Context Of Global Governance Research Articles

The Politics of Russian Revisionism: Diplomacy of a Worldview, 2011–14

Abstract Russia’s use of force in Ukraine has been described as a challenge to the rule of international law and an event of unilateral intervention. This paper provides a reinterpretation of this standard history of Russian revisionism. Our new history places this practice in a global governance context through an analysis of the politics concerning the international legal norm of ‘non-intervention’ and its legitimate/illegitimate exceptions for collective intervention. This analysis discloses a practice of Russian diplomacy that emerges out of resistance to humanitarian interventions advocated for by Western states. This practice justifies its own state-bound humanitarian intervention as the legitimate exception to the foundation of international order, which Russian diplomacy had previously sought to restore. We argue the political discourse of the worldview of ‘state civilization’ explains these events of Russian revisionism. We conclude with an analysis of the international paradoxes of peace and conflict contingent on this Russian worldview.

Charting three trajectories for globalising public administration research and theory

Scholars in the field of public administration are operating in an increasingly globalising world in which people and polities enjoy an unprecedented degree of connectivity irrespective of their geographical location. The enormity of the global spread of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has brought this into clear focus. The purpose of this article is to highlight three trajectories for globalising public administration research and theory. The first trajectory is to build generalisable theories to enhance global applicability. The second is to be more inclusive of diverse perspectives in the mainstream of public administration scholarship. The final trajectory is to scale up the lens of inquiry beyond the nation-state to include global governance actors and organisations. Research efforts that test a universal measurement scale of public service motivation demonstrate progress in the direction of generalisable theory. The broad and diverse body of research on electronic government typifies a decisively inclusive research area. At the same time, the expansion of research on policy networks to the global governance context provides an example along the scaling-up trajectory. The three-trajectory approach outlined in this article provides for a more comprehensive understanding of what it means for public administration research and theory to globalise.

Civil Society Democratising Global Governance? Potentials and Limitations of “Counter-Democracy”

A major aspect of global interdependencies during the last two decades has been the intensified interactions between international organizations (IOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs). In this paper, we propose a new way of analysing the potential of CSO inclusion to democratise global governance. The aim is to explore the possibility for CSOs to function as a form of counter-democratic force. This approach contrasts with earlier research that has tended to focus on participation, voice or representation when evaluating IO-CSO interaction from a democratisation perspective. Using Pierre Rosanvallon's term, we argue that counter-democratic actors organise distrust against power-holders, pressuring them to strengthen accountability. Counter-democracy is manifested in the institutions, agents and functions that are committed to overseeing ruling institutions, expressing mistrust and channelling dissent. Importantly, counter-democracy is not contrary to democracy, but a vital and perennial aspect of it. Our argument is that Rosanvallon's concept of counter-democracy can help us understand how the monitoring activities of CSOs may restrain the power of IOs and make them more responsible which in turn can be related to democratic qualities of global governance. However, we maintain that not all activities of transnational CSOs have counter-democratic qualities. To examine if and how a specific CSO might serve as a democratising force in global governance, we suggest that the actors and their activities should be scrutinised according to an analytical framework centred on the concepts of power-resources, ideational foundations and activities. Empirically, we investigate three carefully selected cases of CSOs that perform monitoring activities in a global governance context: the Corporate Europe Observatory, the NGO forum on the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and NGO Monitor.

Disputing the Global Land Grab: Claiming Rights and Making Markets Through Collaborative Governance

As transnational movements contest economic inequalities and demand inclusion into global decision-making processes, new models of collaborative governance have proliferated. Promoters of this new mode of governance suggest that it can produce “win-win” solutions through inclusive, consensus-based processes, if these arenas of governance account for power asymmetries within their rules and processes. Yet, by focusing on procedural aspects of collaboration, these accounts overlook how power operates through the wider landscape of transnational legal pluralism. This article adapts the sociolegal disputing approach to the context of global governance through an extended case analysis of the “global land grab.” In doing so, it demonstrates how power operates through the competition to frame disputes across transnational arenas. I argue that the frame through which collaboration is ultimately deployed serves to reconstitute conflicts, thereby subordinating competing claims to the values of the dominant frame. This analysis ultimately suggests participation in collaborative governance comes with risks. By engaging in collaborative processes, activists face the possibility of constituting the very markets they seek to contest.

Negotiating Authority in Global Biofuel Governance: Brazil and the EU in the WTO

The global demand for biofuels (liquid or gas fuels deriving from biomass) has grown dramatically in recent years. European Union policies that promote biofuels as more sustainable sources of transport fuel are partly driving this development. In this article, we analyze how Brazil, as a key producer of biofuels, navigates an emerging global governance context for sustainable biofuels. We do so by examining how Brazil responds to EU biofuel sustainability imperatives, including by evoking World Trade Organization disciplines in questioning their transnational validity and reach. While domestically Brazil emphasizes the social and developmental objectives of its biofuel policies, globally it frames itself as a leading producer of sustainable biofuels. In so doing, it navigates intersecting spheres of authority in a manner that promotes its own biofuel policy agenda, partly by seeking to reframe “sustainability” debates internationally to reflect its developmental agenda.

