The ENSURED project started in November 2023. To kick off of our research, we reviewed the academic and policy literature on global governance and the EU’s support for the reform of multilateralism. We summarised key findings and discussed their relevance to ENSURED’s goals in three literature reviews. These literature reviews engaged with three hitherto separate bodies of research dealing with international organisations, the crisis of liberal international order and the EU and international institutions. By integrating those insights, we developed our conceptual framework on global governance transformation, which builds out from three core properties of global governance: robustness, effectiveness, and democracy.
To test, refine, and develop the framework, we sought input from other researchers as well as ENSURED’s advisory board and civil society. Our aim is to introduce new concepts and theories that enrich understandings of global governance in academic debates and across different thematic areas. Finally, we have explored different scenarios for how global governance will likely develop and how it could be transformed considering the beliefs, interests, and strategies of major international actors. This conceptual framework forms the basis for the empirical research we are carrying out in the project. Project researchers are now conducting 15 case studies across 5 policy areas. They also engage in comparative analysis.
During the first year, we have also established the project in terms of its online presence (website, social media, identity). We have furthermore set up a network of external experts who provide their insights on global governance to project researchers. As such, the project is working to develop a epistemic network of global governance experts around the world.
