Regime Complexes In Global Governance System

The amount of international regimes is increasing rapidly in the global governance system.Multiple regimes get involved into the same issue area,it brings about regime overlapping and interaction and needs to be managed more effectively by their member states.Thus a regime complex came into being and asked a deeper and more comprehensive insight.Three questions are vital to understand the regime complexes,what action strategies would their member states take,how do the elemental regimes interact with each other and how will the effectiveness be affected by the two aforementioned factors? Three kinds of action strategies are common in practice,the laissez-faire strategy,cooperative strategies and conflictual strategies.Laissez-faire strategy won't lead to the emergence of regime interplay.Cooperative strategies can be further divided into regime deference,regime coordination,dispute resolution mechanisms and introducing supportive regimes.Conflictual strategies can be classified into regime shopping,regime shifting and contesting regime creation.The action strategies states take will bring about different modes of regime interplay,including synergistic interplay,coordinative interplay,(rule/leadership)competitive interplay and oppositive interplay.They are vital to the regulatory effectiveness.It is imperative to establish an objective and operable standard to evaluate the effectiveness of the governance of regime complexes.We select four indicators to fulfill this requirement: compliance,implementation,relative improvement and problem solving or target realization,they represent different levels of effectiveness respectively and the more one regime complex achieved,the more effective it is.Synergistic interplay usually leads to substantial improvement of effectiveness and oppositive interplay on the contrary.Coordinative interplay and contested interplay fall between the two extremes and are flexible to change.They may slightly increase or decrease regulatory effectiveness respectively.It is not only conducive to provide new insights to institutionalism studies from an aspect of theoretical construction,but also of great practical significance to have a deeper understanding of regime complexes.Mutual-detrimental effects can be avoided,and it is quite possible to improve the international society's capabilities of coping with global challenges through a sound division of labor and deeper cooperation.Meanwhile,it may help to mitigate the suspicions on why China is enthusiastic on creating new regimes,and China could play a more active and positive role in global governance.