The basic architecture of the post-Second World War international order is clear and well-known. The UN family is asked to protect and promote peace and security, human rights, and sustainable development. The IMF was established to ensure monetary and financial stability, and its sister Bretton Woods institution, now the World Bank Group, maintains its original remit of supporting reconstruction and development. The WTO, originally envisaged as the International Trade Organisation, is mandated to help its members use trade to raise living standards and create jobs through negotiations, surveillance, and dispute settlement.
This typography reflects a more complex reality: sovereign states delegate authority upward to better pursue public goods through collective action. Sovereign imperatives, in the Westphalian conception anchored in protecting territorial integrity, have in the post-WWII period become as much about facilitating exchanges and intercourse between territories and their peoples (and business).[1]
The Yearbook of International Organizations[2] lists over 42,000 active international organisations, of which an estimated 5,000 are intergovernmental, including regional and subregional, entities (IGOs)s.[3] Given database anomalies,[4] prudent commentary puts the IGO total at closer to 300.[5]
Thus, a first characteristic of the international order is that, beneath this commonality of pursuit of public goods, the panoply of organisations and forums together serve a myriad of objectives for their respective memberships. A wide range of subjects affecting the international community are addressed by an equally wide range of international organisations.
For example, the International Maritime Organization and the International Civil Aviation Organization effectively regulate sea and air traffic; the Universal Postal Union enables cross-border mail; the International Telecommunications Union addresses the radio spectrum; the World Meteorological Organization ensures international coordination on the state and behaviour of the Earth’s atmosphere, and the Bank for International Settlements and its Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, is a counterparty for central banks in their financial transactions, an agent or trustee in connection with international financial operations, and sets capital and reserve requirements for financial stability.
A second characteristic is that most all of this activity is pursued successfully most all of the time, so it may be said that, at least at the more technical level of specialised rulemaking and adherence, a rules-based order is alive and well.
Third, at most of these institutions and forums, representatives of administrative and regulatory agencies work and negotiate with their counterparts through ‘transgovernmental regulatory networks’[6]. Delegates are experts from responsible ministries or agencies, not foreign ministries responsible for diplomacy and negotiations. An example is the ‘three sisters’ of Codex Alimentarius, the World Organization for Animal Health, and the International Plant Protection Convention Organization, which set global standards for food safety, animal health, and plant health, respectively, under the auspices of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization. Delegates include veterinarians, plant scientists, and related specialists as the decision-makers.[7]
Fourth, international rulemaking is no longer solely the prerogative of government representatives but can encompass authorities of autonomous or independent agencies with delegated authority. For example, the Financial Stability Board, an independent entity now reporting to G20 finance ministers and Central Bank governors, has membership comprising representatives of central banks, finance ministries, securities commissions, and insurance supervisory agencies. A less-known illustration is the Third Generation Partnership Project, or 3GPP, that brings together a small group of telecommunications standard development organisations, often industry-led, to agree on technical specifications that in turn are transposed by the standardisation bodies into their governing standards. It has set the global standard for ‘5G’, for example, independent of the tensions between certain countries regarding its deployment.
In a similar vein, so-called ‘private standards’ increasingly play a role in the production and sale of goods and services, including across borders. The universe of such standards is complex, encompassing voluntary, sometimes consumer- or NGO-led labels (e.g. concerning ‘fair trade’), to company or sector-agreed practices (e.g. Tesco’s ‘Nature’s Choice’; the Marine Stewardship Council’s sustainably farmed fish code)[8] through to industry-led then government-adopted standards (e.g. the well-known Generally Accepted Accounting Principles,[9] set by the private Financial Accounting Standards Board; and the less well-known Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code[10] established by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, accepted virtually world-wide as the standard for industrial boilers and pressure vessels). Debate in government and academic circles continues on how and whether international disciplines can and should apply to private standards to avoid discriminatory, trade-distorting impacts.[11]
A pervasive characteristic of international rulemaking is that formal negotiations are preceded and supported by discussions among representatives with common interests to coordinate and consolidate positions to nurture broader multilateral consensus and action. Such groupings are not based on ideology or alliances, but rather on the issues at stake.
