[P2P-F] Fwd: Global Government Revisited (GTN Discussion)

Tue Sep 26 07:52:33 CEST 2017

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Great Transition Network <gtnetwork at greattransition.org>
Date: Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 1:24 AM
Subject: Global Government Revisited (GTN Discussion)
To: michelsub2004 at gmail.com

>From Lucie Edwards <lucie.edwards at bell.net>

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[Moderator's Note: The open discussion period will be ending on Saturday,
Sept 30, after which Luis will have the opportunity to respond. We look
forward to your contributions! -- Jonathan]

There are (at least) two approaches to global governance. The first,
exemplified by Luis Cabrera’s, belongs to the Kantian “perpetual peace”
School, advocating an evolution to cosmopolitan political and economic
institutions, replacing the current model of sovereign states. It is based,
as the author says, both on principles of justice and on effectiveness:
Only such a system of world government could bring about peace and
prosperity for all. Another key argument in favour of perpetual peace 2.0
is the nature of the wicked problems facing the world today: climate
change, maritime pollution, and biodiversity crash. These problems can only
be addressed if all societies are harnessed to the task and can’t be left
just to nation-states.

The second School of Global Governance takes a more anthropological (or
butterfly collector) approach and seeks to identify, document and explain
the new institutions of governance, many of them well outside the ambit of
the sovereign state, where governance is taking place. Many of the
institutions that govern our lives from day to day are nongovernmental,
private or public/private, and operate under club rules (coalitions of the
willing) rather than universal rules. They include the institutions that
set global accounting rules; set standards for most industrial and consumer
products (the International Standards Organization); resolve conflicts in
transnational transactions—the International Chamber of Commerce’s
arbitration service—and govern the Internet and the underwater cables that
cinch the world together. Yet most people would be hard-pressed to name
these organizations. Other key areas of rule-setting are enacted by
transnational organizations, notably the European
Union, which holds a mighty sway over most health, environment and safety
issues, particularly in the developing world. And there are fields where
subsidiary organizations hold sway—notably California, in issues of
transportation and environmental protection, such as vehicle emission
controls. In these cases, the governing institutions are mobilizing three
kinds of power: economic power; the capacity to mobilize ideas, which
speaks to legitimacy; and the capacity to convene other agencies to
communicate their ideas, which speaks to leadership.

In addition to documenting new institutional types, students of global
governance examine how ideas are diffused across national states, through
transnational epistemic communities (climate scientists, for example, or
gay rights advocates), advocacy agencies (Greenpeace, Amnesty
International) or transnational media agencies like Russia Today, Al
Jazeera or Wikileaks. These may, or may not, take their direction from
nation-states, but they exercise agency and enjoy considerable legitimacy
at popular levels.

While the nation-state remains a powerful, indeed perhaps THE most powerful
actor in global governance, it is striking how much decision-making has
slipped out of its control. The trend began with the rise of environmental
problems, which could not be effectively addressed at state level, and has
accelerated with the rise of the cyberworld. This has led a number of
experts to question whether the state system is decaying, and in the
process of being replaced by a new dominant power; perhaps a form of
neo-medievalism where effective control is centred in powerful city states
which set the rules and diffuse the ideas to the rest of us. I should add
there is a debate in global governance over whether the current system is
too untidy and obscure and would be better replaced by big transnational
regulatory agencies like the WTO governing all especially of the global
digital economy and environmental politics. But there are equally strong
voices that argue that big agencies routinely
fail; the current system, with all its redundancies and byzantine rules,
provides many avenues to address and solve emerging problems.

So personally, I am not convinced that our choices are either/or at this
stage of global governance: the continued dominance of the nation-state vs.
more formal world government. If current trends continue, we are likely to
see ever more diffuse and informal governance arrangements which fail to
meet the objective of effectiveness in securing justice, democracy and
transparency, but may meet the basic requirements of efficiency in
addressing tangled global problems.

Lucie Edwards

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Thursday, August 31, 2017

>From Paul Raskin

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Dear GTN,

The world confronts grievous global-scale risks with feeble global-scale
institutions, or, as I’m fond of putting it, Earthland resembles a failed
state (www.greattransition.org/publication/journey-to-earthland). This
dangerous incongruity demands reconsideration of the fraught project of
global government, a task Luis Cabrera takes on in his new GTI essay,
“Global Government Revisited: From Utopian Vision to Political Imperative.”

Surely any rigorous Great Transition vision must address the need for
supranational decision-making, but what are the contours of new
institutions appropriate for the task? What intermediate steps can move us
down that road? Read Luis’s answers at www.greattransition.org/
publication/global-government-revisited.

Please share your reactions and comments by SEPTEMBER 30.

Looking forward,
Paul Raskin
GTI Director

HOW WE WORK
GT Network discussions of new essays occur in odd-numbered months. You
receive comments via email, and can review all postings at
www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-forum. Then, in the following
even-numbered month, we publish the essay along with a “Roundtable” (edited
commentary drawn from the discussion and the author’s response).

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http://www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/192-
global-government-revisited/2451

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