China's Evolving Response to the US-Led International Order and its Impact on Global Governance

This paper aims to explore the relationship between national judges and courts and the international economic order, from the perspective of global economic governance. It is proposed, therefore, the thesis that there is room and need for active participation of these bodies as institutions of global governance, through four sections. The first section presents concepts such as international order and global governance, guiding to the succeeding reflections. The second part enters into the question of disaggregation of State and its consequences in international trade relations. Third section deals with the perspective of constitutionalism and cosmopolitan law as a project for global order, and the layers of multilevel trade governance encompassing multilateral, regional and national levels of norms and institutions. Fourth part discusses the role of national courts, understood as having also an international authority, in international economic order, focusing specially on the relation between national judiciary and the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism decisions. This thesis explored in the paper is an attempt to overcome the perspective of classic international law that erects a wall of separation between international order and domestic order, in what consists its main value, as a new perspective for international law as a broader instrument for global governance.

When new Bush administration, announced in March 2001 that United States would abandon 1997 Kyoto protocol, governments, media, and environmental organizations all launched major protests. The statement by John Prescott (UK deputy prime minister) that Kyoto protocol is the only game in town was significant for these protests. (1) It is, however, only in a very limited sense that Kyoto protocol, or UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, can be conceived of as only game in town. In this article, we maintain that both will and capacity to govern atmosphere is diffused among several governors. Our understanding of climate governance is derived from more general approaches to global governance, leading us to suggest that global climate governance should refer to all purposeful mechanisms and measures aimed at steering social systems toward preventing, mitigating, or adapting to risks posed by climate change. Proceeding from such a conception, global (climate) governance must not be performed by states only; it is also a matter for other authorities--for example, nongovernmental organizations and epistemic communities. In line with this reasoning, we argue that private authority is an important form of climate governance and that several of climate-related measures taken by insurance industry ought to be viewed as instances of global climate governance. Further, emergence of insurance industry in climate politics raises questions not just about efficiency and equity of governance necessary for mitigating climate change, but also about much less debated governance required for adapting to climate change. Defining Global (Climate) Governance The absorptive capacity of atmosphere is a limited resource in sense that quantity and physical quality of emissions is a matter of great significance. The atmosphere is a common good and open to everyone's use--that is, no one can be denied right to utilize it. Accordingly, individuals, private industry, and states alike have traditionally used atmosphere to harbor their emissions. As early as 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius showed that there exists a physical limit to amount of emissions that atmosphere can absorb without causing serious changes to global climate. (2) Scientifically, there is today a fairly general agreement that we are approaching this limit with increasing speed. (3) What type of authority and government is required to reverse this trend? The answer is not straightforward because effective government over climate issue does not exist. Indeed, government does not exist over any transboundary issues. This is not to say that no action can or does take place. It only means that globally there is no government responsible for this action. Since international system lacks such government, concept of global governance has been suggested instead. (4) While government has only one form--that is, government is synonymous with governmental authority--governance can take on various forms. To many observers, state authority is still main form of governance, but it is increasingly asserted that state authority is not only game in town. Among others, Ole Waever has pointed out that because authority has shifted location, political map over last four centuries is no longer adequate. Instead of one level being most important point of reference, there is now a set of overlapping authorities. (5) The concept of global governance has emerged and is being developed as a way to comprehend these changes in present international political order. However, no consensus has emerged as to exact meaning of concept. In a recent attempt to structure various uses of global governance concept, Martin Hewson and Timothy Sinclair point to three different (competing and complementary) meanings, which, in fact, generate quite different research agendas. …

The purpose of this article is to analyse NATO’s security roles as a significant contribution to the development of a rules-based international order and the establishment of an effective framework for global and regional governance in the 21st century. Central to this study is an examination of the evolving roles NATO has adopted in recent decades, some of which were articulated during the Alliance’s founding in 1949, while others have emerged from the post-Cold War strategic transformations. The article is premised on a clear semantic distinction between the concepts of “international order” and “global governance”, arguing that the various forms of security governance associated with NATO’s roles collectively reinforce the creation and maintenance of a rules-based international order. This order is explicitly framed in NATO’s strategic concepts, which emphasise collective defence, crisis management, and cooperative security as foundational to the Alliance’s mission and its engagement in global and regional security governance. By exploring these dynamics, the article sheds light on how NATO continues to adapt and contribute to international stability, balancing traditional defence responsibilities with emerging security challenges in a complex geopolitical environment.

