Editor's introduction: <i>Governance for a More Ethical World</i>

Abstract

This issue of Irish Studies in International Affairs is primarily focused on the topic of 'Governance for a more ethical world', drawing on a series of papers presented at the annual conference of the Royal Irish Academy's Committee for International Affairs, held in Dublin in November 2010, a presentation from Mary Robinson to the Academy in December 2010 on climate change and a number of other articles dealing with related substantive issues of concern. This is not the first time the journal has addressed such issues.1 However, as institutional structures of regional and global governance become more significant, and have to deal with a wider range of issues, from finance to security and climate change, the challenges of balancing such institutional structures with other voices representing traditionally marginalised groups, or of including an ethical dimension in decision-making, becomes ever more crucial. Yet, international and regional governance by its nature is at a greater remove from citizens than their state-level structures and usually does not to involve a directly elected, or even directly accessible, element equivalent in any way to national democratic processes. In this void there is a key challenge for international relations to develop processes that temper the realpolitik of powerful state interests with other influences. The power of the Arab Spring revolts emerging across North Africa and the Middle East during 2011. and the sense of their immediacy for those of us outside the region created by the use of new media technologies, reflect the genuinely growing globalisation of our political space. Another example of such globalisation is the extent to which citizens of states within Europe facing serious banking and fiscal crises now have a much greater sense of the power of international financial institutions, including the IMF, a reality experienced by states in the Global South for many years. At another level, a free-market approach to climate change will allow wealthy states to alleviate some of the impacts of such change at local level, leaving vulnerable and poor states to face the greatest impacts. What will be the response to such challenges at the level of international governance?