Governing the World?

Cases in Global Governance

Sophie Harman, David Williams, Sophie Harman, David Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135049621
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

'Global governance' has become a key concept in the contemporary study of international politics, yet what the term means and how it works remains in question.

Governing the World: Cases in Global Governance takes an alternative approach to understanding the concept by exploring how global governance works in practice through a set of case studies on both classical issues of international relations such as security, labour and trade, and more contemporary concerns such as the environment, international development, and governing the internet.

The book explores the processes, practice and politics of global governance by taking a broad look at issues of human rights governance and focusing on detailed aspects of a topic such as torture and rendition to help explain how governance does, or does not, work to students and researchers of international politics alike. Bringing together a diverse and international group of scholars, each chapter responds to a set of questions as to what is being governed, how and who by and offers issue-specific case studies and recommended reading to develop a full understanding of the issue explored and what it means for global governance.

1 Security and global governance

Jamie Gaskarth

Analysing the global governance of security is difficult because the concept of security is so pervasive in public discourse. A host of issues, from the use of military force, intelligence and policing, to climate change, disease and development, even to exam results and pension liabilities have had the tag of security applied to them. How can any one actor, or group of actors, be considered to govern security across such a range of global problems?

The United Nations Security Council is the highest international authority supervising military security, supported by a series of agencies that seek to regulate and ameliorate particular security threats. The International Atomic Energy Agency oversees nuclear inspections and monitors the proliferation of nuclear technology and weapons. The Department of Peacekeeping supervises conflict resolution. The UN Office of Disarmament Affairs seeks to curb the spread of weapons and aid disarmament. There are then various UN bodies and programmes that exist to confront threats that could be incorporated into security discussions, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), and UNAIDS, devised to combat disease. However, economic security problems are dealt with by the separate bodies of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the G8 and G20 groups of richer states. The latter have also sought answers to development problems and environmental threats but agreements have often proved elusive. Meanwhile, regional alliances such as NATO have also begun to exercise a global reach.

In an anarchic world, without a higher sovereign than the governments of nation states, the governance of security is fragmented and often contingent on ad hoc coalitions and the distribution of power. Moreover the meaning of security seems to shift according to the context. In some environments, security is understood as an objective condition, measurable according to casualties, economic growth or infection rates. In others, it appears to be less tangible, a matter of psychological health or freedom from fear. Used in so many different ways, by such a range of actors, in an array of contexts, the concept threatens to become an empty metaphor or cipher; a cliché used to suggest that what is being talked about is so threatening that it demands the transfer of extraordinary powers to policymakers so that they can deal with it.

To make sense of such complexity, this chapter will begin by returning to first principles and enquiring as to what we mean when we talk about security. It then builds on this by examining debates over the type of threat that global governance needs to confront – and what governance means in such a diverse range of policy environments. The actors in world politics have engaged in ever wider efforts to manage and control problems through the lens of security. Yet, as I will attempt to show using two case studies, that of the governance efforts to turn human security into reality and the governance of the use of force in the UN Security Council, the result has been political tension and fragmentation.

What is security?

The term ‘security’ is problematic because it seems to exist on the fault-line between the physical world and its social interpretation. Do we describe something (usually labelled the referent object) as being secure because it is not physically threatened by another actor? Or is security an emotional state, the feeling of being secure (which may or may not have a physical basis)? For post-structuralists, this is an artificial distinction since it is the actor’s interpretation that gives the physical world meaning and so makes sense of any discussion of security/insecurity. But, in the world of security an actor’s perception can be proved false in the most brutal way possible, through violent subjugation or even extermination. The practice of security often takes the form of a dialectic between the physical world and the world of ideas. Sometimes the idea of an actor’s strength can lead to military victory even if they have fewer material resources. At other times, overconfidence and a misreading of capabilities can lead to defeat. As a result, it is very difficult for an actor to measure how secure they are – either in material or psychological terms.

