Formal Coordination Mechanisms in Global Governance: The Case of Knowledge Goods

Global policy issues tend to be highly complex, involving numerous public and private actors but also crossing sectors and organizational authorities. Coordination of activities is therefore highly important, particularly in the case of new issues that find themselves at an overlapping ‘periphery’ of several well-established fields. While literature on networks is developing quickly, research on formal inter-organizational coordination mechanisms is still scarce. This paper will review existing research on coordination mechanisms, attempting to identify factors that tend to explain their emergence and their ability to contribute to problem solving, and linking the discussion on global coordination needs with the literature on national coordination mechanisms. The paper will apply the framework on a case of regulating ‘knowledge goods’, with a focus on ‘open access’. It is a new issue area where a number of international organizations (e.g. EC, OECD, UNESCO) have got engaged in, in addition to numerous national and non-governmental actors, and where coordination mechanisms are emerging.