Multipolar governance and global imbalances

The deficiency of financial regulation and the presence of large macroeconomic global imbalances should be considered complementary interpretations of the global economic and financial crisis. The risk we face is that a new expansionary phase will bring back large and growing external imbalances, which will keep world growth on an unsustainable path. At the international level there is a classical ‘collective action’ problem to address since if export growth oriented strategies are pursued by all major countries they will generate a deflationary bias in world demand. This article explores how multilateral cooperation and international institutions can become reengaged with, and provides a meaningful device for addressing, these new issues and problems. It is necessary to restore shared rules of the game for international macroeconomic adjustment. This means endorsing a strengthened surveillance regime for the IMF in order to induce more compatible macroeconomic policies. In this regard, the IMF should have enforcement rule incentives and mechanisms, otherwise we are going to repeat past negative experiences where peer pressure did not produce significant results.     

Security,environment, and global governance

Abstract

Security, though an admirable objective, remains forever elusive. In common with all other forms of life, the human species is subject to the inherently chaotic behaviour of the earth system in which it exists. The idea of international security is rooted in a world in which cooperative communities of nation states are run by governments in broad control of their populations. But the relationship between these networks of states and the guarantee of security is made less certain by the continuing changes in the ways power and information are distributed. Perhaps even greater threats to security are posed by environmental degradation, whether deliberate or unwitting. This review discusses these threats and suggests that they will only be overcome by increasingly global systems of governance.     

The European contribution to global environmental governance

The European Union has become an increasingly central player in international environmental politics. Its role, especially as a protagonist to the United States, has been highlighted by the way in which it successfully led the campaign for ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. The 2005 UK presidency has made climate change one of its twin priorities along with African development, and it is with this in mind that the article discusses the way in which the Union can be considered an international environmental actor in its own right and the various contributions that it makes to global environmental governance. While the EU is well known as a trade actor the complexities of its role as an environmental actor, operating under shared competence between the member states and the Community, are less well understood. Despite the inherent difficulties it has been surprisingly effective, although in areas such as climate change there is a need for strong presidential leadership.
The EU's most evident field of activity has concerned the many multilateral environmental agreements in which it has come to play a leading role. However, this does not exhaust its contribution to global environmental governance that extends to the dissemination of norms and the incorporation of partners in its accession and neighbourhood policies. Sustainable development is also a key area of internal and external Union endeavour at the WTO and elsewhere, although there are continuing contradictions arising from its agricultural and fisheries policies. Finally, the Union's credibility will rest upon its ability to implement its environmental commitments and this is nowhere more evident than in its new emissions trading system. This is the centrepiece of the EU's commitment to the Kyoto Protocol and it is the need to co-ordinate the Union's diplomacy in the extension of the climate change regime, to include the United States and the developing countries, that the UK presidency must address.     

Syncretism and subversion in AIDS governance: how locals cope with global demands

This article raises a set of theoretical questions about culture and governance in organizational responses to AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. It draws on material from two visits to sub-Saharan Africa (Botswana in July 2003 and Malawi in June and July of 2004): interviews with government officials, international organization representatives and staff from AIDS NGOs across a variety of settings in sub-Saharan governance. The article examines the relation of AIDS governance to existing patterns of African governance and argues that while 'institutional isomorphism' can be imposed by international funders, such efforts often produce paradoxical outcomes on the ground. It seeks to understand why the intersection between the organizational models proffered by AIDS NGOs and existing patterns of authority and cooperation produce either syncretism, subversion, or simply a standoff.     

