Beyond Multilateralism: Global Public Policy Networks
In recent years, the failures and insufficiencies of traditional multilateralism have become ever more obvious: Governments and international organizations alone are no longer able to address ever more complex global policy issues. The corporate sector and civil society are significant players in almost all global policy domains. Their active engagement is a critical if not imperative component in delivering policy outcomes that are timely, effective and legitimate. Creative institutional innovations are needed that connect governments, international organizations, civil society, and the corporate sector in order to better address the growing number of global public policy challenges.
In this article, we argue that global public policy networks are one promising answer to the growing organizational vacuum at the global level. In these trisectoral networks, states, international organizations, civil society actors and the private sector are collaborating to achieve what none of the single actors is able to achieve on its own. With no early guarantee of success, many of them started as innovative “experiments” responding to an ever more complex global policy environment and in particular the inability of governmental or intergovernmental structures to manage the consequences of increased socio-economic integration and rapid technological change. Trisectoral networks are coalitions of and for change – they are both a result of a changing external environment and they help to shape it. Networks have emerged in vastly different areas ranging from the development and provision of vaccines, the construction of dams to the establishment of environmental standards.
How and why do global public policy networks develop? What makes them work? What are their capabilities and limitations? What roles do and should states and international organizations play in these networks?
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