Regionalisation and Global Governance

The Taming of Globalisation?

Andrew F. Cooper, Christopher W. Hughes, Philippe De Lombaerde

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415453769
• eBook ISBN: 9781134052462
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The relationship between global governance and regionalization is fraught with ambiguity. Understanding regionalization in this context requires an understanding of its relationship, and reactive condition, with both the constellations of global governance and globalization.

This book presents an overview and explores the distinctive but intersecting trajectories of regionalization and global governance. It surveys:

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• the theoretical debates
• the economic dimensions: multinationals, trade and investment, and labour
• the security considerations: armed conflict, conflict prevention and peacekeeping and non-traditional security in Asia
• the governing structures: managing contemporary multilevel architecture and cultural policy, leadership and the L-20.

The expert and multi-disciplinary editors and contributors survey the context as well as the general character of these projects, together with their links as both parallel mediating mechanisms and distinctive choices for interjecting governance into globalization. Examining these projects in tandem amplifies their importance and enables the contributors to tease out coincidental as well as alternative possibilities in policy direction.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, area studies, international economics, international political economy, political science, public administration and development studies.

Part I
Theoretical debates

Locating regionalisation theory

1 Enhancing global governance through regional integration

Ramesh Thakur and Luk Van Langenhove

The United Nations and regional organizations should play complementary roles in facing the challenges to international peace and security.

(Annan 2005: para. 213)

Introduction

The problématique of global governance may be simply stated: the evolution of institutions of international governance has lagged behind the rapid emergence of collective problems with on-border and cross-border dimensions, especially those that are global in scope or potentially so. Depending on the issue area, geographic location, and timing, there are vast disparities in power and influence among states, international organisations, corporations, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Consequently, today’s world is governed by a ‘crazy quilt’ or patchwork of authority that is as diffuse as it is contingent (Rosenau 1999: 293). In particular, the international intergovernmental institutions that collectively underpin global governance are insufficient in number, inadequately resourced and sometimes incoherent in their separate policies and philosophies.

In framing global governance in this way, the nature and shortcomings in governing international peace and security become clear: the absence of any semblance of a central authority in a world of sovereign states. The Security Council and Chapter VII of the United Nations (UN) Charter exist on paper, but the overwhelming reality is what Hedley Bull immortalised as ‘the anarchical society’ (Bull 1997). With a few exceptions (arguably Korea, Kuwait, and responses to a few humanitarian crises in the 1990s), the dearth of any powerful institutional response ensures poor international security governance. Collective security is an idea, not a reality. The existence of vibrant market forces and proliferating NGOs does little to counteract this dominant fact.

The basic unit of international relations is and for the foreseeable future will remain the sovereign state. As such, sovereign states have to cope with the governance of global problems. This gives rise to a paradox: on the one hand, the policy authority for tackling global problems and mobilising the necessary resources is vested in states, while on the other hand, the source/ scale of the problems and potential solutions are situated at a transnational, regional or global level. The result is that member states have the capacity to disable decision-making and policy implementation by the United Nations, but lack the vision and the will to empower and enable global problem-solving. This paradox holds for many problems such as armed conflicts, environmental degradation, human trafficking, terrorism and nuclear weapons. The United Nations cannot displace the responsibility of local, state and national governments, but it can and should be the locus of multilateral diplomacy and collective action to solve problems shared in common by many countries.

So can regional organisations be the locus of multilateral diplomacy and collective action to solve problems shared in common within a region but not necessarily beyond it? As societies evolve, expand and multiply, their governing framework of rules and institutions becomes correspondingly more complex and functionally specific. A necessary consequence of increasingly differentiated structures of governance is the increased space between citizens as self-contained individuals, and the state as a collective abstraction. In contemporary societies, national governments can satisfy only a small and diminishing proportion of the needs of human beings as social animals. Consequently, citizens look more and more to additional actors and layers of governance. Civic associations channel a growing range and variety of social interactions, which in turn need a framework of governance outside the jurisdiction of the state. ‘Civil society’ refers, broadly speaking, to the social and political space where voluntary associations (as distinct from the automatic, binding and compulsory membership of a state) attempt to shape norms and policies to regulate public life in social, political, economic and environmental dimensions. And the layers of governance now extend from the local to the global.

