La coopération contre toute attente : les réseaux transnationaux et l'avenir de l'ordre mondial

MAI’A DAVIS CROSS: Good evening. My name is Mai’a Cross. I am Dean’s Professor and director at the Center for International Affairs and World Cultures at Northeastern University. I am also a nonresident fellow here at the Council.

I am delighted to welcome you to this roundtable on "Transnational Networks and the Future of Global Order." This event marks the culmination of a multi-year research project supported by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, and I am very grateful to Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for co-organizing and hosting this event, where we will discuss our findings and the implications for the future of international cooperation, especially at this time when so much depends on it.

We are all aware that we have entered into an unusually difficult period for international relations. Some longstanding partnerships are straining while others are growing stronger, and conflict and competition are heightened.

There are two key questions that will drive our conversation tonight: What is the potential for breakthroughs in international cooperation, even seemingly against all odds, and, what power do transnational networks have to effect positive change?

At the heart of this is a puzzle. While we are living through a moment of great stress for international cooperation, cooperation actually still persists. It is sometimes easy to forget that cooperation is all around us. Tens of thousands of agreements and norms are shared across the planet. International civil aviation, the global postal system, and the Outer Space Treaty were all built in moments of profound tension and uncertainty, and yet they endure.

Even though the conventional wisdom today is bleak, new breakthroughs in international cooperation continue to emerge. In just the past few years, the world agreed on a treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas, the UN General Assembly adopted its first resolution on artificial intelligence, a broad coalition of countries coordinated their response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Indigenous movements have embedded new understandings of nature into UN agreements, leading to a kind of paradigm shift.

These are just a handful of examples across a broad range of issue areas from security to environment to science and technology, and you may be thinking to yourself, what is a breakthrough in international cooperation?We define it broadly, but we also set a high bar. It can be, for example, a shift in global worldviews, a transformation in dominant norms and practices, a significant policy change, or even the ability to overcome detractors to change, all in a way that fosters positive and new areas of cooperation.

So, the question is, Why do these breakthroughs happen when they do, and how can we encourage more of them? What makes the difference between breakthrough and breakdown? Dominant narratives in international relations clearly focus on state power, material capabilities, great-power competition, and in this moment, defined by strategic rivalry and polarization, the prevailing assumption is that any effort at cooperation should fail.

Our research shows that this view misses a crucial mechanism of change, the social power of transnational political networks, by which I mean networks as groups of individuals including experts, activists, and practitioners who transcend national boundaries to collectively champion transformational ideas. At the elite level, these networks include judges, diplomats, and scientists, who leverage recognized expertise. At the societal level, this includes civil society representatives and grassroots movements, and these often have bold visions for the betterment of humanity.

When the two levels operate together, their impact is greater than the sum of their parts. Their influence comes from what we call “social power,” which is the ability to set standards and shape norms and values without coercion or payment. For example, when millions of people across dozens of countries refused to accept nuclear weapons as a legitimate instrument of war and persuaded leaders to limit nuclear testing at the height of the Cold War, that was social power.

Our work builds in part on my book, International Cooperation Against All Odds: The Ultrasocial World, which draws on a wide range of scientific fields that converge on the finding that humans as a species are ultrasocial, and by this we are predisposed to empathic, cooperative, and socially oriented, even toward strangers. Of course, we do not always behave this way, but networks that tap into this predisposition can be especially powerful and persuasive. We have focused on networks that pursue the common good and are transformational rather than transactional, inspiring fundamental change.

Since 2024 we have brought together research and policy advice through workshops around the world including in the United States, Norway, Ireland, and India with our partners and collaborators at University College Dublin, O.P. Jindal Global University, the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and now Carnegie Council. Together these convenings and research have produced over 40 case studies of transnational networks involved in trying to foster international cooperation. This work is about to come out in published form in Global Studies Quarterly and Ethics & International Affairs, the journal of Carnegie Council, and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. There are a couple of policy briefs up there on the table as well.

What have we learned? Several patterns stand out. First, transnational networks that reframe a problem in ultrasocial terms work better than simply promising each side a better bargain or deal. Persuasion works by changing how people see the issue itself.

Second, the most effective networks build bridges between the elite and societal levels rather than just pursuing change at the grassroots level or amongst experts.

Third, crises create windows of opportunity, usually for networks that are already prepared. The Dark and Quiet Skies movement in space governance shows that the best moment to shape outcomes comes before new practices become normalized and positions harden.

Fourth, influence lasts through becoming embedded in institutions, so the creation of a resolution, treaty, or new scientific panel, for example, gives cooperation a home to keep growing.

Finally, power and influence appear in more ways than we usually recognize. For example, symbolism, physical presence, and the translation of one worldview into the language of another are also important.

One of my own case studies in this project illustrates this. In 1976 a traditional Polynesian voyaging canoe named Hōkūleʻa sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti with no modern instruments, guided by stars, currents, and sea birds. The voyage proved that Polynesians purposefully navigated the Pacific more than a thousand years ago. Over the last 50 years, the Polynesian Voyaging Society has grown into a transnational network championing what I call the “navigator’s mindset,” the idea that the ocean is part of a shared, interconnected ecosystem that we are all responsible for protecting rather than a resource to be exploited.

Through decades of voyaging, including a circumnavigation of the globe and visits to hundreds of ports, Hōkūleʻa and its network helped move Indigenous knowledge from the fringe to the mainstream of ocean governance, including through the High Seas Treaty, which entered into force earlier this year. This case tangibly shows what I mentioned, the power of symbolism, physical presence, and translation in the context of an ultrasocial and inclusive goal.

