Global governance is the system of institutions, norms, and rules that coordinate collective action beyond the nation-state. This system isn’t a single, centralized authority, but a diverse ecosystem of actors.

While scholars debate its scope, GGI views global governance broadly to include:

• Formal structures: International organizations (IOs), treaties, and legal frameworks (Rosenau 1995; Pevehouse & von Borzyskowski 2017).
• Informal structures: Transnational coalitions and networks, private-sector partnerships, and civil society actors (Barnett et al. 2021).

States and IOs remain anchors of this ecosystem but increasingly collaborate with an “ensemble cast” of NGOs, corporations, and multi-stakeholder partnerships. GGI focuses on how these diverse actors cooperate and coordinate authority to achieve collective action, recognizing that governance occurs through multiple, overlapping pathways.

Innovation in governance involves arranging existing elements in new ways to reach a policy objective (Papin 2019). These elements can include rules, procedures, structures, mechanisms or instruments.

Innovations can take many forms, including:

• Establishing new institutions with unique operational features;
• Reforming existing institutions by recombining elements from other domains;
• Introducing novel procedures for participation, decision-making, or resource mobilization.

GGI distinguishes innovation from invention (Morin et al 2022, Papin 2019). An invention is a completely unprecedented governance feature. An innovation involves the application, recombination, or new arrangement of existing features to address a governance challenge.

In complex systems like global governance, true inventions are rare. Instead, innovation more often emerges through borrowing and adapting models across contexts (Papin 2019).

GGI studies both innovations and inventions to understand how institutional breakthroughs occur and how new governance ideas spread. Importantly, innovations do not need to be fully original or successful; what matters is that they introduce new ways to organize authority, coordinate actors, design institutions, create rules, or mobilize resources in response to global challenges.

Yes. While multilateralism—coordination among three or more states—is central (Keohane 1990; Ruggie 1992), global governance increasingly involves transnational and non-state actors (Barnett et al. 2021). Actors without formal state affiliation can participate in governance by collaborating with multilateral or multi-stakeholder structures.

GGI studies innovations in various settings:
• Global and regional IOs.
• Hybrid or multi-stakeholder partnerships.
• Locally rooted governance models with global relevance.

Our overarching concern is actors addressing interrelated cooperation problems around global challenges, asking whether there are lessons for the global level.

GGI focuses on areas where global governance gaps and needs are most urgent and where UN Member States have called for innovative reforms or solutions.

We source these demands from multilateral outcome documents like the Pact for the Future and the FFD4 Compromiso de Sevilla, as well as regional and group-based declarations from the G20, African Union, Alliance of Small Island States, and others. At present, we have identified seven core areas for innovation:

• Accountability & Enforcement: Oversight, compliance, and monitoring mechanisms.
• Voting & Decision-Making: Procedural and participatory innovations.
• Dispute Settlement & Arbitration: Frameworks for conflict resolution.
• Standard-Setting & Harmonization: Norms, benchmarks, and best practices.
• Secretariats & Executive Governance: Leadership and organizational structures.
• Innovative Finance & Resource Mobilization: Tools for raising new and additional resources
• Future Generations: Mechanisms that embed long-term perspectives

These areas offer the highest potential for institutional design improvements and lesson transfer.

These terms describe different aspects of a governance innovation.

• A feature is a specific aspect of an institution or organization. Both models and mechanisms can be types of features.
• A model is a high-level framework for the design of an institution, such as a legal agreement or an intergovernmental organization (IGO).
• A mechanism is the specific “how”—the modality through which a feature works. For instance, a “multilateral mechanism” refers to a specific mode of governance that involves states.

The GGI Platform focuses on models and mechanisms, but explicitly not on practices, which are the routine behaviors and repetitive actions of people (Adler & Pouliot 2011).

Institutional mimicry occurs when organizations adopt structures, rules, or procedures modeled on others, often for legitimacy, prestige, or perceived success (DiMaggio & Powell 1983). It explains how innovations spread across governance systems, even when local contexts differ.

GGI uses mimicry to analyze the diffusion and transferability of innovations without assuming universal effectiveness.

Multilateral organizations are formal entities composed of three or more states with a permanent secretariat (Pevehouse & von Borzyskowski 2017). They are distinct from treaties or legal regimes, which establish rules without a standing administrative structure.

GGI covers all types of multilateral institutions, including treaties, laws, norms, rules, and organizations.