What Happens in the Cloud Stays in the Cloud, or Why the Cloud's Architecture Should Be Transformed in 'Virtual Territorial Scope'

The most common used adjective for cloud computing is “ubiquitous”. This characteristic poses great challenges for law, which might find itself in the need to revise its fundamentals. Regulating a “model” of “ubiquitous network access” which relates to “a shared pool of computing resources” (the NIST definition of cloud computing) is perhaps the most challenging task for regulators worldwide since the appearance of the computer, both procedurally and substantially. Procedurally, because it significantly challenges concepts such as “territorial scope of the law” - what need is there for a territorial scope of a law when regulating a structure which is designed to be “abstracted”, in the sense that nobody knows “where things physically reside” ? Substantially, because the legal implications in connection with cloud computing services are complex and cannot be encompassed by one single branch of law, such as data protection law or competition law. This paper contextualizes the idea of a global legal regime for providing cloud computing services, on one hand by referring to the wider context of global governance and, on the other hand, by pointing out several solutions for such a regime to emerge.

Authenticity, Identity and Hegemony in the Context of Global Governance

AbstractThe narrative of authentic national identity, as being immutable, transcendent and endowed with sacrosanct qualities, has been inculcated into the public consciousness of every nation and constitutes an essential feature of one’s self-awareness in relation to the outside world. This proclivity for national exclusivity impedes the collective advancement of global civil society and undermines the ongoing efforts at forging effective democratic institutions of global governance.Indeed, many societies blindly heed to the message of national exceptionalism and pledge allegiance to the integrity of their imagined community without critically scrutinizing their belief and understanding its consequences. First, in this article I argue that the notion of authentic national identity is fictitious because the concept of national identity is always fluid and constantly reconstructed. Second, the international community is functioning in the state of cognitive dissonance and therefore must recognize that in the era of globalization, nationalism has exhausted its social utility and is becoming increasingly detrimental to the welfare of global civil society.

Partnerships and the Privatisation of Environmental Governance: On Myths, Forces of Nature and Other Inevitabilities

Since the end of the Cold War, two parallel developments took place in global governance: fragmentation in social/environmental legislations across countries, and an increasing uniformity (or ‘globalisation') of economic/financial legislations. In the liberal democratic context of global governance, both of these developments are embodied in partnerships for sustainable development. Studying these partnerships in the context of private environmental governance and tracing the origin of the concept in business and law, can reveal the implications of ‘privatisation of governance’ on sovereignty, authority, and global governance. Focusing on partnerships in the United Nations context, this paper examines the private environmental governance institutions in their historical economic context.

Indigenous Rights, Global Governance, and State Sovereignty

This article discusses indigenous rights within the context of global governance. I begin by defining the terms “global governance” and “indigenous peoples” and summarizing the rights that are most important to indigenous peoples. The bulk of this article studies the global governance of indigenous rights in three areas. The first example is the creation of the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. A second example involves violations of indigenous rights brought before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. A third case looks at a relatively new international regime created by indigenous peoples themselves—the Inuit Circumpolar Council. I conclude by using theories of sovereignty to assess the relative successes and failures of indigenous efforts to secure their rights.

Institutional interplay: Biosafety and trade

International institutions and the consequences of their interplay are emerging as a major agenda item for research and policy. As governments enter into an ever-increasing number of international agreements, questions arise about the overlap of issues, jurisdiction and membership. Of particular interest to practitioners and analysts is how this malange of institutions at the international level intersects and interrelates to influence and affect the content, operation, performance and effectiveness of a specific institution, as well as the functioning of the overall global governance context. Biosafety, which is an issue that is relevant to numerous institutions, offers an excellent case study for exploring and applying interplay in practical terms.

From economic to sustainable development: unfolding the concept of law

AbstractThe paper presents an analysis of the interrelationship of law, policy and knowledge under conditions of globalization. The paper's basic premise is that the emergence of the sustainable development policy has been driven by an expanding awareness of the world as a singular and interdependent entity. The principal argument is that the policy of sustainable development is part of a wider epistemic shift, which means that the global community at large understands the world differently today than 50–60 years ago when the United Nations and the Bretton Woods‐inspired institutions were established. The theory of change underlying these policies represents, therefore, a shift from the model of economic development, which builds on the idea of separation and functional specialization, to a model of sustainable development, which builds on interdependence and integration. It is suggested that the sustainable development policy provides us with a key to develop a common theoretical framework for explaining the implications of the epistemic shift, but, giving effect to the shift will require research and co‐operation between a wide range of disciplines. It is further suggested that expanding the concept of law provides a necessary condition for making the epistemic shift operational as a new paradigm in a global governance context. In conclusion, the paper proposes that the theoretical insight from policymaking provides the resources to answer the post‐modern crisis of truth, which in essence is a crisis of reality, self and language. And further, that sustainable development has the potential for enabling a change equivalent to that of the Copernican revolution, which concerned man's place in the cosmos, while sustainable development concerns man's place in the biosphere. Effectuating the change will, however, require a fundamental willingness of the global scholarly community to engage with—and not merely describe, prescribe, and measure—reality and the human condition. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.