Advocacy group effects in global governance: populations, strategies, and political opportunity structures

The role of the European Union in global politics has been of growing interest over the past decade. The EU is a key player in global institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and NATO. It continues to construct an emerging identity and project its values and interests throughout contemporary international relations. The capacity of the EU to both formulate and realise its goals, however, remains contested. Some scholars claim the EU’s `soft power’ attitude rivals that of the USA’s `hard power’ approach to international relations. Others view the EU as insufficiently able to produce a co-ordinated position to project upon global politics. Regardless of the position taken within this debate, the EU’s relationship with its external partners has an increasingly important impact upon economic, political and security concerns on an international level. Trade negotiations, military interventions, democracy promotion, international development and responses to the global economic crisis have all witnessed the EU playing a central role. This has seen the EU become both a major force in contemporary institutions of global governance and a template for supranational governance that might influence other attempts to construct regional and global institutions. This volume brings together a collection of leading EU scholars to provide a state-of-the-art overview covering these and other debates relating to the EU’s role in contemporary global governance. The Handbook is divided into four main sections: Part I: European studies and global governance – provides an overview and critical assessment of the leading theoretical approaches through which the EU’s role in global governance has been addressed within the literature. Part II: Institutions – examines the role played by the key EU institutions in pursuing a role for the EU in contemporary international relations. Part III: Policy and issue areas – explores developments within particular policy sectors, assessing the different impact that the EU has had in different issue areas, including foreign and security policy, environmental policy, common commercial policy, the Common Agricultural Policy, development policy, accession policy, the Neighbourhood Policy and conflict transformation. Part IV: The global multilevel governance complex and the EU – focuses on the relationship between the EU and the institutions, regions and countries with which it forms a global multilevel governance complex, including chapters on the EU’s relationship with the WTO, United Nations, East Asia, Africa and the USA.

In this chapter, I draw on recent scholarship on the alleged legitimacy deficits in global governance institutions, seeking to engage the notions of legitimacy this literature suggests with the intriguing case of international human rights institutions. First, I reconstruct how this literature views the problem of legitimacy in global governance, a view that relies on a particular notion of international institutions which both explains and justifies global governance institutions in terms of the collective goods they help states obtain. The puzzle of legitimacy, on this view, lies in offering citizens valid reasons to obey, support or abstain from interfering with global governance institutions ??? reasons that include certain procedural, epistemic and substantive elements, which together comprise a complex, hybrid standard of legitimacy. Second, I explore to what extent this view of legitimacy problems in global governance institutions can be applied for analyzing corresponding legitimacy problems in international human rights institutions. Drawing on recent liberal international scholarship, I discuss the ways in which international human rights institutions constitute a different kind of political entity than typical global governance institutions. Uniquely, international human rights institutions do not help states obtain any joint benefits, but regulate the internal relation between a government and individuals under its jurisdiction, and, to the extent that they are effective, chiefly rely on domestic mechanisms of enforcement. This crucial difference between the two kinds of international institutions, in turn, changes the legitimacy puzzle involved. In the human rights area, the problem of legitimacy rarely entails offering citizens reasons why they should accept to bear the costs of international cooperation in light of the benefits it provides for states. Rather, the issue is why governments should accept their obligations under international human rights law, in light of the benefits human rights treaties provide for citizens. In the third section, I draw out the implications of this analysis for finding such reasons. While the complex, hybrid standards of legitimacy suggested for global governance institutions seem difficult to transpose to international human rights institutions, the discarded notion of state consent provides an essential component of legitimacy for the human rights area. Finally, I discuss whether the notion of international institutions discussed in the chapter may have implications beyond the human rights area.

This article examines how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) catalyzed cross‐border labor cooperation and collaboration (i.e., labor transnationalism), by creating a new political opportunity structure at the transnational level. Because there are differences in the way power is constituted at the transnational and national levels, theories of national political opportunity structures cannot be directly mapped onto the transnational level. The author describes three primary dimensions of political opportunity structure at the transnational level that explain how power is established: (1) the constitution of transnational actors and interests, (2) the definition and recognition of transnational rights, and (3) adjudication at the transnational level. The case of NAFTA suggests that while the emergence of national social movements requires nation‐states, global governance institutions can play a pivotal role in the development of transnational social movements.

