Together with an international group of researchers, our authors contributed to the development of a new concept: Organizational (Dis)Entanglement. Building on the existing framework of regime complexity, this novel approach investigates the relationship between International Organizations, international order-making and power resources. Concurrently, this new concept aims to contribute to our understanding not only of "how actors are pursuing different visions of international order, but also which actors are likely to do so where and when."

Stephanie Hofmann, one of the co-authors, defines organizational (dis)entanglement "as an actor-driven process of constructive and disruptive relation-building across organizations. (Dis)entanglements are distributional processes over access and use of material and ideational resources occurring in key international sites."

In the context of African regional international organizations (RIOs), Diana Panke and Sören Stapel describe how Nigeria and South Africa drove regional entanglement between ECOWAS, SADC and the African Union (AU) to streamline their policy preferences in the 1990s and 2000s. Acting as regional powers, both countries utilised the respective RIOs as important fora for regional order-making. Our authors argue that, given their relative size and power, South Africa and Nigeria are better suited to navigate the potential negative effects of increased entanglement than their smaller neighbours.

To the article: https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viaf002