Global governance is changing fast. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza are amplifying geopolitical tensions. The transaction costs of coming to an agreement at the United Nations (UN) are going up; additionally, states more often seek solutions outside of the multilateral system in smaller, more informal formats.

The consequences of this for the UN system are significant. Since 2014, no new UN peace operations have been fielded; five large operations have been closed (Côte d’Ivoire, Darfur, Haiti, Mali and Liberia); and the remaining three multidimensional operations in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan have all been asked to develop transition plans. This reflects an ongoing transition from UN peacekeeping to subregional and ad hoc coalitions. This shift aligns with a lowering of ambitions for what states aim to achieve through support to countries emerging from conflict, moving from building liberal states to regime support.

The trend is not unique to peace operations. The UN’s involvement in peace mediation is also sharply down, from 14 UN-led processes in 2011 to just four in 2020. At the same time, the number and lethality of armed conflicts has trended upward. Countries like Sudan, Mali, and Burkina Faso are experiencing a high level of violence, while violent extremism remains stubbornly high in places like Somalia and the Lake Chad Basin.

We argue that the effect of this transition is deinstitutionalization.

What is Deinstitutionalization? A Case Study

As a case study, we have examined the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) fighting Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region. This operation was set up in 2014 with Nigeria in the lead and additional troops from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. The African Union (AU) authorized the mission post-hoc and provided support for planning at the beginning, as well as human rights training throughout. Initially, the European Union (EU) provided significant funding via the AU, but there were complaints about delays.

In 2021, the EU changed its funding mechanism from the African Peace Facility to the European Peace Facility. The result was that funding previously funneled through the AU was instead sent through the Swiss NGO Coginta to ensure faster disbursement. Another result was that the AU was reduced to a mostly normative role, providing international legitimacy through authorization, but with limited involvement in the implementation.

This pattern has been replicated across the African continent. Most interventions are implemented by coalitions of neighboring states, sometimes with some form of authorization from the AU (the AU Peace and Security Council can mandate, authorize, endorse, or recognize an operation). Funding is provided directly by the EU and other international donors. Although the AU over time has built up significant expertise to plan and field peace support operations, it has been reduced to a legitimizing actor with a very limited operative role.

From this case study, we were able to identify three features of deinstitutionalization: coalitions can bypass standard procedures for decision-making processes, whittle down established institutional scripts, and shift resource allocations.

Not Just Security: The Larger Trend

The deinstitutionalization trend is not limited to how challenges are met in the field of security. Informal coalitions and clubs are increasingly important tools for trade agreements, regulation of international banking, and the handling of COVID-19. The tendency towards “low-cost” forms of cooperation is most clear when looking at the increasingly important role of the G20 and BRICS. In European politics, informal groupings of countries also keep multilateralism going. These clubs do not have a permanent secretariat but provide an arena where a select group of powerful states set the agenda and provide international institutions with marching orders.

While the agenda of the G20 initially was focused on international financial stability in the wake of a series of financial crises in the late 1990s, it has expanded to cover diverse topics such as climate change, health, and global peace and security. The UN and Bretton Woods institutions are being consulted by the G20, but they have been moved down the global governance pecking order to become one service provider among many picking up tasks from the G20 and other informal arenas.

The G20 is becoming an important orchestrator of global governance. The new order is becoming particularly clear during the next UN General Assembly. On September 25, the G20 will, for the first time, arrange a foreign minister’s meeting in the ECOSOC chamber to consult and engage with UN member states.

Weighing Effectiveness vs. Legitimacy and Accountability

The consequences of these changes are significant and not yet fully clear. Amid wrangling on the UN Security Council and other multilateral bodies, there are calls to make multilateral institutions more effective. To achieve more effective solutions, we have seen considerable innovation in global governance. Philanthropists, corporations, and other non-state actors have joined civil society in the provision of solutions to global challenges. While these actors often can act more quickly than international institutions, they do not have the legitimacy of inclusive representative bodies like the UN. But the increases in informal cooperation and lack of representation and legitimacy is balanced by increased effectiveness, at least in theory.

In the case of the MNJTF and subregional and ad hoc coalitions more broadly, the provision of funding directly to coalitions also contributes to weakening the accountability of these coalitions. While funding that passes through the UN to regional and subregional operations is put under strict human rights and financial reporting requirements, direct funding—from the European Peace Facility, for example—has a lot fewer strings attached.

At the end of 2023, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2719, which, in theory, opens up predictable and sustainable funding to AU-led peace operations. However, the AU may have won the battle but lost the war. The resolution’s application in practice needs to surmount large political and operational obstacles. The resolution specifies that funding can only be accessed for AU-mandated operations, while the preference on the ground is for subregional and ad hoc coalitions. The resolution also puts strict demands for financial and human rights accountability mechanisms to be in place, while subregional and ad hoc coalitions are under much less scrutiny.

Finally, the application of Resolution 2719 may lead to precedence in financing African-led peace operations that the United States—still footing the main part of the bill of assessed contributions to the UN—would rather avoid. The likelihood that future missions will be financed through dedicated trust funds rather than under Resolution 2719 is thus high.

Reform or Be Whittled

Under the promise of “multilateral solutions for a better tomorrow,” UN member states are preparing for the Summit of the Future that will kick off the 2024 UN General Assembly. While the current draft of the Pact for the Future contains many bold statements and goals, concrete actions are mostly absent.

The UN is struggling to stay relevant amid increased competition from a multitude of more informal and less inclusive actors. Financial and material resources are and will remain scarce, so to stay relevant, the UN is adapting. This is amid a decoupling of the traditional link between the UN as a normative actor, knowledge producer, and, in some distinct areas, important implementing actor. The trend is not limited to the UN—in our analysis, we examined the African Union and its relationship to the MNJTF.

That other actors are taking on more responsibility in global governance is not necessarily a bad thing. But it is important to assess these changes and ask what the implications are broadly, and for large, medium, and small powers. With more ad hoc coalitions taking on governance tasks, the global architecture is getting more “dynamized” at a time when great power rivalry compromises multilateral conflict management in more and more countries. However, subregional and ad hoc coalitions can also be fragile shells poorly hiding their sporadic and unstable character. The G5 Sahel Joint Force, the East African Community Regional Force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (SAMIDRC), and the South African Development Community Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) are examples of short-lived arrangements that had little impact.

This leaves multilateral organizations such as the UN, AU, or EU between a rock and a hard place. They cannot be expected to work against such member state initiatives. However, they are obliged by their own best interest to adjust to new realities, use ad hoc coalitions as complementary tools to their own instruments, and advance internal institutional reforms. Substantial reform should not be the end result of a dreadful crisis of multilateralism but a proactive response to changes in global politics. If multilateral institutions do not reform, the result will likely be a continued deinstitutionalization of global governance structures, relegating them permanently to a secondary role, and a further splintering of global public goods with little chances of addressing the polycrisis challenges we are confronted with in the decades to come.

Dr. John Karlsrud is a Research Professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). Dr. Malte Brosig is a Professor of International Relations at University of the Witwatersrand.