Global Governance Framework Research Articles

Combating healthcare corruption and fraud with improved global health governance

Corruption is a serious threat to global health outcomes, leading to financial waste and adverse health consequences. Yet, forms of corruption impacting global health are endemic worldwide in public and private sectors, and in developed and resource-poor settings alike. Allegations of misuse of funds and fraud in global health initiatives also threaten future investment. Current domestic and sectorial-level responses are fragmented and have been criticized as ineffective. In order to address this issue, we propose a global health governance framework calling for international recognition of “global health corruption” and development of a treaty protocol to combat this crucial issue.

The international politics of disease reporting: Towards post-Westphalianism?

Since the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, there has been much discussion about whether the international community has moved into a new post-Westphalian era, where states increasingly recognize certain shared norms that guide what they ought to do in responding to infectious disease outbreaks. In this article I identify this new obligation as the ‘duty to report’, and examine competing accounts on the degree to which states appreciate this new obligation are considered by examining state behaviour during the H5N1 human infectious outbreaks in East Asia (since 2004). The article examines reporting behaviour for H5N1 human infectious cases in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam from 2004 to 2010. The findings lend strong support to the claim that East Asian states have come to accept and comply with the duty to report infectious disease outbreaks and that the assertions of sovereignty in response to global health governance frameworks have not systematically inhibited reporting compliance.

Asia's role in twenty-first-century global economic governance

The basic foundations of today's framework for global economic governance were laid in the years following the Second World War. Reflecting the balance of economic power at the time, Asia did not play a major role in either designing the institutional architecture or setting the agenda for global economic governance. In more recent decades the centre of gravity of the global economy has shifted towards Asia, and this trend is likely to continue in the decades to come. Asia's growing economic weight enhances its potential to play a much stronger role in shaping twenty-first-century global economic governance. Realization of that potential will, however, depend upon how successfully Asia addresses five key challenges: rebalancing sources of growth; strengthening national governance; institutionalizing regional integration; providing political leadership; and adopting the global lingua franca—English. While the Asian policy-makers' ambition to play a bigger role in global economic governance is growing, their appetite for addressing the necessary policy challenges is not necessarily keeping pace with that growing ambition. This gap between ambition and action will need to be gradually closed—only then can Asia help itself in playing a bigger role in global economic governance.

Comparing regional organisations in global multilateral institutions: ASEAN, the EU and the UN

Structural change brought about by the end of the Cold War and accelerated globalisation have transformed the global environment. A global governance complex is emerging, characterised by an ever-greater functional and regulatory role for multilateral organisations such as the United Nations (UN) and its associated agencies. The evolving global governance framework has created opportunities for regional organisations to participate as actors within the UN (and other multilateral institutions). This article compares the European Union (EU) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as actors within the UN network. It begins by extrapolating framework conditions for the emergence of EU and ASEAN actorness from the literature. The core argument of this article is that EU and ASEAN actorness is evolving in two succinct stages: Changes in the global environment create opportunities for the participation of regional organisations in global governance institutions, exposing representation and cohesion problems at the regional level. In response, ASEAN and the EU have initiated processes of institutional adaptation.

The Environment Has No Standing in Environmental Governance

For most of human history the natural environment stood separate from man: indifferent and alien, to be overcome, exploited, or managed. This article draws on the legal concept of standing and the nonlegal concept of voice to argue that nature no longer has standing as an “other” within the global environmental governance framework. Reviews of the transition toward “sustainable development” in environmentalism and also the post–Cold War global environmental governance framework are offered to support this point. Freed of the role that nature plays to ground humanity in space, sustainability now frames mankind only in temporal terms that are developmental but, without reference to context, irrational. The implications that nature has no standing are applied as alternative perspective on Blühdorn’s arguments for a “politics of unsustainability.”

