The Emerging Regime Complex for Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

The promises and pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have led to an intense race to regulate the technology. However, no central international regulatory institution has yet emerged. Instead, the regulatory landscape is characterized by a variety of nascent and partially overlapping governance arrangements, resembling an emerging regime complex. What are the key characteristics of this regime complex, and what logics can account for its origin and shape? This article offers the first systematic analysis of the AI regime complex. Its contribution is twofold. First, theoretically, we develop three explanatory logics—power-oriented, functionalist, and path-dependent—to evaluate the evolution and shape of the AI regime complex along two key structural dimensions: hierarchy and differentiation. Second, empirically, we track and explain the development of the AI regime complex 2014–2024 based on a novel and comprehensive dataset on 119 international institutions involved in AI governance. Our findings show that the AI regime complex is marked by a lack of hierarchy, dense geographic concentration of governance efforts in Europe, and generally low functional differentiation, reflecting the combined influence of state power, functional demands, and institutional path dependencies. These patterns point to risks of fragmentation in global AI governance, as overlapping institutions and regional concentration may impede coherent rule-making and constrain the regime complex’s capacity to adapt to emerging challenges.