Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, cooperation among nations was based on international regimes and formal intergovernmental organizations. However, since the 1990s, informal modes of global governance, such as informal intergovernmental organizations and transnational public-private governance initiatives, have proliferated. Even within formal intergovernmental organizations, informal means of influence and informal procedures affect outcomes whilst, around all these institutions, even more informal networks shape agendas.
This volume introduces and analyzes these three types of informality in governance: informality of, within, and around institutions. An introductory chapter traces the rise of informal governance and suggests a range of theoretical perspectives and variables that may explain this surge. Empirical chapters then apply these and other explanations to diverse issue areas and cross-cutting issues, often using newly developed datasets or original case study research. The concluding chapter sets out a research agenda on informality in global governance, including its normative implications.
Speaker:
Thomas Biersteker is the Gasteyger Professor Honoraire at the Graduate Institute, Geneva and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He previously taught at Yale University, the University of Southern California, and Brown University, where he directed the Watson Institute for International Studies from 1994 until 2006.
Author, editor, or co-editor of eleven books, his next book, co-edited with Oliver Westerwinter and Kenneth Abbott is Informal Governance in World Politics (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2022). He is also co-editor of Targeted Sanctions: The Impacts and Effectiveness of UN Action (Cambridge, 2016), Countering the Financing of Global Terrorism (Routledge, 2008), International Law and International Relations: Bridging Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2006), The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance (Cambridge, 2002), and State Sovereignty as Social Construct (Cambridge 1996).
His research focuses primarily on international relations, global governance, and international sanctions. In addition to providing annual sanctions training for incoming members of the UN Security Council, he is the principal developer of SanctionsApp, an interactive tool for the design and analysis of UN targeted sanctions.
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