In the introduction to this roundtable, we argue that global governance currently faces hard times because it is affected by a set of significant developments revolving around the changing distribution of state power, the rise of nationalist populism, and the frequent occurrence of transnational crises, while seeking to facilitate collective action on complex cooperation problems. Against this backdrop, the essay identifies two major institutional dynamics of global governance in hard times: first, the drift of formal intergovernmental organizations (FIGOs) that is caused by them being gridlocked in a period of significant changes in their social, (geo)political, economic, and technological environment. Second, the proliferation of various types of low-cost institutions. To help us think systematically about how these two interrelated institutional dynamics affect global governance, the essay develops the innovation thesis and the decline thesis. The “innovation thesis” suggests that by transitioning from a rather exclusive and hierarchical system revolving around FIGOs into a more inclusive and heterarchical system revolving around institutional diversity, global governance is currently being adapted to its new environment. The “decline thesis,” by contrast, argues that the two institutional dynamics undermine rules-based multilateralism and may lead to a shift back toward traditional (great) power politics that does not respect institutional constraints.

The essay examines the lessons from the international intervention in Afghanistan, highlighting the failures of externally imposed state building, including neglect of local governance structures and prioritizing donor interests over Afghan ownership. The international peace- and state-building intervention in Afghanistan, which spanned two decades, culminated in the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2021, leading to the Taliban’s swift resurgence. This event has sparked a critical examination of the strategies employed by NATO and allied nations during their engagement in Afghanistan. This essay aims to distill seven key lessons from this intervention, emphasizing the need for future peacebuilders to adapt their approaches to better align with local contexts and realities. The analysis highlights the failures of liberal peacebuilding, the importance of local ownership, the necessity of effective and legitimate institutions, and the detrimental impact of corruption. Furthermore, it underscores the significance of coherence among international actors and the need for a nuanced understanding of regional dynamics. By reflecting on these lessons, the essay seeks to provide actionable insights for future international interventions in fragile and conflict-affected states.

Recent times have been hard for global governance, not least for formal intergovernmental organizations (FIGOs). Given changing conditions and their inability to adapt, many observers argue that FIGOs are drifting and losing ground to low-cost institutions (LCIs). We argue that this widespread perception is incomplete and that it dismisses too quickly the durability of FIGOs. We begin by pointing out that not all FIGOs are drifting and that some may even thrive amid transnational crises and power shifts. We then highlight the possibility that in a densely institutionalized global environment, states can substitute one FIGO for another. Thus, even as one FIGO is drifting, other FIGOs, rather than or alongside LCIs, can take the mantle. We identify and exemplify three key motivations for FIGO substitution: overcoming gridlock, enhancing ideological alignment, and policy laundering. During crises and power shifts, some members might paralyze a FIGO, leading to gridlock and prompting other members to cooperate in another FIGO. Power shifts and crises can also motivate dissatisfied FIGO members to pursue parallel activities in a FIGO that better fits their ideological outlook. Policy laundering occurs when members use one FIGO over another to signal political intent. We conclude by exploring the normative implications of FIGO substitution.

Many aspects of migration policy involve hard moral dilemmas. Whether the dilemmas are concerned with refugee accommodation and integration, temporary labor migration, or the prospects of rejected asylum seekers, policymakers must sometimes make tough choices between competing and equally compelling moral values. Through in-depth discussion of various concrete examples, contributions to this roundtable argue that recognition and systematic analysis of the “ethics of migration policy dilemmas” can both increase philosophical and social-scientific understanding of public debates and policymaking on migration and provide ethical guidance for migration policy. Before introducing the roundtable’s individual contributions, this essay argues for the distinct epistemic value of the Dilemmas perspective by contrasting it with an approach that emphasizes the “busting” of myths; that is, the empirical uncovering of influential falsehoods in public and policy debates, often in the hope of improving policymaking through stronger evidence. We argue that while such myth busting can be valuable, it is insufficient and sometimes unhelpful for understanding how migration policy comes about and can be improved. Policymaking is not just shaped by empirical facts and understandings but also by interests and goals, including moral ones, that give empirical considerations deeper meaning and action-guiding potential. Often, these moral goals are numerous, similarly or equally compelling, and in profound tension with one another. Where this is the case, we should not simply introduce more and more accurate factual descriptions; we must also analyze dilemmas.

