Governing Complexity in Complex Times: The HDP Nexus and the Role of the UN, the EU and the World Bank

ABSTRACT

Based on the work conducted with a Nexus-centred network of scholars and practitioners (HDP LAB SYNEX4 Future), an overview is offered of the literature on regime complexity to analyse origins and evolution of the Triple Nexus multilateral approach to the governance of compound humanitarian-development-security crises. Identifying the main institutional features of the UN-orchestrated Nexus policy concept highlights its potential as an innovative attempt at global experimentalist governance. This analysis of the nexus-based approach of the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU) and the World Bank Group (WBG) in three pilot countries – Cameroon, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – demonstrates that, while coordination has increased, the agency of local communities remains limited and major impediments hinder the inclusion of the peace dimension, an area where separate initiatives by non-Western regional organisations have also stalled. Progress will necessarily depend on the ability of Nexus actors to develop its bottom-up and participatory components, and to improve coordination within the group of like-minded donors who share a clear commitment to a human rights-based, inclusive and prosperous future.

KEYWORDS:

• regime complexity
• Triple Nexus
• UN
• EU
• World Bank Group

Acknowledgments

While taking full responsibility for any errors or omissions, the author is particularly grateful to three anonymous reviewers and to the editors of this journal, whose comments and suggestions have greatly helped to improve an earlier version of this article. The author thanks the participants in the HDP LAB SYNEX4 Future, practitioners, activists, scholars and students, who have contributed countless thought-provoking insights to this research between 2019 and 2024.

Notes

1 Seven interviews were conducted with EU, UN, WBG and NGO officers between 2019 and 2023, with informed consent and under confidentiality, with additional information gathered from the participants to the HDP LAB SYNEX4 Future Seminar Series (2019-20-21-22), as well as to two international conferences organised by the Global Governance Research Group – UNA Europa. See the Online Annex for additional details.

2 Between 2008 and 2018, 75 assessments were produced in response to disasters and conflicts (EU, UN and WB 2018).

3 “A regime complex is an array of partially overlapping and nonhierarchical institutions that includes more than one international agreement or authority” (Alter and Raustiala 2018, 329). Regime complexity refers both to the approach that advances “a new conceptualization of the international politics of cooperation” and to its empirical referent, that is, the densely institutionalised international environment where states and non-state actors interact (346).

4 The International Network on Conflict and Fragility (INCAF) was established in 2009 as a subsidiary body of the OECD-DAC, to provide guidance on post-conflict aid (OECD 2012). Created in 1991 as a service within OCHA (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), the IASC (Inter-agency Standing Committee) monitors humanitarian assistance, assembling several UN agencies and organisations, as well as prominent humanitarian and development INGOs.

5 A default penalty for non-compliance is not included in the five constitutive criteria of GXG, yet De Búrca et al. (2014, 478) argue that “GXG regimes frequently operate in the shadow of a ‘penalty default’ that induces appreciation of the relative benefits of joint efforts by sanctioning non-co-operation”.

6 A Muslim ethnic minority that has been living for generations in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar (formerly Burma), the Rohingyas have been the target of violence and systematic violation of basic human rights. Since 1982 they have been denied citizenship, becoming the largest stateless population and most persecuted minority worldwide. Their situation deteriorated further when a de-facto military campaign, fueled by militant ethno-nationalist groups in the Rakhine State, was launched against them by joint national and Arakan Army forces in 2017 (Zarni 2024).

7 The EU-UNHCR-IOM cooperation finances Nexus activities in the Cox Bazaar’s Refugee Camp (Bangladesh), where nearly one million Rohingya refugees fleeing from Rakhine have been settled, in an attempt to promote at once emergency relief and development support to both refugees and host communities. While Bangladesh has accepted Rohingya’s refugees from Myanmar for decades, its incentive to keep doing so has been drastically reduced by rising costs from natural hazards and Covid-19 challenges to poor Bangladeshi communities.

8 Since February 2021, the EU Commission’s Directorate-General for Cooperation and Development (DG DEVCO) has been renamed as Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA). Nexus activities entail close cooperation with DG European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) and the European External Action Service (EEAS).

9 Deployed in the DRC since 1999 – first under MONUC (Mission de l'Organisation des Nations Unies en République démocratique du Congo); since 2010 as MONUSCO (Mission de l'Organisation des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en République démocratique du Congo) – UN peacekeepers have been heavily criticised by both CSOs and INGOs for their costly, ineffective and at times counterproductive role.

10 IDA (International Development Association) is the concessional agency of the World Bank Group. Its financial support to least developed countries is delivered in three-year policy frameworks, financed by contributions by its member states. The nineteenth replenishment (IDA19) covered a shorter period from 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2022 (instead of 30 June 2023), due to the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on financing needs in IDA countries.

11 Prior to choosing ‘constitutional policy’ as the fourth type in its typologisation exercise, Löwi had envisaged ‘foreign policy’ as a fourth case, along with distributive, regulatory and re-distributive types (Löwi 1964, 689).

12 According to Jack Donnelly (2016, 1) heterarchies are “systems of multiple functionally differentiated non-territorial centers arranged in divided or tangled hierarchies”. Similar to scholarship on regime complexity, he uses the concept to describe a tendency inherent in the 21^st-century international system, where governance is becoming multi-level and multi-actor at the same time. Different from GXG, however, heterarchies imply a heavy vertical (hierarchical) overlay by supranational structures (as in the European human rights regime and to some extent in the global human rights regime).

13 ‘Big P’ refers to country- or region-level stabilisation efforts, either military or diplomatic, often aimed at restoring the legitimacy of country authorities. ‘Small p’ indicates peacebuilding efforts to improve inter-communal dialogue and social cohesion at community level.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eugenia Baroncelli

Eugenia Baroncelli is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.