Global Governance and Human Development: Promoting Democratic Accountability and Institutional Experimentation

This paper identifies two elements for global governance critical to the pursuit of human development: democratic accountability and institutional experimentation. The paper stresses the critical importance of organizing effective global institutions for the purpose of human development and briefly discusses some major challenges that can and do affect the international community. It summarizes the theoretical underpinnings for the primacy of institutions as derived from two strands of development theory and the extent towards which these ideas have been acted upon in developing frameworks of global governance. The paper discusses these two principles in light of some of the major challenges that can and do affect the international community as a whole, and some of the decentralized forms of governance that are being developed as developing countries assert themselves in debates on institutional organization. It focuses on the global financial crisis as a case study in the inadequacies of current global governance and the reforms advocated by the Commission of Experts of the President of the United Nations General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System to redress these failures.

A Framework for Sustainable Global Development and Effective Governance of Risk

This work outlines an accessible framework for the current and future exploration of sustainable development. It explores the issue from the global and the local levels of analysis. The book draws on insights provided by Ulrich Beck's World Risk Society, testing the hypothesis that the world has entered an era of reflexive modernity providing synergies between theoretical assertions and empirical observations. Taking these unique insights into the local arena the book outlines the transmission of sustainable development from the global to the local scale through the medium of an energy reduction scheme designed to mitigate global warming through behavioral change.

Transnational corporations and climate change: towards a global governance framework

Transnational corporations and climate change: towards a global governance framework

Climate Change, Migration, and Governance

There is growing recognition that the effects of climate change are likely to lead to more migration, both internally and internationally, in the relatively near future. These climate change-induced migrations are likely to pose new challenges to the international system, ranging from an increase in irregular migration, to strains on existing asylum systems, to protection gaps for certain migrants affected. Yet the legal and normative framework, and institutional roles and responsibilities, relating to climate change-induced migration remain poorly developed. This article provides an overview of the interactions between climate change and migration, outlines the current international response, and considers new approaches to the global governance framework. KEYWORDS: climate change, migration, asylum. ********** AS EARLY AS 1990, THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC) warned that significant levels of migration could occur as a result of changing climatic conditions. (1) The concept of environmental migration proved to be a controversial one, largely because of the difficulty in measuring the extent to which environmental factors compel people to move. Since the 1980s, when the term environmental refugees was coined, experts within the environmental and migration fields have differed in their characterization of the phenomenon. Oli Brown puts those concerned with the interconnections in two groups--alarmists and skeptics. (2) The alarmists see the environment as a principal cause of population movements, emphasize the forced nature of the migration (thus, using the term refugee), and often project that hundreds of millions of persons will be affected, frequently without differentiating between those who will move short distances to safer ground versus those who will move thousands of miles to new countries. The skeptics, by contrast, raise questions about the models used to generate estimates of those who will be forced to migrate and emphasize that pull factors in destination locations are often more important than push factors at home in determining whether, where, and in what volume people will migrate. Perhaps not surprisingly, some environmentalists have been particularly alarmist, often using the threat of mass migration as a reason that immediate action should be taken to address climate change and other environmental problems. Migration experts, concerned about a potential backlash against migrants and misuse of terms like refugee, which is carefully defined in international law, have tended to join the camp of the skeptics. Recognizing the complexity in determining causality, and the broader context in which the environment affects population movements, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has offered the following broad definition of environmental migrants: Environmental migrants are persons or groups of persons who, for compelling reasons of sudden or progressive change in the environment that adversely affects their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad. (3) Policymakers have been slow, however, to develop national, regional, or international laws, policies, or organizational responsibilities--that is, a system of governance--to manage environmentally induced migration. This situation derives in part from uncertainties about the actual impacts of the environment, particularly as exacerbated by climate change, on migration. But even where there is a recognition that some form of migration related to environmental change is likely to occur, addressing these movements is hampered by the paucity of policy or institutional responses that are deemed appropriate to these forms of migration. This article begins with a brief discussion of the potential impact of climate change on migration patterns. I continue with an examination of existing capacities to address these forms of movement, discussing gaps in governance. …