Tied up with this confusion are debates about what exactly is the referent object that is being secured (or rendered insecure). The focus of security can be scaled down to the level of individuals or scaled up to encompass wider political communities, such as the family, tribe or clan, nation, state, regional body, religious community or civilisation. If we are trying to assess the physical safety of these units of analysis, we might look at threats to individual life and health, or the well-being of the community at the aggregate level, or the physical space, the territory, they occupy. Much of the traditional security studies literature is concerned with the latter two and explores how states maintain the integrity of their borders and protect their communities from external threats of violence.

Alternatively, the referent object of security could be an idea, such as an identity to which an individual or group places particular importance. Stuart Croft describes the latter as ‘ontological security’, which he defines as ‘having a consistent sense of self and having that sense affirmed by others’ (2012: 42). Having some idea of who we are and how we belong to a community is a major factor in the psychological well-being of social animals like humans. However, this can also create insecurity in others – particularly when attachment to a particular identity is used to exclude or dominate. When identity is grounded in a specific physical situation – ownership of a given territory, say – and this is disputed, insecurity can be especially rife and lead to violence. Many of the most protracted conflicts around the globe, from Israel–Palestine to Kashmir, are prolonged by the way protagonists see their ontological security as inseparable from ownership of territory. Thus, those who would enact global governance need to find a way to adjudicate on such claims.

A further problem implied in the above discussion is whether security entails stability over time. Is a territory only viewed as secure if it maintains the same borders? Do we have to continually reinforce a particular identity and preserve it in stasis for our ontological security? In his novel on the Sicilian aristocracy of the nineteenth century, the Italian writer Giuseppe di Lampedusa famously had one character opine that ‘everything must change so that everything can stay the same’. In other words, we are faced with a paradox: to provide security for something, we have to accept its insecurity and be prepared to change it to fit the circumstances.

The challenge for agents of governance is to weigh what level of insecurity is acceptable. This is no easy task. If we equate insecurity with susceptibility to (negative) change, then we must ask how much change can an entity endure before it becomes something different entirely? Is there a core or essence that we are trying to preserve, for which we will sacrifice other extraneous aspects? Buzan, Waever and de Wilde advocate restricting the security agenda to ‘existential threats’ (1998: 21). However, when they seek to elaborate what kinds of existential threats apply in different sectors, they acknowledge that in the economic sector ‘these are difficult to pin down’, in the societal, it is ‘extremely difficult to establish hard boundaries that differentiate existential from lesser threats’, in terms of identity, they concede ‘it is always possible to paint challenges and changes as threats’ and when it comes to the environment, they accept that it includes ‘a huge mass of problems that are more difficult, although not impossible, to construct in existential terms’ (1998: 22–23). As a result, the fundamental nature of a referent object, and what changes might constitute a threat to its existence, resists objective description. The only kind of objectivity possible is that which derives from wider social agreement.

Although this discussion might seem very abstract it has some important ramifications. Security is not an objective or absolute condition. It resists binary classifications that suggest we are either wholly secure or insecure. Instead, policymakers need to judge how best to provide a reasonable level of physical safety for individuals and/or groups as well as stability for their identity and values, given the circumstances. Security/insecurity is closely associated with change. For traditional security approaches, particularly those of a realist disposition, security was often conveyed as about building the capacity to resist negative change. This emphasis is derived from the realist desire to privilege order over demands for justice. However, Ken Booth, arguing from a critical perspective, has asserted a more positive interpretation of security as ‘emancipation’ (1991). According to Booth, people are most secure when they are free to realise their potential. Thus, security becomes the freedom to do things, as well as the freedom from having to worry about your physical or mental well-being. In effect, security in this view is the ability to bring about positive change as well as resist the negative. Although the concept of human security (to be discussed in Case study 1.1) seemed to promise a similar progressive agenda, in reality its interpretation has been wholly concerned with freedom from threats.

Case study 1.1 Human security

Our first case study is concerned with how global governance mechanisms have tried to implement the new concept of human security. The term itself was promoted in the UN Human Development Report of 1994, which argued that:

The concept of security has for too long been interpreted narrowly: as security of territory from external aggression, or as protection of national interests in foreign policy or as global security from the threat of a nuclear holocaust. It has been related more to nation-states than to people.

