Designed for different times? Institutional challenges of international organisations and the rise of informality

Kari Irwin Otteburn and Axel Marx

Chapter 4 in Institutions of Global Governance, 2025, pp 65-85 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: International organisations (IOs) must operate in a changing geopolitical and global governance context thatpresents a number of challenges for them. This chapter aims to identify some general challenges that IOs face across different issue areas. The identification of challenges is based on an in-depth analysis of mapping reports which describe global governance complexes in six issue areas (trade, security, climate change, migration, development, and finance) and focus on IOs. The chapter identifies three primary institutional limitations: (1) IOs face difficulties balancing the needs of a diverse set of stakeholders and members due to inappropriate decision-making rules or inflexibility of governance structures; (2) IOs’ mandates often do not grant the IO sufficient policy autonomy or scope of action to meet its goals; (3) IOs’ frequently lack the necessary resources, including funding, staff and access to information and a shift in funding from general funding to earmarked funding. These limitations create ‘friction’ between developments in the external environment of IOs and their capacity to govern in this changed environment. Next, the chapter assesses to what degree informal IOs address these challenges. The chapter suggests that these structural institutional limitations of IOs are not likely to be fully resolved through increased informality in certain issue areas.

Keywords: Institutional design; International organisations; Decision-making; Global governance; Informal institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035302574
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