Complex global and regional governance includes both the informality of governance institutions and informality around those institutions. National governments are only one category of actor, though an important one, among a more heterogeneous group of governors. The dynamics and evolution of globalization over time explain the emergence of complex governance in recent decades, an explanation that is complementary to those based on functionalism or domestic politics. Globalization alters actor incentive structures and reduces border effects, allowing nonstate and subnational actors to collaborate and reducing costs of participation in governance. Globalization has empowered actors: Emerging economies, INGOs, and MNCs. Globalization's future will continue to shape the prospects of complex governance.

We assess the development of informality in international climate policy on two levels: Whether informal organizations meaningfully contribute to climate change mitigation, and what role informality plays under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Proliferation of informal intergovernmental organizations (IIGOs) has enabled the move from a rigid list of countries with and without commitments, to the Paris Agreement, under which each country contributes to mitigation. Within the UNFCCC process, we find a “formality-informality cycle,” in which actors sometimes render rules and procedures more flexible and hence more efficient, only to suddenly reverse this trend at other times. Such a high-profile reversal occurred in Copenhagen in 2009. Subsequently, through the use of highly transparent negotiation procedures, trust in informality increased again, allowing negotiators to successfully override Nicaragua’s opposition in Paris in 2015. Similar formality-informality cycles can be observed on specific topics within the UNFCCC negotiations, such as international market mechanisms.

The aim of this volume is not to provide or test a single theory of informal global governance but rather to provide a set of analyses that speak to a common set of theoretical, empirical, and methodological questions. More broadly, the aim is to advance the emerging research agenda on informality in world politics. We conclude the volume by highlighting four productive avenues for future research on informality, based on the insights of the empirical chapters.

Understanding contemporary global governance requires a focus on informality. States increasingly govern through informal intergovernmental organizations, transnational public–private governance initiatives, and other informal institutions. Even within formal institutions, informal practices complement or override formal rules. And diverse informal groupings operate in the orbit of governance institutions, framing novel issues and placing them on policy agendas. We address these three aspects of informality – of, inside, and around global governance institutions. We first trace the nature and extent of the shift toward informal governance. We then consider a range of factors that may be driving the shift, drawing on major streams of International Relations (IR) theory; we treat these as candidate explanatory variables. Finally, we summarize the findings on those variables, and other theoretical insights, from the empirical chapters of this volume.

Transnational policy networks (TPNs) participate in global governance by formulating ideas and policy options around and through formal and informal intergovernmental organizations. They illustrate the third type of informal governance introduced in Chapter 1, informal governance that exists in the spaces around these institutions. TPNs are constituted by individuals who share a common expertise, a common technical language, and broadly shared normative concerns, but not a common institutional setting nor agreement on specific policy goals. This chapter contrasts TPNs with other institutional forms in the literature – advocacy networks, epistemic communities, transgovernmental networks, public–private partnerships, multistakeholder initiatives, and transgovernmental initiatives – and argues for their integrative advantages and ability to address individual agency and power. A heuristic case illustrates how a TPN functioned to create the Office of the Ombudsperson at the UN – securing rights protection for individuals targeted for UN sanctions – despite the initial opposition of all five Permanent Members of the Security Council. The chapter concludes with reflections on the potential benefits of applying the concept to other emergent policy domains.

Focusing on three initiatives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat – the Momentum for Change Initiative, the Lima–Paris Action Agenda, and the Non-state Actor Zone for Climate Action – this chapter studies how an international environmental bureaucracy can evolve from a low-key and servant-like secretariat to an actor in its own right. It argues that international environmental secretariats increasingly take on the role of an orchestrator that seeks to shape policy outcomes through changing the behavior of others. Using orchestration as a conceptual lens, the chapter identifies new types of influence of international bureaucracies. The forms of influence that the UNFCCC Secretariat exerts include in particular (i) awareness-raising, (ii) norm-building, and (iii) mobilization. This new way of how soft power is deployed underscores the increasingly proactive role of the UNFCCC Secretariat. The chapter concludes that the UNFCCC Secretariat is currently “loosening its straitjacket” by gradually expanding its original mandate and spectrum of activity. It is no longer a passive bystander but has adopted new roles and functions in the global endeavor to cope with climate change.

This chapter concludes by addressing how this book’s analysis reconsiders sovereign power in IR and speculates on a structural model of responsibility that takes hybrid sovereignty seriously.

