roundtable participant: Alexander Thompson	View Paper Details