Shaping Global Interdependencies in Complex Global Governance: Actors, Issues, Dilemmas

In times marked by rapid changes and uncertain perspectives, the need to explain current events and highly complex phenomena requires both theoretical and empirical innovation. As a consequence, well-established theories and approaches may need to be challenged, updated and adapted. The notion of global interdependence has been broadly used to understand how various actors respond to emerging economic, social and political issues vital to the global community. Much scholarship has shed light on the tensions between different levels of government, institutions and rules such responses may entail. This Section seeks to provide a platform for a multidisciplinary debate on how the notion of global interdependence is changing and needs to be rethought in today’s world, and on how its dynamics are affecting governance across scales and issue areas. Traditionally, research on interdependence has focused on economic and security politics as well as on the complex relationships between transnational communities and dominant nation states. Recent research on global interdependence has broadened its focus to include three main, partly overlapping categories. Firstly, scholars have focused on how actors across different dimensions (governmental towards/vs. intergovernmental; non-governmental vs./towards governmental) have responded to a wide variety of key issues and needs. Secondly, previous research has revolved around both formal and informal mechanisms and forms of dialogue, which led to a better understanding of the multiple ways in which rule, norms and principles are shaped, negotiated, and potentially codified, and how practices and informal channels have been legitimated and institutionalised. Thirdly, the application of these insights to other policy areas has broadened the debate to include a wide variety of political and social contexts and arenas characterized by different sets of constraints and power dynamics. Climate change, international migration, the implications of new forms of terrorism, and the effects of civil conflicts are cases in point. Taken together, these three overlapping research areas have individually and collectively broadened and enriched existing works on global interdependence. Researchers will be contributing to each of these research areas in this Section.