intergovernmental

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

an adjective describing relations, agreements, organisations, or processes that occur between or among two or more governments — whether between national governments in the international arena, or between different levels of government within a federal or quasi-federal system; intergovernmental relations in federal systems encompass the fiscal, regulatory, and political interactions between central and subnational governments including grant allocation, joint programming, negotiated standard-setting, and intergovernmental disputes resolved through courts or negotiation; intergovernmental organisations in the international arena — including the United Nations, World Trade Organization, and International Monetary Fund — are constituted by and accountable to their member state governments rather than directly to citizens or supranational authorities; the management of intergovernmental relations is a central challenge of multilevel governance in both domestic and international contexts

Examples

• The intergovernmental agreement on emissions standards took three years to negotiate between the federal and state governments.
• Intergovernmental organisations like the WHO coordinate member state responses to public health emergencies without having direct authority over national health systems.