Global Governance Structures Research Articles

Global world: a problem of governance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to include the following items: to show the absolute necessity of managing the international community, to explore the fundamental possibility of managing the global world, to prove or disprove such a possibility, to determine the real background of global governance in modern conditions and to show the methods of transition toward global governance. Design/methodology/approach – The main methodological principles used in writing the paper are: the principle of the integrity of the world; the understanding of globalization as an objective historical process; the principle of historical sequence of the considered event; the principle of priority of the general over the particular, as well as of the global over the regional and the local. Findings – As a result of the proposed research, it is shown that the global world needs to be managed. Prerequisites for the management of the global world are identified, among which the most important are morality and rights. It is shown that for management of the global world there should not only be global government, but also other branches of government, such as a World Parliament and a judicial system based on global law. Research limitations/implications – A clear distinction between the management and regulation of social relations is made. The need to further explore the concepts of international law and global right is stated. Practical implications – National sovereignty increasingly must give place to global governance structures. Social implications – The need to build a global civil society is evident. Originality/value – The absolute necessity and possibility of regulating the world community are shown. New approaches to solving this problem are proposed. They are based on existing assumptions in the field of executive and legislative power and also involve the creation of new structures, primarily in the area of the judiciary.

A grande estratégia dos Estados Unidos para o Tribunal Penal Internacional no pós-Guerra Fria.

This article analyses the policy of the United States of America of opposition to the International Criminal Court, in particular during the administration of George W. Bush. The creation of the International Criminal Court has been cited by scholars and activists as an achievement in combating impunity of the main perpetrators of crimes against human rights. The Organization was negotiated during the Clinton government and its treaty entered into force in 2002. The United States during Bush government conducted a calculated campaign to undermine the Court . Thus, the article analyzes the U.S. opposition to the International Criminal Court entered into a wider debate that takes into account different views regarding the new role of the United States in the international system reconfiguration in the post-cold war period. Since then, this article demonstrates that to understand the possibilities of strengthening or breakdown of global governance structures as the International Criminal Court is necessary to consider the variation of North American foreign policy in key fields such as security and human rights.

The System Worked: Global Economic Governance during the Great Recession

Prior to 2008, numerous international relations scholars had predicted a looming crisis in global economic governance. Policy analysts have only reinforced this perception since the financial crisis, declaring that we live in a “G-Zero” world. This article takes a closer look at the global response to the financial crisis and reveals a more optimistic picture. Despite initial shocks that were more severe than the 1929 financial crisis, global economic governance structures responded quickly and robustly. Whether one measures results by outcomes, outputs, or process, formal and informal governance structures displayed surprising resiliency. Multilateral economic institutions performed well in crisis situations to reinforce open economic policies, especially in contrast to the 1930s. While there are areas where governance has either faltered or failed, on the whole, the system has worked. Misperceptions about global economic governance persist because the Great Recession has disproportionately affected the core economies; analysts have conflated national with global governance; and the efficacy of past periods of global economic governance has been badly overestimated. Why the system has worked better than expected remains an open question, but we can tentatively conclude that both the power of the United States and the resilience of neoliberal economic ideas were underestimated.

Climate change, social policy, and global governance

This paper considers the challenge to global social policy posed by global climate change. It sets side by side global social policies and global climate change policies, and surveys the governance of each. The first part summarises global social policy in recent years, distinguishing (1) the policies and practices pursued in the global arena, and (2) the structures of global governance and the role of significant global actors. The second part repeats this at a greater length for global climate change. The third part then considers the relationship between these two sets of policies/practices and governance structures, in particular the potential conflicts between the pursuit of social justice and environmental sustainability. It identifies two possible responses – compensation and co-benefits – and maps these onto current global actors, before concluding with a radical vision of eco-social policy.

