The Social Purposes of Global Governance

Abstract

Why govern? Because there is a demand for global governance, say some of my colleagues. To report that there is a “demand” for a form of governance, is to in some manner, at a microeconomic level, to explain why institutions of public global governance, e.g. international organization and regimes, and institutions of private global governance, e.g. myriad private actors such as transnational corporations (TNCs), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and networks of these, act to provide governance. Yet this answer cannot explain the source of power and more particularly the authority of global governance institutions of any form. There is a demand for global governance. This is undeniably true. When I now report that man is a featherless bipedal vertebrate this is also undeniably true. Man is indeed a featherless biped. But while this may be an adequate answer to a biologist attempting to ascertain the biological genus and phylum in which to locate the human species, it's not a very useful explanation of man to a social scientist or to a disciplinary expert in the humanities. What constitutes an adequate answer to a question depends crucially upon what it is that we wish to know. Much of this debate about the demand for global governance puts me in mind of a previous debate in international relations theory regarding the sources of demand for international regimes. In that debate, Robert Keohane put forward a functional theory of international regimes. Constructivist analysis of global governance has from its earliest days parted with the purely functionalist view of neoliberal institutionalism that, for example, international regimes are generated and function due to a purely utilitarian “demand” for them. Over three decades ago, Keohane argued in this context, “I explore why self-interested actors in world politics should seek, under certain circumstances, to establish international regimes through mutual agreement; and how we can account for fluctuations over time in the number, extent, and strength of international regimes, on the basis of rational calculations under varying circumstances.” He cited asymmetric information among actors, problems of moral hazard, and problems of deception and irresponsibility between and among states as explanations for the demand for regime structures.