Nonstate Actor Coalitions: Innovating or Complicating Global Governance

The Stanley Center, New America, and the Stimson Center will host a workshop entitled “Nonstate Actor Coalitions: Innovating or Complicating Global Governance” at Civic Hall.

The purpose of the workshop is to look across sectors to examine what we know, and what we need to learn, about how nongovernmental coalitions are reshaping global governance—from cities and private companies taking action together on climate change to international early warning networks of civil society and local leaders acting to prevent factional violence in fragile polities.

Cooperative multistakeholder action is a newly vital area of global governance, but one where key developments are often not understood across sectors, or are greeted with concern. The workshop will bring together diverse perspectives from leading practitioners and observers to consider three key questions: How have multistakeholder coalitions filled gaps in global governance? How are they active in relation to conflict and failed states, the “hardest cases” confronting the world? And how do they interact with the existing norms of international politics? Our aim for the day will be to draw and road test cross-sector lessons and observations that will lay the foundation for a practical toolkit to strengthen the interface between new and traditional global governance actors.