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Complex adaptive systems are a special kind of self-organizing system with emergent properties and adaptive capacity in response to changing external conditions. In this article, we investigate the proposition that international environmental law, as a network of treaties and institutions, exhibits some key characteristics of a complex adaptive system. This proposition is premised on the scientific understanding that the Earth system displays properties of a complex adaptive system. If so, international environmental law, as a control system, may benefit from the insights gained and from being modelled in ways more appropriately aligned with the functioning of the Earth system itself. In this exploratory review, we found evidence suggesting that international environmental law is a complex system where treaties and institutions self-organize and exhibit emergent properties. Furthermore, we contend that international environmental law as a whole is adapting to exogenous changes through an institutional process akin to natural selection in biological evolution. However, the adequacy of the direction and rate of adaptation for the purpose of safeguarding the integrity of Earth's life-support system is questioned. This paper concludes with an emphasis on the need for system-level interventions to steer the direction of self-organization while maintaining institutional diversity. This recommendation stands in contrast to the reductionist approach to institutional fragmentation and aims at embracing the existing complexity in international environmental law.

Policy action for sustainability transformation faces inherent and ever-present sources of conflict, pushback, and resistance (i.e., discord). However, conceptual frameworks and policy prescriptions for sustainability transformations often reflect an undue image of accord. This involves simplified assumptions about consensus, steering, friction, discreteness, and additiveness of policy action, conferring an unrealistic view of the potential to deliberately realize transformation. Instead, negotiating discord through continuously finding partial political settlements among divided actors needs to become a key focus of policy action for sustainability transformations. Doing so can help to navigate deeply political settings through imperfect but workable steps that loosen deadlock, generate momentum for further policy action, and avoid complete derailment of transformation agendas when discord arises.

International institutions such as treaties and organizations shape, and are shaped by, the large web-like architecture of global governance. Yet we know little about what this architecture looks like, why certain structures are observed, and how they are linked to the functioning of international institutions as well as the overall effectiveness of global governance. Over the past decade, network science has emerged as a promising and indispensable approach to unraveling structural nuances and complexities of the system of international institutions. This article presents a state-of-the-art review of this emerging field of research and seeks to stimulate its further development. In this article, I draw connections between various network analyses of global governance that are found in different bodies of literature. In so doing, I integrate three separate but overlapping strands of work on institutional fragmentation, polycentricity, and complexity and bring much-needed conceptual clarity to the debate. Building on previous studies, I propose a framework for operationalizing fragmentation, polycentricity, and complexity in network terms in order to enable systematic and comparative analysis of global governance systems. This article argues that there is much potential in the network approach and makes a case for advancing the "network science of global governance."

International institutions such as treaties and organizations shape, and are shaped by, the large web-like architecture of global governance. Yet we know little about what this architecture looks like, why certain structures are observed, and how they are linked to the functioning of international institutions as well as the overall effectiveness of global governance. Over the past decade, network science has emerged as a promising and indispensable approach to unraveling structural nuances and complexities of the system of international institutions. This article presents a state-of-the-art review of this emerging field of research and seeks to stimulate its further development. In this article, I draw connections between various network analyses of global governance that are found in different bodies of literature. In so doing, I integrate three separate but overlapping strands of work on institutional fragmentation, polycentricity, and complexity and bring much-needed conceptual clarity to the debate. Building on previous studies, I propose a framework for operationalizing fragmentation, polycentricity, and complexity in network terms in order to enable systematic and comparative analysis of global governance systems. This article argues that there is much potential in the network approach and makes a case for advancing the "network science of global governance."

AbstractInternational institutions such as treaties and organizations shape, and are shaped by, the large web-like architecture of global governance. Yet we know little about what this architecture looks like, why certain structures are observed, and how they are linked to the functioning of international institutions as well as the overall effectiveness of global governance. Over the past decade, network science has emerged as a promising and indispensable approach to unraveling structural nuances and complexities of the system of international institutions. This article presents a state-of-the-art review of this emerging field of research and seeks to stimulate its further development. In this article, I draw connections between various network analyses of global governance that are found in different bodies of literature. In so doing, I integrate three separate but overlapping strands of work on institutional fragmentation, polycentricity, and complexity and bring much-needed conceptual clarity to the debate. Building on previous studies, I propose a framework for operationalizing fragmentation, polycentricity, and complexity in network terms in order to enable systematic and comparative analysis of global governance systems. This article argues that there is much potential in the network approach and makes a case for advancing the "network science of global governance."

Abstract In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as an "integrated and indivisible" set of policy objectives with the aim, among others, to unite the diverse and vast system of international organizations under one shared normative agenda. And yet, have these SDGs really become such an integrative force in global governance? Our conclusion here is negative, and our research suggests that the SDGs have not lived up to these high expectations. We find instead that the 17 global goals have not been taken up by a substantial group of international organizations, and some organizations rather cherry-pick those goals that best fit their own agenda and interests. To overcome these challenges and to fulfill the promise of integrated global sustainability governance enshrined in the SDGs, we propose three urgent actions: first, to further push the use of the SDGs across all international organizations, in particular regional organizations outside the United Nations system; second, to facilitate better collaboration across policy domains; and third, to focus attention on those SDGs that are so far "left behind."

International institutions are prevalent in world politics. More than a thousand multilateral treaties are in place just to protect the environment alone, and there are many more. And yet, it is also clear that these institutions do not operate in a void but are enmeshed in larger, highly complex webs of governance arrangements. This compelling book conceptualises these broader structures as the 'architectures' of global governance. Here, over 40 international relations scholars offer an authoritative synthesis of a decade of research on global governance architectures with an empirical focus on protecting the environment and vital earth systems. They investigate the structural intricacies of earth system governance and explain how global architectures enable or hinder individual institutions and their overall effectiveness.