Formal transparency policies are increasingly prevalent in global governance institutions, partially attenuating the influence in these institutions of practices of secrecy inherited from interstate diplomacy. This article assesses the incidence and specific characteristics of formal transparency policies across a select group of institutions and outlines some of the justifications given for these policies—including justifications based on the publicness of these institutions—and for the more controversial exceptions to transparency, such as the exception for deliberative materials. It examines three drivers affecting the adoption, form, and content of transparency policies and other transparency measures in these institutions: spillover from national transparency laws and policies, growth in the reach and significance of authority exercised in and through global institutions, and criticism of global institutions by influential states and nongovernmental organizations. Twelve hypotheses are proposed about the effects, for states, nonstate actors, and global governance institutions, of transparency measures—formal policies and other steps to increase transparency—in global governance institutions. Finally, the article considers some implications of transparency measures for structures of political power and authority beyond the state and for global administrative law.

This article reviews the role of the OECD, a much cited but little studied institution, in global governance.

Legitimacy is central for the capacity of global governance institutions to address problems such as climate change, trade protectionism, and human rights abuses. However, despite legitimacy’s importance for global governance, its workings remain poorly understood. That is the core concern of this volume: to develop an agenda for systematic and comparative research on legitimacy in global governance. In complementary fashion, the chapters address different aspects of the overarching question: whether, why, how, and with what consequences global governance institutions gain, sustain, and lose legitimacy. The volume makes four specific contributions. First, it argues for a sociological approach to legitimacy, centered on perceptions of legitimate global governance among affected audiences. Second, it moves beyond the traditional focus on states as the principal audience for legitimacy in global governance and considers a full spectrum of actors from governments to citizens. Third, it advocates a comparative approach to the study of legitimacy in global governance, and suggests strategies for comparison across institutions, issue areas, countries, societal groups, and time. Fourth, the volume offers the most comprehensive treatment so far of the sociological legitimacy of global governance, covering three broad analytical themes: (1) sources of legitimacy, (2) processes of legitimation and delegitimation, and (3) consequences of legitimacy.

