Pillar IV · HSI Research

Governing across borders when no one's in charge.

Networked Governance and Track II Dialogue

The institutions built for the multilateral order of the late twentieth century were not designed for the governance problems of the 2030s. Track II diplomacy, informal expert-led dialogue across borders, has historically complemented formal multilateralism. In an era of fragmented authority and accelerating technology, it becomes a primary mode of cross-border governance work.

Our Governance and Diplomacy work develops frameworks for structured multi-stakeholder alignment, networked multilateralism, and Track II dialogue on questions that cross jurisdictional lines. The anchor-city salons function as the Institute's standing Track II infrastructure.

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Initiative

The Cross-Border Governance of the AI Labor Transition

The AI workforce transition is being answered nationally. In the United States, employer-led coalitions are mobilizing serious capital to retrain workers at home. What no domestic effort is built to govern is the layer above it, the movement of the shift through global labor markets, migration, education standards, and the arrangements between states. That layer is a governance and diplomacy problem, and it is currently unowned. This initiative studies how governments and institutions coordinate across borders on a transition none of them can manage alone.

Active Research Questions

What coordination infrastructure does the AI labor transition require between states, when national workforce coalitions stop at the border?

ScopingResearch Brief · Q4 2026

How should international education and credentialing standards adapt when the half-life of skills is set by model releases?

ScopingSearchlight series · 2027

What governance infrastructure supports cross-jurisdictional coordination on technology and AI when no single regulator has authority?

DraftingHorizon Scan · Q4 2026

How can Track II convenings be structured to produce institutionally consequential outputs rather than commentary?

ScopingResearch Brief, post-NYC Salon · 2026

What does networked multilateralism look like in practice for governance questions that exceed any single state's reach?

PublishedLinked: UN Charter at 80

How do institutions translate dialogue into structured agreement at decision-making scale?

ForthcomingResearch Brief · 2027

Affiliated Fellows

Abdullah Ishak Khan

Inaugural HSI Doctoral Fellow

Deputy Director, Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (Prime Minister's Office). Doctoral student in Public Affairs at Florida International University. Master's, International Business Strategy, Hitotsubashi University (MEXT Young Leaders Program). Applied research on investment promotion, logistics hubs, and resilient manufacturing in emerging markets, with focus on multilateral governance and Track II dialogue.