International Organisation as Coordination in N‐Person Games

One major problem in global governance is the specification of decision‐making rules for international and regional organisations to coordinate the states of the world. Various organisations use different decision‐making rules, and the properties of these rules may be compared systematically in terms of the power index approach. The power index solution concept of N‐person games may be employed to display a basic problem in global governance, namely, the fundamental trade‐off between state veto on the one hand and the capacity of the organisation or groups of states to act, meaning its decisiveness, on the other hand. Thus, when states coordinate through the setting up and running of international organisations, they then face a trade‐off between their own control over the organisation and the capacity of the organisation to act. States make this trade‐off in different ways depending upon the nature of the international or regional organisation as they reflect upon what is most important, to wit, own control or the capacity of the group to act.