Commonwealth

Inter- and Non-State Contributions to Global Governance

Timothy M. Shaw

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415351201
• eBook ISBN: 9781134266524
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Commonwealth consists of only a quarter of the world's states and yet the Commonwealth Secretariat and Foundation have made and continue to make a significant contribution to global politics.

Commonwealth is a superb examination of an often neglected but crucial force in world affairs. Timothy M. Shaw;

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• explains the history, structure and future of the Commonwealth
• demonstrates the central role that the Commonwealth has played in advancing decolonization and supporting multiculturalism, democracy and human rights
• details the significant links between Commonwealth institutions and myriad networks concerned with education, development, gender, health, islands, literature, media and sport
• examines the Commonwealth within the context of wider debates about 'global' governance and globalization.

1
Commonwealth(s)—inter- and non-state

How compatible?

Global governance implies a wide and seemingly ever-growing range of actors in every domain. Global economic and social affairs have traditionally been viewed as embracing primarily intergovernmental relationships, but increasingly they must be framed in comprehensive enough terms to embrace local and international NGOs, grassroots and citizens’ movements, multinational corporations and the global capital market.

(Thomas G. Weiss)¹

Because of the very nature of the current international community, following the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the emergence of new dynamics in the global order (or disorder?) … now is the time for new forms of diplomacy and global strategies. In an extraordinary way, it is almost as if the Commonwealth has leapt in utility from past to future. It is a non-exclusive transnational organization whose time has probably come.

(Deryck Schreuder)²

The current Commonwealths of countries and communities, civil societies and multinational companies are increasingly diverse despite commonalities of history and language, perspectives and values. This initial chapter presents an overview of these diversities which have generated a distinctive political culture within the extended family. In turn, this informs the character of multilateral diplomacy around the Commonwealths: a novel version of public diplomacy given the relative influence of their non-state agencies. The chapter concludes by examining the impact of Commonwealth groupings on several regional organizations and by contrasting anglophone with other Commonwealth communities, so comparing their respective contributions to contemporary global governance.

Today’s Commonwealths are dominated by middle powers and small states (see Table I.1) and so span many international divides, especially North-South, big-small, continental-island. They do so by being active around a growing range of contemporary issues reflective of the complexities and diversities of the twenty-first century. As suggested already in the Introduction, new multilateralisms of mixed actor coalitions around the Commonwealths, which advance responses to child soldiers, conflict diamonds, forced migrations, small arms, etc., may yet come to be regarded as both invaluable and worthy of emulation. These may come to be seen as a distinctive form of “Commonwealth governance” as elaborated below.

How can what Richard Bourne calls the G-54³ (now strictly, post-Zimbabwe, the G-53) (for dates of formal joining see Appendix 1) cohere in the new millennium, and so impact the other 150 or so states in today’s global society, especially given fissiparous pressures post-9/11 (twin tower and other terrorist attacks on New York and Washington) and 7/7 (terrorist attacks on London underground trains and buses)?

Here I argue that it is their very heterogeneity as well as similarities that unites the contemporary Commonwealths and enables them to communicate and cooperate when other better established and better funded global organizations are increasingly problematic. As Mills and Stremlau have asserted: “The Commonwealth has a number of strengths, among them the very fact that its varied membership, commonalities and trans-regional nature prevent it from becoming a vehicle for any narrow interest or fleetingly fashionable ideology.”⁴ I also suggest in Chapter 5 that it is the multiple “extra-official” or non-institutional features of the Commonwealths like culture, language and literature, media and sports—Commonwealth Plus—which enable the Secretariat and Foundation to be able to at least make a claim to be influential.

In short, despite being both overlooked and undramatic, the Commonwealths may yet prove to be an anchor that the world community needs to advance human development, human rights and human security in the first decades of the twenty-first century (see Chapter 3 below) against prevailing rhetoric about national security and fundamentalist terrorists. As David McIntyre notes, the Commonwealth is “not a large player as an international entity” yet it has come to have salience in a trio of issue areas where it can leverage its extensive extra-Commonwealth networks: “These three themes—globalization, the vulnerability of small states and the importance of regional organizations—mark the main features of the international environment in which the Commonwealth has to find its niche.”⁵

In the preceding Introduction, I lamented the lack of attention paid to the Commonwealths in the burgeoning global governance literature, which is beginning to supersede the more established, state-centric international law and international organization genres. Here I go further to suggest that there is a rather distinctive version of governance being developed within the Commonwealths’ nexus: Commonwealth governance. This is distinguished by the particular combination of inter- and non-state actors and issues found in today’s Commonwealths. These are different from those already analyzed elsewhere, including in the Global Institutions series, in the more familiar and recognized UN and IFI systems.⁶

Their distinctiveness is best captured graphically in a “governance triangle” presented in a Commonwealth Foundation report on “Citizens and Governance: civil society in the new millennium” (see Figure I.1) which suggests that the established, “top,” state corner is shrinking while newer, “bottom” corners of civil society and private sector are growing. This general trend toward economic and political “liberalization” at all levels—from local through national and regional to global—is related to both globalization and privatization; i.e. “structural adjustment” or “neo-liberalism.” Relations along all three sides of the governance triangle at all levels are characterized by both cooperation and conflict, with the horizontal side no longer necessarily being characterized by the latter rather than the former. Despite lingering assumptions to the contrary, NGOs and MNCs are increasingly collaborating over mutual interests, encouraged by Commonwealth Foundation and Commonwealth Business Council deliberations and broader global pressures towards strategic alliances in sectors like fisheries, forestry, mining, etc.

