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Abstract by the author:: Big Science communities have been remarkably effective in evolving complex processes and mechanisms to enable international collaborations. Major powers such as the People's Republic of China, Russia and the USA, who are fierce rivals in other domains, form lasting alliances. Three of the most relevant case examples are the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) community, the International Thermonuclear Experiential Reactor (ITER) nuclear fusion project community and the International Space Station (ISS) community. Beyond Gridlock theory identifies eight pathways through and beyond gridlock and their mechanisms. It is through the combination of these pathways that international collaborations can be initiated, maintained and delivered. Extensive field work in each of the three case study communities reveal winning combinations of pathways for Big Science collaborations. Shifts in major powers’ core interests and multiple, diverse organisations and institutions coalescing around common goals emerge as the two core pathways. They are supported in their implementation by two enabling pathways: innovative leadership and innovative funding. The relationship between all four provides clues on mechanisms that can be used to good effect in other international relations domains that are caught up in the debilitating global gridlock phenomenon. Collectively, the Big Science case studies show that if we can create a global collaboration of major nations around meaningful endeavours then anything is possible.
Abstract by the author: The ecology of governance organizations (GOs) matters for what is or is not governed, what legitimate powers any governor may hold, and whose political preferences are instantiated in rules. The array of actors who comprise the current system of global governance has grown dramatically in recent decades. Especially notable has been the growth of private governance organizations (PGOs). Drawing on organizational ecology, I posit that the rise of PGOs is both required and facilitated by disagreements between states that block the creation of what might be otherwise effective intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). In a form of "double-negative regulation," states block IGOs, which in turn leave open niches that are then filled by PGOs, which then both complement and sometimes substitute for state law. The organizational ecology approach outlined here extends and refocuses inquiry in systematic ways that give us a fuller understanding of how and why PGOs have emerged as one of the most striking features of the contemporary world order. The key innovations in this paper are to (a) shift the level of analysis from single agents or populations of agents to the entire field of GOs, including states, IGOs, and PGOs and (b) draw on principles of ecology to understand the composition and dynamics of systems of governance.
Abstract by the authors: The paper summarises the findings of this special issue and suggests avenues for future research. It concludes that the Eurasian regionalisms' development in the 2010s was influenced, among other factors, by Russia's concerns about external threats and by its control over the Eurasian space. However, the design of the regional institutions does not make them incompatible with global governance. The cooperation between global and regional institutions varies depending on the agenda of the specific regional organisation. In addition to direct competition between global and regional institutions, there may be an indirect one through offering access to different forms of economic benefits. Through this indirect strategy, regional institutions may reduce the incentives for individual countries to comply with their obligations to global institutions. This paper also places Eurasia within a global context of analysis and considers similar trends world-wide as well as outlines the agenda for future studies of global versus regional governance.
Publisher's note: This article reconstructs the evolution of global governance through time, in a perspective organized around Karl Polanyi's double movement. Starting from present-day global governance, the article reaches back in time to understand the different socially and historically contingent layers that have constituted it as a discourse and a set of practices. It argues based on the notion that global governance is a hegemonic discourse of world politics, and claims that it is so because it has become inclusive enough to accommodate both the "movement" and the "countermovement" in its cognitive and material structures. In this order of knowledge, the "healthy functioning" of the global economy always precedes the existence of prosperous societies, and comes before maintaining harmony in the ecosystem. This order sustains the active-reactive dynamics of the double movement and limits the possibilities of change in global governance.
Publisher's note: This article draws attention to an aspect that thus far has escaped systematic scrutiny in the theoretical literature on the political legitimacy of global governance — functions. It does so by exploring the idea that the content and justification of a principle of political legitimacy for global governance may depend on the function of the entity it is supposed to regulate (for example, law making, policy making, implementation, monitoring). Two arguments are made: one meta-theoretical and one substantive. The meta-theoretical argument demonstrates the fruitfulness of adopting a ‘function-sensitive approach’ to political legitimacy to address this aspect. The substantive argument develops the contours of an account of political legitimacy by applying this approach. This account consists of five regulative principles, which are sensitive to, and vary in accordance with, different functions in global politics.
