Liberal Global Governance Research Articles

G20 Governance for an Inclusive Liberal Order

The Group of Twenty (G20) was created first at the ministerial level and later upgraded to the summit level as a response to the global financial crises that first erupted from Asia in 1997, and then from the US in 2008 and Europe in 2010. These crises called into question the core principles and practices of the liberal order based on the economic, social and political openness that had been progressively internationally institutionalized since 1944. The G20 was designed with a dual distinctive foundational mission to promote financial stability and to make globalization work for all. It combined all established and emerging economies with high capability and connectivity, to operate as equals, to protect all within their borders and those beyond. It increasingly did so since its first summit in 2008. Its performance spiked at the summit in Hangzhou, China, on 3–4 September, 2016, and again at Hamburg, Germany, on 7–8 July, 2017. The latter coped with the new populist, protectionist US president and UK prime minister, whose countries had hosted the first three summits. G20-supported initiatives and agreements for full free trade have advanced since the first summit in 2008. No other center of global summit governance has emerged to guide an increasingly globalized world. The G20 has also steadily become an effective governor of global security. As the forces that propelled this rise will intensify, the Argentinian-hosted G20 summit on 30 November–1 December, 2018, promises to proceed along this path. It is guided by a country again afflicted by a financial crisis but now dedicated to following the core liberal order and making it work better for all. The real test will arrive in 2019, when Japan as host must co-operate with Korea and China, its neighbouring Asian powers and previous G20 hosts, to provide a new center of inclusive, progressive, liberal global governance that the world badly needs.

Transnational Clientelism, Global (Resource) Governance, and the Disciplining of Dissent

Schemes for more responsible global governance have often come with new ways of thwarting meaningful voice, participation and dissent of those they are claimed to be beneficial for. This article argues that these processes extend beyond the more often criticized disciplinary effects of civil society promotion and community participation, which, despite a rhetoric of empowerment and emancipation, also contribute to containing protest within narrow confines of technocratic management. Using the case of transnational resource governance and examples from multinational mining companies in Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South Africa, the article demonstrates that alongside the ‘air-conditioned’ politics of participatory development and corporate social responsibility operate the ‘veranda’ politics of transnational governance: practices of stabilizing order and containing dissent through transnational clientelist practices. These do not operate despite or outside liberal global governance but are an inherent part of it. The article contributes to understanding the manifold ways in which dissent is disciplined in global governance, pushing critical engagement with indirect technologies of government further and beyond the liberal self-image.

China and liberal hierarchies in global international society: power and negotiation for normative change

This article investigates the entanglement of the rising Chinese power with the liberal global order in negotiating for normative change. Drawing upon the English School theoretical perspective, it argues that three hierarchical constructs of liberal persuasion co-exist in and cohabit the global international society today. They are, namely, the legalized hegemony as seen in the UN Charter-based liberal pluralism; the changing normative order of emerging solidarist and anti-pluralist formation that purposively creates unequal sovereigns; and the liberal global governance order that moves predominantly in the direction of state-centric solidarism. As an emerging power with an authoritarian regime, China's entanglement with these liberal hierarchical constructs is multifaceted with complex dynamics. The article argues specifically that three differentiated strategic approaches have been developed by China in this entanglement: to defend liberal pluralism in the legalized hegemony; to contest liberal cosmopolitan anti-pluralism in the changing normative order; and to endorse state-centric solidarism with regard to the construction of a liberal global governance order. If they reflect a rising China's preferences of order construction, they also constitute an important part of China's engaging negotiations for normative change in international society. The agency China exercises in this regard helps explain the limited consensus among Great Powers as to the ‘central direction’ for the evolving global order. The preferences of China as the second among equals in the Great Power club matter greatly in understanding the contention between pluralism and solidarism in the changing raison de systeme of contemporary global international society.

Liberalism(s) and the Critical Securitization of Development Debate

The securitization of development theme has developed substantially since the late 1990s within the critical global governance literature. To varying degrees, contributors to this debate argue that a liberal global governance complex links the discourses of security and development in what is described as the ‘security–development nexus’, such that the South is conceived as an international security threat. Whilst the security–development nexus itself has been thoroughly explored, the use of the central concept of liberalism has not. This paper addresses this issue through demarcating and critiquing the three readings of liberalism relevant to the securitization of development debate. Identifying and elucidating the three distinct strands of liberalism enable this paper to identify several weaknesses within the debate and propose a number of amendments. This includes proposing that the liberal discourse of global governance reflects complexity rather than consensus and that the centrality of ‘liberalism’ is at the expense of a robust investigation into how the structural power of global capitalism underpins the security–development nexus.

Rising powers, global capitalism and liberal global governance: A historical materialist account of the BRICs challenge

This article analyses the phenomenon of rising powers from a historical materialist perspective. It (1) elaborates the key concepts of historical structures of world order, state–society complexes and transnational class formation, and (2) applies them to Brazil, Russia, India, China and other so-called ‘rising powers’ to account for the nature and extent of the challenge they pose to the existing institutions of global governance. A double argument is advanced: first, the integration of rising powers into the historical structure of global capitalism has reduced traditional sources of great power conflict, and made rising powers heavily dependent on the existing institutional framework established by the liberal West. This facilitates their integration into the existing governance order. However, within the limits of the existing order, two factors lend a heartland–contender cleavage to the politics of global governance: the rising powers’ relatively more statist, less market-driven forms of state, and their subsequent failure to be integrated into emergent transnational capitalist class structures. Consequently, it is not the global governance order itself, but its most liberal features, that are contested by rising powers. The result is that, in contrast to realist pessimism and liberal optimism, the rise of new powers is leading to a hybrid governance order that is both transnationally integrated and less liberal.

"Global Civil Society" and the Political Depoliticization of Global Governance

Activists, officials, and academics alike have often linked observations about an emerging global civil society to an incipient democratization of world politics. Global civil society is assumed to bring public scrutiny and “bottom-up” politics to international decision making “from outside” formal political institutions. Based on an analysis of uses of the concept of global civil society in 1990s global governance discourse (especially related to the major UN world conferences), this paper argues that the presumed democratization of world politics is better understood in terms of a double movement: on the one hand, “global civil society” depoliticizes global governance through the promotion of “human security” and “social development”; on the other hand, the emerging international public sphere (in the UN context) operates as a subsystem of world politics rather than opposing the system from outside. Practices of depoliticization are thus part of the political logic of (neo-)liberal global governance. The argument draws on Luhmann’s systems theory and Foucault’s analysis of governmentality.