Regime complexity: Since the end of the Cold War and particularly after the 2008 crisis, new agreements and institutions have been superimposed on pre-existing ones, and regimes have evolved into ‘regime complexes’ due to system-wide political shocks, increased issue density and task expansion. Institutional proliferation has in turn impacted on the politics of cooperation. As a result, the layering of parallel, imperfectly overlapping and potentially conflicting authority claims has brought increased complexity.
IR scholars have long been acquainted with the maxim ‘global problems require global solutions’. During the Cold War, Robert Keohane noted how “In a post- hegemonic world, the rules of international regimes cannot be reliably enforced
through centralised organisations. If we view international regimes, and their international organisations, as attempts to construct hierarchies, or quasi-governments, they will appear weak to the point of ineffectiveness”. In the three decades that have elapsed, power configurations have changed, complexity has grown and new coping strategies have been devised, by states, International Organisations (IOs) and non-state
actors.
the Nexus policy concept is an example of
increased regime complexity. On the one side, it possesses post-hierarchical features, such as
- indirect governance by orchestration,
- exhibits several experimentalist traits, such as open-ended goals, a networked approach to policy definition and monitoring, and a strong emphasis on the role of local knowledge and agency
Originally orchestrated by the UN, the Triple Nexus relies on the contribution of multiple actors (local communities, states, IOs, NGOs) at different governance levels.
“orchestration entails the creation, support and
integration of a multi-actor system of indirect governance, to pursue common goals that neither the orchestrator nor the orchestrated players would be able to achieve separately”.
GLOBAL EXPERIMENTALIST GOVERNANCE
GXG is characterised
- by a shared perception of a common problem: common perspection that challenges in fragile contexts would
be best addressed as a common problem. poverty-reducing, democracy-enhancing post-conflict reconstruction efforts of the 2000s, were rooted in widely shared understandings of the interdependencies between HDP challenges;
- by the creation of a framework for a common understanding on how to respond to such problem to achieve open-ended goals: develop a common framework towards the
definition of open-ended goals to address cross-policy challenges in fragile countries. Collaborative endeavours followed, with the creation of a UN-WBG Partnership Framework for Crisis-Affected Situations (2017) and a UN-WB Joint Steering Committee on Humanitarian and Development Collaboration (2018). Most notably, the elaboration of an OECD-DAC Joint Recommendation on HDP linkages was the first multilateral document that provided both principled and operational guidelines to bridge the gap between high-level goals and existing processes on the ground;
- by the implementation of those goals by actors at lower governance levels, based on their knowledge of and adaptability to local contexts;
- by the constant production of feedbacks from local contexts on outcomes that are peer-reviewed horizontally;
- by a regular reassessment and redefinition of goals and practices