Informalization in Global and Regional Organizations: Inward and Outward Dimensions

My paper extends my research project on informalization at the global level, above all the G20 and the BRICS. The unique component about these informal organizations is their outward-oriented relationships. In institutional terms the G20 is explicitly contrasted with the United Nations. Moreover, the BRICS can be contrasted not only with earlier institutional manifestations of the challenge of the global South via the UN (the G77, UNCTAD), but with the implementation of the BRICS/New Development Bank through a differentiated comparison with the World Bank. My paper for the Joint Sessions of the ECPR explores the similarities and contrasts between the G20 and the BRICS as global informal organizations and regional organizations that cooperate through a set of significant informal arrangements. My reading of the recent literature on the European Union is that informalization has proliferated not because of a outward relationship dynamic to external organizations but rather because of inward looking dynamics. This inward oriented symbolic component is accentuated in other regional institutions above all in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with a culture of low-key and risk adverse informalization. The question that I want to explore is whether this dualistic approach to analyzing informalization stands up to close scrutiny. Although the G20 and the BRICS have an explicit relationship to external organizations, each of these organizations have intricate inward looking dynamics around club cohesion and collective action. At the same time the EU may be the exception as a wide number of other regional groupings are defined increasingly by their relationship to other organizations. This is particularly true of ASEAN. Whereas attention on the G20 and the BRICS must be reconfigured to take into account of its internal informal dynamics, regional organizations beyond the EU must be analyzed how its organizational structure relates to other external institutions.