International Regimes and Democratic Governance: Political Equality and Influence in Global Institutions

Proponents of cosmopolitan democracy rely primarily on institutional design to make their case for the feasibility of democratic governance at this level. Another strategy seems more plausible: proposing a 'non-ideal' theory in Rawls's sense that examines the social forces and conditions currently promoting democracy at the international level. The strongest forces operating now are various transnational associations that help to produce and monitor regime formation and compliance. Such a highly decentralized form of governance suggests that democratization is thereby promoted by a dense network of associations in international civil society, a global public sphere, and responsive political organizations. However much these forces disperse power through the normative principle of equal access to political influence, they could also fall well short of realizing desirable ideals such as free and open deliberation. In order not to devolve into an interest group pluralism, the decentralized strategy requires that a richer democracy be realized through the legal institutionalization of free and equal access to the global public sphere.     

Global social justice at the WTO? The role of NGOs in constructing global social contracts

Over the past decade, international non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) have been contesting the neo‐liberal economic order in international politics by campaigning for normative conditions to bring about what Richard Falk calls ‘humane governance’. However, the degree to which NGOs have contributed to the formation of global social contracts remains controversial. While NGO activists and various scholars advocate the establishment of such contracts, empirical testing of this normative argument is underdeveloped. Drawing upon this lack of empirical support, critics dismiss the global social contract concept and question the roles played by NGOs in international politics. This article addresses the controversy through a review, refinement and application of global social contract theory and an empirical study of two prominent international NGO campaigns directed at the World Trade Organization (WTO), an institution that represents a ‘hard test case’. It explores the ways in which NGOs and their networks are challenging the neo‐liberal basis of WTO agreements and contributing to the emergence of global social contracts. The article concludes that in some circumstances, NGOs have the capacity to inject social justice into international economic contracts and there is some basis for optimism regarding the formation of global social contracts involving NGOs, nation‐states and international organizations.     

Ontological security and the limits to a common world: subaltern pasts and the inner-worldliness of the Tablighi Jama’at

ABSTRACT

In this article, the often conflictual intersection between transnational dimensions of religious social formations and narratives of global governance and national security is interrogated. Concretely, the article examines how the relation, between the transnational activities and commonalities actuated by the Islamic revivalist movement Tablighi Jama’at and the perception that it hosts and nourishes extremist elements, both activates and makes manifest efforts at attaining ontological security. At the heart of the analysis is hence the question of where to locate the limits to the common world as it finds embodiment in contemporary expressions of global governance and transnationalism. By critically engaging the possibility of incorporating the many voices of being human into a singular and all-encompassing framework of human existence, the article moreover builds and expands on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s theorising of ‘subaltern pasts’ and relates it to the seeming need of selfhood to strive towards wholeness, that is, for subjectivity to be securitised. It is, as a consequence, suggested that the identity formation that emerges through Tablighi Jama’at’s comportment, and the controversies that surround it, must be understood as a manifestation of the limits to what narratives of globality might accommodate. By claiming this, the article confirms and furthers extant reasoning on the incomplete and fractured relation between the possibility of a common world and the intrinsic silence of the subaltern within the realms of the international and the global.     

The potential and pitfalls of global environmental governance: The politics of transfrontier conservation areas in Southern Africa

This article examines the potential and problems associated with global environmental governance with particular reference to Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in Southern Africa. By taking a political ecology approach, it reflects on theories and practices of global environmental governance through an analysis of transboundary environmental management. In particular, it examines the politics of the struggle over control of and access to key natural resources and how it impacts on the implementation of transfrontier conservation. In order to do this, this article includes an analysis of the complex role of local and global NGOs, the changing role of the state in relation to international actors, the importance of community based natural resource management, the commitment to tourism to make conservation pay its way and the problems associated with illicit networks of traffickers of wildlife products, cars and people.It is important to investigate the politics of TFCAs because they are part of a wider context of increasing forms of transnational management of the environment; such transnational forms of management are often deemed to be more effective than national level management because of the transboundary nature of environmental problems. This article argues that the assumption that transnational management can be neatly implemented needs rethinking. In particular, it highlights the ways that complex networks of actors constitute a significant challenge to global environmental governance. This in turn raises more general questions about the effectiveness of other forms of global environmental governance centred on managing problems such as climate change, pollution or trafficking of endangered species and tropical hardwoods.     

