Complex governance and the new interdependence approach (NIA)

ABSTRACT

Existing models that aim to explain the effects of economic interdependence on global politics do not adequately capture transnational politics and the production of new modes of governance. The new interdependence approach (NIA), defined and illustrated in this symposium, exemplifies new modes of cross-border complex governance. Complex governance is defined by its disruption of the dominant role of national governments in global and regional governance. National governments have become only one set of actors in among a heterogeneous group of participants in global governance, agents who collaborate across type to produce more informal and less legalized governance outcomes. Complex governance and the NIA approach appear to have both functional limits (more apparent in issue-areas new to the global agenda) and spatial limits (gradually extending beyond the industrialized countries to the developing world). National governments and politics remain influential in a world of complex governance. A final contribution of the NIA approach is its concentration on the distributional effects of complex governance.

KEYWORDS:

• interdependence
• governance
• NGO
• multinational corporation

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author thanks Min Jung Kim for her research assistance. He is grateful to the editors of this symposium and the participants in the NIA project for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. By 2012, world output share for developing countries had increased from 23% (2000) to 40%, and their share in world trade had increased to 48% (from 33% in 2000).

2. The Covenant of Mayors in Europe is only one such initiative in transnational climate governance.

3. Pauwelyn, Wessel, and Wouters (2012) have asked whether these new processes of governance could create international law without the participation of national governments.

4. An exception to this generalization may be climate change mitigation and transnational climate governance, where the Chinese government has important motivations for encouraging NGO and subnational government participation in complex governance (Hale and Roger 2012). Many of the NGOs in China, however, are in fact GONGOs (government-organized, non-governmental organizations).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Miles Kahler

Miles Kahler is a distinguished professor at the School of International Service, American University and Senior Fellow for Global Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. He is a member of the editorial boards of International Organization, Global Governance, and Global Summitry. His current research centers on emerging economies and global governance and challenges to the nation-state as a dominant unit in the international system.