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The Rise of New Institutions
The past decades have witnessed dramatic changes in the world. The bipolar world order has vanished, the unipolar period has passed and a new multipolar world order is emerging.
In this “unraveling” globalized world, geopolitical, economic, environmental, societal and technological challenges are tightly interconnected (Haass 2014). They “transcend borders and spheres of influence and require stakeholders to work together, yet these risks also threaten to undermine the trust and collaboration needed to adapt to the challenges of the new global context” (World Economic Forum 2015). The challenges and their perceptions have been driving shifts in international cooperation. One major trend is “the proliferation and diversification of actors, forums, and their arrangements to address global challenges,” leading to a presumed fragmentation of global governance (Egel 2015, 4–5). However, fragmentation is also often perceived positively as “contested multilateralism,” because institutional diversity can produce better outcomes than “stalled cooperation through existing venues” struggling to respond to persisting and emerging challenges (Egel 2015, 5).
With multipolarity rising as countries outside the old core become economically more powerful, and clusters of countries gravitate to form new poles, the demand for multilateralism becomes more pronounced (Wade 2011). Multilateralism can be defined simply as the practice of coordinating policies in groups of states through ad hoc arrangements or institutions (Keohane 1990). Different modes of multilateralism and participation in coordinating mechanisms exist: the entry of new states into apex governing forums, the increased voting power of emerging states in international organizations, and new agreements and institutions established to coordinate and contribute to regional or global governance.
In spite of an increasing number of international actors, including nonstate actors, both formal and informal organizations as well as governments remain key players.
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