Do Tough Times Call for Informal Measures? Exploring the Crisis-Informality-Nexus

Transboundary crises spawn informal modes of global governance. This notion has become a truism in the academic debate on informal intergovernmental organizations (IIGOs) and empirical examples are, indeed, readily observable: In the coronavirus pandemic, the Group of Twenty (G-20), an IIGO of the world’s leading economies, entered the sphere of health governance to spearhead the global Covid-19 vaccination campaign COVAX. The Normandy Format talks in the contemporary Ukraine crisis serve as a recent example from the realm of interstate militarized conflict. Accordingly, scholarship expects crises to trigger the use of IIGOs, highlighting their low costs, quick decision-making processes, and ability to react to situations of high uncertainty as reasons for their involvement. However, the academic presumption of a crisis-informality-nexus suffers from at least two shortcomings. On the one hand, transboundary crises differ regarding the issue areas they affect, their potential to spread geographically, and the perceived urgency they evoke. Not every crisis type propels IIGOs to crisis managers. On the other hand, scholarship also overlooks the variety of IIGOs. They vary in their membership structure (and related resources), the issue areas they cover, and their institutional design. Not every type of IIGO is equally suitable to address crises. Moreover, the rationale for their use as crisis managers differs by type. The reasons for the involvement of an established, resourceful IIGO like the G-20 in a global health crisis likely differ from the emergence of a new ad-hoc contact group in militarized conflict. Therefore, the crisis-informality-nexus needs to be reevaluated. In how far are transboundary crises and IIGOs interrelated? Which crisis characteristics call for informalization the most? And which types of IIGOs are best suited to manage different crises? This paper addresses these questions by theorizing the crisis-informality-nexus. We provide a differentiated conceptualization of transboundary crises, present a typology of IIGOs, and explore the relationship between crisis characteristics and IIGO type. Empirical examples illustrate our theorization of the crisis-informality-nexus.