Emerging Challenges to Global Governance in 21st Century

Global governance—the collective management of common problems at the international level—is at a critical juncture. Although global governance has been a relative success since its development after the Second World War, the growing number of issues on the international agenda, and their complexity, is outpacing the ability of international organizations and national governments to cope. Power shifts are also complicating global governance. If global governance structures and processes do not keep up with the changes in the balance of power in the international system, they run the risk of becoming irrelevant. Emerging powers are suspicious of current institutional arrangements, which appear to favor established powers. Without adequate frameworks to bring order to an international system in flux, disorder could prevail, fueling greater instability. The mix of old and new challenges generates new requirements for collective problem-solving: more international cooperation and innovative approaches.The United States’ National Intelligence Council (NIC) and the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) have recently projected the long-term prospects for global governance by the mid-21st century. Two important documents have emerged out of this exercise. One is Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The other is The New Global Puzzle. What World for the EU in 2025? DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n8p622

Losing grasp over the global financial system: the retreat of the North vs. the advance of the South

During the past decade the world has witnessed an unprecedented rise of emerging powers across the developing world. This development, accelerated by the recent global financial crisis, has led to a gradual increase of emerging powers involvement in international governance structures. Unlike the past, when the economic rise of new players such as Japan and the European Union (EU) somewhat challenged the American economic supremacy but did not alter much in the global landscape, the new wave of challengers seem to have the capabilities not only to change the balance within global governance structures but can also potentially shift the very structures themselves. To this end, emerging powers seem to increase their pressure over reform processes through their coordination as well as the institutionalization of alternatives to existing global and regional governance structures that fit more to their understanding of the world.

Great-power politics, order transition, and climate governance: insights from international relations theory

The complex politics of climate change cannot be properly understood without reference to deeper geopolitical trends in the wider international system. Chief among these is the growing resurgence of ‘great-power politics’ between China and the US, along with failures of socialization and enmeshment into global governance structures in relation to these two powers. Traditional theoretical frameworks have failed to adequately account for these developments. Nonetheless, this current great-power contestation is at the core of an order transition that has prevented the large-scale institutional redesign required to remove deadlocks in existing global governance structures, including climate governance. Examples from the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference provide ample evidence for these claims. The slow progress of the climate change negotiations are due not just to the politics of the issue itself, but to the absence of a new political bargain on material power structures, normative beliefs, and the management of the order amongst the great powers. Without such a grand political bargain, which could be promoted through a forum of major economies whose wide-ranging remit would go beyond single issues, the climate change regime is only ever likely to progress in a piecemeal fashion. Policy relevance Despite the achievements of the 2012 Doha Climate Change Conference, the climate negotiations are not on course to limit warming to 2 °C, and thereby avoid ‘dangerous’ climate change. Several factors have been invoked to account for such slow progress: notably, the nature of the climate change problem itself, the institutional structure of the climate regime, and lack of political will among key players. An alternative explanation is proposed such that the failure to seriously address climate change – as well as other global problems – reflects a resurgent meta-struggle between the ‘great powers’ of China and the US over the nature of the global order. Without such a broader understanding of the deeper dynamics underlying the stalemates of the climate change negotiations, there is little chance of turning those negotiations around.

Thinking about the Future of Global Water Governance

Global water problems are likely to increase in severity, rendering existing governance approaches unable to cope with the resulting problems. We inquire into the relationship between global water governance structures, particularly those involving the United Nations, and look at how those structures are likely to respond to and shape projected water futures. Building on story lines of possible water futures taken from existing scenarios, we discuss the functions to be performed by global water governance. We aim to open a discussion about four global water governance options and to introduce the constraints and possibilities for each option. We argue that the nature of the water problem calls for structural changes. However unfeasible these may appear today, such transitions do occur, and, if the narrative is sufficiently sound, it can be used by social movements and networks to mobilize policy entrepreneurs and directional leaders to work for such changes.

