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Goethe had lifelong unhappy memories of his early riding lessons at the Frankfurt Marstall. Yet not only did he become a passionate rider later, but he also held riding in unusually high esteem as a veritable form of 'art'. In his literary works, riding serves as a complex symbol of, among other things, a prudent, measured style of government, an analogy that was also drawn in early modern equestrian theory. Above all, however, according to his understanding of art, riding can be located not only in the early modern system of the artes, but also in the contemporary aesthetics of autonomy.
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. <br /> Points for practitioners <br /> 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.