Governing international regime complexes through multi-level governance mechanisms: lessons from water, forestry and migration policy

ABSTRACT

Why do international regime complexes develop? Are hard-law regimes effective in integrating regime complexes for international water resources management? Are there other alternatives? This article introduces international regime complexes and argues that these form a superior alternative to hard law and traditional global integrated regimes for many global policy issues. Failure of hard law to overcome fragmentation and generate integrated policy outcomes in international forestry, migration and water resource management is presented. Additional insights are drawn from two successful cases of water management in North America to argue for international regime complexes for better multi-level governance at the regional level.

KEYWORDS:

• Regime complexes
• hard law
• global governance
• international water resource management
• forestry
• migration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.