The global governance of international development: Documenting the rise of multi-stakeholder partnerships and identifying underlying theoretical explanations

Bernhard Reinsberg () and Oliver Westerwinter
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Bernhard Reinsberg: University of Cambridge
Oliver Westerwinter: University of St. Gallen

The Review of International Organizations, 2021, vol. 16, issue 1, No 3, 59-94

Abstract: Abstract The global governance of development increasingly relies on multi-stakeholder partnerships between states, intergovernmental organizations, and non-governmental organizations. This article takes on two tasks. The first is to describe quantitatively the institutional evolution of the multilateral development system over the past century. The second is to juxtapose four rational-institutionalist explanations for why states establish new organizations as transnational governance initiatives—functionalism, power-oriented theories, domestic politics, and contextual design. The empirical analysis probes these explanations using the new Transnational Public-Private Governance Initiatives in World Politics dataset, which combines several existing data sources to build the most comprehensive data on different forms of institutionalized cooperation in global governance. The results lend most support to the contextual design view, while also yielding support for other accounts. By employing Heckman selection models, the analysis addresses potential selection bias due to unobserved correlation between state choices to create a new organization and its design. A qualitative case study further validates measurement choices and causal mechanisms. These findings have implications for theories of institutional design and development practice, specifically regarding the role of intergovernmental organizations in an increasingly interconnected world.

Keywords: Global governance; Multilateral development organizations; Aid architecture; Informal governance; Transnational governance; Regime complex; Trust funds (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F30 F55 H87 O19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11558-019-09362-0

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