Publisher's note: Greater interdependence is often taken to require more global governance, but the logic requires scrutiny. Cross-border spillovers do not always call for international rules. The canonical cases for global governance are based on two sets of circumstances: global commons and "beggar-thy-neighbor" (BTN) policies. The world economy is not a global commons (outside of climate change), and much of our current discussions deal with policies that are not true BTNs. Some of these are beggar-thyself policies; others may produce domestic benefits, addressing real market distortions or legitimate social objectives. The case for global governance in such policies, I will argue, is very weak, and possibly outweighed by the risk that global oversight or regulation would backfire. While these policy domains are certainly rife with failures, such failures arise not from weaknesses of global governance, but from failures of national governance and cannot be fixed through international agreements or multilateral cooperation. I advocate a mode of global governance that I call "democracy-enhancing global governance," to be distinguished from "globalization-enhancing global governance."
Publisher's note: The G20 has two distinctive features that make it a unique forum in global politics. First, it is one of the few existing global platforms where different international institutions and regional organisations can coordinate across a vast array of issue areas and emergent policy fields. Second, it is an institution that brings together heads of government which control roughly 80% of world GDP. Despite these features, the G20 lacks constitutive authority of its own, bound by a consensus principle which sharply delimits its scope of action. Notwithstanding its circumspect authority, no recent international body has garnered more attention from transnational civil society groups and advocacy networks than the G20. Most of this attention is critical and points to legitimacy problems. We argue that these legitimacy problems derive from a perception of untapped potential and undue privilege for great powers. Against this backdrop, we submit that a more active and institutionalised forum – with clear decision-making procedures for exercising authority – could help mitigate resistance and contribute to a more legitimate global governance system overall.
Publisher's note: We sketch a novel mode of governance—'global ungovernance' (GU)—which draws on and informs the articles in this special issue. GU operates in the context of transnational institution-building projects which at once pursue big visions with claims to universality (eg, building 'markets' or the 'rule of law'), and at the same time offer no adequate prescriptions. We argue that the 'impossibility of closure' becomes a central problematic of practical activity in GU—by which we mean the ultimate practical impossibility of matching institutional structures with desired outcomes in these contexts. Viewed as a set of organised practices, GU evinces a commitment both to pursue closure and to embrace its impossibility, equally competently and even at the same time. As a result, GU changes the nature, purpose and conditions of possibility of institution-building techniques and practices.
Publisher's note: This article focuses on the intersection of rising powers, competition for status, and the extent to which governance is influenced by such elements. Despite extensive scholarly attention to these concepts, contestation regarding the classification of state powers, the exact role status plays, and the consequences that can exist when it comes to global and regional forms of governance continues. We contend that the majority of states within this project have effectively risen, with some potentially still rising (from one grouping to another), while two countries, Iran and Turkey, are considered at best rising, but with uncertain trajectories. It remains unclear how they may rise sufficiently to become influential as ‘rising’ powers in the current state of international politics. We argue as well that the impact of status seeking on global governance is highly variable and, depending on the status seeking strategy chosen, may not exacerbate conflicts between rising powers.
Publisher's note: Legitimacy is central to the functioning of global governance institutions (GGIs) such as the European Union (EU) and the United Nations. There is a vibrant debate about legitimacy in International Relations, and a burgeoning literature in comparative politics on public attitudes towards the EU. Yet, these literatures rarely speak to each other, which has resulted in missed opportunities for theoretical advancements on the sources and consequences of citizens’ legitimacy beliefs vis-à-vis GGIs. To assist researchers in advancing on this state of the art, this research note develops a conceptualization of popular legitimacy as a multidimensional belief system including both moral convictions and self-interest. A statistical analysis of public attitudes towards the EU from 1973 to 2012 suggests that commonly used survey measures capture self-interest rather than moral beliefs. This note concludes by suggesting a research agenda intended to push theory and survey research on legitimacy beliefs towards GGIs forward.