Much has been written recently about the supposed decline in the sovereign power of nation-states due to global economic processes and the emergence of supranational governing institutions like the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, NAFTA, the EU, etc. This has posed what some consider a problem for still largely nation-state-centric social theory in terms of making sense of what appears to be a major transformation in global governance patterns and institutions. This article argues that the apparent transformation in global governance is less historically revolutionary than evolutionary with the key being a shift in power relations among capitalist class factions at all levels of governance. Toward substantiating this claim, the article focuses on what some argue to be the (re)-emerging global political-economic significance of subnational city-regions as a result of the apparent geographic rescaling of global governance downward from dominant inter-nation-state relations. Of importance is that this apparent (re)emergence of sovereign actors at the subnational city-region scale is largely the result of this contemporary new regionalist discourse essentially rendering itself a reality. It is therefore a highly contested, and contestable, phenomenon, even in the overwhelmingly neoliberal context of the United States. Recientemente se ha escrito mucho sobre la supuesta decadencia en el poder soberano de los estados-naciones, debido a los procesos económicos globales y el surgimiento de instituciones de gobierno supranacionales como la Organización Mundial del Comercio, el Banco Mundial, el Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte, (NAFTA, por su sigla en inglés), la Unión Europea, etc. Esto ha planteado lo que algunos consideran un problema para una teoría social todavía en gran parte estado-nación-céntrica en términos de tener sentido lo que parece ser una transformación mayor en las tendencias de gobierno e instituciones globales. Este artículo sostiene que la transformación aparente en la gobernanza global es menos revolucionaria históricamente que evolutiva, siendo la clave un cambio en el poder de las relaciones entre las fracciones de la clase capitalista y todos los niveles de gobierno. Para corroborar este argumento, el artículo se enfoca en lo que algunos sostienen que es el (re)surgimiento del significado económico-político global de las regiones-ciudades subnacionales, como resultado de un aparente redimensionamiento geográfico de gobierno global descendiente de las relaciones inter-naciones-estado dominantes. Es de importancia que el (re)surgimiento de los actores soberanos en la escala de región –ciudad subnacional, se debe mayormente a este planteamiento regionalista nuevo contemporáneo, básicamente presentándose a sí mismo como una realidad. Es por eso un fenómeno altamente controvertido y discutible, incluso en el contexto abrumadoramente neoliberal de los Estados Unidos. 由于全球经济进程以及诸如世界贸易组织、世界银行、北美自贸区和欧盟等超国家治理机构的兴起而导致人们认为民族国家的主权权力受到削弱，近来已广为述及。这对在很大程度上仍以民族国家为中心的社会理论提出了一个亟需考虑的问题，如何理解全球治理模式和制度中的重大变迁。本文认为，全球治理中的显著变化与其说是历史革命性的，不如说是渐进性的，关键是各治理层次上资本家阶级各派系的权力关系的变化。为了证明这一主张，本文聚焦于一些人士所认为的（重新）兴起的次国家城市-地区的全球政治经济意义， 认为它是支配性的民族国家间关系下降为明显的全球治理地理再调整的结果。重要的是，在次国家城市-地区层次上主权行为体的明显（重新）兴起，很大程度上是当代新地区主义话语实际上使自身成为现实的结果。因此它是一个高度争论的和可争论的现象，即使是在美国压倒性的新自由主义语境下。 지구적인 경제 과정과 WTO, 세계은행, NAFTA, EU 등과 같은 초국적 기관의 등장으로 국민국가의 주권이 약화되고 있는 것에 대한 많은 연구가 이루어졌다. 이것은 기존의 국민국가에 기반을 둔 사회이론들이 글로벌 거버넌스 패턴과 제도에서 일어나고 있는 주요 전환을 이해하는데 문제를 가지고 있다는 것을 제시하였다. 이 논문은 모든 거버넌스 수준에서 자본가 계급 분파들 간의 권력관계 변화를 핵심으로 혁명적이기보다는 점진적으로 글로벌 거버넌스의 변화가 일어나고 있다는 것을 주장한다. 이 논문은 지리적으로 지배적인 국가간 관계로부터 글로벌 거버넌스의 하향 조정의 결과로 국가 내 도시-지역의 글로벌 정치-경제적 중요성이 대두되는 것에 초점을 맞춘다. 중요한 것은 국가 내 도시-지역 수준에서 주권을 갖는 행위자들의 등장이 본질적으로 그 자체로 현실을 보여주는 현대 새로운 지역주의 담론의 결과라는 것이다. 그러므로 그것은 미국과 같이 압도적으로 신자유주의적인 맥락 속에서도 대단히 갈등적인 현상이다.