China’s “Radicalism at the Center”: Regime Legitimation through Climate Politics and Climate Governance

The article examines whether there is reciprocity between the legitimating effects of China’s regime at home and abroad and how global governance and legitimacy interact in the case of China. This is done through an analysis of Chinese climate politics and China’s engagement in international climate negotiations and governance, especially its behavior during and after the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December 2009 and the Chinese regime’s efforts to legitimate this behavior. While China’s role in international climate governance was disputed at the Copenhagen Summit, China contributed constructively to brokering a deal with significant implications for a new climate governance architecture suiting China’s preferences and being aligned with China’s core interests. China defended the procedural logic of the current global climate governance framework and managed to contain institutional change. Based on Anthony Giddens’ proposition about “radicalism at the centre”, it is argued that China’s national and international discourse on and actions associated with climate change and the international negotiations about the new climate governance architecture seem to be able to reinforce each other and may well have a mutual legitimacy augmenting effect for the ‘radicals at the centre’ of the Chinese regime, provided that they ensure consequential logic through targeted reduction of GHG emissions and a “green transformation” of the economy.

Non-state authority and global governance

AbstractNon-state actors are increasingly assuming an active part in the design and construction of the institutional framework of global governance. The introduction of the concept of private authority in the literature has provided us with an insightful analytical tool for a deeper understanding of the role of private actors in the context of global governance. However, in order to achieve this objective the concept of private authority needs to be defined accurately and applied consistently in the examination of non-state governance schemes. This article aims to delineate the concept of private authority in the context of global governance first, by outlining the main characteristics of authority and identifying instances of inconsistent and loose application of these characteristics in the private authority literature and secondly, by offering a starting point for an analytically consistent typology of non-state authority. Following this analysis, a more thoroughly defined and analytically consistent concept of transnationalinauthority is presented. This new conceptualisation locates non-stateinauthority in the amalgamation of public authority and private power in the context of complex transnational governance structures, and can hopefully helps us gain a deeper understanding of the increasing institutionalisation and legitimation of transnational non-state governance.

Meeting the millennium development goals’ targets: Proposed UN global governance framework to confront challenges of the 21st Century.

Drawing on existing literature on governance and MDGs, the paper seeks to illuminate the dismal progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals’ (MDGs) targets, with almost two-thirds of the target period gone by, since the targets were set by 189 member states of the UN in 2000. The urge to meet the targets appears stronger today, as can evidently be noted by the concern world leaders continue to express in the face of increasing levels of poverty in many parts of the world. The paper identifies poor governance, characterized by weak governing institutions, poor leadership and undemocratic tendencies as the main causes of limited progress towards the achievement of the MDGs in developing countries. Sub-Saharan African countries, from where most examples are drawn, bear the brunt of this phenomenon of poor governance. The paper proposes a global governance framework under the mandate of the UN. It notes that, to avoid a repeat of past failures, there is need for a new UN Charter which empowers the world body, and effectively brings on board all independent states, as well as development partners such as the World Bank and the IMF. The paper concludes by noting that not until such a structure is adopted and implemented will the economic reform initiatives in developing countries have any meaningful impact in terms of elimination of poverty and all its attendant consequences.KEYWORDS: Millennium development goals (MDGs), globalization, governance, United Nations, Uganda

Labour Standards and WTO — Dilemma of Legitimacy and Efficacy

A lack of global management for dealing with global issues has necessitated the formation of a global governance framework to address global problems. The enforcement of labour standards in each national jurisdiction is now one of the most important items on the trade forum agenda. Even though during different negotiation rounds of the WTO, other trade linkage problems and standards have been addressed through trade laws and regulations, the issue of labour standards, although they are one of the most important sets of social standards related to human prosperity remains unresolved. The problem of labour standards is a dilemma that the WTO is faced with – between its legitimacy and efficacy. This article explores the problem of labour standards based on the Rawlsian concept and the distributive nature of Justice upon which the theories of global governance have been developed.

