Global Governance Organizations Research Articles

The Role of International Organizations in Global Governance: Challenges and Opportunities

International organizations play a crucial role in global governance, serving as forums for cooperation and coordination among nations to address shared challenges and opportunities. This article explores the multifaceted role of international organizations in global governance, focusing on the challenges they face and the opportunities they present. Employing a qualitative approach, this study conducts an extensive literature review and library research to examine the contributions, limitations, and evolving dynamics of international organizations in the realm of global governance. Through the review of existing literature, various roles of international organizations are identified, including policy formulation, norm setting, capacity building, conflict resolution, and humanitarian assistance. Additionally, the study assesses the challenges faced by international organizations, such as political polarization, resource constraints, legitimacy concerns, and institutional inefficiencies. Furthermore, the study identifies opportunities for international organizations to enhance their effectiveness and relevance in global governance, including promoting multilateralism, fostering partnerships with non-state actors, harnessing digital technologies, and addressing emerging global issues. The findings highlight the importance of international organizations as key actors in shaping the global governance landscape and emphasize the need for continuous adaptation and innovation to address complex global challenges effectively. By elucidating the challenges and opportunities faced by international organizations, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the dynamics of global governance in the contemporary world.

Controlling internet content in the EU: towards digital sovereignty

ABSTRACT We analyse the rhetoric and reality of EU digital sovereignty by looking at content control. The control of online content is central to sovereignty because it relates to fundamental freedoms and democratic competition. Our main data source is the unique International Organizations in Global Internet Governance (IO-GIG) dataset which contains internet policy output documents across international institutions and issue areas between 1995 and 2021. By assessing policy output, we show structural trends in content control output in volume, bindingness, and orientation. By analysing policy discourse, we show the evolution of frames on content control over time. We find evidence for a comprehensive but still ongoing trend towards digital sovereignty in policy output and a shift from prioritising free access to the public order in discourse.

Torn into the Abyss?

Abstract Recent challenges to the liberal international order (LIO) have called into question the efficacy of international organizations (IO s) in global governance. However, it remains unclear if the anticipated crisis of the LIO affects all policy fields to the same degree. Based on organizational ecology, this article seeks to explain compositions and trajectories across three fields—climate, education, and health. It shows that the three subpopulations of IO s are stable since the early 2000s, while regional IO s constitute a significant share of the subpopulations. It further finds notable variation in the distribution of generalist and specialist IO s. While the number of generalist IO s in relation to specialist health IO s decreased over time, the article finds generalist education and climate IO s have been on the rise. It argues that—as policy issues grow ever more interconnected over time—IO s expand their thematic scopes to new niches.

노동인권 제고를 위한 새로운 노력

The issue of labor rights violations by multinational corporations has emerged as a serious international problem. Accordingly, the international community discussed how to regulate labor rights violations by multinational companies and strengthen their responsibility to protect labor rights. Various efforts and attempts to protect human rights at the level of multinational corporations, global governance and international organizations, and advanced countries have resulted in preventing violations of labor rights by multinational corporations and enhancing labor rights. However, there were definitely limitations. New measures are emerging to enhance labor human rights that can overcome these limitations. The EU Parliament and EU Member States have determined that the essence of the problem of labor rights violations by multinational corporations lies in global supply chains. They intend to enhance labor rights by enacting the Mandatory Corporate Due Diligence Act (Mandatory Supply Chain Due Diligence) to impose certain obligations on domestic companies, overseas branches of domestic companies, and subcontractors for human rights and due diligence. The due diligence obligations of the EU Parliament and EU member states are not limited to domestic companies, but they are also mandatory for foreign companies operating in their countries, which is expected to have a lot of impact and change. According to the EU Parliament's Corporate Due Diligence Directive, Korean conglomerates and small and medium-sized enterprises exporting to the EU are subject to the due diligence guidelines, so they must carry out due diligence on human rights and the environment in their supply chains, assess and minimize negative impacts, and disclose information. The EU Parliament's Mandatory Business Due Diligence Directive applies not only to the original contracting company but also to cases of human rights violations caused by its suppliers.
 In particular, the textile and steel industries, which are high-risk sectors, are more likely to be classified as companies subject to due diligence obligations, so they should also pay attention to the issue of labor rights violations that may occur in the global supply chain. Although it will take some time for the EU Parliament's mandatory corporate due diligence directive to be applied in EU member states, the trend of EU member states and the EU Parliament making it mandatory for companies to conduct due diligence on their supply chains is expected to have a significant impact on international norms. In line with this trend, the Korean government also needs to actively restructure its domestic laws and policies to comply with various international standards, including the European Due Diligence Directive.