Prominent ministerial and leaders’ level forums, e.g., the G7, G20, BRICs, APEC, and others often seek to build and then socialise consensus positions at the relevant international negotiating table. Today, increasingly ad hoc coalitions or clubs of like-minded countries in various sectors, for example regarding critical minerals, digital standards, and “green steel”, provide leadership in shaping international rulemaking, and often encompasses diverse geographic regions, political perspectives, and levels of development. For example, consultations and collaboration among India, Japan and Korea is producing enhanced maritime security to the Indian Ocean; the so-called G-4 (Germany, Japan, Brazil and India) has become the most influential state coalition for UN Security Council reform; and India’s G20 leadership on promoting “human-centric” AI governance laid the groundwork for the first Global AI Safety Summit hosted by the UK at the end of 2023, with both governments and business participating. India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar explicitly endorsed such issue-based collaboration during a recent visit to South Korea, citing examples from naval cooperation to semiconductors and chips.
Importantly, developing countries can and do provide the catalyst for action. India’s successful development and deployment of a Digital Public Infrastructure as a key element for expanding access to healthcare provided the basis for the WHO’s launch of a global Initiative on Digital Health platform. Brazil’s Bolsa Familia program, with a successful record of poverty reduction, is providing the basis for Brazil’s G20 Presidency to marshal enhanced international efforts to address food security.[12]
Taken together, these characteristics underscore the reality that the development, implementation, and enforcement of rules in the international economic space is disbursed among a range of institutions, organisations, and forums, conducted at various levels of authority, and has a growing public-private multistakeholder character. This diversity of settings requires the engagement of various ministries from participating governments, often alongside non-governmental representatives. While the challenge of finding and agreeing on common approaches is complex, developing countries, including prominently India, are bridging divides, and leading by example, in support of rules-based international cooperation.
Jonathan Fried is Senior Associate, Economics Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
Adapted from Fried, “Navigating Stormy Waters, a Middle Power Perspective,” forthcoming in Oxford Review of Economic Policy, vol. 42 no.2, summer 2024.
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References
[1] McRae, D. M. (1996), ‘The Contribution of International Trade Law to the Development of International Law’, Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law, Vol. 260; See also The International Law and Policy of Human Welfare, Macdonald, Johnston and Morris (eds.) Sijthoff and Noordhoff, 1978
[2] https://uia.org/yearbook
[3]See illustrative list at ‘List of intergovernmental organizations’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intergovernmental_organizations
[4] ‘How Many International Organisations are There? The Yearbook of International Organizations and its Shortcomings’, Political Studies Association (PSA), https://www.psa.ac.uk/psa/news/how-many-international-organisations-are-there-yearbook-international-organizations-and-its
[5] See, for example, National Geographic, https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/international-organization/
[6] Slaughter, A.-M. (2001), ‘The Accountability of Government Networks’, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 8(2), 347–67.
[7] A useful primer on animal health as an illustration is provided by Dr. Catherine Lambert of the French Collaborating Centre for Veterinary medicinal products at https://www.woah.org/fileadmin/Home/eng/Conferences_Events/sites/vet_damas2009/Presentations/Session3/3_Dr.Lambert_S3.pdf
[8] A database of hundreds of such standards is maintained by the International Trade Centre (jointly owned by the WTO and UNCTAD) in a ‘Standards Map’, https://standardsmap.org/en/home
[9] https://asc.fasb.org/Login.
[10] https://www.asme.org/codes-standards/bpvc-standards.
[11] See Henson (2007); Henson and Humphrey (2010); International Trade Centre (2011); Scott (2021).
[12] “Brazil’s return: Towards zero hunger (again)” Institute of Development Studies, 31 August 2023.