To what extent can global issues be solved by multistakeholder collaboration, a relatively new type of organisation? Jan Aart Scholte, the coordinator of the Global Transformations and Governance Challenges (GTGC) interdisciplinary research programme, has received a Dutch Research Council (NWO) grant to research this.
We know that the world is facing all sorts of urgent problems (relating to climate, economic inequality and rapid technological changes, for instance). Many of these require effective international policy. But research has shown that the organisations from whom we would expect such policy, such as the United Nations or the World Health Organization (WHO), are often not as effective as they should be. The UN and the WHO are examples of multilateral organisations in which different governments cooperate.
Multistakeholder organisations may be more effective
Over the past 30 years, another form of governance has been on the rise: multistakeholder organisations. These consist of multiple parties that all have an interest in a certain societal problem. These parties can be very diverse, ranging from governments to businesses and researchers to citizens.
What is distinctive about these multistakeholder organisations is that they involve all relevant sectors in their policymaking. And because these organisations comprise so many different groups, they are able to swiftly implement policy at all levels. There are multistakeholder organisations within all sorts of areas, such as food, health, trade, security, agriculture, education and the environment.
New learnings on how to address complex issues
The problem is that we do not know enough about these 'new' organisations. How exactly do they work? And what can we learn from them? Does their organisational structure make for effective and legitimate governance, or does it create more chaos? These are questions that a new international GTGC research team led by Professor Jan Aart Scholte hopes to answer.
'The answers we find will be relevant for policymakers wishing to address complex global issues at both the national and international levels. In this research, we will also look specifically at how some internationally focused multistakeholder organisations work, namely the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). They will be able to use these results to increase their capacity, efficacy and legitimacy.'
The NWO has awarded €813.000 to this four-year project.
Banner photo: Kyle Glenn / Unsplash
In Leiden's Global Transformations and Governance Challenges