We also have looked at cases where networks fall short because you can learn a lot from failure. Networks stall when they lose touch with the broader public, for example, when institutions adopt their language but not their substance, or when the networks define themselves mainly by what they oppose instead of what they are for.

Why study transnational networks now? We are at an inflection point. The challenges that we see are transnational, global, and in some cases planetary in scale, but the institutions designed to address them are clearly straining under political pressure. If we accept that great-power competition makes international cooperation unworkable, we risk overlooking how cooperation happens, we under-invest in it, and then we miss opportunities when they emerge. I would argue that this pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Even in the most difficult times, the power of possibility remains one of the strongest forces in world politics. Take the example of the Polynesian navigators. They are taught to hold the island in their minds long before it appears on the horizon, and the networks we studied did the same.

The question for all of us tonight is, how can we strengthen the networks that keep the next breakthrough in view, and I could not ask for a better group to help us think through these issues. Each of our panelists is distinguished in their field. Each has been a valued contributor and partner in this project.

Marianne Riddervold, who chairs this panel, is Research Professor at the ARENA Centre for European Studies at the University of Oslo as well as at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs. She is an expert on transatlantic relations, maritime security, and space governance.

Denise Garcia is professor of political science and international affairs at Northeastern University and the author of a recent book on the artificial intelligence (AI) military race and common good governance.

Karolina Pomorska is associate professor of international relations at Leiden University. She is an expert on informal policymaking and diplomacy as well as populism.

Patrícia Rinaldi was until recently professor of international relations at Faculdades de Campinas in Brazil, and she is now the Marie Curie Fellow at Leiden. She has expertise in the rights of nature.

Finally, Ben Tonra is Professor of International Relations at University College Dublin and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, specializing in European and Irish foreign policy, security, and defense.

With that, I am delighted to turn it over to Marianne. Thank you.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: Thank you, Mai’a, and welcome everyone to this panel. Welcome to everyone joining us virtually as well. I also want to express my thanks to the Andrew Carnegie Foundation for enabling us to do this project, which I think is very important and timely, maybe more important than ever, as Mai’a already said.

As you said, Mai’a, we live in a time when international cooperation seems more difficult than in a very long time. We have international conflicts and deep political tensions at the same time as international institutions and norms are unfortunately being deliberately undermined. At the same time, we face all of these transnational challenges that no state can solve by itself like climate change, the governance of artificial intelligence, global health, international security, and many others.

It is easy to become pessimistic about the prospects for international cooperation, but what Mai’a has shown, and we have been trying to help, is that cooperation actually happens all the time. We identified more than 40 cases, and I think we could find more if we continued.

Against all odds, we see all this international cooperation going on, and it is not something that only happens between governments. Transnational networks play an important role in shaping ideas, building trust, influencing policymakers, and helping to bring international cooperation forward.

What I find particularly interesting about this project and some of the things we have been doing is that it gives us a better understanding not only of why these networks matter but also how they can make a difference, and that also makes it possible to identify pathways forward in the future toward more international cooperation.

What we want to talk about today is what challenges these transnational networks face, what strategies they use to overcome them, and what we can learn that might help us also strengthen international cooperation in the future.

I am very lucky to have four excellent speakers here covering very different issues and political contexts, and I will moderate the discussion for about 35 minutes or so, and then we will open for Q&A from people in the room and also virtually.

I would like to start by asking each of you to briefly introduce your case, and then we will move to a conversation of some of the challenges and what we can learn. I will start with you, Denise. Artificial intelligence is a topic that is attracting a lot of attention because of its implications for international security, global governance, and not least maybe because of the great-power competition that is playing out within this domain. Could you briefly tell us about the networks you studied and what they were able to achieve in spite of everything?

DENISE GARCIA: Thank you, Marianne. Thank you for being here. What an honor to be here in this house of peace. I accepted to be part of this project because I will say yes to whatever Mai’a asks me to do but also because I am very concerned about the state of peace in the world.

I have been involved with the Institute for Economics & Peace for over a decade, and the data shows that there is a decline in the state of peace, and now we have the social impact of violence up to $22 trillion this year, so indeed we must refocus and start glorifying peace and not war.

I studied three networks, and what they did was elevate the issue of regulating AI onto the world diplomatic stage at a speed that is perhaps the fastest-growing movement along maybe with the rights of nature that my friend Patrícia will talk about. These networks also brought a science-based urgency to the risks, and they created a common vocabulary for change.

I had several networks in mind that I could study, but I decided on three and labeled them in this area where we have no norms, no international law, and there is a real vacuum. I not only studied them but was in the room where diplomacy was being made very often. I studied networks that keep AI safe, ethical, and out of war as well.

The first one was Beneficial and Safe AI, which was constituted by scientists and tech workers, many of them working in some of the frontier labs. Their achievements are too numerous for me to mention, but I will mention one achievement of this network. They created a global movement for safety in AI, creating safety AI institutes, and also an annual meeting that happens in Paris, where they congregate and continue to advance their ideas. I became a lifelong member of this network.

The second is an Ethical and Principled AI network that is more multi-stakeholder and includes coalitions of governments, usually medium and small powers, industry, but also international organizations like Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris. Again, their achievements are very numerous, but I would mention the Council of Europe Convention, the first legally binding treaty on AI, and also the OECD and UNESCO Principles on AI Ethics.

The third network I labeled as AI for Good and for Humanity, and that is out of the United Nations in New York and Geneva, starting with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a great example of global cooperation as well, which has been hosting the AI for Good summits in Geneva. I have been present since the first one in 2017, a pivotal year for AI.