(UN 1994: 22)

Instead, the report sought to orientate the referent object of security towards individuals and what makes them insecure in their everyday lives. Security was defined as ‘first, safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression. And second, it means protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life’ (UN 1994: 23). Or, as it states later in the report: freedom from fear and freedom from want (UN 1994: 24). It then goes on to relate the idea of security to seven main categories of threat, namely: economic security; food security; health security; environmental security; personal security; community security; and political security (UN 1994: 24–25). Importantly, the report argues that human security in these areas ‘cannot be brought about through force, with armies standing against armies. It can happen only if we agree that development must involve all people’ (UN 1994: 24).

From this brief description we can see that the report is very much in accord with those arguing for a broadening and deepening of the security agenda – albeit with slightly different category headings to those of Buzan. The reference to ‘sudden and hurtful disruptions’ is a reminder that security, as noted above, is often concerned with resisting or ameliorating the effects of negative change. Confronting these security threats is argued as about promoting equal opportunities for development rather than the traditional panacea of military force.

The UN Human Development Report of 2010 argues that the human security agenda represented a ‘radical shift in thinking on peace and conflict prevention’ (UN 2010: 17). Moving the focus from states to individuals knocks the former off their pedestal as the referent object of security and ‘opens up the state for critical scrutiny’ (Thomas 2001: 164). However, it does not go as far as Booth in moving security away from ‘freedom from’ questions to ‘freedom to’ (Booth 1991) and as such is arguably not as progressive an agenda as Booth offered. Recent discussion on the concept has tended to emphasise the mutual dependence between state security and human security, with a UNESCO questionnaire noting the view that: ‘Human security and state (“traditional” or “national”) security are no longer seen as being in tension: the HSQ responses affirm that a capable and well-functioning state is fundamentally important to the attainment of human security’ (UNESCO 2008: 117).

The UN Human Development Report of 2010 is careful to draw a distinction between human development and human security, asserting that the first relates to: ‘expanding people’s freedoms and the second to ensuring against threats to those freedoms’ (UN 2010: 17). In this reading, human security policy is essentially negative and designed to prevent threats to development from being activated. Nevertheless, the two are seen as fundamentally connected, with the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, arguing that: ‘we will not enjoy security without development, development without security, and neither without respect for human rights’ (UN 2005: 6).

The question arises as to how far this concept actually impacted on the global governance of security. An immediate effect could be seen in the range of international forums that sprung up to debate and analyse how the concept could be applied. Building on their successful campaign to promote a treaty against landmines, the Norwegian and Canadian governments, along with eleven other members including South Africa as an observer, developed a Human Security Network in 1998, which holds an annual meeting of foreign ministers and NGOs to consult on how human security might be furthered (Howard-Hassmann 2012: 99). Austria, a founding member, describes the network’s activities on its embassy website as ‘urging states to accede to the Anti-Personnel Mine Convention and the International Criminal Court’ as well as focusing on issues such as: ‘the control of small arms and light weapons, the promotion of women, peace and security, the protection of children in armed conflicts, questions of humanitarian international law, and dialogue between civilizations’ (Austrian Foreign Ministry 2012). The network’s membership is largely made up of smaller nations and for this reason it has been asserted that it ‘does not appear to have had any significant impact on how the international community address the responsibility to protect people’ (Howard-Hassmann 2012: 99).