Disability-Inclusive Education, Development, and Dialectics: Complex Cases in Bhutan

Disability-inclusive education and development have become priorities for global governance organizations over the past decade and have thus introduced new complexities to existing development narratives. One reason for this is the long-standing discourse of “disability models” (medical, social, and cultural models) most often found in disability studies discourses. This study demonstrates that individuals with disabilities and their advocates navigate education and development opportunities through the lens of multiple models simultaneously. In this article, we introduce the philosophical theory of dialectics as a way of understanding how seemingly competing models might simultaneously inform the actions that individuals take in relation to disability-inclusive education and development. We present three minicases—two from teachers and one from a youth with a disability—drawn from a recent 3-year project in Bhutan. These case examples demonstrate how dialectical thinking is often present in education and development initiatives.

COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict : Emergence of India as a Global Leader

India’s foreign policy has four clearly-stated principles that have been practised over the past seven years, namely, taking care of national trade and security interests (including using aggressive defence if needed), helping its citizens in foreign countries, taking care of partner countries, and continuing to participate in global governance organizations and institutions while maintaining its non-aligned stand. India over the last seven years has initiated various foreign policy strategies: Act East policy, Sagar (trans-ocean) outlook, Gulf engagement and Central Asia strategies that have focussed on resource use, humanitarian aid, and defence. Greater investment in defence strategies can be done through strengthening national defence, providing maritime security with India’s neighbours in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, and restructuring the defence organization. As a irst responder, India takes on a leadership role for its partner countries that are in need of disaster management. Over the last few years, India has taken on the leadership of the global south and engaged with the United Nations as a temporary member.

Cooperation among intergovernmental organizations in global cultural governance: Towards an actor-centered constructivist approach

ABSTRACT This article provides an empirical investigation of the cooperation among intergovernmental organisations (IOs) in global cultural governance. The existing scientific literature has not yet taken up the inter-organisational cooperation as a serious topic of research and the present contribution aims to fill this gap. Based on an actor-centred constructivism, the article seeks to address inter-organisational cooperation as an observable empirical phenomenon, to explore when and why the cooperation between IOs risks not lasting and to understand why the dynamics of inter-organisational cooperation in cultural affairs have a specific-time limit. The focus will be on two cases: the European Union-Mercosur audiovisual programme and the United Nations interagency group on creative industries. As such, the article is more concerned with analysing the political micro-foundations through which the cooperation among IOs takes place and with exploring the factors, which contribute to not establish sustainable cooperative arrangements.

What role for regional organizations in goal-setting global governance? An analysis of the role of the European Union and ASEAN in the Sustainable Development Goals

This paper analyzes the current role of regional organizations in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We construct a conceptual model and distinguish four potential roles that regional organizations can play in the implementation of the SDGs: the translating role, supporting role, coordinating role and monitoring role. We apply this framework to the European Union and ASEAN. The case studies are analyzed on the basis of document analysis from primary and secondary sources, voluntary national reviews and interviews. We show that regional organizations play different roles in the implementation of the SDGs.

Competition, cooperation, and adaptation: The organizational ecology of international organizations in global energy governance

AbstractIn policy domains characterised by complexity, international organizations (IOs) with overlapping mandates and governance functions regularly interact in ways that have important implications for global governance. Yet the dynamics of IO interactions remain understudied. This article breaks new ground by building on the theoretical insights of organizational ecology to examine IO competition, cooperation, and adaptation in the domain of energy. Drawing on original empirical data, I consider three related hypotheses: (1) competition between IOs in the same population is likely to centre on material resources; (2) IOs are more likely to cooperate when they have a shared governance goal; and (3) individual IOs can adapt by changing their goals and boundaries. In considering these hypotheses, this article highlights the limits of the organizational ecology approach and the need to broaden it to account for the possibility that IOs do cooperate, and that individual IOs, such as the International Energy Agency, have the capacity to adapt to changes in their environment.