The achievements of this network are astounding. Two mechanisms were created in the fall of 2025. One is the first scientific panel on AI, unanimously agreed by all Member States of the United Nations, and they have already started their work with 40 renowned scientists. The second is the establishment of a permanent global dialogue on AI. These achievements are indeed marvelous.

The central finding that I have is that these are indeed movements that are grassroots and scientist-led efforts that became visible even before government action came into play. Thank you.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: Thank you, Denise. Karolina, you and Marianna Lovato also studied a very high-politics case, Russia’s war against Ukraine, which of course has also created enormous challenges for international cooperation including recently also between the trans-Atlantic partners. In spite of all of this, you showed that there has also been considerable transnational mobilization in support of Ukraine. Can you elaborate a bit on what coalitions you studied and also what they achieved?

KAROLINA POMORSKA: Together with Marianna Lovato, who is now based at the Tallinn University in Estonia, we looked at a very hard case. We looked at the huge crisis, the war, the consequences of Russian aggression on Ukraine, and within that case we looked at on one hand military help to Ukraine, so hard security, and on the other hand food security.

We added two specific things to our study. We put in the center the idea of solidarity. We were very interested to see how the idea of solidarity plays out, solidarity understood as a very positive, ultrasocial idea, following the leadership of Mai’a as she brings a lot of attention to ultrasocial ideas such as solidarity that can bring networks together, mobilize them, and make them believe in something together, even in such dire situations. That was one different thing.

Another one is that we looked at elites. In this particular case, we looked at decision-makers, officials, and politicians as a network, people who had tools and possibilities to implement changes. Again, we were looking at extreme crisis and the idea of solidarity at the level of elites.

We looked at hard security. Here groupings such as the Ramstein Group (the Ukraine Defense Contact Group) and also different informal coalitions that evolved for different capabilities, maritime security capabilities, de-mining, or air force.

It is also important to underline why they had to emerge, because some of the formal institutions were quite powerless. Why? Because there were spoilers, such as Russia at the United Nations, so there had to be other means of collaboration possible in order to provide support to Ukraine.

The other case was on food security and the reaction to crises very quickly with informal initiatives, Black Sea grain initiatives and others. Here formal institutions were more helpful, and we will come back to that.

We also studied the role of leadership in both cases. Here of course we had a kind of unfortunate experiment because in both cases we had a shock with the withdrawal of American leadership with the election of Donald Trump in both cases. During the Biden administration, our interviewees and observations showed that American leadership was absolutely crucial to mobilize those networks, those informal ways of collaboration to bring more actors onboard, and then it changes at certain points, so we saw resilience.

What we observed, and we will come back to that, but it was easier in a sense to pick up the leadership when it came to hard security. Even though it is a very politicized area, it was considered so existential and so threatening and such a high priority that it was easier for other countries to pick up the burden, even without such compelling huge American leadership to continue, so there was a complete change of mindset in Europe.

When it comes to food security, it was much more difficult. However, here the formal institutions remained to a large extent in the driver’s seat and collaborated with informal networks.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: Thank you. Patrícia, moving on to your case, your research takes us to an area of international cooperation not less important but very different. Could you introduce the Harmony with Nature network and also explain to us what it seeks to achieve and what it actually has achieved so far?

PATRÍCIA RINALDI: Of course. It is a pleasure to actually showcase the achievements of the Harmony with Nature network because as a strand of the environmental and climate movement this particular network has chosen a different approach to promote international cooperation toward the protection of nature and ecosystems.

As you know, usually the environmental movement uses very harsh narratives to convince people to protect the environment. It is all around fear: “The world will collapse. Climate disasters will happen more and more. Ecosystems will disappear. We are in a stage of human extinction.”

All of those narratives that mobilize fear are of course important because they bring a sense of urgency toward nature protection, but they also create resistance because then people’s governments and institutions always feel that nature protection means not developing human capabilities, leaving economic growth behind. That negative narrative makes us think that protecting nature means canceling human development.

The Harmony with Nature network decided to use a different approach, a positive approach: What if we treat nature as our friend and ally, because in fact we are all part of nature? We try to see ourselves as something separate from nature, but we cannot live outside of it, at least now, without the support and with everything the planet Earth provides us with.

The Harmony with Nature network decided to work on this very transformational and ultrasocial idea of ecocentrism: Let’s put our perspective around nature, let’s reconnect our relationship with nature, and let’s recognize all living and nonliving beings are subjects of intrinsic value. That is a major paradigm shift. Where to start? It is such a big endeavor.

I think the Harmony of Nature network was very clever here because they focus on very specific and practical ways of embedding living harmony with nature in different processes. I will mention three achievements, first of all, through law.

The rights of nature are growing. It is recognized by the UN secretary-general as the fastest-growing legal movement of the 21st century. Right now there are more than 400 legal provisions all over the world granting nature substantive legal rights, so nature is recognized as a subject of rights, and that gives nature the voice and legal power to be protected and the right to thrive and be restored when there is damage.

There are also changing economics because of course we all want to see economic progress. The Harmony with Nature network is working to redefine economics in general beyond gross domestic product (GDP), beyond economic growth, because when we measure progress through GDP we are actually harming natural environments. So they are proposing different ways of conceiving economic progress beyond GDP.

There is also achievement at the multilateral level. A great achievement was the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that embedded the principle of living in harmony with nature, to find more holistic and pluralistic ways of promoting sustainable development, but also the network is working at the implementation level with the three Rio Conventions, working with the Biodiversity Convention and Mother Earth-centric means of implementation with Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement to come up with new market mechanisms for climate mitigation and adaptation and embedding indigenous people’s knowledge and culture as a way of combating desertification. These multiple strategies are making this paradigm shift much easier for us to live in harmony with nature because in the end the future of humanity also depends on the future of nature.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: We have already touched upon several of key topics for today, AI, war, climate change, and the rights of nature. We will now move on to a fourth, human rights, also on the top of everyone’s agenda, I would hope.

