The starting point of the analysis is the fragmented state of AI governance itself. Scholars describe the current landscape as underdeveloped, unorganized and immature, populated by three broad categories of actors. Private sector giants such as Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, IBM and Meta have produced industry guidelines, ethics documents and voluntary commitments, often favoring self-regulation that does not slow the pace of development. Public sector actors, including national governments and intergovernmental bodies like the G20, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the United Nations, have published national strategies and international agreements. Non-governmental organizations, professional bodies such as the IEEE, think tanks and advocacy groups round out the picture, setting standards and drawing attention to emerging risks. Yet despite this flurry of activity, there is still no generally recognized global governance mechanism for AI, and no consensus on what one should even look like.

The central obstacle, according to the study, lies in the divergent approaches of the three actors that lead AI development worldwide. The United States has published more AI strategies and policy reports than any other country and pursues a market-driven, less restrictive model, prioritizing sector-specific governance, granting autonomy to federal agencies and allowing industry to shape policy through consultation and voluntary commitments. There is no federal AI law; the most prominent federal action has been the Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI, while state legislatures pass a patchwork of regulations on applications ranging from elections to healthcare. China, by contrast, treats AI as an extension of its centrally planned political system, aligning development with national and socialist values through a rule-based approach while tolerating decentralized innovation at the local level. Its 2017 New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan declares the ambition to become the world leader in AI by 2030. The European Union has carved out a third position, weaving the narrative of trustworthy, human-centered AI into global discourse and releasing the EU AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive AI law, which classifies systems into four risk categories with escalating regulatory requirements.

These three actors each want to lead globally, and their competing ambitions generate concrete barriers to cooperation. The EU’s risk-based regulation is perceived by the US as innovation-stifling, while the US preference for self-regulation clashes with both the EU’s legal approach and China’s state-led model. Geopolitics deepens the divide: decoupling technology supply chains, the ongoing chip war and trade tensions have made faster AI innovation a matter of national security for Washington and Beijing, while the EU pursues open strategic autonomy. Ideological differences compound the problem. The US and EU favor collaboration with democratic partners, whereas China’s use of AI for mass surveillance and social scoring has alienated Western states, pushing it toward partnerships with Russia and developing countries through the Belt and Road Initiative and an AI study group within BRICS. Even the preferred modes of cooperation differ, with the US and EU working through existing institutions while China builds new alternative ones, a dynamic that risks accelerating bloc formation in an already fragmented landscape.

The consequences of this non-cooperation are far from abstract. The study catalogs a series of risks that are amplified or directly generated by the standoff between the three powers. Heightened nationalism in AI development could divert attention from global concerns such as sustainability toward short-term economic interests, fostering protectionist policies that disrupt markets and widen inequalities between nations. The US-China rivalry could spill over into other international conflicts as more countries pursue AI purely for competitive advantage, concentrating power among leading nations while dispersing costs widely. A hollowed-out multilateral system could fragment into minilateral groupings, enabling forum shopping in which countries align with the least restrictive regime. Cross-border risks, from AI-driven cyberattacks to nefarious uses of open-source models, become harder to manage without joint research and coordination, and societal-scale risks from frontier AI models could go unassessed without an international consortium pooling expertise and regulatory resources.

Perhaps most alarming is the prospect of a race to the bottom, in which each actor prioritizes speed over safety, cutting corners to be first to achieve breakthroughs. Coordination would help establish AI safety standards and agree on red lines that should not be crossed, including military applications such as lethal autonomous weapons systems and bioweapons. A competitive race toward artificial general intelligence among the three most capable actors could expose humanity to existential and global catastrophic risks, the study warns, making collective management of long-term dangers as urgent as addressing immediate harms.

