Global Governance Regime Research Articles

Rising Powers in Complex Regimes: South African Norm Shopping in the Governance of Cross-Border Investment

ABSTRACT This article offers a critical engagement with the literature on contemporary global power shifts and the phenomenon of ‘regime complexity’. It does so by focusing on South Africa's role in the governance of cross-border investment, and using this case to explore the strategies used by rising powers to pursue their strategic aims in institutionally complex and fragmented global governance regimes. This article situates an understanding of regime complexity within a critical constructivist literature that highlights the ambiguity of international norms and the relationship between power and strategic rhetorical action. It argues that complex regimes create space for agency and strategic action by states and highlights one specific strategy – norm shopping – that rising powers can use to legitimate their actions and challenge dominant norms in complex regimes.

Migration, structural injustice and domination on ‘race’, mobility and transnational positional difference

ABSTRACT This article addresses current norms of the ‘dispersed’ regime of global migration governance centred on state control of borders as pivotal to the reproduction of structural injustice in the form of racialized patterns of transnational positional difference. It focuses on the implications of this structural injustice for global inequality and, more specifically, for fair access to migration opportunities. Drawing on Rawls’ discussion of background justice and Young's work on structural injustice, it argues that addressing this structural injustice requires constructing a regime of global migration governance that regulates state migration policies and proceeds to outline, within the terms of non-ideal theory, the basic norms of such a regime and to indicate some practical steps that could be taken toward such a regime.

The discourses of climate change science: Scientific reporting, climate negotiations and the case of Papua New Guinea

This paper analyses climate science as a discourse to reveal how it enables and constrains climate change negotiations and action. Focusing on long-term outcomes projected in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report and the World Bank's “Turn Down the Heat” reports, this paper examines processes of discourse structuration and institutionalization to identify the dominant discourses which frame climate action. We trace the dominant discourses identified in the scientific reports – Survivalism, Ecological Modernisation and Economic Rationalism – through the Paris Agreement and selected Leader Statements and Intended Nationally Determined Contributions from COP21. From the 24 states included in this analysis, Papua New Guinea (PNG) is developed as a case study to investigate the hybridity and institutionalization of discourses. Even though PNG's rhetoric and commitments at COP21 express Survivalism, the state's policy frameworks rarely move beyond solutions found in Economic Rationalism and Ecological Modernisation. This suggests that states strategically adopt hybrid discourses drawn from climate science in line with their positionality, political economy and interests. Understanding how discourses drawn from climate science manifest in national policies has significant implications not only for how science is communicated at the international level but also for understanding different state positions in the global climate governance regime.

Balancing Effectiveness and Control in Global Intergovernmental Organizations

In quantitatively exploring the governance structure of Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs)–key components of the global governance regime–we find both an effectiveness and a controlling rationa...

PISA: multiple ‘truths’ and mediatised global governance

ABSTRACTThe OECD’s PISA programme has been portrayed as central to the emergence of a regime of global educational governance and the subsequent convergence of policies towards a standardised model. Whilst there is an extensive literature describing PISA’s impact on education policies, there is a paucity of analysis of how PISA data is presented to the public within nations by three main actors which interpret the results; namely the OECD itself, politicians, and the media. This study analyses how England’s 2012 PISA results were interpreted by those actors, focusing particularly on the role of the media. We demonstrate that the OECD’s original messages were significantly distorted by the UK Government and show how the media, driven by its own logic, framed the results in terms of a narrative of decline, crisis and the need for urgent reform, while, significantly, giving little coverage to either the recommended policy actions or the contrasting interpretations of the PISA results by politicians and the OECD. We argue that a form of ‘mediatised governance’ shaped and limited the overall frame within which the results were debated and had a powerful influence on how local politicians represented the PISA results and advocated their own policy actions.

Should We Give Up on Global Governance?

Two decades after the high point of global governance in the mid-1990s, hopes that globalisation would be buttressed by a system of global rules and a network of specialised global institutions have been dashed by a series of setbacks. This retreat from multilateralism can be attributed in part to political developments in individual countries. But such factors hide a series specific roadblocks to global governance: the growing number and diversity of countries involved; the mounting rivalry between the US and China; doubts about globalisation and the distribution of the associated benefits; the obsolescence of global rules and institutions; imbalances within the global governance regime; and increased complexity. Demand for global governance has not diminished, but support for binding multilateral arrangements has. Thus, the narrow path ahead is to establish a sufficient, critical multilateral base for flexible arrangements and to equip policymakers with a precise toolkit for determining, on a field-by-field basis, the minimum requirements for effective collective action.