Ben, your research examines transnational networks of human rights defenders. You do that at a time when international human rights is under increasing pressure including in many countries that used to be at the forefront of upholding international human rights like Europe and the United States. Could you briefly introduce your argument that human rights defenders are part of the governance infrastructures of the human rights regime and explain what these networks actually do?

BEN TONRA: Thank you very much, Marianne, and thank you all for being here.

I will start off with something of a contradiction or a paradox inasmuch as we have a very robust international treaty regime, we have many institutions in the area of human rights, but at the same time that entire framework is under some considerable pressure. It is thinning out. It is being hollowed out.

The question is, where is the governance coming from to replace that or to sustain that process over time? Where I see that coming from is particularly in the role of human rights defenders, who work in concert with many other professional groups, many other what we could “epistemic” groups such as journalists, medical professionals, and people who work in the world of communications, basically to reinforce networks when states in particular are standing back from their enforcement. Some of these institutions are under direct attack, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), but the more important problem is that states are stepping back from responsibilities that are mandated under treaty.

My argument is that human rights defenders are, if you like, filling in many of the gaps as to where states should have been. They gather and authenticate evidence, protect witnesses, and keep cases alive until they find an opportunity for prosecution. This is less advocacy than brokerage, a bringing of different networks together in pursuit of common goals.

I look at three examples: One was in the case of Syria and holding particular individuals to account for human rights abuses in the civil conflict there. We saw a successful prosecution of a case in Koblenz in Germany, which took advantage of the fact that the evidence was there, was credible, and could be used in a successful prosecution.

I also look at the case of Ukraine, where again you see prosecutors working with medical professionals, journalists, and others in the field again to build cases so that when the opportunity arises to take those cases before the ICC and working through Eurojust, that those cases can again be taken and responsibility be taken for those human rights abuses.

Finally I looked at the Pegasus Project, which was a fascinating one to me inasmuch as it identified abuses in terms of corporate surveillance. It brought together in particular journalists and very much technical expertise in the area of information technology (IT), which identified how particular officials, particular governments, and particular nongovernmental organizations had been targeted by this surveillance technology, what uses that technological surveillance was put to, and how people were disadvantaged as a result.

None of these are stories of advocates and human rights defenders replacing states. They cannot do that, but what they can do is work around the edges, around the margins, to maintain cases, and to keep cases on the agenda, so that there is an opportunity for those cases eventually to be brought to justice.

I think the wider lesson for us is that the international order—using Mai’a’s work—has a social infrastructure as well as a legal architecture, and we have to notice when that legal architecture is weak this social infrastructure cannot replace it, but it can fill the gaps and reinforce it in a period of contestation globally.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: And also build the basis for cooperation when states come back to the table perhaps.

BEN TONRA: Absolutely.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: These are all very different and important cases in AI, war, climate, and human rights, but they do illustrate that networks can make a difference. I think you show that very clearly working with states and filling in gaps when needed, creating solidarity, changing the discourse, changing international law, development standards, et cetera, but as you also say their influence is not automatic.

Mai’a, you mentioned that it depends on the ideas they promote, how they organize, who they cooperate with, the political context, maybe drawing on where crisis happens, but I would like us to dig a bit deeper into what made cooperation difficult in these cases, what were the obstacles, and what did these networks do to overcome them, because I think that is important for us to learn from your cases in order to allow other networks as well in addition to your own to help promote international cooperation in the future.

I want to start with you again, Denise. You study a very complex topic with AI, with many different actors involved. You have scientific expertise, you have technological development, you have the companies themselves, a strong political interest, very strong geopolitical competition among the great powers including China and the United States, and you also have a case where governments and companies might have very different priorities. Could you tell us what the main challenges are that the AI movements faced in bringing actors together and what strategies it used to overcome them and then also maybe what we could learn from this going forward in your case and in other cases?

DENISE GARCIA: Actually, I asked Claude to read my paper and tell me what the challenges were. It said: “Well, you didn’t really look at the challenges too much. You were too optimistic.”

Regardless of what Claude said, Marianne, I see two races going on at the same time. One is the AI military race that is happening. States, especially the two major superpowers, are engaged in an AI race, but other countries are as well. They shall remain nameless right now, but there are maybe ten countries in this race who want to speed what is called the OODA Loop in the military domain, which is Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. They want to expedite that, and they think they will have an advantage if they have AI, but the current wars that are happening show us that this is not really happening.

The second race that I see happening, and you alluded to it, is among the frontier labs, especially here in the United States but also in equivalent labs in China. There the situation is different. They have more regulation than we have here, but the labs continue competing because we do not have regulation for them, and we are not sure right now if they are training the AIs in a way that is beneficial for humanity. That is another separate discussion I can engage with in the Q&A, but the strategy to overcome these races that we see going on that I see the networks utilizing is mobilization of action through providing authoritative knowledge.

Small powers engage in this a lot with scientists and with civil society, for example, creating a global commission on AI in the military domain. This was an initiative by South Korea and the Netherlands. I was one of the global commissioners. We served for three years and produced a report with the first norms on the use of AI in the military domain.

There was a lot of behind-the-scenes engagement in several different diplomatic capitals, creation of advanced platforms for dialogue also behind the scenes sometimes, but I think these strategies seem like, what are the examples we can take from other industries?

