Global Governance PDF

GLOBAL GOVERNANCE Although many internationalists envisioned a worldwide government, there is none that exists presently. There is no single entity to whom all states must answer. Furthermore, no organization can compel a state to follow predefined global regulations...

GLOBAL GOVERNANCE Although many internationalists envisioned a worldwide government, there is none that exists presently. There is no single entity to whom all states must answer. Furthermore, no organization can compel a state to follow predefined global regulations through military force. The overall behavior of states, however, has some consistency. For instance, they largely adhere to global navigation routes and, in most cases, respect each other’s territorial borders. Furthermore, when they do not, which happened when Russia invaded Crimea in 202w4, it causes global worry and controversy. Despite the lack of a single world authority, states under an international order continue to adhere to some global rules, implying that there is some semblance of world order. The multiple intersecting processes that generate this order are referred to as global governance. Global governance can come from a variety of sources. Nations establish treaties and form organizations, enacting public international law (international standards that regulate relations between states rather than, for example, private enterprises). International non-governmental organizations (NGOs), though not having state power, can lobby individual states to behave in a certain way ( for example, an international animal protection NGO can pressure governments to pass animal cruelty laws). Powerful transnational corporations can likewise have tremendous effects on global labor laws, environmental legislation, trade policy and more. Even ideas such as the need for “global democracy” or the clamor for “good governance,” can influence the ways international actors behave. One lesson will not be able to cover the various ways global governance occurs. As such, this lesson will only examine how global governance is articulated by intergovernmental organizations. It will focus primarily on the United Nations (UN) as the most prominent intergovernmental organization today. What is an International Organization? When scholars refer to groups such as the UN or institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, they usually call them international organizations (IOs). Although international NGOs are sometimes considered IOs, the term is commonly used to refer to international intergovernmental organizations or groups that are primarily made up of member states. One major fallacy about international organizations is that they are merely amalgamations of various state interests. In the 1960s and 1970s, many scholars believed that IOs were just venues where the contradicting but sometimes intersecting agendas of countries were discussed – no more than talk shops. What has become more evident in recent years, however, is that IOs can take on lives of their own. For example, the IMF was able to promote a particular form of economic orthodoxy that stemmed mainly from the beliefs of its professional economists. IOs can thus become influential as independent organizations. International relations scholars Michael N. Barnett and Martha Finnemore listed the following powers of IOs. First, IOs have the power of classification, Because IOs can invent and apply categories, they create powerful global standards. For example, it is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that defines what a refugee is (see Lesson 10 for more). Furthermore, since states are required to accept refugees entering their borders, this power to establish identity has concrete effects. Second, IOs have the ability to change the meaning of words This is a more general function that is linked to the first. Various concepts, such as "security" and "development," must be clearly defined. IOs are seen as legitimate sources of information for states, organizations, and individuals. As a result, the meanings they generate have an impact on a variety of policies. For example, recently, the United Nations has started to define security as not just safety from military violence but also safety from environmental harm. Finally, IOs have the power to diffuse norms. Norms are accepted codes of conduct that may not be strict laws but produce regularity in behavior. IOs do not only classify and fix meanings, they also spread their ideas across the world, thereby establishing global standards. Their members are, as Barnett and Finnemore emphasized, the "missionaries" of our time. Their power to diffuse norms stems from the fact that IOs are staffed with independent bureaucracies, who are considered experts in various fields. For example, World Bank economists come to be regarded as experts in development, and thus, carry some form of authority. As a result, they can establish standards for the implementation and conceptualization of development projects. Because of these immense powers, IOs can be sources of great good and great harm. They have the ability to promote important standards such as environmental conservation and human rights. However, similar to other entrenched bureaucracies, they can become closed communities that refuse to question their views. For example, Nobel Prize winner and economist Joseph Stiglitz publicly condemned the IMF for adopting a "one-size-fits-all" approach in making recommendations for developing countries." The United Nations Having examined the powers, limitations, and weaknesses of IOs, the spotlight will now fall on the most prominent IO in the contemporary world, the United Nations (UN). After the collapse of the League of Nations at the end of World War II, countries that worried about another global war began to push for the formation of a more lasting international league. The result was the creation of the UN. Although the organization is far from perfect, it should be emphasized that it has so far achieved its primary goal of averting another global war. For this reason alone, the UN should be considered a success. The UN is divided into five active organs. The General Assembly (GA) is UN's main deliberative policymaking and representative organ. Annually, the General Assembly elects a GA President to serve a one-year term of office. All member states (currently at 193) have seats in the GA. The Philippines played a prominent role in the GA's early years when Filipino diplomat Carlos P. Romulo was elected GA president from 1949-1950. Despite the General Assembly (GA) being the most represented body in the UN, many critics believe the Security Council (SC) is the most powerful. According to the United Nations, the latter has 15 members. Ten of the fifteen members are elected to two-year terms by the GA. The other five- sometimes referred to as the Permanent 5 (P5)-are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries have been permanent members of the UN since its inception and cannot be removed or changed by elections. The SC is in charge of evaluating whether a threat to the peace or an act of aggression exists. It encourages the concerned parties to resolve their differences through peaceful ways and suggests measures for adjustment or terms of settlement. In some cases, it can resort to imposing sanctions or