A separate initiative spearheaded by Japan has arguably had a great effect, as a result of its integration into United Nations operations. In 1999, Japan established a UN Trust Fund for Human Security, at first under the Office of the UN Controller and since May 2004 maintained by the Human Security Unit (HSU) that operates out of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The Unit proudly boasts on its website that since 1999 it has committed over $350 million to projects in over 70 countries (OCHA 2012). In 2000, the UN Secretary General affirmed in a number of speeches the importance of freedom from want and freedom from fear as ‘building blocks of human, and therefore national, security’ (Commission on Human Security 2003: 4). Following Annan’s support for this approach at the UN Millennium Summit, Japan was again instrumental in establishing an independent commission on human security that submitted a report in 2003 to the Secretary General entitled Human Security Now. This recommended an Advisory Board on Human Security (ABHS) be set up to mainstream the concept across the range of UN operations (Commission on Human Security 2003: 142). The 2005 World Summit Outcome statement was seen as a particular success for the Advisory Board, the Trust Fund and the Human Security Unit in that UN member states agreed in paragraph 143 that: ‘all individuals, in particular vulnerable people, are entitled to freedom from fear and freedom from want, with an equal opportunity to enjoy all their rights and fully develop their human potential’ (UN 2005). The implication of this statement was that the principles of human security were accepted by all the states of the UN.

As a consequence of the efforts of these bodies, a series of UN reports have made reference to human security and highlighted its relevance to development in subsequent years (e.g. UN 2005, 2006, 2010). The governments of Canada and Japan have been noted as playing particularly important roles as ‘norm entrepreneurs’, advancing the concept of human security. Some have drawn a distinction between the Canadian emphasis on the military aspects of security and Japan’s focus on the developmental ones (Howard-Hassmann 2012: 92). But what original divisions may have existed have largely been dissolved by the establishment of the ‘Friends of Human Security’ initiative in October 2006, co-chaired by Japan and Mexico. In 2010, the Japanese Ambassador to the UN noted that: ‘More than 140 Member States have participated in the seven meetings held to date’ (Takasu 2010). These meetings have entailed discussions on both the conflict and development branches of human security.

Importantly, the human security agenda has been taken up by NGOs and civil society activists, and many of the intergovernmental forums noted above include strong representation from the third sector. The HSU of the UN notes that their campaign draws ‘input from a number of governments, non-governmental organizations and civil society groups as well as scholars and other prominent individuals’ (UN 2006: 2).

The activities of ‘international agencies, NGOs and the private sector’ are seen as operating alongside states in promoting human security and acting to ‘shield people from menaces’ (CHS 2003: 10). It is also viewed as important for these groups to be co-opted to the aims of human security, as the Commission on Human Security puts it: ‘Implementing a human security approach in post-conflict transition requires significant changes in the way donors, multilateral agencies, nongovernmental organizations and national authorities pursue their goals’ (CHS 2003: 70). Just as traditional state security forces have to appreciate the importance of development to conflict resolution, so donors and NGOs working in development would need to take on board the physical security needs of vulnerable peoples across the globe.

Although the concept of human security has clearly received a bureaucratic impetus within the structures of the UN, it is still a controversial term. Some human rights advocates see it as subverting the already existing and more institutionally defined human rights regime (Howard-Hassmann 2012). Even its supporters concede that the idea of human security can appear too complex, involving too many actors and sectors, to be of practical use (Krause 2004: 43). Perhaps human security’s most important legacy is in strengthening the delegitimisation of state appeals to national security to justify human rights abuses. In its 2001 report The Responsibility to Protect, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) noted that: ‘The emerging concept of human security has created additional demands and expectations in relation to the way states treat their own people’ (ICISS 2001: 7). Indeed, the authors explicitly use the human security concept to highlight how individuals can be put at risk from security forces within a state and criticise the military focus of much security discourses at the expense of guarding them against ‘the omnipresent enemies of good health and other real threats to human security on a daily basis’ (ICISS 2001: 15). In short, what talking about human security does is shift the governance of security away from the formerly dominant discourse of sovereignty and national security and towards the mutual obligations of international society and the security of the individual. It is a move that is also apparent in our second case study.

What should the agenda of global security governance be?

So far we have discussed security in terms of a referent object being subject to change. The catalysts of that change are described as security threats. The end of the Cold War provoked a major debate about what threats the discipline of security studies should focus upon. In a famous 1991 article, Stephen Walt declared that ‘the main focus of security studies is easy to identify … it is the phenomenon of war’; more specifically, he delineated the st...