Qatar's position in the oil and gas market has changed dramatically since the discovery of oil in the Dukhan field in January 1940. Following its independence in 1971, the Qatari economy has been radically transformed as a result of the discovery of the South Pars/North Dome condensate-gas field in 1971. The discovery of the natural gas field and its subsequent exploitation rapidly made Qatar one of the wealthiest countries in the world (World Bank 2013). Given the transnational characteristics of the South Pars/North Dome field (shared between Iran and Qatar), under the leadership of former Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Qatar began playing a leading international role in global energy markets and gas governance institutions. Qatar's international position in energy markets was furthered by former minister of foreign affairs Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani since 1992. Qatar's economic prosperity is directly linked to the sustainability of the wealth generated from natural gas revenues. As such, Qatar has sought to further its leadership role in natural gas governance institutions. This project aims to analyse the role of Qatar as a critical player in emerging global energy governance architectures. The international relations literature on energy governance hastended to focus on the role of the state and markets in the governance of specific energy sector commodities, like oil or natural gas (Lesage, Van deGraaf and Westphal, 2010; Victor, Hults and Thurber, 2012). Other strands in the literature (Goldthau, 2012; Goldthau and Witte, 2010; Van de Graaf, 2013; Victor and Yueh, 2010) have highlighted the growing importance of international institutions and fora (e.g., the International Energy Agency or the G20) in constructing an emerging global energy governance architecture, though these institutions need not be energy commodity specific. In building upon these theoretical approaches, our project attempts to provide more concrete evidence on how specific players (or countries) exercise their influence at a systemic level, particularly in terms of the governance of energy sector commodities within international institutions. In our research project, we offer a case study of Qatar's growing importance in international energy fora, focusing on its involvement in international institutions dealing with natural gas. International institutions and fora relevant to this research include the International Energy Forum's (IEF) natural gas dialogue, the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), the International Gas Union (IGU) and the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (OGP). Unlike the International Energy Agency (IEA) which has received significant scholarly attention in recent years, international institutions focused specifically on natural gas have not been systematically analysed to date despite their important role in collecting and providing industry information, promoting the development of technologies, setting internationally accepted standards, advocating common policy positions and supporting all aspects of governing the industry's upstream and downstream operations. The reason for this lack of industry-related information provision and the voicing of common policy positions is due to the emerging nature of natural gas governance institutions. Scholarly attention to global energy governance institutions has identified the fragmented nature of inter-state energy governance institutions (Leal-Arcas and Filis forthcoming, Dubash and Florini 2011). As the international regime on natural gas grows in importance in global energy dialogue settings, we anticipate that there will be an increasing formalisation of institutional coordination in wide-wide information and advocacy for specific policy coordination outputs. Further, membership in these institutions and fora is significantly broader than membership in the IEA, which is restricted to members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operationand Development (OECD). Even in that particular instance, membership of the OECD does not automatically guarantee membership in the IEA. Member countries of the IEA must demonstrate that as a net oil importer, the country has reserves of crude oil and/or product equivalent to 90 days of the prior year's average net oil imports, that the country has a demand restraint programme for reducing national oil consumption by up to 10%, legislation and organization necessary to operate on a national basis, coordinated emergency response measures, legislation and measures in place to ensure that all oil companies operating under its jurisdiction report information as is necessary (International Energy Agency 2013). In contrast, membership in the IEF, the IGU and the OGP -which straddle the producer-consumer country divide- is more diffuse, thus making them fruitful cases to analyse Qatar's relationship with other major players in international gas markets and assess its evolving role in emerging global energy governance architectures. At a macro level, the proposed project is innovative because it will be the first effort to analyze Qatar's growing influence in global energy governance institutions dealing with natural gas. Moreover, the project is innovative because it adapts a well-known methodological technique in computational sociology (i.e., social network analysis) to a wider application in international relations research. This methodological technique is used because it will best help us understand the power relations between actors in a global setting. In addition, the research will utilize two other cutting-edge methodological tools used in interdisciplinary social science research, namely multi-value qualitative comparative analysis (mvQCA) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). These two techniques will enable us to identify multiple sets of covariate combinations that consistently are associated with a particular output value, specifically as they pertain to the causal factors leading to the emergence of key international relations actors in the global energy governance environment. At a micro level, our research project will offer a detailed timeline to explain Qatar's ascendency in global energy governance, visualizing the development of Qatar's influence over time as well as revealing important insights into the density and strength of the actor network itself. In turn, this will enable predictions about the sustainability, impact and future of Qatar's engagement. By analysing Qatar's participation in energy governance institutions, the proposed research project engages directly with the Qatar National Research Strategy (2012) goals and objectives dealing with the international affairs (SAH 3.1) and public policy, governance and regulation (SAH 3.2). Moreover, in addressing Qatar's growing role in the natural gas markets we would be contributing towards the expanded demand for natural gas objective (EE 1.3).