New powers in the club: the challenges of global trade governance

No good deed goes unpunished: the WTO's timely response to accommodate the new powers—Brazil, India and China—at the heart of its decision‐making has produced new inefficiencies, has heightened its proclivity to deadlock, and has exacerbated disengagement and disillusionment among all its stakeholders. Particularly in the context of a major economic crisis, a reliable international institution is necessary to ensure the continued provision of freer trade—well‐recognized as the route to recovery. With the WTO's recent record to provide these necessary public goods under doubt, where do the solutions lie? This article discusses the changing role of the new powers in the WTO, and further analyses the opportunities and challenges that these developments generate. The concluding section examines possible routes to reform. While very little can, or indeed should, be done to alter the balance of power itself, it is argued that appropriate institutional reform can help the multilateral trading system retain the advances it has made on grounds of fairness and further address the concerns of efficiency that are central to the crisis that it faces today.     

Graduated sovereignty and global governance gaps: Special economic zones and the illicit trade in tobacco products

Illicit trade in tobacco products has been a significant problem globally for many years. It allows cigarettes to be sold far below their legal price and thus contributes to higher consumption, morbidity and mortality, and deprives state treasuries of a substantial amount of revenue. This article identifies special economic zones (SEZs), particularly free trade zones, as a key conduit for this illicit trade. The development of SEZs as weak points in the global governance architecture is explained with reference to the concept of ‘graduated sovereignty’, whereby the uniform management of territory by modern states has given way to a more spatially selective form of territorial governance, in which some slices of territory are more fully integrated into the world economy than others via various forms of differential regulation. Attempts to comprehensively (re)regulate SEZs, in the face of growing evidence of the dysfunctionalities that they can engender, have so far been unsuccessful. It is concluded that the neo-liberal global economy has facilitated a regulatory ‘race to the bottom’, a problem that can only ultimately be overcome by international negotiation and agreement.     

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.     

Asia's role in twenty‐first‐century global economic governance

The basic foundations of today's framework for global economic governance were laid in the years following the Second World War. Reflecting the balance of economic power at the time, Asia did not play a major role in either designing the institutional architecture or setting the agenda for global economic governance. In more recent decades the centre of gravity of the global economy has shifted towards Asia, and this trend is likely to continue in the decades to come. Asia's growing economic weight enhances its potential to play a much stronger role in shaping twenty‐first‐century global economic governance. Realization of that potential will, however, depend upon how successfully Asia addresses five key challenges: rebalancing sources of growth; strengthening national governance; institutionalizing regional integration; providing political leadership; and adopting the global lingua franca—English. While the Asian policy‐makers' ambition to play a bigger role in global economic governance is growing, their appetite for addressing the necessary policy challenges is not necessarily keeping pace with that growing ambition. This gap between ambition and action will need to be gradually closed—only then can Asia help itself in playing a bigger role in global economic governance.     

The story of Comanche: horsepower,heroism and the conquest of the American West

Marked by the Census Bureau’s closure of the frontier; the symbolic end of American Indian resistance at Wounded Knee and powerful articulations on the ‘winning of the West’ from Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill Cody, the early 1890s was a critical moment in the history of the American West. It also saw the death of one of the region’s most famous cavalry horses, Comanche, who succumbed to colic in 1891 aged twenty-nine. Famously billed as ‘the only living thing to survive the Battle of the Little Bighorn’, this article uses Comanche as a locus around which to examine the history of warhorses in the military culture of the American West, and, more broadly, to point towards a growing scholarship on war and the environment that emphasises the usefulness of such themes as spatiality and inter-species exchange in embellishing our understanding of the experience, impact and cultural memory of war. Not only does Comanche’s lifespan (c.1862–1891) usefully coincide with the federal government’s final conquest of the West but his equine biography serves as valuable testament to the use of horses in the US military as both practical and symbolic agents of American expansionism.     

A fertile mother Russia: pronatalist propaganda in revolutionary Russia

The Soviet consultation with its attendant propaganda, visiting nurses, and vacation homes attempted to set science and the doctor as the ultimate authority in matters of child rearing in place of old authorities, deny the contention that motherhood was a natural ability of women, and take over the father's place in the home. Soviet health care policy bridges pre- and postrevolutionary thought, blurred the boundaries between public and private, and mirrored international natalist policies. However, the application of these policies conformed to Soviet concepts of citizens' duties and state imperatives.