Abstract
This thematic issue sprung from a desire to encourage more dialogue across subfields in the study of politics and governance on how we understand the emerging practices of global governance. Shifts in global power, the emergence of new organizations and regimes and the ever-increasing complexity of interstate cooperation have all contributed to increased interest in “governance” and the role supranational organizations play in managing globalization, regionalization and regional integration. They have also contributed to increased theoretical diversity in how “governance” should be studied. While international politics scholars, drawing on constructivist literature, have placed considerable emphasis on the development and diffusion of norms; others have drawn on the insights of comparative politics, public policy and political economy to study similar issues. While the legacy of older disciplinary boundaries continues to isolate new theoretical developments, it is clearly the case that there is a high degree of complementarity in the study of governance, particularly in the emphasis on “norms” or “ideas” and their level of institutionalization.
Highlights
For scholars pursuing the study of global governance, this is both the “best” and “worst” of times
While much of the study of global governance has emerged from International Relations scholarship, reflecting its longstanding commitment to the challenges of cooperation and interstate relations in an environment lacking formal mechanisms of government, increasingly the problems of governance, be they challenges of implementation at the domestic level, the creation of more effective and responsive institutions, and basic questions about the accountability of the global and regional organizations, draw analysis closer to issues traditionally encountered in comparative politics
Drawing on Finnermore and Sikkink’s (1998) concepts about norm life cycle “localization” they offer an in depth analysis of how the EU, the League of Arab States and the African Union have deployed different ideas about R2P in relation to the Libyan and Syrian civil wars. They argue these differences only render R2P even less effective from the perspective of ensuring, “timely and decisive responses to protect civilians”. While they suggest that the key cause has been a level of politicization within the organizations, their account highlights the role of both norms and institutional arrangements in support of those norms in the on-going politics of R2P
Summary
For scholars pursuing the study of global governance, this is both the “best” and “worst” of times. As Holzscheiter, Bahr and Pantzerhielm (2016) put it in this thematic issue, “In global governance scholarship, it is an almost ritualistic acknowledgement that contemporary international relations are characterized by an escalating institutional fragmentation, competing/intersecting spheres of authority and the resulting pluralism of norms, rules and implementation structures.”. In our efforts to make sense of the vast challenges of governance, we do so from a variety of perspectives; perspectives that we argue here are inherently complimentary, if somewhat academically disconnected. This thematic issue attempts to connect a variety of approaches to global governance as part of plea for cross-disciplinary dialogue on how governance operates in contemporary world order. While the response we received was deep, what we have ended up with is far more complex than we originally hoped for, highlighting our basic concern; a wide variety of scholarship is talking about “global governance” or “supranational politics”, but it in a disconnected way
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