A Case for Ex-Ante Coordination in the UN System During the Pandemic and Beyond

Abstract

International organizations mandated to govern social rights are colliding with international organizations mandated to govern economic development. While disagreeing with the nature of fragmentation and conflict across international organizations, legal and social science scholars offer various proposals to unify global governance. Those proposals assume that unification will come naturally. That assumption is wrong.The distinct legal instruments that govern and control international organizations render conflict inevitable and unification improbable. By closely examining the pandemic-related activities carried out by the International Labor Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund in the same 41 countries, the implications of that conflict become clearer. Governments must choose between competing approaches and activities to the detriment of coherence, national policies, and organizational legitimacy. To protect against those perils, international organizations must cooperate on an in-country basis, which would allow them to overcome narrow conflict while respecting their conflicting constitutional mandates.