A Consideration on International Organizations in Global Governance in the field of International Public Health: WHO and the EU

A Consideration on International Organizations in Global Governance in the field of International Public Health: WHO and the EU

Social sustainability and the argan boom as green development in Morocco

Morocco markets argan oil as a fair-traded, organic health and beauty elixir that women extract in an ancient forest protected internationally to clean the world’s air. Since the 1990s, the kingdom has partnered with global governance organizations and foreign investors to develop the argan forest as a coveted natural resource, designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1998. Large-scale investments in reforestation and “arganiculture” propose to mitigate carbon emissions, alleviate poverty, and empower women workers at proliferating state-subsidized argan oil cooperatives in the export-oriented commodity value chain. This impact evaluation of the booming argan enterprise weighs the social benefits and costs of a transnational push that prioritizes economic growth over social sustainability. Empirical data from 829 surveys with local residents depict an unregulated, informal commercial sector at odds with the inclusive neoliberal development narrative on the whole. Results show rural women and their communities exposed to risks in a centralized, market-driven extractivist industry geared toward consumers. The top-down argan boom has triggered new legislation and innovations in science and technology that have shifted control of the land, agroforestry practices, and oil extraction process from local producers to the state. Women and the rural poor have thus been divested of their patrimony and marginally sustained as manual labor rather than effectively empowered. Moving forward, rebalancing economic, environmental, and social sustainability priorities will require initiatives informed by empowerment indicators, revised regulatory policies, diversified investment strategies, and commitment to assuring compliance, transparency, and impartial assessment of benefits and costs to women workers.

WASTE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN COVID-19 PERIOD

The article provides an overview of national reports of global government organizations regarding the specifics of waste management in emergency situations COVID-19. The main problems are identified as the violation of logistics, strict hygiene requirements, changes in the cost of recyclables, an increase in the share of hazardous and disposable wastes. The measures taken by the global community are listed: waste becomes a priority social service, sanitary safety rules are more effectively developed, additional infrastructures for control, transportation, processing of household and hazardous waste are built, and environmental practices of the population are adjusted.

Creating Space for Public Administration in International Organization Studies

The emergent global administrative order includes more than 800 international and regional organizations. Just as the rise of the modern state placed greater importance on the study of public administration, the growth of multistate organizations, their agendas, and personnel require research that draws upon contemporary and classical public administrative thought. This article employs multiple lenses to explore the utility of public administrative theory and empirically based knowledge in analyzing the behavior of international and regional organizations. Specifically, while remaining cognizant of differences between international organizations and sovereign states, we consider the utility of the politics–administration dichotomy, representative bureaucracy, individual and employee due process and other rights, and broader questions of accountability in understanding the administrative life and influence of international organizations in global governance.

Post-apartheid local sustainable development through tourism: an analysis of policy perceptions among ‘responsible’ tourism stakeholders around Pilanesberg National Park, South Africa

Many developing countries aim at balancing macro-level, growth-oriented economic policies with local community-based development strategies under the auspices of global governance organizations. South Africa adopts such a strategy to be competitive in the global market and, simultaneously, to alleviate domestic socio-spatial inequalities inherited from the apartheid period. Based on a qualitative case study in and around Pilanesberg National Park, this paper assesses whether this seemingly contradictory policy combination elicits the empowerment of traditionally marginalized actors. We use an institutional approach to evaluating sustainable development policy. Results of a policy perception analysis indicate that the substantive aspects of South Africa’s policies are widely acknowledged in the Pilanesberg area. The problem rests with the procedural aspects of how to deal with the shared responsibility of stakeholders with different interests and levels of authority. The paper concludes that power can be meaningfully shifted to community stakeholders only when the investments of global and national-level players are redirected towards establishing a system of procedures to solve local-level disparities in skills and power between the “jointly responsible” actors. These disparities currently result in deadlocks regarding local sustainable development in the Pilanesberg area, despite promising multi-level policies implemented in the post-apartheid era to avoid such situations.

The Internet as a global public good and the role of governments and multilateral organizations in global internet governance

The Internet presents social and economic attributes of a global public good, requiring governments and multilateral organizations to play central roles in Internet governance. This article examines the Internet as a global public good, identifies the roles of governments and multilateral organizations in global Internet governance, describes the current status of multi-stakeholder governance, and proposes guidelines to improve international cooperation.