even authorizing the use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security. Because of these powers, states that seek to intervene militarily in another state need to obtain the approval of the SC. With the SC's approval, a military intervention may be deemed legal. This is an immense power. Much attention has been placed on the SC's P5 due to their permanent seats and because each country holds veto power over the council's decisions. It only takes one veto vote from a P5 member to stop an SC action dead in its tracks. In this sense, the SC is heir to the tradition of "great power" diplomacy that began with the Metternich/Concert of Europe system (see the previous lesson). It is especially telling that the P5 consists of the major Allied Powers that won World War II. The third UN organ is the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which is "the principal body for coordination, policy review, policy dialogue, and recommendations on social and environmental issues, as well as the implementation of internationally agreed development goals.” It has 54 members elected for three-year terms. Currently, it is the UN's central platform for discussions on sustainable development. The fourth is the International Court of Justice whose task "is to settle, in accordance with international law, legal disputes submitted to it by states and to give advisory opinions referred to it by authorized United Nations organs and specialized agencies." The major cases of the court consist of disputes between states that voluntarily submit themselves to the court for arbitration. The court, as such, cannot try individuals (international criminal cases are heard by the International Criminal Court, which is independent of the UN), and its decisions are only binding when states have explicitly agreed to place themselves before the court's authority. The SC may enforce the rulings of the ICJ, but this remains subject to the P5's veto power. Did you know that Filipinos played a significant role in the creation of human rights arbitration rules in the United Nations? In the late 1960s, the diplomat Salvador P. Lopez was chairman of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Lopez and other Filipinos helped design the system whereby any citizen of any state may petition the UN to look into human rights violations in a country. That system exists until today. Human rights, therefore, are not foreign impositions. They are part of our national heritage. Finally, the secretariat consists of the "Secretary-General and tens of thousands of international UN staff members who carry out the day-to-day work of the UN as mandated by the General Assembly and the organization's other principal organs. As such, it is the bureaucracy of the UN, serving as a kind of international civil service. Members of the secretariat serve in their capacity as UN employees, not as state representatives. Challenges of the United Nations Given the scope of the UN's activities, it naturally faces numerous challenges. Chief among these are the limits placed upon its various organs and programs by the need to respect state sovereignty. The UN is not a world government, and it functions primarily because of voluntary cooperation from states. If states refuse to cooperate, the influence of the UN can be severely circumscribed. For example, the UN Council on Human Rights can send special rapporteurs to countries where alleged human rights violations are occurring. However, if a government does not welcome the rapporteur or imposes limits on his or her actions, this information-gathering process is unlikely to succeed. However, the United Nations' greatest difficulty may be attributed to issues of security. As previously stated, the UN Security Council is responsible for sanctioning international military intervention. Because of the P5's veto authority, the council finds it difficult to issue a formal resolution, let alone implement it. This became an issue, for example, in the late 1990s when the United States sought to intervene in the Kosovo war. Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević was committing acts of ethnic cleansing against ethnic Muslim Albanians in the province of Kosovo. Hundreds and thousands of Albanians were victims of massacres, mass deportations, and internal displacement. Amid this systematic terror, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, led by the United States, sought SC authorization to intervene in the Kosovo war on humanitarian grounds. China and Russia, however, threatened to veto any action, rendering the UN incapable of addressing the crisis. In response, NATO decided to intervene on its own. Though the NATO intervention was largely a success, it, nevertheless, left the UN ineffectual. Today, a similar dynamic is evident in Syria, which is undergoing a civil war. Russia has threatened to veto any SC resolution against Syria; thus, the UN has done very little to stop state-sanctioned violence against opponents of the government. Since Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is an ally of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the latter has shied away from any policy that could weaken the legitimacy of the former. As a result, the UN is again ineffectual amid a conflict that has led to over 220,000 people dead and 11 million displaced. Despite these problems, it remains important for the SC to place a high bar on military intervention. The UN Security Council has been wrong on issues of intervention, but it has also made the right decisions. When the United States sought to invade Iraq in 2001, it claimed that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) which threatened the world. However, UN members Russia, China, and France were unconvinced and vetoed the UN resolution for intervention, forcing the United States to lead a small "coalition of the willing" with its allies. It has since been discovered that there were no weapons of mass destruction, and the invasion of Iraq has caused problems for the country and the region that last until today. Since then, there were 37 instances when the permanent members of the Security Council exercised their right to veto resolutions, 25 by Russia and China and 12 by the United States. The majority of these vetoes pertained to the volatile situation in the Middle East. Global governance is such a complex issue that one can actually teach an entire course in itself. This lesson has focused on the IOs and the United Nations in particular. International organizations are highlighted because they are the most visible symbols of global governance. The UN, in particular, is the closest to a world government. What is important to remember is that international institutions such as the UN are always in a precarious position. On the one hand, they are groups of sovereign states. On the other, they are organizations with their own rationalities and agenda. It is this tension that will continue to inform the evolution of these organizations. However, note that many institutions, groups, and ideas hold international and global politics together. In your own time, you may want to explore these topics. References: Mendoza, Cheryl C. et al. 2019. “Worktext in The Contemporary World.” Nieme Publishing House Co. Ltd Claudio, L. & Abinales, P. 2022. The Contemporary World. C & E Publishing, Inc.