To diagnose the problem, Olugbade turns to the collective action literature, a field transformed by Mancur Olson’s 1965 book The Logic of Collective Action and later by the Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom. Collective action problems arise when group members pursue short-term individual interests at the expense of long-term shared interests, leaving everyone worse off than if they had cooperated. The key to classifying such problems lies in the nature of the goods at stake, defined by two properties: excludability, whether access can be limited, and rivalry, whether use by one diminishes availability for others. Global AI governance, the study argues, is non-excludable, since any of the three actors can currently influence AI’s direction, but rivalrous, because dominance by one precludes equivalent influence by the others. That combination makes global AI governance a common good, placing it in the same analytical category as the common-pool resources Ostrom famously studied, from fisheries to irrigation systems.

Ostrom distilled eight design principles from long-enduring institutions that successfully managed common-pool resources, and the study applies each to AI governance. Clearly defined boundaries would mean identifying who has a right to do what, using multistakeholder mechanisms while granting the three leading powers special privileges of influence as incentives to participate. Rules must be congruent with local conditions, since centrally determined universal rules are unlikely to survive the ideological differences among the three actors; regional and local mechanisms must complement global ones. Collective-choice arrangements should allow stakeholders at every level to modify rules as the technology evolves. Monitoring and graduated sanctions are deemed crucial, addressing the enforcement weakness that has undermined initiatives like the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI and the OECD AI Principles. Mutual monitoring between the US and China, each interested in the other’s activities, could be leveraged, with sanctions escalating progressively based on compliance history. Conflict-resolution mechanisms, minimal recognition of the rights of governance bodies to organize, and nested enterprises complete the framework.

The study also draws on the analytical framework for large-scale collective action developed by Sverker Jagers and colleagues, which identifies facilitators such as trust, reciprocity and reputational stake, and stressors such as anonymity, lack of accountability, heterogeneity, risk and uncertainty. Applied to AI governance, the facilitators include a shared perspective among all three actors on using AI to solve global challenges and a common willingness to work with international organizations, with China engaging the UN and the US and EU supporting the OECD. These glimmers of common ground, the study suggests, could serve as entry points around which global AI governance is organized, with international organizations such as the UN, the OECD and the Global Partnership on AI acting as third-party interventions with the capacity and legitimacy to generate cooperation, including through the newly proposed International Scientific Panel on AI.

The study’s central conclusion challenges the many proposals for a single centralized global AI authority, such as a G20 coordinating committee, an International Artificial Intelligence Organization or an Intergovernmental Panel on AI modeled on the climate body. Such centralized mechanisms, the analysis finds, are less likely to succeed than a polycentric, multilevel arrangement in which interconnected but independent governance institutions operate at global, regional, national and subnational scales, each determined by the stakeholders at that level and guided by the principle of subsidiarity. Polycentric systems allow learning from experimentation, build trust, respond to local contexts and reduce opportunistic behavior. Enforcement, supported by monitoring, sanctioning, information provision and conflict resolution, remains the linchpin of implementation. The author acknowledges that the paper focuses on institutional design considerations rather than specifying exact institutions, and calls for future research on how polycentric arrangements could be implemented and how information provision should be structured. But the message is clear: any global AI governance proposal that ignores the non-cooperation of the United States, China and the European Union is likely doomed to fail, and the path forward runs not through a single world AI authority but through a resilient mosaic of overlapping, mutually adjusting institutions.

Subject of Research: Global governance of artificial intelligence analyzed through collective action theory

Article Title: In search of a global governance mechanism for Artificial Intelligence (AI): a collective action perspective

Article References: Olugbade, O. (2025). In search of a global governance mechanism for Artificial Intelligence (AI): a collective action perspective. Global Public Policy and Governance, 5(2), 139-161. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-025-00113-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43508-025-00113-z

Keywords: artificial intelligence, global governance, collective action, common-pool resources, Elinor Ostrom, polycentric governance, EU AI Act, US-China rivalry, institutional design, AI regulation, international organizations, frontier AI risks

The core of the argument is that the United States has shifted its strategic ambition from sustaining global governance to advancing national goals within a competitive system. Where the neoliberal unipolar order of the 1990s and 2000s rested on the premise that a benevolent hegemon would underwrite institutions such as the WTO, the UN framework, and the liberal trading system, the emerging order is one in which a declining hegemon and rising powers vie to promote norms that serve their respective national interests. In this environment, the authors argue, the Trumpist mix of unilateral enforcement, bilateral coercion, and selective multilateralism is not a contradiction but a toolkit, with each instrument deployed according to a ruthless cost-benefit calculus aimed at maximizing American leverage against strategic competitors such as China and Russia.