Reviewed by: Human Rights in Global Health: Rights-Based Governance for a Globalizing World by Benjamin Mason Meier & Lawrence O. Gostin Matheus de Carvalho Hernandez (bio) and Inga T. Winkler (bio) Benjamin Mason Meier & Lawrence O. Gostin, Human Rights in Global Health: Rights-Based Governance for a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, 2018), ISBN 9780190672676, 614 Pages. Institutions matter. This is the key message of the volume on Human Rights in Global Health edited by Benjamin Meier and Lawrence Gostin. With a renewed and comprehensive vision of human rights after the end of the Cold War and wide-ranging calls for entering the era of implementation of human rights,1 the inextricable link between human rights and global health has become generally accepted. Global health issues demand complex solutions, solutions that depend on a range of actors. They depend on global health governance. The encounter between these two realms—human rights and global health—places international institutions in the center of dynamics, demonstrating their strategic role for the realization of the right to health. The volume's main goal is to evaluate the connections between public health, global governance, and human rights. It presents a vast array of international organizations based on a broad understanding of global health, ranging from the WHO, to organizations in the UN system, to organizations focused on economic governance, to the UN human rights system. While States remain the primary duty-bearers for the realization of human rights, international organizations have a significant influence and such a wide definition of global health governance is appropriate for the multilevel and multi-stakeholder nature of the issue. It acknowledges that a broad range of organizations (including those whose mandate is not originally linked to global health) indeed have an impact on global health.2 The result of this immense analytical effort is a volume with over 600 pages, five sections, and twenty-four chapters that bring together forty-six authors, including many key experts in the health and human rights field. The first section provides the theoretical, historical, and conceptual basis regarding the relevance of human rights for global health, especially the rights-based approach to health. Chapter Three defines global governance for health as "the structures and methods of governing public health through multi-level and multisectoral institutions, including the actors and norms that define global health in an increasingly globalized [End Page 1045] world,"3 and discusses the role of human rights in influencing these governance processes. The section concludes with a forward-looking chapter on the need to reform global health governance in order to realize human rights in the sustainable development era (and the SDGs also feature prominently in other chapters). The second section is devoted to the World Health Organization (WHO) as the main specialized agency for global health. The authors explore the political and internal constraints and resistance to rights-based approaches inside the WHO. The section also assesses the current Gender, Equity, and Human Rights mainstreaming processes and analyzes the strategic position of the WHO in the future of global health governance. The third section discusses the different approaches of the UN agencies, funds, and programs to mainstreaming human rights into global health. The chapters are dedicated to analyzing each organization (UNICEF, ILO, UNESCO, UNFPA, FAO, and UNAIDS) within their respective mandates and their efforts to promote a human rights-based approach to global health. The section demonstrates how these UN entities have been seeking (with different levels of success) to implement Kofi Annan's appeal to mainstream human rights in all their practices. The final forward-looking chapter of the section (Chapter Fourteen focuses on the role of organizational partnerships for health and human rights. As it is impossible to delink human rights mainstreaming from development cooperation, the welcome fourth section goes beyond institutions that consider global health as the core of their mandate and approaches global economic governance institutions and funding agencies. The chapters critically discuss the role of these institutions in integrating human rights into their recommendations on economic reform and poverty reduction. Following an introductory chapter on the integration of the human rights-based approach and the right to development into global governance to health, the...

Multipolarity has ambiguous implications for the legitimacy of global governance institutions (GGIs). Rising powers’ capacity to contest established powers’ agendas prima facie increases the GGIs’ legitimacy by reducing power asymmetries between the North and South. However, according to some, the rise of new powers has contributed to the GGIs’ poor performance and inadequate representativeness. We investigate how global publics evaluate the legitimacy of two GGIs—the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Group of Twenty (G20)—and multipolarity’s role in those evaluations. Drawing on an original dataset of 3,584 newspaper articles sampled from rising and established powers, mid-ranking developing, and least developed countries between 2008 and 2019, our qualitative content analysis found an intensification of legitimacy deficits over time. Regularly accredited to a new global power configuration, the inability to find consensus severely harmed both institutions’ legitimacy. We also see the resilience of GGIs’ legitimacy in the face of gridlocks and institutional fragmentation. Replacing inclusive multilateral agreements with bilateral or inter-regional ones was widely seen as an undesired outcome of major power tensions. Finally, our data revealed a deep-seated mistrust of great power politics and nostalgia for meaningful multilateral institutions as a potential antidote.