Global Environmental Governance and the Challenge of Shadow States: The Impact of Illicit Sapphire Mining in Madagascar

The environment has become a key site of global governance because of its transboundary nature: forests, wildlife and oceans have all become central foci for networks of global governance which link international organizations, international financial institutions, states and non‐governmental organizations. This article examines how contemporary forms of global governance can be challenged and even subverted. It uses the concept of shadow states introduced by William Reno to explore how invisible global networks flow through developing states, to show how they constitute important political and economic interest groups, and to assess what kinds of environmental impact they have. It explores how powerful these networks are, and whether they are able to challenge or subvert attempts to manage, control or govern the environment. The author provides an analysis of the ways in which the clandestine networks of shadow states impact on conservation initiatives in the developing world, focusing on the features of global environmental governance and the problems posed by illicit gem mining and trafficking in Madagascar.     

War veterans as transnational actors: politics,alliances and networks in the interwar period

Historians have often considered the international veterans’ organizations which came into being after World War I as proof of the pacifist, internationalist orientation of the majority of the Great War ex-combatants. However, veterans active in these organizations were often inspired by specifically national and partisan objectives that belie any simplistic equation between altruistic transnational activism, international cooperation and pacifism. Conceiving of war veterans as transnational actors, this article explores the origins and decline of the veterans’ transnational sphere in the interwar period. It singles out four shades of competing veterans’ internationalism and describes the crucial differences that separated actors such as Henri Barbusse, René Cassin, Henri Pichot and Carlo Delcroix, among others. The article argues that both the veterans’ organizations and their protagonists, while reaching out across national borders, remained embedded in specific constellations of personal trajectories, political partisanship, nation-state interests and inter-state alliances. Their political and social activities also tried to reshape, and were subjected to, existing or emerging spatial configurations such as Great Power alliances and wider internationalist projects. Thus, the article shows that there was no homogeneous transnational sphere in international veteran politics; it was rather the competition between different internationalist practices and projects which shaped veterans’ transnational activities.     

Transnational environmental obligations: locating new spaces of accountability in a post-Westphalian global order

The growth of transnational environmental harm is not only leading to new obligations between states, it is also recasting democratic accountability for the crossboundary environmental performance of public and private actors. Informed by pragmatist ideas on public discourse, I propose a conceptual schema for understanding the moral geography of these new transnational environmental obligations: they mark out non-territorial spaces of public communication delimited according to moral precepts of harm prevention, inclusiveness and impartiality. I outline how the recognition of transnational affected publics is reconstituting and rescaling environmental accountability within international regimes of harm prevention and liability. The critical geopolitical challenge in institutionalizing non-territorial domains of environmental accountability will be the mapping and empowerment of transnational affected publics.     

Turning Point? The Volatile Geographies of Taxation

This article argues that the geographies of taxation offer an important but neglected insight into changes taking place in the nature of the contemporary state in the context of globalisation. Following Schumpeter's analysis of the “tax state”, the paper argues that, historically, the theory and practice of fiscal space are fundamental both to state form and to the possibility of political and social institutions. Despite this, the complexity and fluidity inherent in fiscal space has been obscured by the dominant normative conception of “the” fiscal state. As the concept of “fiscal sovereignty” becomes less and less salient in practice in the context of economic globalisation, it remains a powerful ideological concept for state governance. This paper reviews the primary contemporary accounts of fiscal space across a range of disciplinary contexts and scales of governance. Despite the expectation and or desire for some form of “fiscal globalisation” on the part of commentators, in practice what we see is an increased centralisation of state fiscal control coupled with a creeping individuation and privatisation of fiscal responsibility. This radical respatialisation of fiscal space has profound implications both for the state itself and for any prospect of the creation of a global “public domain” founded on a global fisc.     