The present book suggests then that there is an emerging, distinctive form of Commonwealth governance which seeks to advance cooperation between civil society and the multinational corporation, state and international organization. This aspiration is particularly apparent in the latest Commonwealth Expert Group report chaired by India’s present prime minister, Manmohan Singh, as articulated and analyzed in the final chapter.

I now turn to the Commonwealths’ diversities before treating their distinctive political culture and public diplomacy. The second part of this chapter identifies other, non-anglophone, Commonwealths and treats contributions from the anglophone Commonwealths to contemporary regionalisms before returning to the possibility of a distinctive Commonwealth governance.

Membership diversities, both inter- and non-state

As indicated below, the Commonwealths may be concentrated geographically in Africa, Australasia, Caribbean, South Asia and the South Pacific, but they are increasingly diverse in memberships at both inter-and non-state levels, reflective of a changing world of states, corporations and civil societies.

In terms of the intergovernmental Secretariat, member states span the emerging “three worlds” of first, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)/EU; second, NICs and now emerging economies centered on the BRICs; and third, fragile states (see Chapter 4 below and Table I.1).

According to UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) criteria, in mid-decade (see Table I.2), the Commonwealths include 17 states with “high human development” from the ABCs (ABC and New Zealand in the top twenty list of HDI 2006) through Singapore (number 25 between New Zealand and Cyprus, Barbados and Malta) (NB Brunei, Seychelles and St. Kitts-Nevis now all between numbers 30 and 50 in the annual Human Development Report (HDR); 23 in the medium category including India (number 125 (China is number 81); and 9 in the low group down to Sierra Leone (second to last overall at number 176, just below Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia), including the “Africanization” of the South Pacific as in recent instabilities in the Solomons and Papua.

And according to World Bank data on national incomes (see Table I.1), the Commonwealths include 10 “high income” states (the ABCs and some affluent islands), 13 “upper-middle income” (mainly Caribbean islands, but also Botswana, Malaysia and South Africa), another 13 “lower-middle income” (mainly small states) and 15 “low income” states (mainly Africa, South Asia, including India, and South Pacific).

In turn, companies, who are members of the CBC, can claim to gain from the Commonwealth factor, including major Australian (BHPBilliton and News Corp) and British (Barclays and Shell) as well as Indian (Bajaj, Infosys and Tata) and South African (Anglo American, Johnnic and SABMiller) multinationals. And the Foundation’s network stretches from major INGOs like Oxfam and AKF to miniscule indigenous NGOs and grassroots activists (on economic or corporate and civil society as well as cultural and educational Commonwealths see Chapter 5 below).

Conversely, Commonwealth civil society groups also benefit from a Commonwealth factor as does business, even if their gains are not in efficiency or profitability but rather in familiarity and ease of communication, as is apparent in anglophone global networks like Civicus or Third World Network.

Similarly, the CPA includes very large and very small national (Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Nauru, Turks and Caicos, and Tuvalu) and provincial or state (Nunavut or Yukon versus Uttar Pradesh) assemblies along with OTs like Alderney and St. Helena, as well as the largest and smallest democratic federations in the world: India and St. Kitts-Nevis. The former, India, contains the largest national and state or provincial assemblies anywhere: national Lok Sabha of 545 seats and Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly of some 404. Likewise, the Commonwealth Games Federation has a few very large national delegations but also includes some 20 participants who are not Commonwealth member states. And the ACU has mega-universities as members, including federal universities like London and the West Indies (which initially was a branch of London along with Ibadan, Legon and Makerere) in addition to very small schools like Fourah Bay in Sierra Leone and Uganda Martyrs University. It also includes universities who joined when their states were inside the Commonwealth, such as the Universities of Hong Kong and of Zimbabwe, but who continue to pay membership fees. Such fuzzy borders may give these major non-state institutions distinctive identities and roles. If Commonwealth membership is salient for small independent states, such connections may be even more important for very small dependent territories (for more on such diverse state and non-state memberships see Chapter 5 below).

David McIntyre notes that “a trio of influential bodies … evolved from empire organizations dating from before the 1914–18 war”:⁷ ACU, CPA and CPU. They have long since been decolonized along with the nongovernmental organization...

Table of contents

• Routledge Global Institutions
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Commonwealth(s)—inter- and non-state
• 2 From decolonization to democratization
• 3 Commonwealths today
• 4 Commonwealths’ discourses and directions
• 5 Commonwealths and the competition
• 6 Commonwealths and the future
• Appendix 1 Official Commonwealth membership and year of joining
• Appendix 2 CHOGM location, participation and duration, 1965–2009
• Appendix 3 Commonwealth organizations
• Appendix 4 The Malta Communiqué
• Notes
• Select bibliography
• Select websites Websites relevant to intra- and extra-Commonwealths
• Index