Commentary: On Fragmentation, Differentiation, and Coordination

Michael Zürn () and Benjamin Faude
Additional contact information
Benjamin Faude: Benjamin Faude is a junior research fellow at the Global Governance Research Unit of the Social Science Research Center, Berlin, and a PhD candidate at the Otto-Friedrich-University, Bamberg, Germany.

Global Environmental Politics, 2013, vol. 13, issue 3, 119-130

Abstract: This commentary takes up conceptual issues raised in the introduction. Discussing the contributions to this volume, we offer three points. First, the concept of fragmentation needs theoretical clarification, which can be provided to some extent by sociological differentiation theory. We suggest a typology of different types of fragmentation. Second, differentiation theory helps to improve understanding of the different causes of fragmentation. Third, a high level of institutional differentiation is an important characteristic of modernity at many levels of politics. It is not fragmentation per se, but rather the (lack of) coordination of fragmented or differentiated institutions, that is a problem for global governance. © 2013 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Keywords: fragmentation; differentiation; coordination; global governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/GLEP_a_00186 link to full text PDF (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:13:y:2013:i:3:p:119-130

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=1526-3800

Access Statistics for this article

Global Environmental Politics is currently edited by Steven Bernstein, Matthew Hoffmann and Erika Weinthal

More articles in Global Environmental Politics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().