The theoretical framework the authors develop, which they term the post-neoliberal competitive global order, builds on scholarship about transnational legal orders, the processes by which global norms are constructed, contested, and institutionalized across national boundaries. Halliday and Carruthers’s classic model of recursive lawmaking described global norm-making as a negotiation between international standard-setters and national lawmakers. Sun and Yu argue that this model must be augmented to capture contemporary dynamics, because norm-making has shifted from multilateral consensus-building toward overt coercion and geopolitical bargaining. They identify three interconnected processes defining the new order: agenda-setting for global norms has become a contested arena rather than a cooperative endeavor; norm-making itself is increasingly characterized by coercion rather than persuasion; and enforcement now spans a spectrum from unilateral sanctions to selective multilateral mechanisms, with great powers strategically choosing among them.

The first pillar of the Trumpist strategy, unilateral enforcement, is illustrated most vividly by trade policy. The calculated paralysis of the WTO’s Appellate Body, achieved by blocking the appointment of judges, was not simply an exit from a dispute mechanism but a coercive act that dismantled a binding legal constraint perceived as no longer serving US interests. What followed was an unprecedented global tariff war. According to the study, the imposition of high, across-the-board levies caused a dramatic drop in global exports to the United States, with EU exports falling 21 percent and Chinese exports falling 36 percent in a single quarter of 2025. China retaliated against a 54 percent US tariff with 34 percent tariffs on all American imports, and in a striking reversal of alignments, the European Union and China issued a rare joint statement condemning the widespread disruption caused by the US tariffs and stressing their shared responsibility to support a strong, reformed trading system.

Unilateral enforcement extended well beyond trade. The withdrawal from the Paris Agreement signaled that the United States would no longer be bound by collective climate targets it deemed economically disadvantageous, challenging the existing agenda of global environmental governance. In the security domain, airstrikes against Iranian facilities were conducted outside the framework of the UN Security Council, an assertion that non-proliferation norms would be enforced through unilateral force when multilateral institutions were judged too slow or politically constrained. The authors emphasize that these moves should not be read as isolationist retreat. Rather, they represent a hegemon selectively abandoning its role as steward of multilateral governance in order to wield raw power in a manner it believes maximizes advantage, even at the cost of weakening the very system it once shaped.

The second pillar, bilateral coercion, operates through one-on-one pressure where American power advantages are most pronounced. The renegotiation of NAFTA into the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement is the paradigmatic case. By negotiating directly with Canada and Mexico, the United States imposed new model clauses that would have been impossible to secure in a multilateral forum, including the elimination or narrowing of investor-state dispute mechanisms and restrictions on partners’ trade agreements with so-called non-market economies, a clear reference to China. The study describes this as a deliberate act of bilateral coercion designed to promote US-centric rules for international trade while isolating strategic competitors and avoiding collective resistance from emerging powers in venues such as the WTO.

The same coercive logic was applied to alliance management. Rather than working through the North Atlantic Council, where collective pressure could be exerted back on Washington, the administration opted for direct, public bilateral criticism of individual European allies, as well as Asian partners including Japan and South Korea, demanding significant increases in defense spending. The objective, according to the authors, was to shatter the collective free-rider problem in collective security by replacing collaborative consensus with asymmetric bilateral pressure, compelling allies to internalize costs the United States had previously borne and freeing American financial and military resources for strategic competition elsewhere. Alliance relationships were thus restructured on purely transactional terms.

