Too Complex to Fail: The Stability of Global Environmental Governance Beyond Hegemony

Abstract

The recent US disengagement from global governance has revived concerns—first theorized in the 1970s and 1980s—about the vulnerability of international institutions to hegemonic decline. While these concerns appear valid in many issue areas, the global environmental regime complex presents a notable exception. Unlike more centralized global governance structures, it has a high degree of complexity and this characteristic enhances its capacity to absorb shocks, including the withdrawal of US leadership. In hindsight, it may be fortunate that proposals to centralize global environmental governance, such as the creation of a World Environmental Organization, never materialized. Complexity, once viewed as a weakness of global environmental governance, may now prove to be its greatest strength in an era of geopolitical turbulence.