Sovereign Wealth Funds — Before and Since the Crisis

Sovereign wealth funds have been investing governments’ foreign assets for decades, although it is only in recent times that such funds have emerged as managers of large ‘excess reserves’. Since the crisis however, the sources of funding for sovereign wealth funds have evaporated, while advanced economies are competing for capital injections from these funds. At the same time, the concerns about excessive investment of sovereign wealth funds in advanced economies that were widespread prior to the crisis, are now being voiced less frequently. Against this background, this article provides a reassessment of the growth prospects of sovereign wealth funds. Although the growth path for these funds indeed needs to be revised substantially, there are no grounds to believe that sovereign wealth funds will become less important players in global financial markets over the future, as the structural drivers behind the accumulation of large foreign assets in emerging economies remain in place. Hence, sovereign wealth funds are likely to continue growing and increase their relative importance in global financial markets. Therefore, it remains imperative to resume the efforts — that seem to be partly halted by the current economic and financial crisis — to build a global governance framework for sovereign wealth funds.

The Legal Value of General Principles, Technical Norms and Standards in European Nuclear Safety Law: The Imbalance Between Soft and Hard Law and the Need for Global Regulatory Governance

In all branches of law, the global economic system brings along a vast record of soft law, general principles, technical norms and standards, emanating from International institutions up to self-regulation by industry. In nuclear law, the IAEA in Vienna is responsible for an ever expanding set of International Conventions and nuclear safety standards. We can find these soft law principles and standards back in the clothing of hard law, or in the licensing procedures, at the national level. The larger part however is never “transposed” into national law and especially harmonization, implementation and control of general principles and standards remain doubtful. International nuclear law can also be seen as a precursor of a sort of “incentivating law”, using technical cooperation models (within IAEA, WENRA, WANO . . .) and peer reviews. At the most fundamental level there is the question as to whether the overriding system of soft law in such an important industrial sector is democratic, transparent and effective enough. In this article we try to draw a global picture of the international regulatory regime on nuclear safety, using standards and optimization principles and highlighting the imbalance between “the rule of law” (meaning the hierarchical and legitimate set of rules and norms, established along the lines of a democratic regulatory process) and the many soft laws. The findings of this article underscore the urgent need to move towards establishing a coherent framework for global regulatory governance.

Globalizing Public Interest Law

Public interest law has become increasingly globalized in the post-Cold War era, incorporated in national legal systems across the developing world, and deployed in transnational activist campaigns advancing social justice causes. This essay - the introduction to a symposium on public interest law across borders - examines the structural factors shaping the global trajectory of public interest law and offers a preliminary appraisal of its emerging global role. In Part I, we trace the historical movement of public interest law from an insular American project toward a more globalized set of practices and concepts. We suggest two reasons for this shift. The first is the ascendance of the Rule-of-Law movement, sponsored by international financial institutions and donor agencies, which has promoted public interest law around the world as a crucial component of good governance built upon a foundation of rights enforcement and political accountability. Against this backdrop, local activists, particularly in post-authoritarian countries, have turned to public interest law as a way to achieve the promise of new democratic orders while accessing crucial funding support. Second, the institutional framework of global governance has drawn public interest law into the contest over the impact of open markets and the power of human rights at the supranational level. Transnational activist networks have mobilized public interest law in efforts to hold international finance and trade institutions accountable for their distributional impacts, challenge the deregulation of global markets through multi-level advocacy efforts, and leverage the power of the human rights system to strengthen domestic social justice movements and build transnational solidarity. Part II explores the implications of these trends, suggesting that they point toward two evolving conceptions of public interest law: as a global institution and a technique of global governance. With respect to public interest law's institutionalization in developing countries, we outline the factors shaping its distinctively hybrid form, which incorporates elements imported by global sponsors, while building upon indigenous traditions and adapting to opportunities afforded by national structures. As a tool of global governance, we suggest that public interest law is associated with a broad range of problem solving practices targeted to the transnational context. We conclude by offering a provisional map of the new terrain of this transnational advocacy, highlighting the global arenas in which it operates, the strategies it deploys, and the networks it constructs.

