Complexity in international society: theorising fragmentation and linkages in primary and secondary institutions

This article seeks to contribute to theorising the institutional structure of international society by exploring synergies between complex systems thinking and the English School theory of International Relations (IR). Suggesting that the English School already embraces key conceptual insights from complexity theory, most notably relational and adaptive systems thinking, it reconfigures international society as a complex social system. To further advance the English School’s research programme on international institutions, the article introduces the notion of “law-governed emergence” and distils two effects it has on global institutional ordering practices: fragmentation and clustering. These moves help to establish complexity as a fundamental structural condition of institutional ordering at the global level, and to provide a basis for taking steps toward better understanding the nature and significance of institutional interconnections in a globalised international society.

The Complexity and Instability of Policy Conditionality and Transfer: IMF Interventions in the Political Economy of South America.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) interventions have evolved in the last sixty years based on the predominant orthodoxy in world political economy with a focus in recent decades on encouraging liberal market conditions to secure inward investment and capital flows. This has resulted in a dominant model of policy conditions and transfer, but with a debate about the contextual relevance. This paper uses an innovative approach to longitudinal research, called Dynamic Pattern Synthesis, to compare the economic performance of South American nations between 2000-2015. The results from using this method illustrates multifinality in the IMF outcome of encouraging foreign direct investment. A complex configuration of influences on this outcome are evidenced. Complexity theory is used to explain the results, with the continent defined as a complex system that does not respond to simple causal policy mechanisms, but rather displays different patterns of political and economic influence in the context of global market instability. Different foreign direct investment configurations result, and these illustrate that international monetary and policy interventions need to be contextual and cannot make simplistic and universal assumptions about policy problems and their mechanistic solutions.

The "Super-Network": Fostering Interaction Between Human Rights and Climate Change Institutions

This article contributes to understanding unique forms of actor constellations and their tactics in fostering institutional interaction. It explores interaction processes between the human rights and the climate regime, and more specifically, the incorporation of human rights in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. During the Paris negotiations, an inter-constituency alliance comprised of environmental movements, human rights organizations, gender activists, indigenous peoples’ representatives, trade unions, youth groups and faith-based organizations successfully lobbied for the incorporation of rights principles into the new climate instrument. I argue that this alliance can be grasped as a "super-network", a network above several individual transnational advocacy networks (TANs), that works across policy fields and uses information, symbols and stories, as well as accountability and leverage politics to foster interaction between a source institution (human rights regime) and a target institution (climate regime). By employing a package approach, which reiterates a core message of common principles individual networks have agreed on, the "super-network" changed the practices of governments in international negotiations and fostered inter-institutional interaction. Empirically, my research is mainly based on expert interviews and participatory observations at the strategic meetings of TANs at three different climate negotiations in Warsaw (2013), Paris (2015) and Bonn (2017), including follow-up skype interviews with key experts between 2013 and 2020.

Global Governance in Complex Times: Exploring New Concepts and Theories on Institutional Complexity

This article, and the special issue it introduces, seek to contribute to the emerging and much-needed dialogue between the study of global governance and the study of social complexity. We hold that, while there is wide acceptance that global governance is becoming increasingly complex, studying this complexity still faces significant challenges in terms of concepts, theory, and methodology.The article outlines why that dialogue is needed, and how the complexity sciences can help us address some of these challenges. It then introduces key questions central to such an integrated research programme, for instance: under what conditions can a global governance system be regarded as complex? Which methods can help us recognize and assess patterns of stability, iteration, and change in global governance? How can a theory-driven analysis take into account that complexity may influence spaces for political agency, i.e. that it may alter key aspects of legitimacy, accountability, transparency, technocracy, and power and ultimately the strategical options of certain actors? Finally, the article looks ahead to the special issue and summarizes how the authors contribute crucial conceptual, theoretical, and methodical ideas for addressing these and other questions.