We have safety in aviation. We are not going to enter an airplane if we think the airplane is not going to arrive on the other side of the ocean if you are going to London. You want to be sure the airplane will reach its destination. Is it because of luck? No, because of international law and regulations.

The pharmaceutical industry is another example: You are not going to take a vaccine that you are not sure went through tests and certification schemes. I think the networks are utilizing examples from other areas where safety and risk were assessed, and then we can draw lessons learned to see how we can continue developing AI if it is done with a risk-management framework.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: I want to go back to you, Ben, on the human rights defenders. Defending human rights in today’s environment cannot be easy. Could you tell us more about the main challenges they face now and why are they able anyway to make a difference, so to speak? You tell us in your research that it has become harder, but you are still optimistic.

BEN TONRA: Marginally optimistic, I would say. I think there are three core threats: Repression, fragility, and selectivity.

Repression is obvious. There is a whole academic corpus of literature out there that talks about how state actors actively repress human rights defenders both within their own borders and chasing their own citizens outside of their borders. That is a huge area, and very often you are talking about individuals or small cohorts of people with vulnerable families in vulnerable situations, so they are very open to that kind of state-level repression.

You also have fragility because again these are individuals or small organizations with very little funding. There is a sense of being alone in terms of their battle, which I think leaves them exposed and underlines the fragility of the work that they do.

There is also selectivity because even if they build a case, they have the evidence, they have everything they need in order to promote a successful prosecution, they still have to rely on the state actors, the state parties to treaties, to take these accusations of human rights abuses to the appropriate tribunal. For those three reasons, there is huge pressure and a mountain to climb in terms of prosecuting this effort.

What ameliorates that is, one, the normative commitment, because these people are highly motivated. They are willing to put very often their lives on the line in pursuit of human rights, and that normative coalition I think is a very powerful thing.

The other thing that mitigates against the negatives, as I said in my first intervention, is the multiple professional aspects of this. Again, you get these coalitions of lawyers, journalists, IT specialists, medical professionals, communications specialists, and through this shared normative commitment they share their expertise, they share the toolboxes, and they share the ways in which they bring things to successful fruition, so it is that normative commitment and that interprofessional and—forgive the very technical language—the “inter-epistemic community alliance” that they create that is a very powerful force for change.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: So in a sense it is also about keeping the work going.

BEN TONRA: Absolutely.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: So that once the window of opportunity opens, they are ready.

BEN TONRA: They are ready and they have the toolkit and the capacity.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: And they keep the work going.

BEN TONRA: Exactly.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: Which is important in itself, and they make a difference.

Karolina, if anything, it seems like cooperation over Ukraine may be getting even more difficult, even across the Atlantic recently—Steve Witkoff was actually just in Oslo and I am from Norway, so there has been a lot of focus on that—because of the tension that is also going on between the transatlantic partners.

What is so interesting with your case is that nonetheless you see that there is also a lot of conversation and cooperation going on to support Ukraine. Can you tell us more about how the networks you studied were able to overcome some of these obstacles and also in particular what can other networks learn from that, because as you said leadership vaporized, challenges increased, and nonetheless they were able to coordinate and help cooperation.

KAROLINA POMORSKA: First of all, we have to acknowledge that to some extent the emergence of these informal networks is a response to what I already mentioned, the inability of formal institutions in that case, of course. This is not the political institutions, but the United Nations was not that helpful. The European Union by itself we also have to remember had Hungary, who initially did not want any military help coming through its territories, so in a sense very flexible and quick-responding informal networks were the initial reply.

I have been studying the EU’s policy toward Russia, and I can tell you that for 20 years there was no solidarity and there was hardly any policy because there were huge, huge divisions. I was the last person who expected any solidarity to emerge or informal acting together. That is the first thing.

In our study we looked at two huge challenges. One was related to leadership, withdrawal or disappearance of leadership, and the other one was the perception of an issue itself, of a problem itself.

Under leadership, indeed the reelection of Donald Trump was a severe shock in both of these cases. Nevertheless, like I mentioned already, this Western/Global North coalition, all security crises—delivery of weapons and military equipment—rallied together in response. For me, a very symbolic moment was after Zelenskyy’s humiliation in the Oval Office and then what happened on his return trip to Europe with very symbolic treatment when you could see why some of these governments needed to act this way, but immediate response and showing in the name of solidarity. One of our interviewees told us, “We refused to believe that might makes right in this moment,” so there was a coming together.

However, of course, there were limits because again, I said Western and not global coalition. There were many countries in the Global South which did not necessarily buy into this idea, and think that gives us also lessons learned on public diplomacy, on early engagement, and on working together on ideas or values on the international global order. You cannot fix this immediately. You cannot create this network immediately. There needs to be serious engagement much earlier on, something that you mentioned I think, Ben. It needs to be there and when there is a window of opportunity or a need it comes to the fore.

With the characteristics of the problem indeed we have seen also a very big difference because security was very highly politicized also domestically, which in theory would make it a harder case, but in fact because of the very high threat perception and the other factors at play it worked out much better than the food security crisis, which normally we would say is less politicized so in that issue we could maybe expect more solidarity, but here also we saw some big divisions, especially when we looked at with whom we should show solidarity toward whom, and it did not always play out so well toward the Global South, the recipients of food, so there is still work to be done here.

Again, pointing to this network that needs to be established more strongly, in our case, elite but not only between north and south.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: Patrícia, you studied a network that faced not a less important but very different kind of challenge, namely how to promote ideas that question our established ways of thinking. As you discuss in your work, we tend to think of nature as a resource, something we use or facilitate somehow. Can you tell us a bit more about the strategies that the network used? You mentioned already having this positive approach, but also are there strategies that were used that other networks can learn from?