Global financial governance and the informal: limits to the regulation of money

The list of predicate crimes for the Recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has evolved and grown over its twenty-five year existence. The evolution of this list reflects shifting concerns among the central actors in the organisation, as well as representing a response to any ‘displacement’ activity undertaken by those seeking to avoid these forms of governance. When the scope for cooperation and compliance with the FATF Forty Recommendations was extended beyond the organisation’s membership this governance regime encountered business sectors and financial practices not readily amenable to its objectives. This paper considers the causes and consequences for the situation, as developing economy states attempt to comply with the global governance expectations of the FATF when a significant portion of the domestic economy operates ‘informally’. A frame of reference is provided, with a definition for the informal economy and the concept of displacement as used in research on criminal activity. The focus here is with the nature of the cash economy operating beyond the scope of financial surveillance with implications for the comprehensive effectiveness of the global financial governance regime. The context of informal financial practice and its separation from the regulatory structures of the state leads to a conclusion that global financial governance is limited in practice to the domain of the formal economy.

: <br>Kadi in Jerusalem: Democracy in the Age of Global Governance The Case of Terror Finance in Israel

The Israeli legal system, as other constitutional regimes across the world, has been subject to a growing influence of international organizations and global governance regimes. Comparative research on other legal systems raised concerns over the undermining potential of these processes on the protection of basic rights, due process. This article explores whether and how these processes influenced Israeli regulation through the vantage point of the case study of terror finance. The case study exposes how the various regulatory initiatives and reforms that were implemented in Israeli in recent years were informed, influenced and a product of significant pressures by various global regulatory frameworks in the context of terror finance. Since the Kadi case also stands for the potential of judicial review and civil society opposition the case further examines how the Kadi litigation informed and enhanced civil society opposition in the context of terror finance.

Cyberweapons: power and the governance of the invisible

This article explores the non-emergence of a global governance regime for cyberweapons. Cyberweapons are malicious software entities deployed to cause harm to adversaries’ computer networks and systems. They threaten the integrity and functionality of digital systems that enable global circuits of communication and exchange, with significant potential impacts on social, economic and political order. Using a power-analytical approach, this article identifies four areas in which power works to constrain regime formation: the productive power of NATO’s Tallinn Manual Process; the structural power of US involvement in cyberweapons markets; the institutional power of Internet technologies; and diplomatic claims to sovereignty that mask operations of compulsory power. These work together to prevent a unified global approach to the regulation of cyberweapons. The article concludes that there are substantial obstacles to effective cyberweapons governance but that these should not prevent ongoing efforts to tackle this important and ubiquitous security issue.

The withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement and its impact on global climate change governance

The global community has prepared for the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement since Donald Trump was elected as the president of the U.S. However, Trump's formal declaration of withdrawal still caused worldwide reaction. Trump will use the withdrawal to build his political reputation and to renegotiate the Paris Agreement despite its negative effects on the political credibility, international relationships, and potential long-term economic growth of the U.S. In general, the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement will not change the development of low-carbon technologies and the transformation trend of the global climate governance regime. However, the long-term goals and international cooperation on climate change will be affected by budget cuts in American climate change research and the cancelation of donations from the multilateral environmental fund of the U.S. If the Paris Agreement is renegotiated, the common but differentiated principle of responsibility of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will be challenged again. Nevertheless, climate change governance remains a main theme of future sustainable development. Instead of national governments, local governments and non-governmental organizations will develop strategies for technical innovation and emphasize pragmatic cooperation, thus expanding their roles in climate change governance. The capacity building on climate change research and public awareness should be enhanced as a long-term objective of global climate change governance.

The New (Fragmented) Geography of Carbon Market Mechanisms: Governance Challenges from Thailand and Vietnam

Countries in the Global South—which are contributing an increasing share of global greenhouse gas emissions—are actively developing carbon market mechanisms, including emissions trading systems and (voluntary) offset mechanisms. This article analyzes past and emerging experiments with carbon market mechanisms in Thailand and Vietnam, in the context of their domestic political economies and the shifting dynamics of the global climate governance regime. Drawing from thirty-three in-depth interviews and document analysis, I show the changing roles of government, the private sector, civil society, and donor and multilateral actors in these countries. Moreover, the article identifies key factors that may play roles in the further—and more synergistic—development of carbon market mechanisms: the generation of domestic demand for carbon credits; building and keeping human capacity and adequate data; creating space for civil society; ensuring coordination within the government and between sectors, notably the energy sector; and establishing further linkages with regional (Asian) and global carbon market mechanisms, such as those in China, Japan, and South Korea. These findings suggest that market-based mechanisms with high social and environmental integrity are one of the options that countries in the Global South have to achieve low-carbon development in the post-Paris climate change regime.

