Global Governance Fields Beyond Fragmentation and Complexity: Emergence, Effects and Discursive Underpinnings of Interorganizational Relations

**Call for Papers**

International Workshop hosted by Junior Research Group “Governance for Global Health“, 24-25 November 2016 , Freie Universität Berlin/Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung

“Global Governance Fields Beyond Fragmentation and Complexity: Emergence, Effects and Discursive Underpinnings of Interorganizational Relations”

Deadline for abstracts: 8 July 2016

This workshop aims to query the fixation on complexity and fragmentation in contemporary research on international organizations and global governance. It takes issue with the strangely determinist, yet largely unchallenged truism that global governance in the 21^st century is inevitably racing towards an ever more disintegrated institutional landscape, where large international organizations are becoming invariably more multi-purpose while operating alongside specialized smaller programs and initiatives with similar or overlapping mandates. Both of these tendencies are generally perceived to be the result of an unprecedented influence and numerical increase of non-state actors since the 1990s. Existing research on the contemporary rules and organizational structures surrounding specific issues of international concern has been largely focusing on the competitive dynamics that result from the co‐existence of organizations with overlapping mandates and missions as well as on potential or actual collisions between rule-systems. This workshop, by contrast, explores the cooperativerelationships between organizations in densely populated governance landscapes. What pulls international organizations into ever-tighter relationships with their peers? How do cooperative endeavors between two or several organizations affect the relationships of other organizations in the respective policy field? What power struggles and asymmetries can be identified in recently proliferating discourses, policies and strategies of interorganizational harmonization? What visions of how responses to issues of global concern should be organized inform contemporary attempts to fortify specific institutional orders or ‘architectures’? To what extent do discourses on good global governance reflect back on interorganizational practices and vice versa (reflexivity)? What alternatives are there to a dominant contemporary discourse which privileges effectiveness of global governance arrangements over other global goals and preaches coordination of international actors as a cure for dysfunctional fragmentation?

While the dynamic of institutional fragmentation and growing complexity as well as its origins have been studied in a variety of fields, we see a strong need for scientific exchange between scholars working on different aspects of cooperative interorganizational relationships in specific policy areas. We therefore invite contributions that either limit themselves to exploring interorganizational relationships in a single policy sector or related to one specific issue, as well as those approaching the issue from a comparative perspective. There are numerous areas of global cooperation, in which the number of international organizations, programs and initiatives has seen a dramatic upsurge since the end of the Cold War – and particularly since the turn of the Millennium – for example, emergency relief, climate change, biodiversity protection, food security, fishery, refugees, or health. Our workshop aims to bring together scholars who have studied the institutional dynamics and the evolution of relationships between international organizations that occupy these fields, as well as their discursive underpinnings and power effects. Comparing inter-organizational dynamics across a variety of international issue-areas, the workshop aims to discuss different explanations for the (re-)emergence of order and architecture amid the supposedly complex, complicated or even chaotic array of institutions, rules and actors surrounding a specific field of international cooperation.

Our workshop is organized around the following core themes:

1)    EMERGENCE: The first component of the workshop revolves around explanations of interorganizational cooperation across different fields of global governance. Contributions to this core theme primarily ask about the drivers behind interorganizational cooperation and the motivation of individual international organizations (and actors within them) to forge alliances with other organizations.  

a.    What explains the growth in cooperative relationships between organizations in complex global institutional landscapes? (norms/discourses; hegemonic actors; power structures; emulation; resource constraints)

b.    Where are the origins of specific interorganizational constellations in specific fields of global governance?

c.    How can these different interorganizational constellations be explained across time, across different governance fields?

2)    EFFECTS: The second component of the workshop focuses on the effects of interorganizational cooperation. It explores how these effects can be identified and analyzed within specific global governance fields and by comparing several policy-sectors or issues. Contributions to this building block of the workshop primarily seek to explain the evolution, emergence and persistence of interorganizational constellations, also from a historical perspective. They will address one of the following questions.

a.    How do tightening interorganizational relationships affect the relationships of other actors? To what extent do they (re-)order institutional landscapes; reduce complexity; lead to integration rather than fragmentation? When do they result in stable institutional architectures?

b.    What different orders, modes of interorganizational cooperation and related governing techniques can we identify? What is it that holds the pieces of the institutional mosaic together?

3)    DISCOURSE: In the third component of the workshop, participants will shed a more critical light on existing scholarship on interorganizational cooperation in global governance. This part of the workshop will emphasize the discursive underpinnings of specific visions of good global governance. It will query powerful contemporary notions of good global governance as ‘orderly’, ‘harmonized’ and ‘effective’. Ideally, contributions to this building block will uncover alternative, potentially conflicting discourses on the relations between international organizations in different global policy fields.

a.    What are the causal and normative beliefs underlying contemporary discourses on interorganizational harmonization, coordination or effectiveness and ensuing efforts to build more identifiable governance architectures?

b.    How can past and contemporary interorganizational practices in global governance be contextualized? What alternative perspectives on interorganizational constellations can this historical contextualization bring to light?

c.    What are the larger values (effectiveness; legitimacy; equity) underpinning specific interorganizational constellations and practices?

d.    How have different visions of ‘good governance’ and ‘appropriate/effective interorganizational cooperation’ emerged and transformed over time? What different degrees of reflexivity can be identified in such discourses, how do they translate into practice thus unfolding productive effects?

e.    What alternative modes of thinking and speaking about how global affairs should be governed are excluded or marginalized?

Our workshop aims to assemble contributions that address these themes using a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches but always with a strong empirical focus. We invite contributions from scholars of International Relations/Global Governance, International Law, International Political Theory as well as International Political Sociology and would especially welcome inter-disciplinary work.

The workshop will be held at the Berlin Social Science Center/WZB in collaboration with Freie Universität Berlin on 24/25 November 2016. Selected contributors will be notified by end of July 2016. If you want to know more about the Research Group Governance for Global Health go tohttps://www.wzb.eu/de/forschung/internationale-politik-und-recht/global-health .

Deadline for submission of proposals: 8 July 2016. Please send your proposal (ca. 300 words) tolaura.pantzerhielm@wzb.eu.

Papers are due on 14^th of November 2017 and should ideally not exceed 5000 words.