The global diffusion of state power has led to a decline in global governance; that is, in the attempt to build authoritative rules and institutions that represent the common goals of the international community. The rise of China and other powers has increased the heterogeneity of the international system, and the erstwhile hegemon has turned against the international order. The major powers today have vastly different domestic characteristics and pursue strongly divergent interests. This has gridlocked and marginalized multilateral organizations such as the United Nations and World Trade Organization and seen a worrying disregard for international law. In response, the institutional ecosystem of global governance is adapting by lowering its scope, weakening its commitments, and splintering into partly competing institutional orders. Adaptation and decline are not mutually exclusive: Today, we can witness the adaptation of global governance to its own decline. Theoretically, this points to the enduring relevance of hegemonic stability theory for global governance. The result is a reduced normative ambition for global governance, signaling a retreat from the grand internationalist vision of organized cooperation among all the members of the international community.

Theories of liberal justice depend upon ideas of how much we can expect ordinary people to be motivated by the moral interests of others; there are limits to the motivational power of such notions as altruism and sympathy. This means, however, that the theories of justice we have may have difficulty in understanding how to rightly respond to the moral claims that might emerge in the face of widespread migration in response to climate change. This essay argues that liberal states may face a dilemma in response to this migration—one in which a state must do what cannot be justified toward either the migratory or the sedentary. This claim, further, might represent a new site of intergenerational injustice, in which future generations are given political problems to which our best theories of political justice can provide little assistance.

With formal international organizations (IOs) facing gridlock and informal IOs proliferating, cooperation in the twenty-first century looks different than it did in previous eras. Global governance institutions today also face additional challenges, including a fragmented information environment where publics are increasingly vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation. What do these trends portend for international politics? One way to answer this question is to return to a core ingredient of a well-functioning IO—information provision—and ask how such changes affect efficiency. Viewed through this lens, we see decline in some arenas and adaptation in others. Formal IOs are struggling to retain relevance as their weak policy responses and ambiguous rules create space for competing signals. The proliferation of informal institutions, on the other hand, may represent global governance evolution, as these technocratic bodies are often well-insulated from many political challenges. Yet even if global governance retains functionality, the legitimacy implications of such trends are troubling. IO legitimacy depends in part on process, and from this standpoint, the informational gains of informal governance must be weighed against losses of accountability and transparency. Ultimately, evaluating the normative implications of these trends requires making judgments about the preferred legitimizing principles for global governance.

Today’s controversies about territorial access and rights of refugees and the cohesion of the nation-state can be traced back to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and Kant’s ideas about hospitality. Seyla Benhabib has argued that the resulting dilemma can be softened and bridged through “democratic iterations,” and that the EU deliberation offers a suitable perspective. However, the complex construction of the EU asylum framework has led to a paradox of highly regulated rights and closed borders, and to disappointment and opposition. The sudden opening of borders and free choice for the Ukrainian victims of Russian aggression open a new perspective to address the dilemma, in line with EU principles of free choice and openness.

The openness of decision-makers to be influenced by and invest in proposals for policy reform is not constant. Timing is key, as are the diversity and depth of interests, levels of knowledge, and nature of the policy challenge itself; these can all affect how governments absorb information that might fall beyond the usual cost-benefit assessments of day-to-day policymaking. This essay explores how and when the policy environment provides opportunities to introduce a more nuanced discussion of competing moral values in migration governance and, critically, the new policy directions to which they might give rise. In doing so, it will utilize a range of examples from national, EU, and global debates of the past decade, to highlight moments when a dilemmas approach has been—or could have been—useful to effect policy change. Stressing ethical dilemmas can influence migration policymakers when the conditions are right.

