Global Governance Research Paper

In the context of national government, the authority of public institutions lies ultimately in the government’s monopoly of the legitimate use of force. In the global context, no such authority exists; there is no world governmental body that enjoys a monopoly of the legitimate use of force. Yet commerce among countries and firms expands, information is communicated across national boundaries in an orderly fashion, and expectations about rule implementation are shared through transnational networks. Cooperative action is based on rights and rules that are enforced through a combination of financial and moral incentives as well as through the use of threat or force. How this happens is the domain of global governance.

Global governance is distinguished from international governance. International refers to relations among states. Global encompasses activity at the international, transnational, and regional levels. For some, the term also includes a recognition of the effects of local activity on the global, such as individual auto emissions of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere, and global effects on the local, such as transnational capital flows on the health of subnational economies. For most, global refers to those activities in the public and private sectors that transcend national boundaries.

1. Governance In The Context Of Rapid Globalization

Heightened attention to concepts of global governance at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century comes as a result of increasing consciousness of the interconnectedness of human activity on the planet. Basic discoveries about the interdependence of species and habitat for survival, about the effects of human activity on the biosphere, about the volatility associated with rapid capital flows across national borders, and new inventions that permit people to talk to one another around the globe contribute to a sense of the globalization of human society. It is in this context, and in the growing knowledge of the harm that such global processes may bring about, that the idea of global governance takes on greater importance. The problems of shaping societies so that their activities do not produce irreversible harm to the biosphere and to the sustainability of human species prompt increased attention to the possibilities of improved global governance for the public good.

2. Perspectives On Global Governance

Ordered and patterned interactions on a global scale are the result of international agreements, of harmonization of laws between countries, of transnational cooperation among functional agencies, of self-enforcing contracts between private firms, and of standard operating procedures encoding daily activities of governmental and nongovernmental organizations. Taken altogether, this array of formal legal arrangements, informal codes of conduct, and habitual practices based on shared expectations about legitimate action, constitute global governance.

So, for example, the United Nations is a formal international arrangement based on legal agreements among states and is considered to be part of global governance. It is one of many formal institutions, however. Others would include the World Trade Organization, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organization of American States, as well as other regionally based treaty organizations. In addition, transnational cooperative actions among national law enforcement agencies also are part of global governance. Combating illegal criminal activity, for example, is accomplished through cooperation among agencies in apprehending offenders. In civil law, courts set precedents and decide cases based on case law from other national judicial systems. And in commercial law, private mediation is used by business firms from different countries to settle disputes (Slaughter 1997).

Many of these informal institutional arrangements are supported by networks among individuals and agencies. Cross-national professional relationships provide opportunities to learn from the experience of judges, policy officials, or executives from other countries. The annual World Economic Forum at Davos, primarily for business people, is just one rather visible example of informal forums. Through these and other meetings, professionals and executives begin to develop shared goals and values that can contribute to common standards and rules for conducting business, protecting human rights, conserving the environment, or implementing humanitarian missions.

The development of networks has accelerated with the introduction of high-speed electronic communications technology. Even before the advances in this area, however, increased travel and telephone communication contributed to a worldwide human rights movement, a global environmental movement, an international women’s movement, the development of transnational corporations, and of international professional societies. Such networks have played a distinctive role in helping to establish common standards in a number of fields. In the case of human rights, for example, the diffusion of norms about the rights of prisoners came about through the use of international media to publicize cases of abuse. Such public ‘shaming’ of governments is based on a shared norm about the value of individuals and the need to protect their rights. Some of these values have been codified in formal national and international laws, while others are observed because they enhance the public reputations and legitimacy of governments or of businesses.

In sum, the concept of global governance builds on behavioral understandings of law and society. These perspectives suggest that norms of appropriate behavior emerge from daily interactions and the development of community consensus about what is fair and just, and is then codified in law. Law is a dynamic and changing reflection of shared standards. Implementation and compliance are understood as rather more voluntary than enforced, although the threat of sanctions—either criminal or civil—is recognized as an underlying motivating force for compliant action. The simple example of stop signs illustrates the dual character of rules. Individuals obey stop signs because they may be afraid of getting caught breaking the law; but perhaps more important for some, they obey the stop sign because they wish to avoid being hit by another car. Both the threat of sanctions and an interest in avoiding harm are thought to be at work. In another example—of the private adjudication of transnational business disputes—firms wish to preserve flexibility and avoid undue government interference, which they may view as harmful. So they are willing to comply with the judgement of an agreedupon private mediator rather than insist on taking the issue to a public institution for settlement.