Evidence-based medicine and the governance of pandemic influenza

The conventional response of governments to protect their populations against the threat of influenza has been to ensure adequate vaccine production and/or access to supplies of vaccines and antiviral medications. This focus has, in turn, shaped the global governance structures around pandemic influenza, with collective efforts centred on facilitating virus sharing, maintaining and increasing vaccine production, and ensuring access to pharmaceuticals – responses that remain unattainable for many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in the short to medium term. This paper argues that this emphasis on pharmacological responses reflects a particular view of biomedicine that pays inadequate attention to the weak capacity of many health systems. In more recent years, this dynamic has been further exacerbated by the influence of evidence-based medicine (EBM) that preferences certain types of biomedical knowledge and practice. This paper explores the role that EBM has played in shaping the global governance of pandemic influenza, and how it has served to reinforce and reify the authority of particular groups of actors, including policy-makers, elected officials and the medical community. The paper concludes that only by unpacking these structures and revealing the political authority in play can alternative policy responses more appropriate to LMICs be considered.

The UN Arms Trade Treaty: arms export controls, the human security agenda and the lessons of history

The UN conference to negotiate an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) concluded on 27 July 2012 without reaching consensus on the text of a draft treaty and saw both the US and Russia calling for more time to negotiate. The ATT process marks the latest in a series of attempts to insert human security concerns into arms export controls. The setback in July raises questions about the current level of international support for the human security agenda, as well as the relative power of different actors to shape global governance structures. This article locates the ATT negotiations in the broader history of multilateral efforts to regulate the international arms trade, from the 1890 Brussels Act to post-Cold War initiatives. The historical record shows that such efforts are more likely to succeed if they are negotiated or imposed by major arms exporters. The introduction of human security concerns, as well as the merging of export control and arms control agendas, went some way towards reversing this trend. In particular, it created a broad international coalition of supportive states and NGOs from the global North and South. Yet disagreements over the purpose of an ATT remained. The draft ATT included human security provisions, but China, Russia, the US and a number of emerging powers ensured that state security considerations remained paramount in decision-making on arms exports. The US was the first major actor to announce its unwillingness to sign the draft ATT in July 2012 and two alternative interpretations of US actions are considered. The article concludes by considering the options available to supporters of the ATT process following the 2012 conference and examines the notion that the ATT campaign has become an initiative ‘out of its time’, one that might have had success in the 1990s but not in current circumstances.

Network Institutionalism and NGO Studies

Understanding the institutional identity (as opposed to the organizational one) of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) within structures of global governance is the main theme underpinning this work. Studies documenting the quantitative rise of the NGO sector in world politics have largely neglected the qualitative impact of that development. The institutional identity of NGOs is particularly important when considering the NGOs in light of the new links and relationships they have created with state-centric structures of world politics. To this end, this article offers network institutionalism as a theoretical tool to address that gap and to serve as a bridge between NGO studies and international relations (IR). In an effort to develop an institutional perspective on NGO studies, the article integrates network theories with historical and sociological strands of the new institutionalism. Building on this theoretical discussion, and after introducing the key assumptions of network institutionalism, it offers four broad clusters of research directions for further NGO studies as a way to think about future NGO studies in a more comprehensive manner while also stimulating new research directions that can strengthen the study of NGOs and the study of IR.

Citizenship education and the promise of democracy: A study of UNESCO Associated Schools in Brazil and Canada

With current manifestations of globalization creating local problems, including widening equity gaps, increased environmental destruction and burgeoning poverty, many policymakers, civil society, organizations and educators are seeking models of education that promise social justice and a democratic public sphere that reflects more than democracy of and for elites. This study of UNESCO Associated Schools, located in Brazil and Canada, identified how educators negotiate contradictory global agendas and employ UNESCO ideals of a peaceful world, human rights and democracy, and a healthy environment to create a platform for citizenship education. While there is no package of liberation and transformational education that comes with being a UNESCO Associated School, there is encouraging evidence that educators are working in creative and critical ways to educate toward more engaged citizens who are capable of contributing to a strengthened public sphere. This article compares the Brazilian and Canadian experiences with the UNESCO Associated Schools project, and examines both commonalities and differences. While global neoliberalized governance structures define much of what happens even in local contexts, the schools in this study demonstrated innovative ways in which citizenship education can be a pathway to understanding and resisting destructive global agendas while, simultaneously, maintaining a critical global awareness and citizenship engagement. Recommendations are made for citizenship education that prepares activist citizens to participate in a pubic sphere that challenges normative elitism and opens possibilities for a justice to be the common foundation of public engagement.