Introduction: Global Governance of Water

Water is a key element of the earth system with all its geophysical, biological, and human-social interactions. Freshwater is a prerequisite of human well-being in terms of drinking water and sanitation, food security and health, industrial processes and energy supply, transportation and recreation, and further goods and services delivered by ecosystem integrity and freshwater biodiversity. The sustainable management of water resources in times of global change poses one of the most pressing challenges for public policy in the twenty-first century. Global demand for freshwater has skyrocketed with population expansion, income growth, and technological development. The resulting strains on supply create not only environmental pressures but social tensions as well, given that freshwater resources are unequally distributed among world regions, countries, and social groups. Water scarcity and conflicts over the allocation of water resources are already widespread around the world. One-third of humanity already lives under water stress today, and one-fifth of the world's people do not have access to safe drinking water. Freshwater ecosystems are the most degraded and endangered of the planet's habitats. Under contemporary global change, the inequality of water distribution is increasing, and threats from water extremes like droughts and floods are growing. The importance of securing world water resources is increasingly recognized not only by researchers across the academic disciplines, but also by policymakers and the general public. Yet although a global discourse about water issues has evolved over the last five decades, a clear global governance framework has still not emerged. This omission is the more remarkable when one considers that, unlike governance of many other environmental and resource issues, water management has a very long history. It can be traced back 5,000 years to the ancient civilizations of the Nile, the Indus, the Euphrates, and the Tigris. Nevertheless, global regimes for water have been much slower to emerge than global governance of, for example, climate change and ozone depletion. As ecological, social, and economic interdependence on a planetary scale grows, the need to govern water in global terms becomes all the more urgent. Yet how can global public policy on this issue be promoted when local and national arrangements have become entrenched over a very long period of time? How can new global elements of water management be intertwined with local, national, and regional aspects to create multilevel arrangements that provide effective and legitimate governance of this vital resource? In spite of the clearly evident scientific and political challenges, global water governance has not yet received the research attention it needs. To improve this situation, the Global Water System Project (GWSP) was created in 2005 to, among other things, build capacity and networks among global water governance scholars. The GWSP organized a workshop in June 2006 to bring together researchers from multiple disciplines working on global aspects of water policy. This special issue of Global Governance includes a collection of major articles presented at that workshop. The five articles published here highlight the need for adopting a global perspective on water governance. With regard to theory, the articles consider how to conceive of global water governance. In terms of empirical analysis, the articles provide in-depth analysis of specific global water issues, with particular emphasis on delineating the links between the river basin level and the global level. The case studies span different continents and cover a variety of institutional, cultural, economic, and environmental conditions. Taking the five articles in order, the opening piece by Claudia Pahl-Wostl, Joyeeta Gupta, and Daniel Petry analyzes global governance of water with emphasis on the role of network governance and on the use of governance typologies--in particular, the mobius-web concept developed by James Rosenau. …

Healthcare in developing countries and the role of business: a global governance framework to enhance the accountability of pharmaceutical companies