3. Elements Of Global Governance

It is possible to identify fundamental elements that constitute the building blocks of contemporary global governance. The most prominent of these are standards, norms, and states.

3.1 Standards

One means of coordination among private actors is the setting of standards. For example, the standardization of time through the use of Greenwich Mean Time permits coordination of communications, airline schedules, television broadcasting, and a myriad of daily transactions that we now take for granted. Rules of international navigation and airline procedures ensure the safety of air travel across national borders. A standard railroad gauge eases trans border crossings. Product standardization rationalizes the multinational manufacture of automobiles, televisions, refrigerators, and so forth. We begin to see how useful these standards are when we do not have them. The lack of standardization in electrical plug and socket connections across continents is an example of a lack of common standards.

In general, standards are accepted because they are thought to be voluntary and are arrived at through reason, that is, through the exercise of professional expertise, in which fundamentally equal actors reach decisions through rational deliberations that are open to interested parties. In practice, the process of standard setting by bodies such as ISO 9000 is completed by those with expertise in a field (in accounting or engineering, for example), representing users and pledged to serving the public interest. Efficiency in operations is essential to the acceptance of standards. Furthermore, the legitimacy of standards is based on the desirable consequences of the rule, which allows no exceptions or variations. To the extent that efficiency is a value in itself, and to the extent that professions embody and transmit a set of values, standard setting is not entirely value-neutral.

Yet, in comparison with hierarchy, markets, or norm-based communities, standardization is a minimal form of coordination.

3.2 Norms

Norms are internalized rules based on commonly held values. In the international security area, non-use of nuclear weapons is cited as a shared norm, as well as a major achievement. The norm is based in part on a shared revulsion at the devastation to human life and society that is inflicted indiscriminately in a nuclear explosion. The success of the human rights movement is based on publicizing human rights abuses perpetrated by national governments. To the extent that ‘shaming’ governments is a successful strategy it is because a norm is widely shared about the rules for appropriate treatment of individuals by their governments.

Communication of common values through informal and professional networks is critical to the development of shared norms. It is through informal networks, those that include representatives from international institutions, national governments, and nongovernmental voluntary associations, and in some cases from private business, that common understandings and values are established. These commonly held values in turn, contribute to the management of environmental issues, human rights abuses, humanitarian relief, and security relations. Some analysts view these networks as an essential component of global governance, providing a way of governing without government (Reinicke 1998).

3.3 States

The organization of nation-states in the twentieth century has included a dependence on and growth of bureaucracy, or hierarchy, as a means of governing. The growth of the modern state has included regulation of markets, of educational institutions, of environmental conditions, of criminal activity—in fact of nearly every aspect of daily life as a means of coordinating action for the common good. While some of this regulation has come through standard setting and norms development, the characteristic mode of hierarchical government is through directives. These directives are enforced through the use and threat of punitive sanctions, including imprisonment and fines.

As noted earlier, the enforcement power of the state is based on its monopoly over the legitimate use of force. This monopoly, in turn, is thought to be based on a notion of a social contract, whereby citizens give up some rights to a sovereign government, in return for protection and through the establishment and preservation of social order. The central problem for theorists and practitioners of global governance is that no world government exists, yet transnational activity generates needs for coordination as well as problems of collective action. We turn next to a discussion of methods of coordination, problem-solving, and conflict management currently in use—methods that constitute global governance in practice.