Amidst a significant shift in global governance marked by the erosion of multilateralism, the failure of the rules-based trade regime, and the increased use of unilateral economic discretion by major powers, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has emerged as a new model of governance. This paper examines the BRI not merely as an infrastructure or development initiative, but as an evolving legal and governance paradigm aimed at restoring trust, predictability, equity, and equality among nations, and fostering cooperation in cross-border economic relations. The first section of the paper conceptualizes global governance as a necessary mechanism for managing and ensuring interdependence in a fragmented international system. It analyzes the paradox of growing international legal instruments amid declining global security, equity, and equality among nations, and declining compliance. It attributes this ever-increasing gap to power asymmetries and selective enforcement of international law. The second section explores the BRI’s approach to conflict management and dispute resolution, focusing on China’s preference for mediation, consensus-building, and policy coordination alongside formal legal mechanisms. The third section revisits the evolution of the international trade and legal order, tracing the shift from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/World Trade Organization (WTO)-based rules regime toward a discretion-based global trade environment shaped by unilateral tariffs and bilateral coercion. The fourth section reemphasizes the BRI as a response to this fragmentation, emphasizing the role of law in transforming physical connectivity into sustainable and equitable economic integration. The paper concludes that the BRI’s legal architecture, reinforced by the Global Development, Security, Civilization, and Governance Initiatives, may represent a durable shift from the contemporary power-based order toward a principled, predictable, and justice-oriented model of global governance.

This book illustrates the importance of global cities for world politics and highlights the diplomatic connections between cities and global governance. While there is a growing body of literature concerned with explaining the transformations of the international order, little theorisation has taken into account the key metropolises of our time as elements of these revolutions. The volume seeks to fill this gap by demonstrating how global cities have a pervasive agency in contemporary global governance. The book argues that looking at global cities can bring about three fundamental advantages on traditional IR paradigms. First, it facilitates an eclectic turn towards more nuanced analyses of world politics. Second, it widens the horizon of the discipline through a multiscalar image of global governance. Third, it underscores how global cities have a strategic diplomatic positioning when it comes to core contemporary challenges such as climate change. This book will be of much interest to students of urban studies, global governance, diplomacy and international relations in general.

State governance and global governance are two intertwining aspects in the construction of world order. A peaceful, prosperous and equitable world order encompasses internal order of sovereign states and international order of the international systems. Effective state governance nurtures internal order of sovereign states, eschews internal disorder, and prevents the spillover of negative externality into the international systems. In this sense, state governance is the cornerstone for constructing world order. In the meantime, effective global governance constructs world order and assists sovereign states in constructing internal order. In the construction of world order, different actors in the international systems represented by sovereign states inter alia must cooperate with a view to dissolving conflicts of interests and policies among states, managing global public domain, responding to common challenges and sharing responsibilities in assisting internally disordered states to govern effectively. Since the reform and opening up, China has contributed its distinctive part to the construction of world order by means of responsible state governance and global partnership governance.

Global governance is one of the most important and contested issues in international relations scholarship and policy making today. With intensified globalization and the proliferation of collective action problems in diverse areas such as security, climate, human rights, refugees, health, economic relations and cyberspace, the need for global governance is ever more acknowledged. Yet there is also growing uncertainty and doubt about its future. While there is a tendency among policymakers to think of global governance as a “good thing,” the rationale for and progress of global governance are marked by uncertainty. The spread of the institutions and forms of global governance is remarkably different across issue areas. Debates and controversies abound over the reform of existing institutions of global governance and the creation of new ones. Adding to the uncertainty is the fact that the architecture of global governance erected after World War II is now under considerable stress. That architecture was built around the United Nations (UN) system of multilateral institutions, which were in turn considered to be the foundations of a liberal international order reflecting, at least initially, the power and purpose of the United States. As the issue areas requiring transnational response have proliferated, the number of actors demanding greater space within the global governance system have also multiplied. Among them are the rising powers, like China, India and Brazil, who seek greater voice and influence in the existing institutions and are prepared to erect new ones when their demands are frustrated. But the rising powers are hardly alone. Other players in global governance include civil society networks, corporations, private foundations, regional organizations, and various types of partnership among them. Hence, it is not surprising that a good deal of the recent work on global governance has focused on the proliferation of actors and its changing architecture. This has led to a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of global governance than the earlier literature that focused on large international institutions. But the emphasis on “who governs” obscures the question of “why govern.” The focus on the supply side of global governance, such as its institutions and actors, old and new, state and non-state, and the myriad forms of their modus operandi , often takes the demand for global governance for granted, and neglects the more fundamental question about why global governance is needed in the first place and what are the sources generating that need.