PATRÍCIA RINALDI: Of course. In my specific research for this project, I tried to map how the Harmony with Nature transnational network influenced the redefinition of the concept of sustainable development within the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

There were two challenges here: First, sustainable development is one of the most well-established concepts within the UN framework. Since the 1970s, everybody agrees that sustainable development is promoting development for present and future generations, but the anthropocentric view of sustainable development is very, very deep because in that concept we need to manage natural resources for the benefit of humanity.

How does a transnational network flip that script to make sustainable development more ecocentric instead of anthropocentric? This is a major questioning of a well-established UN principle, sustainable development, and how can you do that with a network that has no formal participation in UN decision-making processes because this network emerged in the 2000s, it is very decentralized, it is composed by hundreds of nodes that are very informal, lots of grassroots organizations and a lot of epistemic communities with lots of experts but who do not interact with the United Nations. Those nodes of the transnational network do not have formal observer status in the United Nations, so how to pursue that?

I think here their strategy was very clever. First, they pursued a nonconfrontational and incremental strategy, so instead of saying, “Sustainable development is bad, everything is wrong,” they played along with it. For the Harmony of Nature network, “Okay, we can work with sustainable development, but let’s find ways of providing an alternative to your sustainable development, a view that could embed ecocentric principles and could tap into more pluralistic and more holistic views on how we interact with nature.” So, no confrontation. Why are we going to be confrontational with a well-established concept? We will not be successful.

By this nonconfrontational strategy they were very successful. They were able to include an agenda item within the General Assembly work in the second committee. It was established in 2009 and it has survived since then. They were able to get annual interactive dialogues with the General Assembly in which grassroots and experts could brief UN Member States on their achievements in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through the rights of nature and through ecological economics.

It was very incremental. Every year, every round of encounters with UN Member States, they would add new achievements that could show that in fact it was feasible and possible to embed living in harmony with nature as a principle for sustainable development.

Again, of course, access was an issue, and here I have to say that the institutional access provided by the UN Secretariat was very important. I think we usually neglect the role of UN staff and international civil servants in opening those doors, and within the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs a harmony with nature program was created, and that coordinator, the UN staff, was able to open doors to those nodes of the network that lacked formal access, but then through those gates and making those bridges it was possible for the members of the network to interact and influence Member States without formal representation.

I think the lesson here is that, one, if we have a very interesting framing we can pursue it, and if we show that it is nonconfrontational, then Member States will be more open and more reception to it. Two, if we do not have formal access or lots of resources, we need to work in those informal ways of getting influence within the United Nations.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: I have a lot of questions I would like to ask you, but we have to open the floor as well. You point to so many interesting things, these incremental changes, working with institutions and some Member States, but also how these networks are long-term projects in the sense that they are built on trust and shared understandings that have developed over time, and these conditions might be difficult to create in times of crisis and conflict.

The important question, I guess, is, how can we sustain and support these networks, even during these times? If you had to give policy advice based on your research, short policy advice, what would it be?

BEN TONRA: If you want a short answer, it is to invest in the muscle of these networks, invest in the connections, invest in the networks. We cannot put a lot on their shoulders. They cannot replace states, but if you invest in the connections within the professional associations, assisting the human rights defenders with legal funds and literally giving them a break for six months to come to your host country and live a normal life, that kind of investment will deliver huge returns.

But the critical thing is, we cannot over-expect on these networks. The way I think about it in my own area, and I will finish on this, is that these networks of human rights defenders can raise the floor of what is prosecutable, but they cannot break the ceiling of what is actually enforced. That still is the responsibility of the states.

PATRÍCIA RINALDI: I think my main recommendation is that policymakers need to keep their minds open to the power of imagination. If we are not able to imagine different sorts of relationships, different ways of communicating, and different ways of interacting with natural entities, then we cannot continue doing business as usual. We can translate the power of imagination into the power of finding practical tools to pursue change.

KAROLINA POMORSKA: I have a similar recommendation to Ben in my case. Take care of these informal ad hoc networks and try to keep everybody onboard. Do not neglect those that you might perceive as looking weaker at the moment. Do not neglect anybody.

I think also counter the cynicism and negativity of today’s public discourse on certain ideas such as solidarity. Solidarity has a good name in many circles, but it does not mean that we have to give way to cynical, negative understandings. So, be brave and speak against this. It is not naïve. It is not silly. It is very important because then in the moment of need you can count on that value.

DENISE GARCIA: The networks I studied started framing AI as for the common good and not only as a strategic asset, so I think for the policymakers—and I have seen this in the last ten years studying how AI is impacting peace—they have to continue knowing the technical side, how the AI models work, how AI works, because if we do not understand the technical side we will be less aware of the risks, so we have to continue studying how it works to overcome what is called the “black box conundrum,” where we do not know how the networks come up with outputs sometimes after they train data.

To be honest, Marianne, when I started this project with Mai’a, you, and our wonderful colleagues, I was asking if cooperation would be possible in AI governance. Now I am asking myself how we are going to make it durable, so there is already a lot of progress. How do we sustain it?

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: Very optimistic to end there because we have to remember after all that we have agency. It is at the core of this very project, but if we are pessimistic and think that international cooperation is just too hard, it is going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy like you said, Mai’a. It is up to us decide after all that networks can help.

I want to open the floor for questions. The first question is, “Does it suffice to leave cooperation win-win as a voluntary approach or do we need to strengthen global governance through a legal system with legislative, executive, and judicial branches to ensure that win-win arrangements can be enforced, even when a recalcitrant power favors a win-lose approach?” Yes, we know who we are referring to.

