Global actors and public power

Abstract

Prominent recent scholarship in global political justice has focused on creating conceptual space for international NGOs – and sometimes also corporations and states – as fully-fledged participants in global governance. While acknowledging the achievements of international non-state actors, I argue that core global governance tasks – of global distribution, regulation or administration – should not be assigned to them. Drawing from neo-republican theory, I contend that such actors fall short of the formal criteria that are necessary for constituting a global public actor, because they do not have a global function and orientation. The distinction between public and private actors matters, since it conditions our expectations for them: both categories of actors are asked to avoid dominating individuals, but public actors must, in addition, protect individuals from third-party domination.