Key Questions for Forming Partnerships: A Review and Research Agenda

Partnerships receive significant attention in public administration scholarship, with the mass of this literature focusing on whether partnerships work, how to make them work, or how they fit into existing institutions (Provan and Milward, 2001; Vigoda, 2002; McGuire, 2006; Thomson and Perry, 2006; Andrews and Entwistle, 2010; McQuaid, 2010; O’Toole, 2015). Although partnership has been used variously by different scholars, in general, partnerships refer to formal arrangements between two or more organizations that are characterized by defined responsibilities, obligations, and/or governance structure, as compared to other forms of cooperative behaviors which may be more informal, unorganized, or involve few obligations. In general, existing scholarship on partnership formation argues that partnerships are a function of resource-exchanges, available partners, or fragmented authorities, and assumes a pragmatic managerial approach to these arrangements (Grady and Chen, 2006; Feiock and Scholz, 2009). However, scholarship is limited in linking these mechanisms together and explaining how organizations go from isolated and autonomous to integrated and interdependent. As such, it is difficult to determine how initial decisions in the partnership process eventually lead to success or failure in collaboration. Furthermore, much of this scholarship is written with a solely academic audience in mind, making difficult for practitioners, non-academics, or non-subject area experts to consume. To remedy this, we use Cohen, March, and Olsen’s (1972) Garbage Can Theory (GCT) of organizational choice as a guiding framework to identify key issues that affect partnerships formation and tie this disjointed set of literature together. We then synthesize these issues into three key questions that can be operationalized by practitioners: 1) is there a problem that cannot be managed unilaterally?; 2) what new capacities are needed?; and 3) what partnership opportunities are there? From this perspective, forming partnerships unfolds in organized anarchies, where decision-makers must sort through ambiguous problems, solutions, and participants in order to determine if partnership is the right choice for their organization. In general, the purpose of this discussion is to identify and examine key issues that likely affect partnership choices made by practitioners and that can provide guidance to those who are considering engaging in collaboration or partnership. Finally, we discuss links between partnership formation and broader understandings of collaborations and networks.

Institutional complexity is complexity with an adjective

A review of the studies on institutional complexity reveals that the many definitions of institutional complexity and related concepts share similarities with the understanding of complexity and complex systems of complexity science. Yet few publications on institutional complexity engage explicitly with complexity science. Most observers still confuse complicated and complex systems, for instance. Furthermore, the variety of definitions may create disarray regarding what institutional complexity and its related concepts are and what they imply. Highlighting the similarities between institutional complexity and complexity science in global governance, this think piece offers a conceptual and operational definition of institutional complexity using a complexity science lens. It highlights the attributes and properties of institutional complexity. It also presents the benefits of such an approach. Besides offering advantages in terms of concept clarification, this approach aims to engage theoretically, epistemologically, and methodologically with the complexity of global governance, as well as propose a way to answer remaining questions on this crucial topic.

International Institutions in Hard Times: How Complexity Increases Resilience

This paper asks how institutional complexity affects the resilience of global governance. By drawing on sociological differentiation theory, it interprets growing levels of institutional complexity as a process of institutional differentiation which allows the “political system of world society” to mirror the increasing complexity of its social environment. More precisely, the paper suggests that growing levels of institutional complexity enhance the resilience of global governance by providing states with a more diverse set of governance tools and by making backup governance tools available. Against this backdrop, it makes two interrelated contributions to the literature on global governance. First, by applying the concept of resilience to global governance, the paper provides the conceptual basis for a novel research agenda on the ability of contemporary global governance to operate under stress. So far, the analytical toolbox of global governance researchers does not contain a concept that enables a theory-driven analysis of international institutions’ ability to facilitate cooperation when confronted with high levels of stress. Second, it offers a sense of how the central structural feature of contemporary global governance—institutional complexity—affects its resilience. With these two interrelated contributions, the paper seeks to start a scholarly conversation on the resilience of contemporary global governance.

What makes a “regime complex” complex? It depends

What makes the collections of international institutions or regimes governing various domains—called in theliterature regime, institutional, or governance complexes—“complex”? This article examines several conditions for complexity discussed in that literature and finds them necessary but not sufficient. It argues that the sufficient condition is dependence and outlines a framework of increasing levels of synchronic (social/spatial) and diachronic (temporal) dependence. Putting dependence at the centre of discussions on regime complexes has four advantages: (1) it is analytically more precise a condition than proliferation or linkage; (2) it orients us toward questions of degree, ‘how complex’, instead of the binary ‘whether complex’; (3) it informs a range of research design and theoretical choices, especially highlighting extra-dyadic dependencies and an underdeveloped temporal dimension; and (4) it arguably reconciles competing uses of the term “complex” in the literature without conflating it with complexity, structure, or topology.

Governing Complexity in World Politics

Complexity is the new global ontology for world politics. This article summarizes the characteristics of complexity and its implications for informed US state policy making. We conclude with some suggestions about administrative reforms to improve US policy making to address global complexity.

How Effective Public Managers Transform Separation of Powers into “Inseparable Powers” in United States Foster Care Administration Networks

Results from a four state foster care administration field research study in the United States with over 55 key player interviews produced data on what particular networking practices public managers perform that contributes to foster care administration effectiveness. One of these practices was the concept of inseparable powers, whereby the traditional checks and balances roles of the judicial, executive, and legislative branches are slightly altered in eras of state-level foster care administration effectiveness. During a period of inseparable powers, effective public managers work across the state branch boundaries in the United States with partners from other branches to produce better foster care outcomes.