4. Methods Of Global Governance

4.1 Harmonization Of Laws

The implementation of international agreements is accomplished through the adoption of national laws to bring local and national practices into compliance with international rules. For example, carrying out the provisions of the Montreal Protocol to protect the atmospheric ozone layer is done through legislative action in each country to bring manufacturing practices into conformity with the Protocol’s agreed directives to reduce production and release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

Legislative action is one path to harmonization of laws. Another is through the courts and judicial systems of countries. A body of transnational law is developing informally in which judges in one country are basing their decisions on precedents and case law from other countries (Slaughter 1997). This is taking place in areas of civil and commercial law, where standard rules help to smooth business and legal transactions. In the area of human rights law courts are also citing cases in other national systems, in addition to the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to lend credibility to decisions about the protection of civil and political rights in their own countries.

4.2 International Regimes

International regimes are defined as a ‘set of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge’ (Krasner 1983). The effectiveness of a regime rests on the operations of institutions, organizations, governments, and international bodies that share a set of principles, rules, and norms in a particular area of international action. Although regimes include formal treaties and national law, they also rely on informal norms and networks to develop and enforce standard behavior in an area of global policy.

For example, regimes to control the development and spread of nuclear weapons had been relatively successful in the context of the Cold War. They were critical to controlling the US–Soviet arms race, to preventing nuclear war, and to limiting the spread of nuclear weapons technology and weapons. These regimes had their basis in a number of formal treaties and international agreements, such as the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968, as well as some enforcement powers through the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency. For compliance, however, regimes relied on a number of formal and informal surveillance techniques and the trust that emerged from shared norms about the dangers of nuclear weapons, their development, production, and proliferation (de Nevers 1999). A decade after the end of the Cold War, we are beginning to see how much trust the USA and the Soviet Union had in one another, and in the shared norm of the non-use of nuclear weapons, as the arms control regime is being tested by the actions of several parties to these regimes.

4.3 Global Policy Issue Networks

Development of global policy and implementation of common laws also depends on informal networks of organizations and individuals. These networks are composed of individuals who share an interest in providing a public good that may not be provided by any single nation-state. Through communication networks, sometimes built around professional associations and scientific bodies, these transnational action networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998) or epistemic communities (Haas et al. 1993) provide information, documentation, and alternative policy solutions to global policy problems.

Some of the most visible networks have formed since the mid-1970s on human rights, environmental protection, and women’s issues. In each of these areas, lawyers, scientists, and political and cultural leaders have found counterparts in other countries to form worldwide movements that have publicized the harm to people and the environment brought about by current national policies and practices. In the case of women’s issues, the role of nongovernmental organizations at the official United Nations conferences on women and on population has been dramatic. The adoption of women’s empowerment as a major path to fertility reduction, rather than an emphasis on birth control, at the population conference in Cairo in 1995 demonstrated the influence and effectiveness of issue networks in shaping global policy.

4.4 Hybrid Institutions

As transnational activity has increased, as nongovernmental actors have become more prominent, and as national governments have devolved authority to private sector bodies, new institutional arrangements have developed to manage global relations. These arrangements are referred to as hybrid institutions or public–private partnerships because they mix private sector organizations and a variety of incentive systems with governmental agencies to achieve public goods. They will often combine standard rules, private market arrangements, nongovernmental norm-based organizations, and government agencies—both national and international.

Some of the most inventive have emerged in the area of environmental protection. The certification of sustainably harvested forest products is just one example of a hybrid global governance process. Presented as an alternative to governmental regulation of the timber industry, environmental nongovernmental organizations have worked with major private enterprises in the forest products industry to convince them of the economic benefits of sustainable forest practices. They have demonstrated that consumers will pay premium prices for furniture and other lumber products that are sustainably harvested. They have shown that profits can be achieved over a longer period of time, and that reducing dependence on clear-cutting provides livelihoods for those people, mostly in developing countries, dependent on forests for their survival.

The major method of ensuring compliance with sustainable practices is through certification of wood products. Private firms participate in a council that includes producers, scientists, and other independent interests. This council, in turn, inspects production operations and certifies that manufactured products are derived from sustainably harvested lumber. The manufacturer can use that certification to advertise products and, in most cases, to charge higher prices to consumers. This process takes place without government intervention; it includes market incentives and relies on professional expertise and standardization to enforce rules that will contribute to the protection of natural resources—to the conservation of a public good.