The central question addressed in this chapter is whether regionalism and regionalisation can provide a satisfactory solution for the above paradox. Solving it calls for a new thinking that emphasises the networked aspects of governance in order to deal with the interdependencies across policy levels (from local to global) and policy domains. Especially in Europe, with, on the one hand, the processes of Europeanisation of policy and, on the other, the progressive upgrading of the microregional level in both national and European policy processes, there is now a wide consensus that governance is not limited to the level of the state. A novel concept has been advanced— multilevel governance— in order to emphasise power-sharing between different levels of government with

no centre of accumulated authority. Instead, variable combinations of governments on multiple layers of authority— European, national, and subnational— form policy networks for collaboration. The relations are characterised by mutual interdependence on each other’s resources, not by competition for scarce resources.

(Hooghe 1996: 18)

Such multilevel governance can be defined as ‘the dispersion of authoritative decision-making across multiple territorial levels’ (Hooghe and Marks 2001: xi). From this perspective, European integration is a polity-creating process in which authority and policy-making influence are shared across the multiple levels of government.

The United Nations University has developed in the past decade an Interlinkages Initiative (Velasquez and Piest 2003), which is based on the recognition that nowadays the problems are linked but the solutions are often disjointed. Interlinkages is a strategic approach to managing sustainable development which stems from the premise that different issues arise across different levels and planning phases (negotiation and ratification, implementation, monitoring). Responses need to take these levels into account and have to be tailored to specific requirements. To take better advantage of the interlinkages between our problems and ensure the effective implementation of our solutions, we need to understand the challenges and opportunities that exist at the various levels of governance.

Considerable potential exists to develop and apply interlinkages at and across all levels of governance. In recent years, attention has been focusing on improving inter-agency coordination at the global institutional level. However, while efforts to enhance synergies at the global level must continue, challenges and opportunities for enhanced coordination at the regional and national levels also need to be addressed. Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke evocatively of problems without passports that require solutions without passports. The one continent where passport-less borders have become at least a partial reality (in the Schengen area) is Europe (although a UN passport by itself is not sufficient to gain entry into this area).

We shall argue that there is indeed a place for regional governance in the multilateral framework of global governance. But only if regional integration processes go beyond economic integration and only if they have sufficient support from civil society, will regional integration have the power to combat the dark sides and unlock the development potential of globalisation. The argument is developed in relation to the UN’s two great normative mandates, namely, underwriting international peace and security and promoting sustainable development. The difference between the two mandates is important, for two reasons. First, at the global level, in the trade and economic sector there probably still is a degree of genuine multipolarity that has disappeared in the peace and security sector. And, second, reflecting this, regionalism in the economic arena can more easily be self-sufficient than in the security sector. Thus the European Union (EU) is comprised of Europeans, but the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is trans-atlantic, anchoring the United States (US) to Europe. Similarly in Asia-Pacific, the experience and memory of the financial crisis of 1997–98 have generated deepening intra-Asian institutionalisation in the finance and trade sectors while the US remains the pivot of regional security arrangements because of persisting and confrontational nationalist sentiments in the political relations among the major East Asian nations.

Global governance¹

Traditionally, governance has been associated with ‘governing’, or with political authority and institutions and, ultimately, control. Governance in this particular sense denotes formal political institutions that aim to coordinate and control interdependent social relations. In recent years, however, analysts of global affairs have used ‘governance’ to denote the regulation of interdependent relations in the absence of an overarching political authority, such as in the international system.

Three definitions related to governance would be helpful. Governance refers to the complex of power, control, and authority; how they are exercised; and how the relationships between their holders, wielders, and objects are mediated and transformed over time. Good governance incorporates participation and empowerment with respect to public policies, choices, and offices; rule of law and an independent judiciary to which the executive and legislative branches of government are subject, along with citizens and other actors and entities; and standards of probity and incorruptibility, transparency, accountability, and responsibility. It includes, essentially, institutions and national integrity systems in which these principles and values find ongoing expression. Global governance, which can be good or bad, refers to concrete cooperative problem-solving arrangements on the global plane. These may be rules (laws, norms, codes of behaviour) as well as constituted institutions and practices (formal and informal) to manage collective affairs by a variety of actors (state authorities, intergovernmental organisations, NGOs, private sector entities, and other civil society actors). It thus refers to the complex of formal and informal institutions, mechanisms, relationships, and processes between and among states, markets, citizens and organisations, both intergovernmental and non-governmental, through which collective interests are articulated, rights and obligations are established, and differences are mediated.