I guess the question here is, don’t we also need really strong institutions to be able to ensure international cooperation and progress in spite of geopolitics? Are networks enough or do we also need to have institutional structures and global governance systems, and how can we achieve that?

DENISE GARCIA: Right now diplomacy I am afraid is severely outpaced by technological development, but that has always been the case, so we should not fear. When the biggest technological innovation of the moment, the telegraph, was invented back in the 19th century, it took a decade before the first strong international institution came about, which was the International Telegraphic Union, which is now the International Telecommunications Union, which still works in Geneva after more than a hundred years and now hosts the AI for Good summits. They also transformed themselves.

We do not have a political appetite right now for strong international institutions or for the creation of new ones, even though we need one for AI, but usually what happens is slow. International lawmaking is a social process as much as the networks are, so it takes time, and usually a mechanism or a soft-law agreement is a launching pad for later, stronger institutional arrangements.

That has happened in many areas we can think about. The law of the sea, for example, the network that you studied, Marianne and Mai’a as well. It took 20 years to have the Law of the Sea Convention and more recently the High Seas Treaty for the larger portions of the ocean.

So it takes time. It is just that when we see an urgency that we want to see results immediately, but it is just going to take time.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: Global governance has always been difficult, but it has been led by the United States, and now the United States is not the leader of global governance anymore, which makes it more difficult, but in AI I guess we also see a lot of law, but we see a lot of legal regional and national approaches. For example, the European Union has the AI Act, there is the Canadian AI regulation, and laws in the United Kingdom. Do you see similarities across these regimes so that in the end we might see some sort of global governance, even if it is implemented at the national or regional level?

DENISE GARCIA: I see similarities, yes, but I want to push back a little bit on the United States being the champion before. I think the United States has always been a difficult partner for everyone, to be honest with you, independent of who is in charge at the White House. The United States is a difficult partner, pushing sometimes for the lowest common denominator, and at the end it does not ratify the treaty.

Take the Law of the Sea Convention. The United States has not ratified it but still abides by all its norms. It is very nuanced I think, the position of the United States as a champion state.

What I see is that there are definitely more coalitions of middle and small powers advancing their own regulations on AI the way they can, and of course the European Union is undoubtedly the leader there, the champion bloc, on creating normative standards for everybody else, not only within the European Union but also in the Council of Europe, where the membership is much larger than the European Union. I see those different distinct legislative mechanisms as launching pads for more concrete and broader arrangements later.

KAROLINA POMORSKA: Of course, institutions are extremely important. They provide legitimacy. This is how we build international order and international systems.

I learned in the project that in a lot of cases success was defined when actually the ultrasocial idea was codified and put into formal institutions, although in my case it was a little bit different because we started at the moment when that codification and formal institution was challenged. It does not mean that it is not important. It means, how do we make it more resilient? Here is where informal networks come in and maybe try to reform the institutions themselves as well.

What I want to also say is that we need to be I think much braver in defending these institutions. I work mostly in the European Union, and I always say even if Member States do not subscribe anymore to the democratic values of the institution, we have proper ways to deal with that, even to suspend voting rights, but we need to be brave. Otherwise, those institutions do not mean much anymore, and then we say, “Oh, institutions don’t work, and we are pessimistic.”

It is not necessarily the institution that does not work, but one country out of 27 might be now not respecting the values we agreed when this organization was created. They are important, but those networks can increase the resilience and find ways to help in those moments when they are have malfunctioned, so to say.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: And we need to strengthen them, but what we also see in this project is that they do not evolve from nothing. They evolve from someone doing the groundwork, and that is also networks. If global governance is more difficult at the moment, we can at least help lay the groundwork as much as possible.

KAROLINA POMORSKA: In my case, Americans were definitely in the leadership until the reelection of Donald Trump. That was confirmed through interviews, they were indispensable in mobilizing networks together, so many informally, working very hard on food security together with the United Nations or security together with the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and so on. That was a blow.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: But you also show that someone took over the leadership.

Patrícia, in your case, looking at the Harmony with Nature network, you look at a network that wants to change the discourse, change the way we speak and think about nature so that we will treat it differently, but I guess also here the endpoint would be global governance systems at one point.

PATRÍCIA RINALDI: Yes, but I think there is also a change in our way of perceiving global governance and enforcement because usually we have this top-down perspective of global governance and institutions, and for the rights of nature movement and the Harmony with Nature network in general governance must be Earth systems governance, so first of all we have to have systemic thinking, and for that governance must also include bottom-up initiatives.

For instance, one way of making the changing discourse really practical and enforced is through the rights of nature legal provisions, and most of them are adopted at the local level. In the case of Brazil, for instance, which is a leader in the rights of nature movement in Latin America among other countries, most of the provisions are enshrined in what we call the “organic” law, the law of a municipality.

Then, by granting rights to a river, for instance, in the Brazilian Amazon, that river becomes part of the political and economic process of that municipality. That initiative actually resonates and inspires other initiatives from the bottom up. It achieved, for instance, the Inter-American Court for Human Rights adopted an advisory opinion in 2025, recognizing the rights of nature as a very important mechanism to achieve also human rights and the human rights to a healthy and safe environment.

We can see that global governance must be seen not only as top-down, but also how these bottom-up initiatives can resonate at the most institutionally higher levels such as in the international courts.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: It is a multilevel system.

PATRÍCIA RINALDI: Exactly.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: Ben, what about the human rights global governance regime?