Introduction: World state futures

In some contrast to the traditional and ongoing normative discussions about the desirability of a world state, new and more explicitly geo-historical questions about world political integration are being posed, especially (i) whether elements of world statehood are in existence already, (ii) whether a world state is in some sense inevitable, and (iii) whether, and under what conditions, a world state would be sustainable? For instance, the existing and emerging structures of global governance, of a global public sphere and global constitutionalism can be argued to converge to form at least nascent forms of world statehood. Building on and complementing such diagnoses of existing forms of world statehood, the question arises about whether there are possible and likely, or even inevitable, futures in which the emergence of more ‘thick’ forms of a world state, understood as a more tightly and substantially integrated expression of political community, could evolve. This possibility raises further questions about the legitimacy, viability and sustainability of such a state form. After a brief overview of these issues, the Introduction provides a preview of the following contributions of this special issue as well as the distinction between the ‘global’ and the ‘world’ as one possible future research trajectory in the present context.

From Rio to Rio + 20: the changing role of local governments in the context of current global governance

The upcoming Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development has instigated a reflective assessment of the last 20 years and the transformation, if any, of our societies and our economies in the context of a changing planet and increasing environmental concerns. A major component of this assessment relates to global environmental governance, and the suitability of the current governance structures to deal with our environmental challenges. This contribution looks specifically at the role of local governments, the most proximate level of governance to citizens, in the overall context of the current global environmental governance structure. In doing so it will argue, that cities, and their local governments, need to be given full recognition in terms of the role they have in achieving global sustainability, as well as meeting the challenges of climate change and addressing general environmental pressures. The intense concentration of human activity in cities has been the source of many of our environmental problems, yet this same concentration also offers many of the solutions. The contribution will also look at the role of ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, and how the organization has evolved since its inception over 20 years ago. Finally, it will ask “what is the future we want”, and whether current decision-makers fully comprehend the extent to which global environmental governance structures need to be reformed in order to achieve a future desirable for subsequent generations.

Understanding India, globalisation and health care systems: a mapping of research in the social sciences.

National and transnational health care systems are rapidly evolving with current processes of globalisation. What is the contribution of the social sciences to an understanding of this field? A structured scoping exercise was conducted to identify relevant literature using the lens of India – a ‘rising power’ with a rapidly expanding healthcare economy. A five step search and analysis method was employed in order to capture as wide a range of material as possible. Documents published in English that met criteria for a social science contribution were included for review. Via electronic bibliographic databases, websites and hand searches conducted in India, 113 relevant articles, books and reports were identified. These were classified according to topic area, publication date, disciplinary perspective, genre, and theoretical and methodological approaches. Topic areas were identified initially through an inductive approach, then rationalised into seven broad themes. Transnational consumption of health services; the transnational healthcare workforce; the production, consumption and trade in specific health-related commodities, and transnational diffusion of ideas and knowledge have all received attention from social scientists in work related to India. Other themes with smaller volumes of work include new global health governance issues and structures; transnational delivery of health services and the transnational movement of capital. Thirteen disciplines were found represented in our review, with social policy being a clear leader, followed by economics and management studies. Overall this survey of India-related work suggests a young and expanding literature, although hampered by inadequacies in global comparative data, and by difficulties in accessing commercially sensitive information. The field would benefit from further cross-fertilisation between disciplines and greater application of explanatory theory. Literatures around stem cell research and health related commodities provide some excellent examples of illuminating social science. Future research agendas on health systems issues need to include innovative empirical work that captures the dynamics of transnational processes and that links macro-level change to fine-grained observations of social life.