Setting the rules: private power,political underpinnings,and legitimacy in global monetary and financial governance

The role of private market agents in global monetary and financial governance has increased as globalization has proceeded. This shift in both markets and patterns of governance has often been encouraged by states themselves in pursuit of liberalization policies. Much of the literature views these developments in a positive light, yet there are other aspects of these developments that also merit attention. This article supports its central propositions with two cases of emerging global financial governance processes: the Basel II capital adequacy standards for international banking supervision and the International Organization of Securities Commissions‐based transnational regulatory processes underpinning the functioning of cross‐border securities markets. Based on the case findings, the article argues first that private sector self‐regulation and/or public‐private partnership in governance processes can leave public authorities vulnerable to dependence on the information and expertise provided by private agents in a fast‐moving market environment. Policy in the vital domain of financial regulation has been increasingly aligned to private sector preferences to a degree that should raise fears of bureaucratic capture. Second, the article contends that the overall outcome in terms of global financial system efficiency and stability has been mixed, bringing a range of important benefits but also instability and crisis for many societies to a degree that has led to challenges to global governance itself. The case material indicates that the input, output and accountability phases of legitimacy in global monetary and financial governance are highly problematic, and much of the problem relates to the way in which private market agents are integrated into the decision‐making process. Third, the article posits that a better consideration of these three ‘phases’ of legitimacy and their interrelationships is likely to enhance the political underpinnings and legitimacy of global financial and monetary order.     

Linking scales: or how research about gender and organizations raises new issues for economic geography

One of the key geographical organizing concepts is that of scale.In the last few years, there has been an interesting debateabout the nature of scale and its relational character, constructedthrough and reinforcing social relations of power. In this paper,I suggest that the rapid growth of a literature about genderand organizations, largely ignored by geographers, might profitablybe brought into juxtaposition with geographical analyses ofeconomic restructuring to suggest both new ways of thinkingabout the scale and about the organization. As organizationsbecome increasingly transnational in their operation, interestingnew questions about connections, networks and hierarchies andthe governance of different aspects of the organization andthe economy arise at different spatial scales.     

The American national interest and global public goods

Since the end of the Cold War, Americans have been divided over how to be involved with the rest of the world. In the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks, the debate between those who favour a unilateral foreign policy and those who advocate a multilateral approach has been brought to the fore in American politics and the media.
In this article, Joseph Nye proposes a conception of the American national interest grounded in multilateralism. He argues that, although the United States remains the world's leading power, it cannot act alone to solve global problems such as transnational terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and global warming. Although the United States is the only country in a position to take the lead in protecting 'global public goods', such as an open international economic system and international stability, it will maintain its current predominance only if it works to establish international consensus on issues of global importance.     

A Socially Engaged Archaeology: Spatiality and Governance of Asylum Seekers in Ireland

This paper draws on Wobst’s concerns ideas of material culture, style and the implications of contemporary archaeology. In a socially engaged “archaeology of now”, I examine the spatiality and material culture of asylum seekers in Irish society as the Irish State governs and thus engineers their social and physical space. Housed in State-operated accommodation centers around the country, the spatial governance of asylum seekers in Ireland creates a structured, exclusionary transnational landscape of difference. The State thereby controls the movement, social borders, place, identity and social relations of asylum seekers in a newly global Ireland.     