This essay reveals the institutional dynamics of hard times in the issue area of human rights. I show that the human rights regime has developed innovative-yet-informal institutions like individuals-based coalitions for the international protection and progressive development of human rights. Yet, as these informal institutions function very much based on, first, the interpersonal relations among their members, and, second, legal instruments that require no further consent by states, the advocacy success of liberal human rights defenders has, in turn, provided a playbook for advocates and governments from the illiberal end of the ideology spectrum. In addition, new human rights advocates in the form of certain private law firms have entered the UN through their pro bono work. They promise valuable resources for a crisis-ridden system but often represent corporate clients with conflicts of interest. Given the imminent risk of ideological capture and illiberal interests in human rights paralyzing the system, I reemphasize the need for regulating access to the human rights global governance institutions.

Organizations often face moral dilemmas. For example, in 2004 the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) needed to decide whether to help refugees in enclosed camps in Pakistan repatriate to Afghanistan. On the one hand, helping with repatriation might have made UNHCR complicit in forced returns, as refugees sought to repatriate just to avoid life without freedom in Pakistan. On the other hand, refusing to help with repatriation would leave refugees stranded in camps: perhaps repatriation was the best option if this was what refugees wanted. When organizations face this and other dilemmas, it is not clear how they should proceed. In other words, it is unclear which policy they should pursue when all feasible policies seem wrong. Some might think that, at least for hard dilemmas, every choice is just wrong, and so no choice is right. But that is not quite true. Even difficult dilemmas can be resolved using certain methods. One method is to ask those affected by potential policies what they think the most justifiable policy is. A second method is to choose what to do randomly. Randomly selecting a course of action can sometimes be the fairest way of determining what to do when every option seems wrong.

Transnational corporations pose a dilemma for scholars of normative political economy. On the one hand, many think that such entities must be tamed by instruments of legal accountability and political control, lest they be allowed to act relatively untamed by legal and moral concerns. On the other hand, the very concern about regulating transnational corporations lends itself to suspicion of such efforts. Just as corporate power often reflects the interests of some class or national interest, efforts to extend normative standards can be seen as a vehicle for powerful nations and actors to extend their influence in the guise of moral or legal accountability. Reviewing three books that touch on different aspects of corporate accountability, this essay considers the way business ethics, human rights due diligence, and extraterritorial legal enforcement attempt to find the balance between these concerns. It concludes that meso-level institutions, which play an important role in all three books, may provide unique spaces for the mediation of normative accountability and power politics.

The secrecy of intelligence institutions might give the impression that intelligence is an ethics-free zone, but this is not the case. In The Ethics of National Security Intelligence Institutions, Adam Henschke, Seumas Miller, Andrew Alexandra, Patrick Walsh, and Roger Bradbury examine the ways that liberal democracies have come to rely on intelligence institutions for effective decision-making and look at the best ways to limit these institutions’ power and constrain the abuses they have the potential to cause. In contrast, the value of Amy Zegart’s and Miah Hammond-Errey’s research, in their respective books, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence and Big Data, Emerging Technologies and Intelligence: National Security Disrupted, is the access each of them provides to the thoughts and opinions of the intelligence practitioners working in these secretive institutions. What emerges is a consensus that the fundamental moral purpose of intelligence institutions should be truth telling. In other words, intelligence should be a rigorous epistemic activity that seeks to improve decision-makers’ understanding of a rapidly changing world. Moreover, a key ethical challenge for intelligence practitioners in liberal democracies is how to do their jobs effectively in a way that does not undermine public trust. Measures recommended include better oversight and accountability mechanisms, adoption of a ‘risk of transparency’ principle, and greater understanding of and respect for privacy rights.