Despite new challenges like climate change and digitalization, global and regional organizations recently went through turbulent times due to a lack of support from several of their member states. Next to this crisis of multilateralism, the COVID-19 pandemic now seems to question the added value of international organizations for addressing global governance issues more specifically. This article analyses this double challenge that several organizations are facing and compares their ways of managing the crisis by looking at their institutional and political context, their governance structure, and their behaviour during the pandemic until June 2020. More specifically, it will explain the different and fragmented responses of the World Health Organization, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund/World Bank. With the aim of understanding the old and new problems that these international organizations are trying to solve, this article argues that the level of autonomy vis-a-vis the member states is crucial for understanding the politics of crisis management.

Points for practitioners

As intergovernmental bodies, international organizations require authorization by their member states. Since they also need funding for their operations, different degrees of autonomy also matter for reacting to emerging challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The potential for international organizations is limited, though through proactive and bold initiatives, they can seize the opportunity of the crisis and partly overcome institutional and political constraints.

中文翻译：

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区域和国际组织应对全球大流行的危机管理政治：成员国处于十字路口

尽管面临气候变化和数字化等新挑战，但由于缺乏几个成员国的支持，全球和区域组织最近仍处于动荡时期。在这场多边主义危机之后，COVID-19大流行现在似乎质疑国际组织在更具体地解决全球治理问题方面的附加值。本文分析了多个组织所面临的双重挑战，并通过查看其在大流行期间（直至2020年6月）的体制和政治背景，治理结构和行为，比较了他们处理危机的方式。更具体地说，它将解释不同的情况。以及世界卫生组织，欧洲联盟和国际货币基金组织/世界银行的零散回应。

从业人员要点

作为政府间机构，国际组织需要获得其成员国的授权。由于他们的运营也需要资金，因此不同程度的自主权对于应对新出现的挑战（例如COVID-19大流行）也很重要。国际组织的潜力是有限的，尽管通过积极和大胆的倡议，它们可以抓住危机的机会并部分克服体制和政治上的限制。