Global Networked Multilateralism: International Organizations in a Post-COVID World

International organizations (IOs) have been the subject of extensive criticism since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the role of these global governance institutions in responding to such a cross-border crisis cannot be overemphasized, as the virus has spread around the world, IOs have struggled to keep pace with the virus’s impact, while their institutional and political vulnerabilities have become more readily apparent. This paper focuses on one salient factor contributing to the struggle of IOs in the face of COVID-19: the deficient cooperation exhibited between the multiple multilateral institutions stepping up to respond to the cross-sectoral crisis in today’s fragmented global governance system. Against this backdrop, and after highlighting the gaps in existing debates on the polycentric global governance system—the fragmentation debate in international law and the regime complexity debate in international relations—this paper makes three interrelated arguments. First, descriptively, it submits that the COVID-19 crisis has exposed the pressing challenges of cooperation and coordination confronting IOs when called upon to address multisectoral, cross-boundary crises. Second, normatively, the article argues that COVID-19 has illuminated the need to develop conceptual, legal, and institutional mechanisms that may not only prevent or solve normative and institutional collisions (a preoccupation of much of the existing debates), but also positively foster cooperation and facilitate concerted global action by multilateral institutions in view of problems that cut across the remit of multiple IOs. Third, the article asserts that by foregrounding cooperation between IOs as a vital-yet-deficient form of governance in today’s international order, COVID-19 invites us to rethink and reconceptualize our understanding of multilateral international cooperation. More concretely, the article advances the concept of “global network multilateralism”, arguing that rather than seeing IOs as isolated multilateral structures established by states to govern discrete areas of international affairs, these multilateral organizations should be viewed as part of an interconnected, interdependent, and multi-sectoral network of global governance.