Geoeconomic Uses of Global Warming: The “Green” Technological Revolution and the Role of the Semi-Periphery

While some semi-peripheral countries have seen renewable energies as an opportunity to build their industrial and technological capacities, core countries and global governance organizations have been promoting “green growth.” Since the 2008 global financial crisis, global warming has been used as a catalyst for big business. As the global economy may be entering the first stage of a “green” technology revolution, neo-Schumpeterian economists have regained visibility. We intend to show how, as a consequence of the lack of a world-systemic perspective, crucial inconsistencies arise in neo-Schumpeterian contributions that weaken their conceptualization of the role of non-core economies in technological change. We examine the case of the tortuous trajectory of wind energy in Argentina to show the specific organizational, institutional, and macroeconomic constraints faced by a semi-peripheral economy as it attempts to develop its own technological and industrial capacities. The neo-Schumpeterian view of the “green industrial revolution” must be understood as valid only for the core-economy subsystem, which seems to require as well polarization of the world-system through what we call “semi-peripheral neoliberalism,” a peripheralizing force upon the semi-periphery necessary in order to rejuvenate core economies.

Conceptualizing Government-Organized Non-Governmental Organizations Across Contexts

The role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in local and global governance has continued to grow, expanding across political, economic, and socio-cultural contexts. Nowhere has this growth been more notable than in authoritarian nation-states. Since the presence of NGOs have long been seen as a marker of civil society and antecedent to democracy, the growth of these organizations in authoritarian polities can be surprising. At a more basic level, this growth suggests a change in the nature of state-society relations, and has brought about renewed attention to the paradoxical government-organized, non-governmental organization (GONGO). Although these organizations have proved to be an academic curiosity, they have heretofore not been properly conceptualized. In this article we construct a working framework to identify and analyze the contemporary behaviour of GONGOs. In this pursuit we discuss how GONGOs’ activities fit within mainstream civil society theories and traditions, and suggest the emergence of what we call a ‘Xi-st’ tradition, rivaling the religious, Duntatist and Wilsonian NGO traditions. Furthermore, we contrast GONGOs and NGOs in terms of their sources of power, main functions and strategies for execution, and dilemmas. Finally, we theorize the effects, and implications the growth of GONGOs have on state and society relations globally.

The Interplay between the G20 and the World Trade Organization

The G20 brings together leaders of the twenty systemically most important economies to discuss global issues in an informal setting. As a network it does not have the formal decision-making procedures and rules of procedure that characterize traditional international organizations, and its output takes shape in the form of communiques and declarations, generating interesting forms of ‘informal lawmaking’. Moreover, the G20 interacts in a number of ways with other, more formal international organizations, like the WTO, whose Director-General is typically present at all G20 summits. A prominent example of cooperation between international organizations upon request of the G20 are the semi-annual trade reports that are compiled by the WTO, OECD and UNCTAD, and which monitor the compliance of G20 members with their commitments to resist protectionism. But the G20 dynamics also are said to have a complementary effect upon the WTO, in the sense that they are expected to generate political support for the decision-making process in the latter, pressurizing it to accelerate its initiatives, including the Doha Development Agenda. Moreover, it has been observed that the G20’s activities have a ‘rebalancing effect’ on global governance and international organizations, in that they bring emerging economies into agenda-setting and coordination discussions serve as a possible catalyst for reform of formal international organizations like the WTO. Last but not least, a ‘replacement’ effect has been voiced to some extent. This contribution takes stock of these interactions and critically assesses them.

The Strategic Manipulation of Transnational Temporalities

While it is now widely recognized that globalization is socially constructed, time is often still seen as a natural unalterable force. Drawing on the literature on the social construction of time, we explore the role of human agency in the interaction of time and globalization by developing the concept of temporal systems. These systems are assemblages that bring together temporal artefacts such as clocks and schedules, the temporalities of the natural world and the body, and social practices involving agency, power, and organization. We then explore, through four illustrative examples, how such systems interact with and constitute globalization. These examples are: the initial emergence and contemporary operation of world standard time; the manipulation of the future and speed in global financial markets; the rise of informal international organizations in global governance; and the role of temporality in the strategic behaviour of multinational corporations.

Does stakeholder involvement foster democratic legitimacy in international organizations? An empirical assessment of a normative theory

The involvement of non-state organizations in global governance is widely seen as an important step toward global democracy. Proponents of “stakeholder democracy” argue that stakeholder organizations, such as civil society groups and other non-state actors, may represent people significantly affected by global decisions better than elected governments. In this article we identify a particularly promising sociological variant of this argument, test it against new evidence from a large-scale survey among stakeholder organizations with varying levels of involvement in international organizations (IOs), and find that the suggested stakeholder mechanism for producing democratic legitimacy in global governance does not work. Stakeholder involvement is unproductive for democratic legitimacy in IOs as perceived by stakeholders themselves. We suggest alternative explanations of this finding and argue that empirical analysis is useful for adjudicating normative arguments on the viability of stakeholder democracy in global governance.