Unraveling the central state, but how? Types of multi-level governance

'Die Umverteilung von Autorität in zentralisierten Staaten nach oben, nach unten und seitwärts hat die Aufmerksamkeit einer wachsenden Anzahl von Forschern der Politikwissenschaft auf sich gezogen. Allerdings herrscht - abgesehen von dem Einverständnis, dass das Regieren sich auf mehrere Ebenen erweitert hat (und erweitern sollte) - kein Konsens darüber, wie Autorität organisiert werden sollte. Dieser Beitrag stützt sich auf eine Anzahl von Artikeln, um zwei Typen von Mehrebenen-Regieren zu unterscheiden. Ein Typ konzipiert eine Ausbreitung von Autorität über für allgemeine Zwecke zuständige, nicht-überschneidende und dauerhafte Jurisdiktionen. Ein zweiter Typ beschreibt Aufgaben-spezifische, überschneidende und flexible Jurisdiktionen. Wir schließen den Artikel mit einer Spezifizierung der Vorteile jedes Typen des Regierens.' (Autorenreferat)'The reallocation of authority upwards, downwards, and sideways from central states has drawn attention from a growing number of scholars in political science. Yet beyond agreement that governance has become (and should be) multi-level, there is no consensus about how it should be organized. This article draws on several literatures to distinguish two types of multi-level governance. One type conceives of dispersion of authority to general purpose, non-intersecting, and durable jurisdictions. A second type of governance conceives of task-specific, intersecting, and flexible jurisdictions. We conclude by specifying the virtues of each type of governance.' (author's abstract)

Review Article: Global Governance in a Complex World

This essay reviews the literature on international regime complexity and international institutional complexity published in three high impact journals between 2009 and 2022. The analysis identifies conceptual ambiguities as it discusses the definitions of complexity proposed by the scholarship. The goal is to highlight indicators of complexity in international politics, with a focus on global governance. These indicators are observable, subject to measurement and comparison. Based on some of these indicators, the essay explores the relationship between complexity and compliance -- or to what extent states implement the legal commitments that they adopted internationally, in light of the literature. The essay makes an original contribution when it chronicles and organizes the scholarship on complexity in terms of agency, scope, and effectiveness. It also analyses the presence and levels of a hierarchical relationship amongst the elements that make up a complex regime or institution. The Scholarship reviewed here constitutes essential reading for any researcher that is interested in global governance, international law, and compliance

China's new multilateral institutions: a framework and research agenda

China has recently taken the lead in fostering several new multilateral initiatives which mirror the policy tasks of existing institutions. This article provides a framework for studying such 'parallel institutions' and sketches an emerging research agenda. First, it provides an empirical overview of China's new institutions. Second, it defines parallel institutions and provides analytical categories for describing types of parallel institutions and integrating them into existing IR theory. This centers on a typology of relationships between parallel institutions and incumbent institutions, which can be reinforcing, complementary, substitutive, or competing. Third, it examines explanations for parallel institution building. Fourth, it considers the implications of parallel institutions in the context of an international power shift

The social construction of global health priorities: an empirical analysis of contagion in bilateral health aid

Donors of development assistance for health typically provide funding for a range of disease focus areas, such as maternal health and child health, malaria, HIV/AIDS, and other infectious diseases. But funding for each disease category does not match closely its contribution to the disability and loss of life it causes and the cost-effectiveness of interventions. We argue that peer influences in the social construction of global health priorities contribute to explaining this misalignment. Aid policy-makers are embedded in a social environment encompassing other donors, health experts, advocacy groups, and international officials. This social environment influences the conceptual and normative frameworks of decision-makers, which in turn affect their funding priorities. Aid policy-makers are especially likely to emulate decisions on funding priorities taken by peers with whom they are most closely involved in the context of expert and advocacy networks. We draw on novel data on donor connectivity through health IGOs and health INGOs and assess the argument by applying spatial regression models to health aid disbursed globally between 1990 and 2017. The analysis provides strong empirical support for our argument that the involvement in overlapping expert and advocacy networks shapes funding priorities regarding disease categories and recipient countries in health aid