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to defend the appropriateness of a global governance framework for the transnational pharmaceutical corporations (TNPCs) as a way to tackle the problems resulting out of a non‐implementation or violation of the “right to health” by a lack of accessibility of vital medicines in developing countries, and control the risks of the TNPCs themselves and to provide for more accountability and trust on their part. The aim is to show that such a framework can prepare the ground for a win‐win‐situation for all stakeholders and for a sustainable combination of interests in profits, human rights, especially the “right to health”, and human welfare.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper on the basis of step‐by‐step analytical and interdiscinplinary approach that requires to pick up arguments from economics, business ethics, law, political science as well as aspects of the human rights and the health governance discourse. A broad spectrum of literature and various information sources are referred to: scientific articles and monographs, newspaper and magazine articles, internet sources and information provided by the corporations themselves and by NGOs (non‐governmental organizations), as well as recent academic and institutional publications. Desk research is the underlying technique to analyze the sources in a heuristic and interpretative way. For a better understanding, first the complexity of the implementation of “the right to health” and the role of different actors will be outlined and second, advantages, positive impacts and deficits of existing health‐related CSR (corporate social responsibility) and multistakeholder initiatives by the TNPCs will be pointed out. This is to prepare a ground for arguing in favor of a global governance framework for the TNPCs and to underline the existence of external and internal drivers for the TNPCs to adhere to a global governance framework.FindingsEspecially in developing countries the “right to health” is poorly implemented. TNPCs could contribute to improvements and partly already do so. Yet, the existing approaches are deficitary, insufficient and not sustainable. The problem calls for more accountability in regard to the access to vital medicines. A global governance frameworks for the TNPCs would pose a win‐win‐opportunity: While the TNPCs can benefit from more accountability, precisely defined responsibilities as well as efficiency by constructive, strategic partnerships on a stable level‐playing‐field and a legitimized conduct, their stakeholders benefit from an improved accessibility to vital medicines and an enhanced implementation of the “right to health”.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the ongoing debate on how to improve the implementation of “right to health” by improving the accessibility of vital medicines, especially in developing (and emerging) countries. It proposes new modes of CSR‐based conduct and partnerships of the TNPCs and a framework of global governance that are urgently required to tackle with a long‐term perspective the problems and threats that pandemics pose on a global scale and to cut down risks for the TNPCs while also widening their markets.

Japan and South Asia: Toward a Strengthened Economic Cooperation

While in the whole scenario of contemporary Asia-Pacific's economic prosperity, Japan's catalytic role is continuing to evolve, ironically in this region's sprawling vibrant landscape, the only backward sub-region that has not yet kept pace with this changing trend is South Asia. Despite the magnitude of Japanese development aid to all South Asian nations, the region's share in Japan's global trade and investment is too small to merit much attention. Moreover, in Tokyo's strategic-diplomatic agenda, South Asia has in fact figured little for a long time, because it has been relevant neither to Japan's security necessities nor the needs for a global economic governance framework. Nonetheless, Japan has very recently shown a heightened interest in expanding its cooperation with South Asia (particularly India). Under this backdrop, this article strives to explore the reasons why South Asia has today risen strategically in significance to the breadth of Japanese foreign policy initiatives. The study argues that for mutual values and benefits, the economic and geo-strategic partnership between Japan and South Asia needs to be nourished more effectively and constructively. This comprehensive policy-relevant scholarly piece concludes with a reasonable expectation that Tokyo's policy towards South Asia will embrace a comprehensive review process with an action-oriented roadmap in a strongly competitive and dynamically changing Asia.

Environmental Rights for the Future? Intergenerational Equity in the EU

Courts, commentators and legislators in Europe and around the world have now recognized that environmental degradation may constitute a violation of human rights. While the human rights model may be effective in addressing the environmental interests of existing human beings, there is a pressing need for a legal doctrine that effectively addresses the environmental rights of the future. Although the EU has actively embraced the sustainable development model and its recognition of the environmental needs of future generations, it has failed to embrace the correlative doctrine of intergenerational equity – a detailed, specific and pragmatic legal framework for global and domestic environmental governance. This article assesses EU environmental law and policy against the requirements of the doctrine of intergenerational equity and concludes that the EU's sustainable development model is inadequate from the perspective of future generations. The recommendation is made that the EU adopt intergenerational equity as a necessary corollary to sustainable development.