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The rise of non-Western powers, such as the BRICS or IBSA states, has entailed competing claims about how these powers act among each other and how they behave vis-à-vis the established powers. Do the rising powers form a counterhegemonic bloc to confront the “old” powers, creating potentially dangerous tension in international politics? Or do we observe an alignment of interests between old and new powers, suggesting accommodation and harmony? To examine rising power behavior systematically, this paper analyzes their voting behavior in the United Nations General Assembly (GA). We employ a spatial modeling technique (W-NOMINATE) to analyze more than 1,000 GA votes through which states reveal their policy preferences.

This project theorizes patterns of international public authority and translates them into a data model that is suitable for the analysis of how various types of international institutions govern national and international politics. The project is motivated by a qualitative shift in international relations: the phenomenon that international institutions, and especially International Organizations (IOs), gain in public authority and profoundly influence internal affairs of states by reducing their room of maneuver. As a result, the principle of national sovereignty is transformed and loses its significance and structuring quality for international and domestic politics.

In International Institutions in Hard Times. A Theory of Global Governance present blockades and norm violations are interpreted as an expression of the institutional deficits of Global Governance. The crisis of European integration, the unilateralism of the USA, growing opposition against international organizations, and the insistence on national sovereignty of emerging countries such as China or India are therefore resulting from deficits in world order. The theory of Global Governance is devoted to questions regarding the emergence, function, and effect of world order. Moreover, it aims to explain current blockades in international politics, as well as the parallel deepening of international institutions.

This project departs from the observation that legitimacy has become important for international institutions but is also strongly contested. Far from constituting a ‘property’ of international institutions, legitimacy is performed and disputed through discursive practices. While international organizations seek legitimacy, states and other actors engage in dynamic processes of (de-)legitimation. Legitimacy talk is utilised as a tool for political contestation, but can also serve important mediating functions. Rethinking the legitimacy of international institutions needs to take into account two key dimensions: the meanings attached to concepts of legitimacy as they play out in political disputes, and its capacity for adaptation and change over time.

A shifting distribution of international power is a fundamental contemporary trend. Emerging powers are changing the global balance of power, altering the character of the global political economy, and bringing new interests and ideas into the international arena. At the same time, international politics is characterized by a growing number of international institutions. These range from formal intergovernmental organizations like the WTO and IMF, to informal clubs like the G7, BRICS and IBSA forums, to commonly accepted ideas and norms. Few of these institutions are unaffected by the economic shift towards emerging markets or by the power shift between national governments.

The international system is composed of a multitude of institutions which overlap frequently in their competences, but are not embedded in a centralized order. Contrary to nation-states and to the European Union (EU), the international system lacks an integrative institutional framework within which norm conflicts among functionally overlapping international institutions can be mediated and solved. Against that backdrop, it is a much discussed question whether institutional complexity is strengthening or weakening inter-state cooperation. In this theory-building book, I show that the tendency to develop an inter-institutional division of labor is inherent in functionally overlapping international institutions.