Regime complexity and global governance: The case of trafficking in persons

Abstract

What are the consequences of increasing regime complexity and institutional proliferation on global governance? Does the growing density and overlaps among institutions facilitate or hinder the ability of states to manage transnational threats through cooperation? This article argues that the impact of regime complexity on the effectiveness of cooperation depends not only on the nature of spillovers among overlapping regimes, but also on the cross-institutional strategies of states and nonstate actors. I distinguish between two types of strategies through which actors can take advantage of institutional overlaps: (1) "opportunistic" or non-cooperative attempts by states to bypass legal commitments, which tend to undermine the goals of cooperation; and (2) "cooperative" strategies by intergovernmental organizations, civil society organizations, and other principled actors. These actors also engage in regime shifting, forum linking, and other cross-forum strategies to promote their institutional mandates and normative agendas. To probe the plausibility of these theoretical claims, I focus on the case of the anti-trafficking in persons regime. The overlaps between anti-trafficking laws and the migration, labor, and human rights regimes illustrate the different ways in which intergovernmental organizations and their allies in society can exploit institutional overlaps to promote greater cooperation and expand the regime complex.

Incoherence in Regime Complexes: A Sentiment Analysis of EU‐IMF Surveillance

“…It also chimes with ongoing debates about the importance of state size for influence in EU policy‐making (Thorhallsson, ) and the constraining power of institutions in this domain (Heipertz and Verdun, ). Turning to the wider international relations literature, our findings may help to refine explanations of why some regime complexes enhance the effectiveness of international cooperation while others do not (see also Gómez‐Mera, ). A central message of this article is that assumptions about the degree of coherence within a regime complex is a matter for empirical investigation rather than something to assume a priori or explore through case studies alone.…”

Assessing Global Governance in the Area of Human Trafficking Through Civil Society Participation in its Regime Complex

“…The international institutions included in the HT database were selected on the basis of a number of criteria. First, they are known to be part to the HT regime complex (see Gomez-Mera, 2016;Aradau, 2013). Second, data is available on CS participation to their negotiation meetings through the lists of participants.…”

Intervention by international organizations in regime complexes

“…Existing models of the politics of regime complexes, however, have yet to fully incorporate IOs as independent political actors. While scholars of regime complexes have taken steps to model in the behavior of private actors (Green and Auld 2017;Zelli et al 2017) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (Orsini 2013;Gómez-Mera 2016), theorizing and research on IOs as actors in regime complexes has lagged behind. The likely reason is that regime complexes have been chiefly theorized by scholars working from Functionalist paradigms that view IOs as mechanisms created by states in order to lower transaction costs and solve coordination problems (Abbott and Snidal 1998); most research on regime complexes thus seeks to explain whether partially overlapping authority increases or decreases the incentives for states to cooperate (Raustalia and Victor 2004;Oberthür and Gehring 2006;Alter and Meunier 2009;Keohane and Victor 2011;Johnson and Urpelainen 2012;Orsini et al 2013;Gehring and Faude 2014;Pratt 2018;Hofmann 2019).…”

“…Scholars now recognize that international organizations (IOs) do not operate in splendid isolation but are increasingly embedded in "regime complexes" in which their authority partially overlaps with other IOs and international agreements in the governance of an issue-area (Raustalia and Victor 2004;Alter and Meunier 2009;Alter and Raustiala 2018). Regime complexes matter because they can generate new, or amplify existing, political conflicts among states navigating non-integrated governance systems with diverse, and sometimes contradictory, rules, norms, and policy goals (Orsini et al 2013;Margulis 2013;Gehring and Faude 2014;Gómez-Mera 2016). The lack of formal hierarchy among institutions in a regime complex means there is no definitive arrangement or meta-authority to which states can appeal to settle jurisdictional ambiguity or treaty conflicts (Alter and Meunier 2009;Keohane and Victor 2011;Kreuder-Sonnen and Zürn 2020).…”