This article seeks to understand what role China can and will play in global energy governance by examining how its domestic energy context shapes the country's attitudes toward the multilateral, market and climate change aspects of global energy governance. It finds that China demonstrates a preference for bilateral/regional to multilateral energy institutions, exhibits an inclination to blend state and market when pursuing energy security, and shows a principally consistent but pragmatically flexible approach to global negotiations on climate change. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, China's engagement with the international energy order suggests that a rising and energy-hungry China has not and is unlikely to upset the very system that has benefited and will continue to benefit the country. Instead, this article argues that China has shown signs and promises of contributing to global energy governance by offering financial, technical solutions and stimulating the world to develop clean energy. However, energy governance in China has experienced considerable capacity decay in the era of reform and globalization. This decay not only bodes ill for the country's ability to lead in global energy governance but also complicates international attempts to engage China on complex energy and climate challenges. Policy Implications • The fragmentation of the central government in China, together with the rise of substate actors and state-owned flagship energy corporations in the country's energy governance, means that it is unrealistic to expect China to have a unified view and voice on global energy governance in the near term. • In light of the fundamental interests of China to engage the international system, the country's absence from the world's most important multilateral energy institutions says as much about its reluctance to join these restrictive organizations as these organizations' lack of seriousness to engage China. • The blending of market tools to a state-dominated energy economy characterizes China's state capitalism approach to addressing complex energy challenges and the country has largely exported this approach when it engages the international energy market. • China's staunch positions on climate change bespeak its preoccupation with development, but its changing attitudes toward key issues in global climate negotiations reflect its flexible and pragmatic approach to development. • To seek effective participation from China in global energy governance, the international community cannot engage Beijing alone; instead, it must also engage local governments in China that have gained autonomy over energy affairs and those restructured and partially marketized energy SOEs that have exhibited entrepreneurship in shaping and implementing the country's energy and climate policies.

This article analyzes the contribution of China's foreign policy to global governance, with particular attention being paid to the impact of China-US relations on global governance. The subject of the study is the influence of China's foreign policy on global governance in various fields in 2013-2024. The object of the study is the foreign policy of the PRC. The relevance of this topic also lies in the fact that the second decade of the 21st century was marked by a new surge in the importance of the "Chinese factor" in world politics. One of its roots is the policy of relative independence of the PRC from the centers of world power, which makes the study of the conceptual foundations of the Chinese and East Asian vector of foreign policy key to the study of relations on global governance. In the course of solving the tasks set in the light of achieving the previously mentioned goals, modern methods of cognition, comparative legal, logical and other research methods were used. China has demonstrated its important role in global governance through the Belt and Road Initiative, climate governance and international security cooperation, and has put forward a number of new concepts, such as the "Community of the Common Destiny of Mankind" and "Joint discussion, joint construction and joint use" to promote the development of the global governance system in a more equitable and reasonable direction. At the same time, the competition and cooperation between China and the United States in the field of global governance has had a profound impact on the world order. The United States is exacerbating the uncertainty of global governance with its unilateral policies, while China advocates multilateral cooperation and building an international order with the United Nations at the center. Despite the numerous problems in U.S.-China relations, the two countries still have extensive potential for cooperation in addressing global challenges such as climate change and global economic stability.

Is there global governance beyond the State? What kind of power emerges in a global arena? In contrast to the neorealist position, which stresses the role of states in the constitution of international power, many Foucauldian interpretations have emerged that emphasize the role of power networks that are constituted through an episteme. In this article I will focus on global governance through a Platonic notion of power and the relationship Plato establishes between the power of norms and rules. I argue that global governance should be understood as a network of power with different intermediations, based on a global constitution taken as a cognitive frame behind the international legal order. In this sense, new forms of power appear, and are different from the traditional state power activity, based on settled practices and norms. My main thesis is that there can be power without a clear ruler, but there is no power without rational order (based on norms, dispositions, and communicative intermediations), therefore, I examine which kind of rational order appears in global governance in accordance to Plato’s account of power and some remarks recently made by Byung-Chul Han.