Chapter 9 - The representational power of civil society organizations in global AIDS governance: Advocating for children in global health politics

The ever-increasing influence of civil society organizations (CSOs) in the very formulation of global standards and public policies, rather than only their role as contesters, promoters or implementers of global norms, stands out as one of the most remarkable features of the changing nature of global politics in the early twenty-first century.1 In this chapter, I will discuss one particular facet of the private authority embodied by CSOs in international politics (Cutler et al. 1999; Hall and Biersteker 2002; Knill and Lehmkuhl 2002; Ruggie 2004): representational power. Although new structures of global governance involving private actors (not for profit and for profit) have come under particular scrutiny in terms of their legitimacy and accountability, the critical exploration of representational power is often neglected. Therefore, I focus on the politics of representation and the critical role that CSOs occupy in the representation of the interests and fates of vulnerable and weak population groups. As I will argue, it is particularly population groups whose status as fully fledged citizens is questioned – such as children – that see their interests, needs and rights in many cases being misrepresented in advocacy practices of globally operating CSOs (Hahn and Holzscheiter 2005).

Repositioning the GCC States in the Changing Global Order

This article examines the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states' changing position within a global order itself in a state of flux following the global financial and economic crisis and a regional order facing the participatory pressures of the Arab Spring. It explores the nature of their engagement in reshaping international institutions and assesses the implications for structures of global governance. The paper investigates the internationalisation of the GCC states through deepening interdependencies with a multiplicity of external actors. Emerging ties of mutual interest revolve around more than just hydrocarbons, and the paper examines the role of food security in these new relationships. Finally, the paper assesses the impact of the Arab Spring on regional security and future trends in the Gulf States' policy making at local, regional and international levels.

EU Global Action on Climate Change and Regulatory Penalty Defaults

The European Union (EU) is a self-conscious leader in the ‘fight’ against climate change and an active proponent of an ambitious global climate regime. Nonetheless, to a significant degree its efforts have been in vain. A global agreement to extend or replace the Kyoto Protocol has not been put in place and prospects for an ambitious and comprehensive global climate agreement seem slim. It is against this backdrop of global climate inertia, that the EU has started to change its tack. Fuelled by both environmental and competitiveness concerns, the EU is acting to extend the global reach of its ‘domestic’ climate change law. It is engaging in climate change unilateralism, albeit unilateralism of a particular and interesting kind. The EU’s climate change unilateralism is ‘contingent’ in the sense that the global extension of EU climate change law depends upon there being no adequate international agreement or third country climate action in place. As such the EU should be viewed as a reluctant unilateralist and as deploying contingent unilateralism as a means of incentivising urgently needed climate action elsewhere. The EU is shaping the legal structures of global governance in a multi-polar world by testing the boundaries of permissible unilateral action and by experimenting with a form of action-forcing contingent unilateralism that conceives unilateralism as a necessary policy option but one which, ultimately, is second best.

The Global Administrative Order Through a German Lens: Perception and Influence of Legal Structures of Global Governance in Germany

This article examines to what extent and how German administrative law and organisation have been changed by globalization, as well as the increasing reach and depth of global governance. A first chapter analyzes the legal discourse in Germany and finds that international (more than global) administrative law has become a major topic. It points to three different strands in German scholarship and highlights especially the proposal to conceptualize global governance as an exercise of international public authority. In a second step, the article examines three specific fields of law (environment, health and financial services) and analyzes how national administrative and legal structures have been influenced by globalization. In particular, it inquires what instruments of standard setting and forms of implementation have been used. Finally, the article acknowledges that globalization has had a tremendous effect on German administrative law, and describes seven instrumental and substantive modes of the effect of international rules on the German legal order.

Global governance, economic migration and the difficulties of social activism

There has been a gradual shift towards greater global governance of labour migration, a development paralleled by the mushrooming of migrant and civil society associations concerned to uphold a rights-based approach to migration. Yet the emergent global governance structures offer few opportunities for advocacy by migrant and civil society organizations. This article explores the reasons why social activism by or on behalf of economic migrants remains difficult. The article focuses in particular on the obstacles in the way of access to global institutions and to migrant voice, the complexity and ambiguity of the increasingly multi-sited governance structure and the difficulties of placing rights at its centre, all of which mean that formal mechanisms of global governance with regard to migration remain exclusionary and migrant activism part of the critical resistance to contemporary globalization rather than an insider element of governance.