ABSTRACT
The number of international institutions has skyrocketed in recent decades. Institutions can undermine each other, such as when ozone-depleting gases banned under the Montreal Protocol were replaced with gases that do not affect the ozone layer but contribute to global warming. A study links the emergence of the regime complex for energy to fluctuations in the price of oil on the world market, leading to either importers or exporters of oil becoming dissatisfied with existing institutional arrangements at different points in time, thus choosing to create alternatives. Club cooperation and institutional layering link to regime complexity in different ways. Clubs are new institutions that overlap with the original institution with which reformist actors were dissatisfied yet were unable to change. Regime shifting can challenge existing institutions by creating inconsistencies at the level of their implementation. Interplay management seeks to ensure the smooth functioning of international institutions, including the creation of novel sets of rules.
