Global governance
Global governance comprises institutions that coordinate the behavior of transnational actors, facilitate cooperation, resolve disputes, and alleviate collective-action problems. Global governance broadly entails making, monitoring, and enforcing rules. Within global governance, a variety of types of actors – not just states – exercise power.
In contrast to the traditional meaning of governance, the term global governance is used to denote the regulation of interdependent relations in the absence of an overarching political authority. The best example of this is the international system or relationships between independent states.
The concept of global governance began in the mid-19th century. It became particularly prominent in the aftermath of World War I, and more so after the end of World War II. Since World War II, the number of international organizations has increased substantially. The number of actors who are involved in governance relationships has also increased substantially.
Various terms have been used for the dynamics of global governance, such as complex interdependence, international regimes, multilevel governance, global constitutionalism, and ordered anarchy.
Definition
The term global governance is broadly used to designate all regulations intended for organization and centralization of human societies on a global scale. Global governance has also been defined as "the complex of formal and informal institutions, mechanisms, relationships, and processes between and among states, markets, citizens and organizations, both inter- and non-governmental, through which collective interests on the global plane are articulated, rights and obligations are established, and differences are mediated".Traditionally, government has been associated with governing, or with political authority, institutions, and, ultimately, control. Governance denotes a process through which institutions coordinate and control independent social relations, and that have the ability to enforce their decisions. However, governance is also used to denote the regulation of interdependent relations in the absence of an overarching political authority, such as in the international system. Some now speak of the development of global public policy.
The definition is flexible in scope, applying to general subjects such as global security or to specific documents and agreements such as the World Health Organization's Code on the Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes. The definition applies whether the participation is bilateral, function-specific, regional, or global.
In the light of the unclear meaning of the term global governance as a concept in international politics, some authors have proposed defining it not in substantive, but in disciplinary and methodological terms. For these authors, global governance is better understood as an analytical concept or optic that provides a specific perspective on world politics different from that of conventional international relations theory. Thomas G. Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson have even argued that global governance has the capacity to overcome some of the fragmentation of international relations as a discipline particularly when understood as a set of questions about the governance of world orders.
Other authors conceptualized global governance as a field of practice in which diverse stakeholders, such as public, private, and supra-governmental actors can compete for influence about issues that are not bound to national boundaries. This conceptualization allows to better understand the principles of exclusions of specific stakeholders from the negotiation field as some actors lack the economic, social, cultural and symbolic resources required to gain enough influence.
History
The League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations, was one of the first organizations to promote global governance.While attempts of intergovernmental coordination of policy-making can be traced back to ancient times, comprehensive search for effective formats of international coordination and cooperation truly began after the end of the WWI. It was during that post-war period that some of the still existing international institutions were founded. Among thinkers who made major contributions to the period discussions on the goals and forms of international governance and policy coordination were J.M. Keynes with his "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" and G. Cassel with his works on the post-war development of the global monetary system.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of a long period of international history based on a policy of balance of powers. Since this historic event, the planet has entered a phase of geostrategic breakdown. The national-security model, for example, while still in place for most governments, is gradually giving way to an emerging collective conscience that extends beyond the restricted framework it represents.
In its initial phase, world governance was able to draw on themes inherited from geopolitics and the theory of international relations, such as peace, defense, geostrategy, diplomatic relations, and trade relations. But as globalization progresses and the number of interdependencies increases, the global level is also highly relevant to a far wider range of subjects, such as climate change, environmental protection and sustainability in general.
In the 20th century, the risks associated with nuclear fission raised global awareness of environmental threats. The 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty prohibiting atmospheric nuclear testing marked the beginning of the globalization of environmental issues. Environmental law began to be modernized and coordinated with the Stockholm Conference, backed up in 1980 by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. The Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer was signed and ratified in 1985. In 1987, 24 countries signed the Montreal Protocol which imposed the gradual withdrawal of CFCs.
Methods
The "cooperative problem-solving arrangements" of global governance may be formal. In that case they take the shape of laws or formally constituted institutions for a variety of actors, non-governmental organizations to manage collective affairs. They may also be informal or ad hoc entities.Global governance can be roughly divided into four stages:
- agenda-setting ;
- policymaking,
- implementation and enforcement, and
- evaluation, monitoring, and adjudication.
Global goal-setting
The Sustainable Development Goals are one example of global goal setting. They were "expected to have a major impact on the United Nations System" which is a key actor within the global governance concept. Previously, another attempt at "global governance by goal-setting" were the Millennium Development Goals from the year 2000 to 2015. Even earlier examples of global goal-setting include the "Plan of Action of the 1990 World Summit for Children" and the "first Development Decade that dates as far back as 1961".
However, results from a meta-analysis found that the Sustainable Development Goals had so far failed to integrate the system of global governance and to bring international organizations together. By and large, the SDGs have not become a shared set of connecting goals, and their uptake in global governance has been limited. The SDGs are not taken up by a enough of the international organizations. Instead, international organizations cherry-pick only those SDGs that best fit their interest. In particular, they often cherry-pick SDG 8, SDG 9, and SDG 12.File:Share-voting-rights-international-organizations.png|thumb|Indicator for Target 18.8 of SDG 16: Share of voting rights in international organizations, for Least Developed Countries, as of 2022One of the SDGs, Sustainable Development Goal 16 on "peace, justice and strong institutions", has a target and indicator regarding global governance. The wording of this Target 16.8 is: "Broaden and strengthen the participation of developing countries in the institutions of global governance." Indicator 16.8.1 is used to measure this target by monitoring the "proportion of members and voting rights of developing countries in international organizations". A UNDP report of 2024 reported that this indicator had made no progress since 2015: "No significant changes in these countries' voting rights were registered since 2015 at any of the international economic institutions".
Orchestration
Orchestration in global governance is defined as a form of soft and indirect steering characterized by a reliance on voluntarily recruited intermediaries. It fills governance deficits by complementing existing regimes and approaches. In other words, orchestration is an indirect mode of governance whereby an actor mobilizes one or more intermediaries to take influence on a certain target group. Three orchestration activities are agenda setting, coordination, and support. For example, the five regional commissions of the United Nations Economic and Social Council have carried out these activities as part of their role as orchestrators for the Sustainable Development Goals.Intergovernmental treaty secretariats
International bureaucracies, such as intergovernmental treaty secretariats, play an independent role in global affairs. An example is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Research suggests that these kinds of treaty secretariats have significant influence. They carry out important tasks in global policy-making. Unlike national governments, they lack the power to enforce laws. Instead, they use softer approaches, such as persuasion and coordination, to impact both global and domestic policy-making.International bureaucracies can work as orchestrators that interact with non-state actors, such as civil society groups, non-profit entities, or the private sector. They can encourage national governments to agree on a more ambitious response to global problems and encourage application of global environmental politics. As of 2022, new alliances are being formed between intergovernmental treaty secretariats and non-state actors.