This chapter introduces the main argument of this book that global sovereign power is constituted by public/private hybridity in Lived Sovereignty, while sovereign authority is recognized as indivisibly public in Idealized Sovereignty. Public/private hybridity takes on different characteristics of contractual, institutional, and shadow forms based on the formalization and publicization of relations. In relation to hybrid sovereignty, the lived realities of different types of public/private hybridity are in tension with the idealized imperatives of determining what is public versus private.

This chapter develops the analytical dynamics of public/private hybridity in Lived Sovereignty. It first situates public/private hybridity in the global governance literature and then introduces three ideal-types. Contractual hybridity features formal and publicized performances where sovereign power is negotiated in public/private contractual exchanges. Institutional hybridity features informal and partly publicized performances where sovereign power is negotiated through public/private institutional linkages. Shadow hybridity features nonformalized and nonpublicized performances where sovereign power is negotiated in public/private shadowy bargains. Finally, the chapter presents a Weberian-inspired research design to show off the three ideal-types in the empirics that follow.

Perhaps due to the influence of the great man myth of history, the Constitution of the United States of America is rarely named as participating in the shaping of the just war tradition, let alone being a just war document. Yet the concerns of war and just war thinking pervade the original document and the Bill of Rights as well as and some of its later amendments and are visible not only in the story of its creation but, even more significantly, in its rhetoric. Moreover, even as it and other constitutions are the primary expression of modern legal thought, it manifests a particular way of doing just war thinking that sits uncomfortably within modern just war theory. The way it inscribes sovereignty – at both personal and national levels – while diffusing authority exacerbates the wicked problems of climate-shaped conflicts, especially those relating to nonstate actors and global inequities.

Orchestration is a soft mode of governance, in which a ‘governor’ enlists the voluntary cooperation of intermediary actors to carry out governance functions that further the governor’s goals. Environmental issues figured prominently in the origin of the orchestration concept, and orchestration has since played a significant role in earth system governance research on architecture and agency. This chapter summarizes key empirical findings of this research, especially on sustainable development and climate change. It also identifies contributions of earth system governance research to orchestration theory: for example, concerning the conditions for successful orchestration, the role of orchestration platforms and orchestration’s role in institutional complexity. The chapter then engages with critiques and normative concerns, particularly relating to power, accountability and legitimacy. The chapter concludes with thoughts on an orchestration research agenda that can support the transformative goals of the new earth system governance science plan.

− ESG–Agency scholarship highlights the fragmented, expanding, and complex forms of authority that prescribe, steer, and govern behaviour on environmental issues. − Agency scholarship on earth system governance covers interdisciplinary debates in four broad areas: the types of agents, the ways authority is exercised, the nature of agents’ influence, and the varieties of governance structures or architectures within which agents act.− Even with increasing scholarship into the fragmentation of authority and multiplication of the types agents to include nonstate, transnational, and subnational actors, states continue to be the centre of agency scholarship. Future research is needed on agency theory and the theoretical nature of relationships between actors and within differing geographic, economic, and political contexts.

This chapter considers the research, development, and implementation of solar geoengineering by nonstate actors and their governance by intellectual property policies. Although some observers are concerned that nonstate actors could deploy it, states will probably retain control over operational decision-making regarding large-scale outdoor tests and implementation. At the same time, commercial entities will play roles – most likely as contractors in public procurement – as providers and innovators of goods and services for solar geoengineering activities. A leading means through which states govern nonstate actors in innovative domains is policies for intellectual property, particularly patents. This chapter reviews the current landscape of patents related to solar geoengineering and the social challenges that such intellectual property could pose. It comments on others’ proposals for intellectual property policies specific to solar geoengineering and also recommends one. Importantly, the suggested "research commons," which is centered on a system of patent pledges, does not require state action and could arise bottom-up among researchers and other nonstate actors.

Governance includes nonstate actors and nonlegal instruments. Nonstate governance – that which is developed, implemented, and/or enforced by nonstate actors – can fill roles that state law cannot or does so poorly. This chapter considers the extent to which nonstate actors do, could, and should contribute to solar geoengineering governance. It introduces key concepts of nonstate governance. The extant governance that is specific to solar geoengineering is largely nonstate. This is particularly evident in the development, influence, and apparent compliance with multiple sets of principles, such as the Oxford principles. Notably, for the most part, these sets substantively agree. The chapter closes with an analysis of nonstate governance’s potential. It concludes that nonstate governance should contribute because solar geoengineering’s characteristics – such as technically complexity, dynamism, reliance upon experts’ knowledge, transboundary impacts, and researchers' shared yet undifferentiated reputational sensitivity – are favorable to nonstate governance, while states are taking no significant steps toward governance.