At the national level, governance implies ‘government plus’— a range of technical, private, economic, and civil society quasi-public authorities that supplement and work with (and sometimes against) governments. At the global level, governance entails ‘government minus’— a range of state, intergovernmental, and only in very exceptional cases supranational public authorities. However, they are supplemented by technical, multinational economic, and transnational civil society actors interacting with one another and promoting public and contestable rules and norms even in the absence of world government.²

The business of the world has changed almost beyond recognition in the past century. The locus of power and influence is shifting. When the UN was founded, its membership consisted of 51 states. Today it stands at 192. Alongside the growth in the number of states there has occurred the rise of civil society actors who have mediated state–citizen relations and given flesh and blood to the concept of ‘We the peoples of the world’. The international policy-making stage is increasingly congested as private and public non-state actors jostle alongside national governments in setting and implementing the agenda of the new century.

The dominance of the market, the rise of civil society and the emergence of international ‘uncivil’ society have all created problems of governance. This is self-evident with respect to uncivil society but worth explaining with regard to the other two, briefly. While economic goals, resources and instruments have always been significant elements in international affairs, the interdependence of national economies has increased with accelerated and expanded flows of trade, investment and technology across political frontiers. Conversely, because states provide the indispensable political, legal and military context for market operations, international economic relations cannot be explained fully without acknowledgement of the enduring and assertive role of the states: ‘Markets cannot play a dominant role in the way in which a political economy functions unless allowed to do so by whoever wields power and possesses authority’ (Strange 1988: 23). Rules governing international commerce, like those governing international politics, reflect the interests of the dominant players.

The dislocation of market power from political authority has led to a crisis of legitimacy. It is now accepted that globalisation entails risks as well as opportunities, and the sceptical dissenters in the streets offer an antidote to the unbridled enthusiasts in boardrooms and finance departments. Financial crises of the 1990s in Asia, Latin America, and Russia showed how much, and how quickly, regional crises take on a systemic character through rapid contagion. The experience demonstrated the potential vulnerability of the G7 economies to crises originating in the emerging market economies. And, of course, the reverse direction of causality is even stronger. Hence the claim by the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that to the duty of domestic excellence and rectitude we must add the ethic of global responsibility in the management of national economies. He goes on to describe the widening inequality within and among nations as ‘morally outrageous, economically wasteful, and socially explosive’ (Camdessus 2001).

NGOs face many challenges to their legitimacy as they are often seen as unelected, unaccountable, unrepresentative, self-serving and irresponsible. Can they claim to speak on behalf of anyone but themselves? What mechanisms exist to hold them accountable to their constituents? Hugo Slim writes of ‘voice accountability’: the reliability and credibility of what they say (an empirical question: can you prove it?), and the locus of their authority for saying it (a political question: from where do you get your authority to speak?) (2002: 6). They can behave like ‘five star activists’ indulging their pet causes without taking responsibility for trying to effect changes. According to Chidi Odinkalu, in Africa, ‘Far from being a badge of honour, human rights activism is … increasingly a certificate of privilege’ (ibid.: 2). UN engagement with unelected civil society actors can sometimes cut across and undermine the role of democratically-elected representatives (see Johns 2004). Recipient countries, for example Afghanistan, can resent the NGO community as competitors for siphoning off aid from governments (D’Cruz 2004). In their unrestrained eagerness to capitalise on worldwide public sympathy after the earthquake and tsunami of 26 December 2004, NGOs paid little heed to how much they could actually do by way of relief work that could not be done better by governments and the UN system.

For all the talk of coordination and accountability, the need to maintain market share continues to trump sound humanitarian practice— at least in crises like the tsunami, where the Western public and Western donor governments are attentive and engaged.

(Rieff 2005: 50)

The organising principle of global governance is multilateralism, and the UN lies at the very core of the multilateral system of global governance— governance without global government. According to...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction: regionalisation and the taming of globalisation?
• PART I Theoretical debates: locating regionalisation theory
• PART II Economic dimensions: regionalisation and the need for rule-making
• PART III Security considerations: the changing nature of strategic regionalism
• PART IV Governing structures: managing contemporary multilevel architecture