Does the System Work? Transnational Crises and the Resilience of Global Governance

Abstract

In recent decades, global governance has faced significant transnational crises characterized by threat, urgency, and uncertainty, from the Global Financial Crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic. Simultaneously, heterogeneous infrastate, public–private, and private governance institutions have proliferated alongside incumbent interstate institutions. As a result, contemporary global governance takes place through institutional configurations that we call hybrid institutional complexes (HICs). How effectively can HICs respond to the stresses of transnational crises? Drawing on the concept of resilience, we prepare the conceptual and theoretical ground for analyzing the crisis responses of HICs-based governance. To that end, we first identify three dimensions along which the resilience of governance arrangements must be assessed. We then derive two theoretical conjectures as to the conditions under which a HIC will be (more or less) resilient. The first, institutional diversity, is structural; the second, the presence of intellectual and entrepreneurial leaders and bricoleurs, is agentic. To probe the analytical utility of our approach, we assess the performance of the Global Finance HIC in response to the Global Financial Crisis and compare the performance of the Global Health HIC in responding to COVID-19.