Another example of hybrid institutions can be found in the area of prosecuting transnational criminal activity. Local and national law enforcement agencies, federal bureaus, banking regulation bodies, international police forces, and banking and financial institutions are developing transnational relationships and standard operating procedures to root out and prosecute international criminals. Organized crime has become relatively border-free, especially as liberalization of economic relations has proceeded; yet law enforcement remains within fixed territorial legal frameworks. To deal with this challenge, national law enforcement agencies have developed cooperative relationships with their counterparts in other countries to share information and to apprehend criminals. For example, US and Russian law enforcement agencies—the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the FSB (Federal Security Service, former KGB)—have set up cooperative relations to investigate and help prosecute corruption in banking and industry in their two countries.

To investigate and report money-laundering activity, the US Treasury Department has set up a Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. This network includes US Treasury Department bureaucrats, law enforcement officials, banking regulators, and private banking and financial institutions around the world. Through a series of agreements, government agencies and private sector organizations have established shared authority in identifying suspicious financial transactions. Banks have opened up their accounts to greater scrutiny and, in exchange, government authorities allow banking operations themselves to determine when activity is suspicious, and thus susceptible to further investigation by law enforcement agencies. Standards have been set about what constitutes suspicious behavior, and data about transactions is shared electronically between the private and public sectors (Reinicke 1998, pp. 135–72).

5. Issues In Global Governance

While new modes of coordinating trans border activity are emerging that hold the promise of effective global governance, a number of theoretical and normative challenges have been identified. Two are addressed here: the legitimacy of authority and democratic values.

5.1 Legitimacy And Authority

Successful governance requires the consent and compliance of those whose activity is being governed, that is, practices and institutions that constrain actions must be seen as legitimate for them to be effective. In contemporary conceptions of governance, this aspect remains problematic. In contrast to theories of governance at local and national levels, the idea of a social contract between citizens and institutions of global governance has not been developed sufficiently to be credible. Such social contracts have depended on theories of participation and representation by citizens in decision-making processes, few of which figure centrally in global governance. Other sources of legitimacy, such as claims of monarchs to ‘divine right,’ or to hereditary rights, are not recognized in twenty-first century conceptions of global governance. Finally, however, legitimacy claims may also be based on what works well, what is efficient, or what is reasonable; contemporary justifications for global governance mechanisms are often based on efficiency warrants.

Issues of authority and legitimacy become even more vexed with the increased participation of nongovernmental organizations in issue networks and hybrid institutions. While the authority of governments and the legitimacy of private firms are based, in some measure, on implicit contracts with citizens or consumers, respectively, the authority and legitimacy of nongovernmental organizations is based on their claims of acting in the public good—as they define it. Whether by protecting individuals from the human rights abuses of their own governments, or conserving biodiversity in the face of extractive private industry, or saving women from customary rituals that cause physical harm, nongovernmental actors believe they are upholding standards that are in the long-term interests of humanity. These organizations, however, are not assembled through an election process or any other democratic procedure. They are self-appointed and claim to be acting on the basis of values that serve a global public interest. Without an authoritative institution that provides a process for establishing common values and agreement on what constitutes the public good, issues of authority and legitimacy in global governance will most likely remain unresolved.

5.2 Democratic Values And Global Governance

While some definitions of global governance emphasize the neutral management of human affairs, there is a strong normative component to any discussion of the term, in addition to an underlying assumption about who governs and upon whose standards. Some of the normative implications are acknowledged, but others need to be surfaced and examined before agreement can be reached on a standard definition.

In its current conception, global governance implies democratic governance. Most authors are careful to make the distinction between the term ‘world government’—that is, a set of procedures and mechanisms based on a single authority with power to enforce laws, by force, if necessary—and the notion of governance. This conception also recognizes that a greater number and range of organizations, individuals, institutions, and governments participate in decisions that have consequences beyond national borders (Mathews 1997). The informal and pluralistic nature of global governance both recognizes and requires the contribution of many of these nongovernmental actors to policymaking. In its own terms, then, global governance incorporates democratic values including those of equitable participation and the use of representative institutions for resolving conflicts. Yet the reliance on scientific and professional bodies to set standards, rules, and procedures, on bureaucratic agencies to implement policies, and on voluntary organizations to monitor compliance, raises questions about the compatibility of democratic values and the concept of global governance.

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