BEN TONRA: I think the lesson is, and it is a lesson we have all drawn from Mai’a’s work here, is that, yes, states and institutions are critically important to global governance, but when states need their feet held to the fire on issues, when states are not thinking imaginatively enough about solutions to global problems, there the potential for these networks is huge.

I bring it back to this concept of human agency. Yes, we want the states to do these things, yes, we want the multilateral institutions to do these things, but if they don’t, don’t simply throw your hands up in despair and say, “Nothing’s happening, the world is coming down around our ears.” We have individually and collectively huge agency that can define the system in precisely the ways we want it to be defined.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: Super-important lesson learned from the project.

QUESTION: My name is Michael. I work for the Institute for Economics & Peace. I would like to perhaps jump on Ben’s final comments. One of the things I have seen notably in and around the UN Secretariat and more broadly is that often when it comes to Member States, and you mentioned the case of the Netherlands and South Korea being examples of proactive states, many, especially with regards to the UN missions, lack ideas. You would not believe how many times I have seen through various conversations it actually be the transnational civil society networks that come up with that initial idea that the states are absolutely desperate to latch onto.

They want to work generally in this area, but they just do not know how to really put that into action. That extends to missions, but it also extends to the office of the president of the General Assembly. It also extends to the secretary-general level as well. There are and have been not only distinct case studies—and you have shared many—but many more of these transnational networks.

Yes, of course, you need to be able to speak the language, you need to be able to present it in the appropriate way, and especially perhaps with the states that are essentially persona non grata and who themselves are desperately trying to find ways of being able to continue engaging with the multilateral sector, being in this case we have talked about Russia, China, and perhaps other states that are on the margins of some issues including human rights, desperate for these particular small things. Just a note of encouragement for anyone who is either investing in or managing their own transnational network, it works. It really does.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: That is a very important point, I think, the idea of having imagination and coming up with solutions or proposals or something. That is one of the key roles that the networks play, again showing that it is also important for them to work with Member States who can then bring it forward formally, for example.

DENISE GARCIA: Sometimes Member States don’t have the language. It is the scientists or the epistemic communities, as Mai’a also proved in her previous work on extended communities. Sometimes the Member States lack the common vocabulary. The common vocabulary is not even there yet, so in the cases where I studied it was the networks that provided, Michael, the platform. They lent their authority, knowledge, and they created the shared vocabulary for states to act. The vocabulary in the case was “AI for good” or “human-centered AI,” “human-centric AI use,” and “responsible use of AI in the military domain.”

These terms are now common language in the meetings in Geneva, Berlin, Oslo, and in all the different diplomatic capitals. In the EU level as well, this vocabulary is being applied. So when you said, as Mai’a said in Cooperation Against All Odds, when it is framed in an ultrasocial way it is more powerful, compelling, and appealing. It sticks.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: I recognize the language in the European Union, with tech leaders, for example. Also, in the High Seas Treaty case that I studied we looked at the language proposed by the High Seas Alliance, which was the network, on how we could trace language in the legal texts back to their suggestions. I am going through the European Union and other Member States, but still it is important.

QUESTION: There are a lot of differences in how you are thinking about transnational networks in terms of replacing or advocating, and I think a lot of the literature in political science has really thought about transnational networks as these epistemic communities, scientific groups, and civil society groups, and a lot of times the leadership is in the Global North, and they are pushing on states.

Patrícia, you are talking about a different kind of bottom-up mobilization, so I am thinking about the Global North and new kinds of transnational networks that are at the community level or in particular cities. What is the role of cities? The Global South has some of the fastest-growing cities. A lot of our population is in those cities, so can we think about transnational networks that are actually governing?

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: We actually have a case on cities. Martha Davis has a paper on that, so we have looked at that. Cities play a very important role.

Like Patrícia said, this is the local level. The local level is super-important for many different things, I think, not only for human rights but climate work as well, and city-to-city cooperation. That is kind of led by transnational networks working across not only countries and cities but even across continents. I think that is very important and is also something that Patrícia thinks.

PATRÍCIA RINALDI: For the Harmony with Nature network the ability to combine grassroots networks with epistemic communities and bridging those two is important, for instance, tapping into the experience of Indigenous peoples, philosophies, and practices, and also engaging with the grassroots movements from cities. Especially in Europe the rights of nature movement is advancing through citizens’ initiatives. They have just launched in the last week a European citizens initiative to embed the rights of nature into the environmental laws of the European Union. They are now collecting signatures, so you see citizens movements.

But you also have the experts, the legal experts and judges, who are now working through different courts and judging cases and bringing the rights of nature as jurisprudence for their decisions.

I think this combination of grassroots and expertise also makes transnational networks stronger because it gives them different vocabularies, different languages, and different approaches to interact at those different levels and also to be prepared because when a door closes then they are ready and have a rapporteur to act in different spheres as well.

For instance, for the Harmony with Nature network we have seen the channel of communication with the UN General Assembly closing because of different reasons including UN 80 and different processes within the United Nations, but even though that window is closing the network is working on different initiatives. They are creating national earth assemblies, they are gathering at the regional level, they are mobilizing the European Union or the Open Science Forum for Latin America and the Caribbean (CILAC).

I think having that multidimensional strategy and bridging grassroots and epistemic knowledge is what makes those international networks more successful as well, especially in times of crisis as this.

MARIANNE RIDDERVOLD: Your question also reminds us that the world is so much more than great-power politics. International relations is so much more than even states. It is multilevel, multi-actor, and everything matters, which means that it is important to support other forces as well as study other forces.

We are going to have to end unfortunately because we are out of time even if we could have continued for longer. Thank you so much for joining us for this excellent panel discussion.