The third pillar, selective multilateralism, completes the strategic triad and explains the puzzle of why an administration hostile to broad institutions simultaneously deepened engagement in others. The strengthening of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Japan, Australia, and India exemplifies a limited coalitional effort aimed at establishing a norm of a free and open Indo-Pacific as a direct counter to China’s expanding influence, without subjecting the United States to the institutional constraints of bodies like the UN or NATO. In global health, the study notes, the administration withdrew funding from the WHO while engaging with and funding the Global Fund, a limited, voluntary mechanism where US pharmaceutical interests held disproportionate sway; the US State Department’s own America First Global Health Strategy records that the Global Fund has procured 3.5 billion dollars in goods and services from US corporations since 2010. Similarly, the administration maintained influence in the IMF and used the UN Security Council’s snapback procedure to restore sanctions on Iran, favoring institutions where it holds veto power while disengaging from those led by competitors.

The implications, the authors conclude, are profound. The strategic selectivity of Trumpism has accelerated the fragmentation of global governance into a contested regime complexity, creating governance vacuums and a precarious gap in the supply of global norms and public goods at precisely the moment when challenges such as climate change and pandemics demand collective action. Theoretically, the framework suggests that hegemonic dominance generates a recursive response from competing powers: China is developing corresponding governance initiatives, including the Belt and Road Initiative and newly founded multilateral institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which paradoxically embrace multilateralism even as the declining hegemon turns unilateral. The authors draw a historical parallel to the rivalry between a declining British Empire and an emerging United States after World War I, when the declining power favored coercive measures while the rising power championed Wilsonian multilateralism. If that pattern holds, the cost-benefit calculus articulated by Trumpism is likely to persist across administrations, compelling a lasting reshaping of multilateralism and the very structure of the global governance order in the twenty-first century.

Subject of Research: The Trumpist strategy of selective engagement with global governance institutions in a post-neoliberal competitive global order

Article Title: The trumpist rationale of global governance in post-neoliberal competitive global order

Article References: Sun, J., & Yu, H. (2025). The trumpist rationale of global governance in post-neoliberal competitive global order. Global Public Policy and Governance, 5(4), 316-328. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-025-00132-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43508-025-00132-w

Keywords: global governance, Trumpism, unilateralism, selective multilateralism, bilateral coercion, post-neoliberal order, US-China rivalry, WTO, tariff war, Paris Agreement, hegemonic stability, international relations

The study adopts a qualitative approach that combines document analysis with a case study method, conceptualizing Vietnam as a representative middle power. Middle powers occupy an awkward middle ground in international politics: too large and capable to simply bandwagon with a stronger state, yet too small to shape the international system on their own. For such states, hedging offers an alternative to the binary choices of balancing against one power or aligning with another. Instead of committing, a hedging state keeps its options open, spreading its dependencies so that no single great power can dictate its foreign policy.

What makes Vietnam’s version of hedging distinctive is its ideological framing. The country’s leadership has articulated the approach through the metaphor of bamboo diplomacy, first systematically laid out by General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong at the National Conference on Foreign Affairs in December 2021. Trong described a distinctive school of foreign affairs rooted in the image of the Vietnamese bamboo, characterized by firm roots, a solid trunk, and flexible branches. The metaphor captures the technical logic of the strategy: principles remain fixed while tactics bend with circumstances. The bamboo sways in the storm but does not break, and it does not uproot itself to escape the wind.

The security dimension of this doctrine is codified in Vietnam’s 2019 National Defence White Paper, which commits the country to what analysts describe as a set of explicit refusals. Vietnam will not join military alliances, will not align with one country against another, will not allow foreign states to establish military bases on its territory or use Vietnamese soil for military activities against other nations, and will not use force or threaten its use in international relations. This stands in deliberate contrast to, for example, NATO members bound by Article 5, which treats an attack on one ally as an attack on all and obligates collective response. Hanoi’s four noes are designed precisely to avoid such binding entanglements that would collapse its maneuvering space into a single bloc.

