The Future of Global Governance: Fragmentation May Be Inevitable and Creative

Abstract

Does global governance have future? What kind of future? Far reaching changes to architecture of global governance, especially emergence of new actors, agents, and forms of governance, make these questions moot and timely. The big multilateral around which postwar system of global governance was initially anchored are no longer only game or actors in global governance. The of global governance entails emergence of a patchwork of international that are different in their character (organizations, regimes, and implicit norms), their constituencies (public and private), their spatial scope (from bilateral to global), and their subject matter (from specific policy fields to universal concerns). (1) There has been proliferation of regional and plurilateral arrangements, initiatives led by private sector and transnational social movements, and various forms of partnership involving government, private, and civil society actors. Their effects are especially felt on prominence, authority, and legitimacy of global multilateral that have been bedrock of postwar global governance system. This has produced confusion, uncertainty, and anxiety over future of global governance among its traditional advocates. At most optimistic end, some see this fragmentation as producing suboptimal or good enough global governance. (2) Others view it in starkly negative terms. Daniel Plesch and Thomas Weiss lament the global sprawl of networks and informal institutions as serious challenge to postwar big multilaterals, especially UN, that need strengthening. They warn of dangers of a misplaced enthusiasm for ad hoc and informal pluralism rather than for more formal and systematic multilateralism, without which and their citizens will not reap benefits of trade and globalization, discover nonviolent ways to meet security challenges, or address environmental degradation. (3) Such debate is healthy. But dominated as it is by scholars and policymakers from West, it also masks quintessential Western anxiety about future of liberal international order. After all, traditional system of global governance led by big Western powers and big multilaterals suited power and purpose of United States and West. A fragmented system of global governance means more pluralization and erosion of dominance of US and Western governments of that order. I argue that fragmentation is inevitable and may even be creative because it reflects broader forces of change in world politics. To elaborate, world today is culturally and politically diverse, yet more interconnected and interdependent. Its main players--both makers and breakers of order--are not just states and great powers but also international and regional bodies, nonstate groups, corporations, and people's movements and networks. Challenges to security and well-being of states and societies defy national boundaries. These changes not only challenge era of big multilaterals, they also do not fit traditional description of world. The notion of multipolarity is outdated. It was basically derived from pre-World War II Europe and connoted geopolitical centrality of Western great powers. Today, actors in world politics are much more varied. Moreover, nature of interdependence is more broad based. Interdependence during prewar European multipolar system was largely trade based and eurocentric. The rest of world was actually in relationship of dependence with Europe. Today, interdependence is global, complex, and broad based, comprising not only trade but also finance and production networks. Furthermore, interdependence today is not just an economic phenomenon. The various issue areas that are central to global governance today--such as climate change, refugee flows, pandemics, and human rights abuses--are precisely what add scope, depth, and complexity to nature of global interdependence. …