Publisher's note: This article uses snapshots , rather than the ongoing flows of diffusion/contestation typically emphasized by constructivists, to explore the exercise of power through normative change. Its case is a high-profile Human Rights Council initiative: the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP s). These UNGP s have successfully presented meanings as fixed while actually stretching those meanings' boundaries. They reconceptualize what it means to "respect" and "protect" human rights. This is surprising given that the principles were framed as a conservative exercise at clarification, and under-noticed due to the legal rather than conceptual focus of the existing critical literature. To respect human rights, according to the UNGP s, agents need to take costly positive action. Furthermore, protect obligations come before respect. These are significant innovations. On the other hand, two missed opportunities of the UNGP s are their thin harm-based foundation for respect obligations, and their state centrism about who has duties to protect.
Publisher's note: This year's UN Charter Day marks the 75th anniversary of the birth of the UN system, providing an important opportunity to reflect on the achievements of the United Nations, and to look ahead at the future of multilateralism. To my deep regret, the current US administration has done deep and lasting damage to the UN system and the broader principles of multilateralism since 2017. From withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, to blocking the appointment of judges on the World Trade Organizations's Appellate Court, to pulling out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) and Open Skies Treaties, the US government has sought to undermine and dismantle some of the crowning achievements of multilateralism.
Publisher's note: Restoring the UN's Archaeology. There is no question that US, and to some degree British and Soviet, leadership drove the wartime UN from 1942 onward, but non-Western agency also shaped them and is imbedded in the core foundations of UN institutions and policy. India, as noted, was considered as an independent state in the Declaration by United Nations of January 1942 and, consequently, participated in the intrawar UN Conferences on Food and Agriculture in 1943, on postwar aid and reconstruction in 1944, and at Bretton Woods and San Francisco on a similar basis as states such as Australia, despite not being independent. These include increasing the space for political solutions to accompany military and technical aspects of peace operations, forging greater partnerships between the UN and regional bodies, and adapting the UN Secretariat to be more "field-oriented" and "people-focused." The UN was designed and has grown organically as a confederation of bodies around the core of the Security Council, General Assembly, and Secretariat. 17 In February 2019, the US Congress restored most of the Trump administration's cuts to the US funding for the UN, except to peacekeeping, which was 3 percent lower than the traditional US share of 27.9 percent of the UN peacekeeping budget.
Publisher's note: This article develops an analytical framework geared at making sense of global governance as patchwork. Our three-step methodology operationalizes the concept of 'bricolage' by focusing on the political practices and the value struggles that underpin the making of global public policies. This framework throws light on the widespread contestation over the objectives and solutions that should be pursued globally, as well as on the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that structure global governance. To demonstrate the relevance of our approach, we examine a key initiative drawn from contemporary IPE and development politics: the making of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Analyzing the making of the SDGs through our methodology sheds light on the bricolage of global public policies in three interconnected ways: (1) in showing the social mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion; (2) in documenting the variety of views involved and the prevalence of conflict; and (3) in identifying practical and normative alternatives that get discarded along the way. Overall, the proposed framework helps restore the contingency and idiosyncrasies of global policies, while also uncovering their common patterns.
Publisher's note: This article sketches an analytical framework to account for new patterns of global governance. We characterize the emergent postliberal international order as a new age of hybridity, which signifies that no overriding set of paradigms dominate global governance. Instead, we have a complex web of competing norms, which creates new opportunities as well as major elements of instability, uncertainty, and anxiety. In the age of hybridity, non-Western great powers (led by China) play an increasingly counter-hegemonic role in shaping new style multilateralism—ontologically fragmented, normatively inconsistent, and institutionally incoherent. We argue that democracy paradox constitutes the fundamental issue at stake in this new age of hybridity. On the one hand, global power transitions seem to enable "democratization of globalization" by opening more space to the hitherto excluded non-Western states to make their voices heard. On the other hand, emerging pluralism in global governance is accompanied by the regression of liberal democracy and spread of illiberalism that enfeeble "globalization of democratization".
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