Iran and the global politics of internet governance

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the internet governance agenda pursued by the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) since 2003. Surveying the official documents of five major global events on internet governance, the article illustrates that the IRI agenda has been preoccupied with three major issues: first, the digital divide and the significant potential of the internet for economic development; second, the dominant role of developed countries in the management of critical internet resources; and third, the role of non-state actors in internet governance. The latter issue constitutes the main area of contention between different Iranian presidents. The IRI’s state-centric agenda for internet governance under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005–2013) sought to limit the role of non-state actors in order to enhance the hegemony of the state vis-à-vis Iranian society. During the presidencies of Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani (1997–2005 and 2013-present, respectively), however, the IRI agenda has acknowledged the role of non-state actors and been more open to the multi-stakeholder framework of internet governance. The article concludes that the overemphasis on these three issues has led the IRI to ignore the complexity of the emerging regime of global internet governance and, consequently, to overlook prevalent issues such as transnational cybercrime.

A Polycentric Approach to Global Climate Governance

As international climate negotiations under the UNFCCC have adopted the goal to limit the increase in global mean temperature to well below 2° C, a highly differentiated—but largely uncoordinated—global climate governance system has emerged. Although coordinated global collective action for mitigating climate change sufficiently to meet the 2°-C goal is still lacking, a multitude of multilateral, minilateral, transnational, national, subnational, and nonstate actors have emerged. This article offers a critical specification of the attempt by Elinor Ostrom and those influenced by her in the literature to conceptualize this climate governance reality as a polycentric approach. We claim that the concept of polycentricity offers high descriptive value for understanding the horizontal and vertical differentiations of current climate governance, and present systematic analysis of a polycentric approach to deliberately enhance the design of the emerging global climate governance architecture. To systematize the Ostromean literature on polycentric climate governance, we identify and specify four key features for climate mitigation governance and their related mechanisms: an emphasis on self-organization, a recognition of site-specific conditions, the facilitation of experimentation and learning, and the building of trust. After discussing objections to a polycentric approach, we conclude by tentatively evaluating its potential to enhance the effectiveness of climate mitigation, and identify central tasks for the efficient design of a polycentric global climate governance regime.

By accident or by design? Pushing global governance of nuclear safety

Nuclear safety governance should move towards a more robust regime including elements of international monitoring and verification. This is needed because nuclear energy production is likely to grow and new reactors will have different global dispersal, veering towards less experienced countries. In addition, there is growing interest in international and multilateral collaboration on disposal of mounting nuclear waste. Unlike existing improvements that came in response to nuclear disasters (by accident), it makes sense to implement all these elements at once (by design). While a comprehensive global governance regime must include elements of verification and enforcement, more transparent international oversight would also improve global nuclear safety through public pressure. The monitoring and enforcement of such a globally organized regime could be introduced at regional or otherwise supranational level. In this paper, we argue that a robust global nuclear safety regime is not only necessary but also feasible provided it manages to address the following potential hurdles: i) the tensions in international security politics, ii) the stickiness of national sovereignty and iii) industry resistance to additional restrictions and to issues of proprietary commercial information. These objections will be elaborately reviewed in the paper.

