Do Transnational Crises Prompt Global Governance Innovation?

Global governance has recently confronted numerous crises, from Covid-19 to the Global Financial Crisis. Crises combine temporal urgency with serious threat and uncertainty. The immediacy of threats frequently induces governance innovations, such as the multi-stakeholder COVAX initiative for Covid-19 vaccines. We analyze whether and how crises prompt such innovations. We argue that the rise of “hybrid institutional complexes” (HICs) – composed of diverse interstate, infra-state and non-state institutions, formal and informal – affects the likelihood and form of crisis-fuelled governance innovation. In contrast to traditional inter-state institutions, frequently deadlocked and weakened by political transformations, alternative institutional forms within HICs can emerge, innovate, and adapt quickly and cheaply. Equally important, institutional diversity facilitates innovation by all institutions in a complex. Even diverse institutions can learn and borrow governance mechanisms from others; and multiple institutions can create flexible coalitions and partnerships that combine institutional competencies in novel ways. Still, crisis innovations frequently fail to achieve their goals, as COVAX did: rapid, ad hoc responses may not prove strong enough to deal with crises, or – as in the COVAX case – with the reactions of states and other powerful actors. Thus, we also consider the conditions under which crisis innovations are likely to be effective.