Decision-making in international organizations: institutional design and performance

International organizations (IOs) experience significant variation in their decision-making performance, or the extent to which they produce policy output. While some IOs are efficient decision-making machineries, others are plagued by deadlock. How can such variation be explained? Examining this question, the article makes three central contributions. First, we approach performance by looking at IO decision-making in terms of policy output and introduce an original measure of decision-making performance that captures annual growth rates in IO output. Second, we offer a novel theoretical explanation for decision-making performance. This account highlights the role of institutional design, pointing to how majoritarian decision rules, delegation of authority to supranational institutions , and access for transnational actors (TNAs) interact to affect decision-making. Third, we offer the first comparative assessment of the decision-making performance of IOs. While previous literature addresses single IOs, we explore decision-making across a broad spectrum of 30 IOs from 1980 to 2011. Our analysis indicates that IO decision-making performance varies across and within IOs. We find broad support for our theoretical account, showing the combined effect of institutional design features in shaping decision-making performance. Notably, TNA access has a positive effect on decision-making performance when pooling is greater, and delegation has a positive effect when TNA access is higher. We also find that pooling has an independent, positive effect on decision-making performance. All-in-all, these findings suggest that the institutional design of IOs matters for their decision-making performance, primarily in more complex ways than expected in earlier research

Globalisation, Domestic Political Institutions, and Climate Commitment and Performance

This study examines whether domestic political institutions moderate the influence of economic and political globalisation on climate commitment and climate performance. It makes four contributions to the literature. First, there has been no systematic research to date on the extent to which domestic political institutions moderate globalisation effects in comparative climate policy research. Instead, three research strands have addressed the joint effect of international integration and domestic political institutions within the broader globalisation literature. The veto-player approach assumes that both ideological heterogeneity among veto players and institutional constraints moderate the effect of globalisation. The political-corruption approach argues that corrupt political decision-makers and public officials affect the environmental consequences of international integration. The regime-type approach suggests that globalisation affects democracies and autocracies in different ways. The present study applies these perspectives to the analysis of climate commitment, as measured by UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol ratification, and performance captured by CO2 emissions. Its findings show that the veto-player approach cannot explain the relationship between globalisation, climate commitment, and performance. However, it does find support for the political-corruption and regime-type approaches. Second, this book contributes to the literature on the joint impact of globalisation and domestic political institutions on the environment. Previous research has focused on domestic pollution, arguing that governments formulating climate policy tend to react in similar ways to the pressures of international competition. The present analysis considers multiple dimensions of globalisation: economic openness, economic interdependence, and international political integration, captured by state involvement in international government organisations (IGOs). While countries may respond in similar ways to international economic pressures in order to stay competitive, domestic political institutions may moderate the scale effects of economic openness and the incentives derived from international political integration. The present findings indicate that the impact of economic interdependence on climate performance in developed countries is independent of veto players and political corruption. In addition, the regime-type and political-corruption approaches improve our understanding of the effect of economic openness on climate performance in developing countries. Aspects of regime type also moderate the effect of international political integration on climate commitment. Third, this study shows that a disaggregated analysis of the moderation effects of institutional explanatory factors can contribute to a better understanding of the climate consequences of globalisation. In addition to earlier research, which suggested that political corruption worsened the negative effects of economic openness, this analysis shows that the interaction effect is independent of the form of political corruption. While political globalisation affects UNFCCC ratification in different ways in democracies and autocracies, civil rights (in particular) strengthen the positive effect of state IGO involvement on Kyoto Protocol ratification. In relation to climate performance, civil rights also moderate the effects of trade and capital openness on developing countries. Finally, this study adds to the literature on treaty design and international cooperation. The interaction effects of regime type and IGO involvement on climate commitment vary in accordance with treaty design