Since the end of the Cold War, civil society organizations (CSOs) have increasingly targeted international organizations (IOs) and other global governance institutions (GGIs). Sometimes this has taken the forms of mass protests expressing grave critique or outright refusal, as was the case with the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1999, subsequently referred to as the Battle of Seattle, and similar protest events directed against economic globalization in the years that followed. At other occasions civil society actors have formed campaigns to influence GGIs in a particular area. An example is the Global Campaign for Decent Work and Rights for Domestic Workers which, in 2011, succeeded in having the International Labour Organization (ILO) adopt its Domestic Workers Convention. Besides, a large share of political engagement is of a slow and continuous character, as when CSOs strive to affect policy by participating in consultations and lobbying individual staff members. A broad range of CSOs, for instance, participate in more or less frequent consultations concerning overarching policies as well as specific projects of multilateral development banks. These varied examples show how organized civil society activism is not restricted to the local and national political arenas, but increasingly target GGIs as well. They also demonstrate the different forms this activism takes.

COVID-19 has demonstrated that global governance is in crisis. Why do international institutions play such a marginal role in managing the current global pandemic? This contribution argues that a theory of global governance focusing on legitimation deficits can account for the failure. In this view, the lack of successful legitimation narratives increasingly troubles the global governance system as a whole as well as global health governance. More specifically, the exercise of authority with a perceived lack of impartiality and a technocratic bias causes legitimacy deficits. This mechanism also applies to the World Health Organization (WHO) and other global governance institutions that could have played a more active role in combating COVID-19. Yet the outcome of the crisis may be the basis for better times for global governance.

Private actors and their interplay with public actors in global governance have become a prominent focus of global governance institutions and research alike. The last decade has witnessed a remarkable growth in the number of private actors in global governance and an increase in public-private partnerships, multi-stakeholder initiatives, informal coalitions between states, NGOs and business partners, and the emergence of private self-regulatory mechanisms. With their problem-solving capacities stretched thin in the wake of globalization and denationalization, states and international organizations began to reach out to the private sector and its resources. Private actors have been brought in to set and locally implement international regulations and have contributed to the provision of collective goods. Lately the private business sector has become a prominent partner of governments, international organizations and NGOs in areas such as environmental problems, labour and social standards, and human rights more broadly. The sheer growth in the number of private actors in global governance is astonishing; equally dramatic is their changed role within the governance initiatives. While their role was initially confined to functions such as agenda setting in the input phase or norm implementation and evaluation on the output side of global governance, it has since expanded to include core decision-making, taking part in all phases of the policy-making process.

The article analyses the influence of internal and external factors on democratization and civil society development in Azerbaijan. Through an examination of internal factors, the article demonstrates how domestic political opportunity structures (POS) have influenced civil society capacities and social capital development throughout the various stages of political and societal development in Azerbaijan. In exploring external factors of democratization, the article investigates the democracy promotion efforts of major Western organizations in the country since the early years of independence in the 1990s. The article argues that the prospects for democratization in Azerbaijan have weakened due to both domestic structural problems and external factors. Civil society development in Azerbaijan has been impeded as a result of the gradual contraction of POS due to government repression and the creation of a context favouring the monopolization of the political and economic space by a single ruling group. The contraction of POS has furthermore been possible because of a lack of criticism and political pressure by Western actors, who have prioritized their economic interests in Azerbaijan's energy resources over long-term civil society development.

Global governance institutions (GGIs) increasingly rely upon NGO involvement for expertise, promotion of rules and standards, and democratic legitimacy. Yet NGO participation in GGIs is unevenly distributed by country of origin. This paper examines patterns of NGO participation in GGIs, and how participation is shaped by incentives and pressures at global and national levels. First, we map NGO participation by country of origin across 42 GGIs based on the roles that GGIs grant to NGOs and by variations in domestic conditions of income level and political regime type. Second, to delve more deeply into domestic factors, we provide an exploratory statistical regression based on NGO participation in two major GGIs, the UN Global Compact on corporate social responsibility and the UNFCCC Conferences of Parties on climate change. We find evidence that participation patterns reflect both the varying institutional design of GGIs and NGO capacity linked to domestic conditions. We observe that NGOs with constrained capacity due to domestic factors gravitate toward GGIs that offer the most significant roles for NGOs, with the greatest opportunity to influence policy. We suggest that domestic civil society factors beyond level of economic development and regime type shape NGO participation at the global level. Analysis of this wide-ranging set of GGIs provides more general confirmation of patterns of NGO engagement in global governance previously identified in studies limited to particular issue sectors or cases.