The issue of global governance has received growing attention, particularly since the 1990s. This has occurred for a number of reasons. The end of the Cold War meant that increased expectations fell on international organizations in general and on the United Nations in particular. Accelerated globalization stimulated discussions about the relationship between trends in the world economy and the institutional frameworks through which it is supposedly regulated. And there has been a general recognition that a growing number of worldwide problems are beyond the capacity of individual states to solve on their own. However, hovering somewhere between a Westphalian world of sovereign states and the fanciful idea of world government, global governance is profoundly difficult to analyze and assess. How is global governance best understood? Does it actually exist, or is global governance merely an aspiration? The arena in which global governance is most advanced is nevertheless the field of economic policy-making. This stems from the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement, which sought to establish the architecture for the postwar international economic order by creating three new bodies: the IMF, the World Bank and GATT (later replaced by the World Trade Organization), collectively known as ‘the Bretton Woods system’. This system, however, has evolved significantly over time, as it has adapted to the changing pressures generated by the world economy.

By nominating his confidante, Susan E. Rice, as ambassador to the United Nations and restoring the post's cabinet status, President Barack Obama enunciated his “belief that the UN is an indispensab...

The 14th Brazil Russia India China South Africa (BRICS) Summit hosted by China on the 23rd and 24th of June 2022 has significance for world politics and global governance. Emerging powers or rising powers have in recent times had significance in terms of global governance. The emergence of rising powers and the subsequent shift in power from the Global North to the Global South can be seen as the new transformations that are occurring in the international order. New groupings such as the G7, G20, BRICS, Malaysia, Indonesia, Republic of Korea, Turkiye, Australia (MIKTA) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organizations have now become significant players in the realm of global governance. They can also be seen as catalysers for the shifting of influence in terms of global governance. In this article, the shifting influence of power from the North to the South will be analysed in the context of status competition. The article would subsequently assess the BRICS grouping in terms of its quest for influence in global governance. Additionally, the article would also assess if this choice to achieve influence in global governance could result in the emergence of conflict between established powers and rising powers.

The object of the study is the policy of Russia and China on international platforms in the sphere of global governance. The subject of the study is the peculiarities of Russia's and China's policy within the framework of international associations with the example of Russian-Chinese interaction in the G20. The aim of the study is to identify common positions of Russia and China on global governance issues, as well as the role of the two countries in defining the global development agenda and solving pressing problems of the international community. The author analyses the dynamics of interaction between Russia and China within the framework of the G20 summits from 2008 to 2022 and the changing approaches of the two countries to global governance and the vision of a new international order, as well as identifies the place of the two countries in the formation of a new agenda for the development of cooperation within the G20. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that the paper attempts to conceptualise Russian-Chinese cooperation within the G20 from the perspective of shaping a non-Western discourse on the new international order. The study analyses the significance of such global challenges as the 2008 financial crisis, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the worsening of the Ukrainian crisis in 2022 for the G20 and Russian-Chinese cooperation within this association. The study concludes that during the 2008-2022 period, the G20 has witnessed a trend of strengthening the voice of developing states, primarily Russia and China, which has actualised the agenda of inclusiveness and multipolarity as the basis of a new international order. However, as a result of these global challenges, there is a threat of antagonism between Western and non-Western approaches to global governance, which calls into question the current potential of the G20 to achieve consensus on key international issues.

The USA is in the midst of a very difficult and protracted revision of its place in the international system. Its role as a global leader, a major pillar of international security and centre of the global economic and political order is unsustainable and is increasingly rejected from both outside and within. Adapting to this new role will not be linear and will develop at different paces in different regions. In the middle term, it will proceed with a harsh and prolonged confrontation with Russia and China as well as with a substantial increase in the US foreign policy unilateralism. The latter will fluctuate from administration to administration, but the common denominator will be a less multilateralist and benign approach than that in the Obama era. Because the USA remains the most powerful player militarily, and diplomatically, retains the dominant position in global finance and has been the centrepiece of the prevailing global governance system for decades, both the international order and global governance will suffer negative consequences until the USA completes its transition to new modalities of participation in the international system. Only when the USA finally accepts rules for equal relations with the other poles can a new international order and a new pattern of global governance emerge.