A Critical View of Global Governance

Abstract

Abstract: This article suggests that various dimensions of the larger project of global governance are incoherent and illegitimate. Three dimensions of global governance – the provision of global public goods; processes of transnational regulation; and efforts to spread universal human rights – are examined and found to be deficient in terms of the ability of affected populations to participate in decisions over value trade‐offs. Citizens’ rights to participation in democratic processes often have been diminished as the locus of political decision making has shifted: on the one hand, to institutions beyond the territorial borders of the nation state; on the other, away from political institutions and towards “global civil society,” which seems oddly intolerant of diversity. But if global governance is anti‐pluralist and disenfranchising, it risks devolving into an imperial project. Hence, the paper concludes with a plea for a return to international politics as a control on the threat of empire.