21st Century International Organizations: Disruption and Resilience

Marked by pandemics, climate change, regional wars, technological advances, large-scale migration, and major power competition, the global polycrisis is disrupting the effective operation and legitimacy of international organizations (IOs). While some IOs face difficulties in sustaining multilateral cooperation, others demonstrate remarkable resilience. Against this background, this section aims to examine the responses, operations, and effects of IOs, thus continuing a well-established section that features at ECPR General Conferences since 2016. The panels focus on different themes (e.g., existential threats and institutional resilience), actors and regions (e.g., UN, EU, and the Global South), and challenges (e.g., far-right and autocracy), addressing cross-cutting issues and specific policy areas at global, regional, national, and functional levels. They also encompass theoretical and methodological diversity and will encourage paper submissions from scholars across disciplines that study IOs or multilateralism. 1) Struggles in, of, and over “the Global South” in IOs Tobias Berger (Freie Universität Berlin), Alexandros Tokhi (Goethe University Frankfurt) Shifting power distributions challenge Northern-dominated IOs, allowing actors from the “Global South” to influence governance models or decision-making processes. This panel examines the strategies of actors from the “Global South” and their transformative impact on IOs by exploring how these actors engage with, contest, and reshape IOs. The panel also focuses on the growing rifts within the “Global South”, studying the increasingly competing claims of actors like India, China, or Brazil. 2) The Global Governance of Existential Threats Mirko Heinzel (Maastricht University), Jelena Cupać (WZB Berlin Social Science Center) The existential threats facing humanity in the 21st century—from climate disasters to artificial intelligence—demand robust global governance frameworks. This panel explores how IOs can better address these challenges. Contributions may study any specific existential threat and focus on broader topics of global governance research, including design, effectiveness, or legitimacy. The panel encourages papers with diverse theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. 3) The United Nations and the Global Polycrisis Martin Binder (Forward College Berlin), Johannes Scherzinger (University of Zurich) This panel explores how the United Nations (UN) addresses the current polycrisis—climate change, great power conflict, economic insecurity, rising authoritarianism, human rights violations, and global health threats. We invite theoretically and empirically diverse papers that examine how the polycrisis affects the UN system—its operations, legitimacy, and resilience—as well as the UN’s ability to navigate these interlinked crises. 4) International Politics and the Far Right Lisbeth Zimmermann (Goethe University Frankfurt), Raffaele Mastrorocco (EUI) The worldwide rise of the Far Right increasingly challenges IOs, while the international dimension of far-right politics remains underexplored. This panel explores the international politics of the far right, focusing on the extent to which the “thick” ideology of far-right groups matters for multilateralism. It analyzes these actors’ preferences, strategies, and patterns of cooperation, investigating also how IOs respond to far-right challenges. 5) International Cooperation and Autocratization Karin Sundström (Stockholm University), Faradj Koliev (Stockholm University) Over the past decade, the share of democracies around the world has declined, and previously stable democracies gravitate toward autocracy. What do these trends imply for international cooperation? This panel explores the complex relationship between autocracy and international cooperation, focusing on how member states engage with IOs. The papers in the panel examine different issues on this topic, including the interaction between the formal design of organizations and the informal practices that autocratic regimes adopt to exert influence. 6) EU support for global governance in a contested world Hylke Dijkstra (Maastricht University), John Karlsrud (NUPI, Norway) The EU navigates a world of increasing complexity, fragmentation, and power shifts. A prime example of multilateralism, the EU seeks to preserve the rules-based global order and governance. Yet what pathways does the EU pursue to maintain this interest growing contestation, fragmentation, and informalization of global governance? To address this question, this panel invites papers that study a variety of policy areas and different international institutions. 7) IOs as Migration Policymakers Karin Vaagland (University of Geneva), Nele Kortendiek (European University Institute) This panel investigates how IOs navigate the contested terrain of global migration policy-making. Adopting a broad interdisciplinary perspective, it unpacks the different decision-making sites within and between IOs to investigate how knowledge, practice, and (crisis) discourses shape international migration and asylum policies. The panel sheds light on how migration IOs (IOM and UNHCR) act as global governors and advances a debate on the production and outcomes of global public policies. 8) The Politics of International Financial Institutions: Conditionality, Identity Shifts, and Leadership Saliha Metinsoy (Erasmus University Rotterdam) This panel examines the political dynamics of International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as the IMF and the World Bank, focusing on the causes and consequences of their conditionality, identity shifts, and the role of leadership. It brings together scholars to discuss how these factors shape the policies and impacts of IFIs in member countries, encouraging a variety of different methodological and theoretical approaches for a fruitful discussion. 9) Innovations in IO Research: Representation, Discrimination, and Power Dynamics Andrea Liese (University of Potsdam), Andreas Ullmann (University of Potsdam) This panel investigates how institutional arrangements and procedures in IOs favor or disadvantage different key actors, such as more or less powerful states, affected groups, or individuals. This panel therefore focuses on the role of IOs as producers of global inequalities and social stratification and sites in which discrimination is reproduced and legitimized. It asks: It asks how stakeholders gain access, how experts are appointed, and how formal voting rules and organizational cultures affect decision-making and the distribution of resources. 10) IOs amid (geo)-politicization: agents and strategies of institutional resilience Tim Heinkelmann-Wild (University of Munich), Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni (Cambridge University) Amid a highly (geo-)politicized environment, revisionist powers, populist leaders, domestic publics, and rising economies contest IO norms and rules. Moreover, IOs compete with each other in an ever-denser institutional landscape. How do IOs---and the actors within them---respond to contestation? What conditions enhance IO resilience to support and fulfill their mandate? To answer these questions, the panel invites contributions studying IOs’ responses and resilience from different theoretical and methodological perspectives.