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Chapter Five links these descriptions of local contestations over biodiversity governance to the study of international relations. In each case, a constellation of different treaties and institutions had rules that overlapped with the CBD and each other governing the management of protected areas. These overlapping rules and institutions gives rise to a condition described as “regime complexity.” As states try to govern issue areas that are affected by more, occasionally conflicting, and non-hierarchically ordered institutions, their obligations will become more ambiguous. Non-state actors can help shape the ambiguity emerging from regime complexity by helping states adjudicate possibly conflicting rules and resolving questions about what constitutes appropriate action under uncertainty. This chapter links a comparative study of activism and environmental justice to constructivist schools of thought that claim that ideas about appropriate behavior matter.

Transnational governance initiatives increasingly face the problem of regime complexity in which a proliferation of regulatory schemes operate in the same policy domain, supported by varying combinations of public and private actors. The literature suggests that such regime complexity can lead to forum-shopping and other self-interested strategies which undermine the effectiveness of transnational regulation. Based on the design principles of experimentalist governance, this chapter identifies a variety of pathways and mechanisms which promote productive interactions in regime complexes. We use the case of the EU’s Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative, interacting with private certification schemes and public legal timber regulations, including those of third countries such as the US and China, to demonstrate how an increasingly comprehensive transnational regime can be assembled by linking together distinct components of a regime complex.

International regime complexity provides a framework that is useful for analyzing the questions that are addressed in this study. This chapter discusses the origins and development of the regime complexity approach and locates the arguments of the book relative to it and other approaches to the study of international organization and global governance. It defines the concept of a regime complex, reviews some of the shortcomings of the approach, and shows how the analysis of the complex for international finance contributes to the research program on regime complexity. This study is a comparison of institutional interaction in seven structured cases of lending programs, woven through a narrative of the euro crisis. The chapter then previews the main arguments of the book, including that regime complexity stems from states’ efforts to control agency drift and that key states mediate interinstitutional conflict informally.

Chapter 6 explores developments in Asia’s regional architecture under the Trump government and the rising influence of China under Xi Jinping. The chapter draws explicit connections between Asia’s current regional architecture and the future of Asian order. It makes the case that institutions in Asia, particularly US bilateral alliances, are more resilient than presumed. It then draws on the historical institutionalism and regime complexity literatures to describe how the complex patchwork both complicates and advances institutional cooperation. The chapter concludes by offering a more optimistic outlook regarding the complex patchwork and its potential for improving regional governance.

There is no global government, but a growing myriad of global governance platforms. Some are intergovernmental (United Nations and affiliated agencies, differing ‘clubs’ of nations such as the G-7 or G-20); others are multi-stakeholder, drawing together governments, private sector interests, civil society organizations, philanthropists, and academics or other prominent individuals. The plurality and questionable democratic legitimacy of many of these governance platforms is problematic in terms of who has authority or influence over global norms and rules affecting the social determinants of health. Four intergovernmental organizations are profiled for the distinct roles they play in global health governance: the World Health Organization (WHO) (nominally the lead global health governance body), the World Bank (whose financial resources eclipse those of the WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund (with a particular remit to improve children’s health), and the International Labour Organization (a unique tripartite body advocating for global social protection floors).