Global Governance of the Embedded Internet: The Urgency and the Policy Response

This paper addresses the need to bring the Internet of Things and associated technologies under a global policy regime, built on the newly independent ICANN, acting in an expanded capacity as a recognized non-territorial, multi-stakeholder-based, sovereign entity under agreed and transparent normative standards. The phrase “Internet governance” is highly contested over its technical, security, and sociopolitical aspects. Until recently, however, it had not been imagined to include networked devices with embedded intelligence, such as smart cars, smart watches, smart refrigerators, and a myriad of other devices. A rapidly emerging issue is how, if at all, the current global Internet governance regime relates to the emerging array of ubiquitous embedded information technologies which collect, store, process, learn from, and exploit information about all aspects of our lives. Does this call for a policy response? This is a non-trivial issue, as it binds together the Internet of Things, big data analytics, cloud computing, and machine learning/artificial intelligence into a single, integrated system. Each component raises policy issues, but the bigger challenge may be unintended adverse consequences arising from their synchronous operation. Because of the inherently global nature of the underlying network, which seeks to connect “everything to everything else,” it is important to give consideration to whether these developments should have a central point of global policy development, coordination, and oversight. This paper answers that question in the affirmative and, after reviewing multiple candidates which have been proposed, concludes that the emerging post-U.S. ICANN is most fit for that role. The authors believe it is important to keep the centers of technical and policy expertise together and efficiently available. The authors recognize that such governance is not a “singular system,” and that some issues, such as cybersecurity, may find other homes, perhaps even treaty-based. The paper further argues that “new” ICANN, largely formally severed from the U.S., and with a revised and expanded role for governments in its management, has a very strong claim for legitimacy and non-territorial sovereignty. On that basis, it may feel more secure in expanding the scope of its mandate – indeed, there will likely be considerable pressure to do so. Another critical factor is the uncertainty about the normative values that underpin, or in some cases undermine, global Internet governance. These values will continue to be contested, but there is already some broad acquiescence to general principles from the United Nations, which can form the basis for a transparent discussion in a multi-stakeholder venue about which norms and values are most appropriate to guide policy actions. Some of these policy alternatives are presented and discussed. This topic, and the approach to it, are novel in the respect that very little work has been done in this area. The paper builds on, and considerably extends, that work.

Power and Responsibility at the Margins: The Case of India in the Global Refugee Regime

Based on a study of the Indian experience of refugee protection, the article poses the issue of responsibility as a critical counterpoint to the question of power. Power may produce influence and power may be an element of influence. But how do we relate power to responsibility? Given the dominant discourse of “responsibility to protect” as part of the global governance regime, the article asks if there is a different way to conceptualize responsibility in the post-colonial context. Here the article seeks to make a second intervention. Responsibility takes us to the perspective of the margins.

The Future of Education for All as a Global Regime of Educational Governance

The article considers the future of Education for All (EFA) understood as a global regime of educational governance. The article sets out an understanding of global governance, world order, power, and legitimacy within which EFA is embedded. It explains what is meant by EFA as a regime of global governance and as part of a “regime complex” along with other regimes that affect education and development. The article traces the genealogy of EFA, focusing on key tensions and contradictions. The emphasis is on understanding the effects of different kinds of power linked to broader global interests within a changing world order. The article concludes by considering the future of EFA. It is suggested that EFA since the Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action is giving way to a new global regime of educational governance in which education and in particular learning is linked to sustainable development, albeit in contradictory ways.

Ebola respons-ibility: moving from shared to multiple responsibilities

Combating threats of infectious diseases has been increasingly framed as a global shared responsibility for a multi-actor framework of states, international organisations and nongovernmental actors. However, the outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) has shown that this governance framework has not been able to limit the spread of this virus, despite the normative and legislative changes to global disease control. By unbundling the concept of responsibility, this article will assess how global shared responsibility may have failed because accountability does not fall on any one state or stakeholder, highlighting an inherent weakness in the global disease governance regime. The paper concludes that a move towards multiple responsibilities may prove a more effective mechanism for ensuring global health security.

The cloud, online piracy and global copyright governance

Piracy is taking on an entirely new character in the age of media in the cloud. Global technology and business models are evolving rapidly, while regulators and lawmakers are catching up in attempts to work out a new set of rules of engagement. In this article, I explore the divergent developments between a retrograde global copyright governance regime and cloud-based media distribution that focuses on connectivity and access. I also examine attempts at business model innovation that seek to effectively embrace and control the continually evolving user–content–platform interaction in the cloud. This article will contribute to our understanding of this rapidly changing ecosystem and the dynamics between technology, law and market.

Arguing Global Environmental Constitutionalism

The current global environmental law and governance regime has been designed primarily to attend to the worsening ecological crisis. Evidence, however, suggests that the regime is far from achieving its goal and it is failing in its efforts to solve what people perceive to be pervasive global environmental problems. There is little doubt that this regime is in need of urgent reforms and/or re-situation in a decidedly different paradigm. This article proposes that global constitutionalism, while no panacea, could contribute to these paradigm-shifting reforms by providing a new perspective through which to view the current deficient global environmental law and governance regime and, in real terms, ameliorating some of the deficiencies of the regime through a normative process of constitutionalization.