scholarly journals Towards a ‘pluralist’ world order: creative agency and legitimacy in global institutions

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 518-544
Author(s):  
Terry Macdonald ◽  
Kate Macdonald
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
World Order ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Global Institutions ◽  
Creative Agency ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
Governance Institutions

This article addresses the question of how we should understand the normative grounds of legitimacy in global governance institutions, given the social and organizational pluralism of the contemporary global political order. We argue that established normative accounts of legitimacy, underpinning both internationalist and cosmopolitan institutional models, are incompatible with real-world global social and organizational pluralism, insofar as they are articulated within the parameters of a ‘statist’ world order imaginary: this sees legitimacy as grounded in rational forms of political agency, exercised within ‘closed’ communities constituted by settled common interests and identities. To advance beyond these statist ideational constraints, we elaborate an alternative ‘pluralist’ world order imaginary: this sees legitimacy as partially grounded in creative forms of political agency, exercised in the constitution and ongoing transformation of a plurality of ‘open’ communities, with diverse and fluid interests and identities. Drawing on a case study analysis of political controversies surrounding the global governance of business and human rights, we argue that the pluralist imaginary illuminates how normative legitimacy in world politics can be strengthened by opening institutional mandates to contestation by multiple distinct collectives, even though doing so is incompatible with achieving a fully rationalized global institutional scheme.

scholarly journals Elite attitudes and the future of global governance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Aart Scholte ◽  
Soetkin Verhaegen ◽  
Jonas Tallberg
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Global Institutions ◽  
The Future ◽  
Medium Level ◽  
Government Bureaucracy ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
Problem Solvers

Abstract This article examines what contemporary elites think about global governance and what these attitudes might bode for the future of global institutions. Evidence comes from a unique survey conducted in 2017–19 across six elite sectors (business, civil society, government bureaucracy, media, political parties, research) in six countries (Brazil, Germany, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, the United States) and a global group. Bearing in mind some notable variation between countries, elite types, issue-areas and institutions, three main interconnected findings emerge. First, in principle, contemporary leaders in politics and society hold considerable readiness to pursue global-scale governance. Today's elites are not generally in a nationalist-protectionist-sovereigntist mood. Second, in practice, these elites on average hold medium-level confidence towards fourteen current global governance institutions. This evidence suggests that, while there is at present no legitimacy crisis of global governance among elites (as might encourage its decline), neither is there a legitimacy boom (as could spur its expansion). Third, if we probe what elites prioritize when they evaluate global governance, the surveyed leaders generally most underline democracy in the procedures of these bodies and effectiveness in their performance. This finding suggests that, to raise elites' future confidence in global governance, the institutions would do well to become more transparent in their operations and more impactful problem-solvers in their outcomes.

Theory of states multilateral interaction on the example of BRICS activities

2021 ◽  
pp. 590-601
Author(s):  
Babek R. Asadov ◽  
Vladimir A. Gavrilenko ◽  
Stanislav B. Nemchenko
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
World Order ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Joint Policy ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
Legal Space ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
World Development ◽  
Rela Tions

The object of study is the BRICS activities as a special format of multilateral interaction between states. We consider the theory of above-mentioned interaction and cooperation of countries, which are expressed in the implementation of a joint policy on a number of issues. The evolution of BRICS and its unification in the international legal space contributes to ob-servance of common interests and views of BRICS participants on the prob-lems of modern international relations, reflects the objective trends of world development and the formation of a multipolar system of international rela-tions, ensures the interests of individual major state actors in broad interna-tional integration. The relevance of the issues under study lies in the fact that individual features of the international legal status of BRICS are investigated, which make it possible to effectively influence the challenges of modern world. The legal status of BRICS is fundamentally different from traditional legal approaches to international organizations and acting as a special subject of world politics, creating the most trusting conditions for interaction, BRICS focuses on other principles of world order within the framework of a new model of global relations.

The fourth face of legitimacy: Constituent power and the constitutional legitimacy of international institutions

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
John G. Oates
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
Constitutional Legitimacy ◽  
Institutional Order

AbstractScholars of international organisation commonly differentiate among three dimensions when studying the legitimacy of international institutions: input, throughput, and output legitimacy. I argue that the study of global governance needs to consider a fourth ‘face’ of legitimacy: constitutional legitimacy. This dimension addresses the normative and practical questions related to the constitutive justification for an institutional order – such as in whose name it is founded, whose interests it should serve, and how authority should be distributed within that institutional order. These questions are distinct from the procedural features of institutions emphasised by other dimensions and concern the constituent power that should ground the authority of governance institutions. In this article, I develop this fourth dimension of legitimacy, explore its varied expressions in world politics, and show how it has implications for the constitutional structure of global governance arrangements. I argue that different representations of constituent power shape the legitimacy of different authority relations within international institutions and illustrate these claims with an analysis of the politics of legitimacy in three cases: the ongoing effort to reform the UN Security Council, the negotiations over the founding of the International Criminal Court, and the debates over the Responsibility to Protect at the UN.

scholarly journals China in Global Governance: Ideology, Theory, and Instrumentation

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 132-153
Author(s):  
Evgeny N. Grachikov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
Distribution Of Power