Economically, the hedging strategy manifests as simultaneous deepening of ties with both rivals. Vietnam and China have recorded unprecedented expansion in bilateral trade, with China remaining deeply embedded in Vietnamese supply chains as a source of inputs and machinery. At the same time, the United States has become one of Vietnam’s most important export markets and a growing source of multi-sectoral investment trending toward higher value chains. The study notes that this dual dependence functions almost as a form of mutual deterrence: each superpower has substantial economic stakes in Vietnam, giving both reasons to compete for Hanoi’s goodwill rather than coerce it. Researchers have described this dynamic as economic mutual assured dependence, a strategic tool that middle powers can wield against far larger rivals.

The return of President Donald Trump and the America First agenda has injected new stress into this equilibrium. The study documents how Washington’s tariff decisions have directly tested Vietnamese resilience, prompting high-level engagement from Hanoi, including discussions between General Secretary To Lam and President Trump aimed at reducing import tariffs, with Vietnam signaling readiness to negotiate tariff levels down to zero percent. The authors frame these episodes as evidence that hedging is not passive. It requires constant active management, as Vietnamese officials pursue economic and trade policy dialogues with the United States while simultaneously cultivating stable foundations for relations with China.

The diplomatic record of 2025 and early 2026 illustrates the balancing act in fine grain. Vietnam has consistently described the United States as a leading strategic partner, upgrading the relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership, the highest tier in its diplomatic hierarchy. Yet in the same period, Vietnam conducted its first joint army drill with China, an episode analysts at the Carnegie Endowment interpreted as a signal that Hanoi remains neither comrade nor ally to either power. The study reads these seemingly contradictory moves as coherent within the hedging framework: each gesture toward one power is counterweighted by a gesture toward the other, preventing either from claiming exclusive influence.

The analytical core of the paper lies in its assessment of conditions. The authors find that hedging has enabled Vietnam to maintain strategic maneuvering space and derive short to medium term benefits from engagement with both Washington and Beijing. But they emphasize that the strategy is conditional rather than permanent. Hedging can be sustained only so long as strategic polarization between the United States and China does not cross the threshold that compels states to align explicitly. In other words, hedging works while the great powers compete but do not demand commitments. Its inherent limitations, the study argues, are likely to become increasingly pronounced as competition escalates, echoing earlier scholarship warning of the structural dangers of a Thucydides trap dynamic between an established and a rising power.

The research also situates Vietnam within a broader global pattern. Companion studies in the same journal examine how Europe pursues strategic autonomy in response to Trumpism and how Trump-era policies are reshaping China’s global strategies, suggesting a worldwide reassessment of how states dependent on American security guarantees and Chinese economic integration should position themselves. For Southeast Asian states watching Vietnam’s experience, the findings carry practical weight: hedging is viable and rewarding, but it is a strategy for an intermediate phase of rivalry, not a permanent shield.

Funded by Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City, the study ultimately offers a sober assessment rather than a celebration. Vietnam’s bamboo diplomacy has proven remarkably effective at keeping options open in a polarizing world, allowing a middle power to talk trade with Washington one week and drill with the People’s Liberation Army the next. But the authors’ central conclusion is that flexibility has structural limits. If the US-China contest intensifies to the point where both capitals demand that smaller states choose, the bamboo may bend as far as it can, and Vietnam, like other middle powers, will face the unenviable arithmetic of alignment.

Subject of Research: Vietnam's hedging strategy toward US-China great power competition

Article Title: Vietnam’s hedging strategies amid intensified US-China competition

Article References: Nghi, N. T., & Tu, N. C. (2026). Vietnam’s hedging strategies amid intensified US-China competition. Global Public Policy and Governance, 6(1), 82-97. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-026-00141-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43508-026-00141-3

Keywords: Vietnam, hedging strategy, US-China competition, bamboo diplomacy, middle power, strategic autonomy, Trump tariffs, South China Sea, foreign policy, Southeast Asia, comprehensive strategic partnership, economic dependence