Of kimchi and coffee: globalisation,transnationalism and familiarity in culinary consumption

This paper discusses the culinary consumption choices of South Korean international students in Auckland, New Zealand as a route to re-considering the transnational production of familiarity. In particular, this study questions the extent to which culinary consumption by transnational migrants is always an intentional declaration of ‘group loyalties’ or about the re-production of local or national identities. Drawing on research with students this paper illustrates that while some aspects of the familiarity enacted in culinary consumption appear to be ‘local’, in the sense that they are encoded as ‘Korean’, other aspects appear to represent forms of ‘global’ familiarity. Hence, it is argued that culinary consumption in transnational worlds can also more subtly represent an effort to recreate familiarity through reference to characteristics of everyday life before migration that may include what appear to be both global and local products. Such familiarity is then not necessarily about group loyalties or identities but rather an example of the importance of practical know how and familiar sensations in feelings of belonging and attachment.     

全球与地方的契合:权力与生产网络的二维治理

企业间关键资源的不均衡引致权力关系的不对称,强势企业得以领导以其为核心的企业网络。由于生产环节的组织和地域上的可分割性,居于权力优势地位的领先公司在全球招募企业组成生产网络。全球购买型领先公司通过外包与地方生产网络建立新的关系拓扑,地方生产网络的治理以全球商品链为纽带,嵌入到以领先公司为主导的全球价值链治理体系中。全球生产型领先公司跨境投资时无法将生产网络全盘复制,以其为主导的跨界生产网络的治理需要通过各种权力的博奕和管理上的互动来实现。     

THE ENDURING PUBLIC STRUGGLE TO CONSTRUCT,CONTROL, AND CHALLENGE HISTORICAL MEMORIES

Sumit Guha's History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200–2000 develops important arguments about the public significance of historical knowledge and the essential role of historians in public life. All societies need collective memories to sustain their cultural identities, as Guha shows in this wide‐ranging account of how such memories have been constructed in South Asian societies since the thirteenth century. The knowledge of historical experts is increasingly challenged or derided by contemporary social groups and political activists, who circulate their own historical narratives via new networks of communication. Political uses of historical knowledge are not new, however, as Guha shows in detailed accounts of how Hindu, Muslim, and British imperial regimes all used historical narratives to justify their own power. He also explains how other social groups challenged official historical narratives with their own popular stories about the past. This book contributes to recent work in global intellectual history by comparing similarities in the historical practices of premodern Europe and South Asia, discussing the cross‐cultural exchanges in colonial‐era institutions, and describing postcolonial challenges to European ideas. Guha thus offers an insightful analysis of how social and political forces influence and respond to the cloistered institutions that produce historical knowledge and construct collective memories. He concludes that evidence‐based historical narratives must be continually defended amid current public assaults on historical knowledge in both South Asia and the United States. More generally, Guha's book suggests the need for ongoing analysis of how public events, social conflicts, and new communication systems can reshape or discredit the work of historical experts.     

Systems and Boundaries in International History

The recent transnational, global, and cultural turns have challenged international historians to reconsider the approach, purpose, and value of their field. Although the new trends are beneficial to the extent that they challenge the premise that the nation-state should be the primary framework of historical inquiry, the boundaries of international history have expanded too far, and the cultural turn's preoccupation with national discourses at the expense of international structures and processes is diverting the field away from the analysis of the causes of war and the conditions of peace. The author argues that international history should distinguish itself from global and transnational history by drawing clear yet open disciplinary boundaries. Every field of inquiry needs some consensus about what it is, where it is going and why: in other words, an identity, purpose, and values. The author argues that what defines international history is its focus on the origins, structures, processes, and outcomes of international politics, above all the causes of war and the conditions of peace.     