Over the past few years, the global political landscape has changed dramatically. Trump’s aggressive foreign policy has broken the precarious balance between the centers of world politics established in the past two decades. The U.S. trade war with China and accusations of creating COVID-19 have added a significant imbalance to the distribution of power in global governance. The current political global space is characterized by a tough struggle between the main centers of power for spheres of influence in macro regions, global power and redistribution of world incomes. In fact, it is a struggle for competition in setting the principles, norms and models of the future world order. Most of the developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are distancing themselves from the West on many international issues, and advocating the creation of national concepts of world order (in “non-West,” “post-West,” “outside the West” formats), which would take into account the political and cultural traditions of their countries, and the specific experience of their interaction with neighboring states and the world as a whole. Thus, the competition in global governance between the United States and China is for a new global order, including influence on the vast Global South. This article offers an analysis of China’s strategy of global governance and Chinese academic discourse on this issue. The paper also examines China’s instrumentation for formatting its own structure of global governance and forms of strategic rivalry with the United States.

scholarly journals Measuring institutional overlap in global governance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoram Z. Haftel ◽  
Tobias Lenz
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Data Set ◽  
International Authority ◽  
Potential Applications ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
And Performance

AbstractOver the past decade, an increasingly sophisticated literature has sought to capture the nature, sources, and consequences of a novel empirical phenomenon in world politics: the growing complexity of global governance. However, this literature has paid only limited attention to questions of measurement, which is a prerequisite for a more comprehensive understanding of global governance complexity across space and time. In taking a first step in this direction, we make two contributions in the article. First, we propose new quantitative measures that gauge the extent of complexity in global governance, which we conceptualize as the degree to which global governance institutions overlap. Dyadic, weighted, directed-dyadic, and monadic measures enable a multifaceted understanding of this important development in world politics. Second, we illustrate these measures by applying them to an updated version of the most comprehensive data set on the design of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs): the Measure of International Authority (MIA). This allows us to identify cross-sectional and temporal patterns in the extent to which important IGOs, which tend to form the core of sprawling regime complexes in many issue areas, overlap. We conclude by outlining notable implications for, and potential applications of, our measures for research on institutional design and evolution, legitimacy, and legitimation, as well as effectiveness and performance. This discussion underscores the utility of the proposed measures, as both dependent and independent variables, to researchers examining the sources and consequences of institutional overlap in global governance and beyond.

Alternative Global Governances

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amaya Querejazu
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Ontological Pluralism ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Diverse World ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
Analytical Category ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Traditional Approaches

Global governance has become part of the international relations vocabulary. As an analytical category and as a political project it is a strong tool that illustrates the major complexities of world politics in contexts of globalization. The study of global governance has expanded and superseded traditional approaches to international relations that focus on relations among states. Moreover, the study of global governance and has included nonstate actors and their dynamics into a more intricate thematic agenda of global politics. However, global governance has become less a political space of deliberation and more of a managerial aspect of world politics because of some assumptions about reality, humanity, and the international community. It would appear that this is a result of the predominance of liberal thought in world politics after the end of the Cold War. Regardless of how diverse the approaches to global governance may appear, the ontological assumptions—that is, the beliefs about reality that are behind its definition, conceptualization, and implementation as political projects—are not neutral nor are they universal. These assumptions respond to specific appreciations of reality and are inherited from Western modernity. The problem with this is that claims to contemplate the interests of humanity as a whole abound in global governance institutions and arrangements, whereas in fact global governance is constructed by neglecting other possible realities about the world. The consequences of this conceptualization are important in the sense that global governance becomes a tool of exclusion. Only by taking into consideration the ontological difference through which global governance can reflect the complexities of a diverse world can one explore the importance of alternative governances as a way to consider how global orders can be approached. Such alternative global governances draw from ontological pluralism and conceive political global orders as based on the coexistence and negotiation of different realities.

Unequal power and the institutional design of global governance: the case of arms control

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLINE FEHL
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Policy Area ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
Institutional Legacies ◽  
Institutional Order

AbstractIR scholars have recently paid increasing attention to unequal institutional orders in world politics, arguing that global governance institutions are deeply shaped by power inequalities among states. Yet, the literature still suffers from conceptual limitations and from a shortage of empirical work. The article addresses these shortcomings through a study of the historical evolution of global arms control institutions since 1945. It shows that in this important policy area, the global institutional order has not been marked by a recent trend toward deeper inequality, as many writings on unequal institutions suggest. Instead, the analysis reveals a pattern of institutional mutation whereby specific forms of institutional inequality are recurrently replaced and supplemented by new forms. This process, the article argues, is driven by states' efforts to adapt the regime to a changing material and normative environment within the constraints of past institutional legacies.

scholarly journals Improving global governance: making global institutions fit-for-purpose in the 21st century

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Clark
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Economic Governance ◽  
Global Institutions ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
Fit For Purpose ◽  
Governance Institutions

In this lecture I will: comment on some of the complex challenges of the 21st century which cry out for effective global governance reflecting today’s geopolitical and other realities; and examine whether global governance institutions – particularly in the areas of peace and security, economic governance, sustainable development and climate change – have kept up with geopolitical changes and been able to tackle emerging challenges to ensure their continued effectiveness, legitimacy and accountability. 

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Peter Hägel
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
National Level ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Private Actors

Chapter 1 introduces billionaires as the prophets of the neoliberal age, whose entrepreneurship is increasingly shifting from business to other social realms, including politics. Several examples illustrate how the political agency of billionaires goes beyond the national level, and why it is of interest for the study of world politics. It delineates the specific focus of the book: how billionaires, as private actors, can shape public policy across borders, transnationally or within global governance. It discusses the neglect of billionaires as political actors, especially in International Relations, describes the methodological challenges of studying the ultra-wealthy, and explains why the book’s case studies concentrate on billionaires that are U.S. citizens. An outline tells the reader the direction of the inquiry, the main questions, and the major arguments that are being pursued in the following chapters.

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