21st Century International Organizations: Contestation and Crisis

International organizations face mounting challenges to their authority and effectiveness. Long-standing patterns of financial and political support are eroding at unprecedented levels, and the future stability of the multilateral order is unclear. This shift occurs in the context of intensifying great-power competition, declining consensus around core normative frameworks, and increasingly visible impacts of the global polycrisis. Against this background, this section will focus on themes, actors, and challenges that strongly reflect this current context, including crisis and adaptation, populism and the far-right, and governance transformation, thus continuing a well-established section that has featured at ECPR General Conferences since 2016. All panels embrace theoretical and methodological diversity and encourage paper submissions from diverse scholars studying IOs or multilateralism from a variety of perspectives. Proposed panels (with organizers) 1) Futures and Transformations of Global Governance Soetkin Verhaegen (Maastricht University) Global power relations are undergoing profound transformation, visible in trade, health, security, technology, and climate governance: new alliances emerge, long-standing partnerships are redefined, and national leaders make once-unthinkable unilateral decisions. With IOs facing unprecedented pressure, such as increased resource constraints, political contestation, and withdrawal threats, this panel investigates the future of cooperation, public attitudes towards international cooperation, and organizational adaptation and responses to pressing global issues. 2) Eighty Years On: The United Nations and the Politics of Contestation Alexandros Tokhi (Goethe University Frankfurt), Martin Binder (Forward College Berlin) This panel explores the United Nations' mounting challenges amid its most significant crisis of effectiveness, legitimacy, and authority in eighty years. Facing contestation from powerful member states, shrinking resources, and politicized decision-making, the UN system is under unprecedented pressure. We invite contributions examining these dynamics, including questions about the recognition of the UN, the promotion of alternative norms within the UN system, or the implications of shifting geopolitics for the organization. 3) Managing Uncertainty: The Politics of Administration in Global Governance Svanhildur Thorvaldsdottir (University of Iceland) How do financing, staffing, and reporting practices of IOs shift and evolve with increasing political contestation and resource volatility? This panel invites papers that explore how administrative practices shape what IOs can do—and for whom. We welcome contributions examining the everyday decisions and structures that underpin IO authority, flexibility, and responsiveness in periods of uncertainty and institutional stress, from global crises to shifting donor priorities. 4) International Cooperation and Public Opinion about the Governance of Critical materials Lisa Dellmuth (Stockholm University), Matilda Petersson (Stockholm University) Geopolitical tensions over access to critical materials, such as lithium and rare earths, have intensified, pushing states to adopt policies, shore up protectionism, and build alliances within and outside IOs to manage economic interdependence. These developments raise questions about how and when states act within and outside of IOs to secure access to critical materials, and whether those choices are supported by greater publics. 5) The Future of Multilateral Negotiations Carl Vikberg (Stockholm University), Tarald Gulseth Berge (University of South-Eastern Norway & Norwegian Institute of International Affairs) International politics are going through several important changes, including power and value shifts, technological advances, and democratic backsliding. How do these changes affect the prospects for effective and inclusive multilateral negotiations? This panel studies the new terrain of multilateral negotiations, investigating the impact of factors such as virtual negotiations, gender dynamics, and autocratization; developing new theoretical arguments about their direct and conditional effects; and testing those arguments using innovative methods. 6) Individual Complaint Mechanisms in International Politics Andreas Ullmann (University of Potsdam), Christoph Steinert (University of Zurich) Empowering individuals through individual complaint mechanisms, such as human rights courts and UN treaty bodies, has long been central to the judicialization of international relations. In recent years, states have increasingly pushed back against these mechanisms. Simultaneously, these mechanisms are more active than ever, and research indicates that they can influence state behavior. This panel solicits papers exploring current challenges to, and future trajectories of, individual complaint mechanisms in IR. 7) Populist Impact on International Organizations: Challenges, Cooptation, and Resilience Burcu Uçaray Mangıtlı (Universität Göttingen) Populism’s varied and often strategic engagement with the Liberal International Order increasingly shapes IO legitimacy and authority. While earlier populist governments appeared pragmatic toward IOs, recent developments signal deeper confrontation. This panel explores whether and how populist leaders challenge, co-opt, or erode IOs–and IO responses. We invite contributions analyzing the mechanisms, conditions, and organizational features that explain IOs’ varying resilience or vulnerability to populist influence, across global and regional settings. 8) Anti-Globalists at the Table: The Far Right in International Organizations Lisbeth Zimmermann (Uni Frankfurt), Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt (Uni Frankfurt) Far-right actors increasingly engage with international organizations they once dismissed as embodiments of “globalist” elites. Rather than merely opposing global governance, they strategically contest, instrumentalize, and reshape it from within. This panel gathers recent research on far-right contestation and participation across IOs, examining how these actors ideologically frame, mobilize against, or adapt (to) multilateral institutions, thus illuminating how the far right seeks to redefine the boundaries, norms, and legitimacy of the international order. 9) Networked International Organizations: Structures, Purposes, and Effects Michael Giesen (University of Potsdam), Steve Biedermann (Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg) IOs frequently interact with one another and other institutions, forming networks with varying degrees of density and connectivity to exchange information and contribute to coordination and cooperation. These networks can be seen as emergent social structures with inherent dynamics beyond individual actors. This panel invites papers studying IOs either as networks or in them and that map or analyze their drivers, purposes, and effects on the international system. 10) Divide et Impera? How International Organisations Govern the World Through Boundary Work Maren Hofius (University of Hamburg), Matthias Kranke (University of Duisburg-Essen) IR scholarship increasingly studies boundary work, which organises social systems around categories of difference, underscoring the potential exclusionary and inclusionary effects of boundaries. Although IOs, like many other transnational actors, routinely engage in boundary work and can wield enormous expert power, scholars have not yet systematically examined these practices. Our panel thus invites papers that discuss the motivations for, dynamics of, and effects of IO boundary work across different issue areas.