Marriage Migration,Gender Transformations,and Family Values in the ‘Global Ecumene’

The metaphor of the market is a poor explanatory tool for the growth in international web-brokered marriages, between (mainly) men from rich countries and women from poor countries. States play an important role in regulating particular forms of migration including creating the ‘need’ for spousal migrants, as well as permitting their entry. The characterisation of the men who seek spouses through international agencies as powerful agents in the world system has to be mediated through understandings of the ways in which gender identities are not simple binaries that the contemporary global order is reproducing on an expanded scale. The characterisation of the women obscures the manner in which they are acting out of their own aspirations; and when a marriage is contracted, the man and woman enter into a personal relationship that cannot be reduced to a commodity exchange. These marriages involve people in negotiations about new forms of personal attachment involving intimacy, spousal roles and family relations. They are constitutive of the social networks of the ‘global ecumene’, a new kind of known world whose borders are constantly expanding. Gender relations are not constituted simply in the realm of the economic. We cannot assume family relations are merely expressions of dominant economic forms. The space of international web-brokered marriages is one in which women can be seen as active subjects in a transnational space that allows them to act outside, to certain degrees, of kinship-based power.     

Are you willing to be made nothing? Is Commonwealth reform possible?

A new round of Commonwealth reform proposals commenced at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting of 2009. An ensuing report, titled A Commonwealth of the people: time for urgent reform, contained a long list of proposals that eventually resulted in 2013 in the adoption of the Commonwealth Charter. Many classic international organizations are in need of reform, but this is, of course, challenging. This new Commonwealth reform process will not lead to satisfying changes and will not make it a more relevant actor in global governance. The year 2015 marks the Commonwealth Secretariat's first half‐century. We take this symbolic marker to push for a forward‐looking exercise, arguing that because the true nature of the Commonwealth is often misunderstood, a better understanding of the organization is essential before embarking on any successful change‐management project. In the article we identify four different kinds of Commonwealth: three of a ‘formal’ nature (the official, bureaucratic and the people's Commonwealth) and a fourth ‘informal’ one (Commonwealth Plus). By describing the potential of these four different kinds of Commonwealth, we can anticipate better the challenges with which the Commonwealth network is faced, both internal (including its mandate, its British imperial past and dominance, the organization's leadership and its membership) and external (other international organizations, other Commonwealths, rivalry with regional organizations and the rise of global policy networks). Consequently, this should lead to a better and more sustainable debate about the Commonwealth's future role in global governance.     

The 'greening' of global project financing: the case of the Sakhalin-II offshore oil and gas project

This article responds to a plea for economic geographers to play greater attention to the world's resource peripheries. The article presents a detailed case study of oil and gas development offshore of Sakhalin in the Russian Far East. The study serves to illustrate the complexity of resource peripheries and to demonstrate how a critical approach to resource geographies aids economic geographic theorization of globalization. The case study focuses on how the 'greening' of global project financing has created a means by which environmental non-governmental organizations hold the international oil companies to account. The article describes the transnational advocacy network that has developed to protest against the Sakhalin-II project. The key issues are identified and the response of the operator, Sakhalin Energy, is considered. Finally, the recent actions of the Russian Government in relation to the environmental impacts of the Sakhalin-II project are examined. The article concludes by assessing the ways in which the Sakhalin case demonstrates the complex processes that construct resource peripheries and how such analyses contribute to the development of a truly global economic geography. Le 'verdissement' du financement de projets à     

‘Mountain women’: silent contributors to the global agenda for sustainable mountain development

In this article, we examine the transnational and international discourses and initiatives focused on and/or carried out by the so-called ‘mountain women.’ Tracking the growing reference to ‘mountain women’, we analyze the way in which the construction and the claim of a gendered identity has developed within the general debate on the international recognition of the global importance of mountain environments that emerged about 20 years ago. Drawing on documents, a survey and interviews, our main objective is exploring how such a reference could lead to the making of an imagined community of ‘mountain women’ offering opportunities for political action. This article concludes that, though women are identified in international discourses as essential contributors to sustainable mountain development, the social identity ‘mountain women’ has not yet evolved into a collective identity around which political solidarities and strategies coalesce to ultimately ground collective action. Indeed, women's organizations have other themes on their agendas and are active at other scales apart from the global one. Indeed, few are willing to identify themselves as ‘mountain women.’ For the time being, ‘mountain women’ remain silent partners in the global agenda for sustainable mountain development.