The World We Could Win (International Institute of Administrative Sciences Monographs)

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THE WORLD WE COULD WIN

International Institute of Administrative Sciences Monographs Volume 27 Previously published in this series: Vol. 26. Vol. 25. Vol. 24. Vol. 23. Vol. 22. Vol. 21. Vol. 20. Vol. 19. Vol. 18. Vol. 17. Vol. 16. Vol. 15. Vol. 14. Vol. 13. Vol. 12. Vol. 11. Vol. 10. Vol. 9. Vol. 8. Vol. 7. Vol. 6. Vol. 5. Vol. 4.

F. Rugge and M. Duggett (Eds.), IIAS/IISA Administration & Service 1930-2005G. Drewry, C. Greve and T. Tanquerel (Eds.), Contracts, Performance Measurement and Accountability in the Public Sector J.C.N. Raadschelders (Ed.), The Institutional Arrangements for Water Management in the 19th and 20th Centuries – Cahier d’histoire de l’administration no. 8 M.T. Gordon, M.-C. Meininger and W. Chen (Eds.), Windows on China A. Salminen (Ed.), Governing Networks – EGPA Yearbook S. Tiihonen (Ed.), The History of Corruption in Central Government – Cahier d’histoire de l’administration no. 7 G. Bertucci and M. Duggett (Eds.), UNDESA–IIAS Joint Publication, The Turning World – Globalisation and Governance at the Start of the 21st Century S. Horton, A. Hondeghem and D. Farnham (Eds.), Competency Management in the Public Sector – European Variations on a Theme F. van den Berg, G. Jenei, L.T. Leloup (Eds.), East-West Co-operation in Public Sector Reform: Cases and Results in Central and Eastern Europe UNDESA–IIAS Joint Publication, Managing Diversity in the Civil Service P. Falconer, C. Smith and C.W.R. Webster (Eds.), Managing Parliaments in the 21st Century B. Kliksberg, Towards an Intelligent State M. Fabri and P.M. Langbroek (Eds.), The Challenge of Change for Judicial Systems R. Gregory and P. Giddings (Eds.), Righting Wrongs Y. Fortin and H. Van Hassel (Eds.), Contracting in the New Public Management S. Nelen and A. Hondeghem (Eds.), Equality Oriented Personnel Policy in the Public Sector L. Rouban (Ed.), Citizens and the New Governance A. Kouzmin and A. Hayne (Eds.), Essays in Economic Globalization, Transnational Policies and Vulnerability J. Corkery, T. Ould Daddah, C. O’Nuallain and T. Land (Eds.), Management of Public Service Reform A. Hondeghem and EGPA (Eds.), Ethics and Accountability in a Context of Governance and New Public Management J.G. Jabbra and O.P. Dwivedi and IASIA (Eds.), Governmental Response to Environmental Challenges in Global Perspective IIAS and the United Nations (Eds.), Public Administration and Development IIAS (Ed.), New Challenges for Public Administration in the Twenty-First Century

ISSN 1382-4414

The World We Could Win Administering Global Governance

Edited by

Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi Minister of Public Service and Administration, Republic of South Africa Chair of the Working Group

Amsterdam • Berlin • Oxford • Tokyo • Washington, DC

© 2005 IIAS All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission from the publisher. ISBN 1-58603-547-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2005930256 Publisher IOS Press Nieuwe Hemweg 6B 1013 BG Amsterdam The Netherlands fax: +31 20 687 0019 e-mail: [email protected]

Co-Publisher International Institute of Administrative Sciences – IIAS Rue Defacqz, 1 B-1000 Brussels Belgium fax: +32 2 537 9702 e-mail: [email protected]

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LEGAL NOTICE The publisher is not responsible for the use which might be made of the following information. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

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THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES IIAS: What is it? The IIAS exists to advance the study and practice of public administration and public management. It operates at a global level and is funded by states world-wide; but is independent of any of them and, through its links with the United Nations, seeks to develop a voice and a vision that is neutral, as objective as possible and grounded in the exigency of the fact. IIAS: What is it for? Although it has existed for over seventy years (since 1930), the Institute’s focus is on the present and the future. How governance is done and how it could be done better; how the law of administration applies and how it might be applied more correctly; and how the management of public affairs is conducted and how it might be best done – all of these reflect its activities. IIAS: What are its values? Accountability is a core value for the Institute. Those who exercise authority must account for its use to those on whose behalf they use it. Public Administration is the key activity that connects between the power-holders and the citizen. We believe it should be effective, efficient and economical in its execution of the duties and rights of the state. We support modern governance and proper public administration and believe these should be carried out in a way that actively acknowledges diversity, that is respectful of identity and serious belief and that reflects balance. IIAS: How does it work? A small-dedicated bilingual secretariat in Brussels serves the Executive Committee, which is in turn accountable to a fully representative Council of Administration. The President and Director General lead and manage the Institute for its members. Each year IIAS: holds three conferences in three different countries around the world is host for seven-hundreds plus delegates publishes +/- 10 books publishes four issues of its prestigious International Review of Administrative Sciences (in three editions English, French and Arabic) manages a budget of approximately 1 million Euros. leads and coordinates activities among its ninety Member States and National Sections

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The Institute has two specialised bodies The International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration (IASIA) The European Group of Public Administration (EGPA) each of which conducts study, research and networking. The Institute has a distinguished library of 15,500 public administration books in several languages to reflect the accumulated wisdom and experience of its members; and a Website, which receives many thousand ‘hits’ per month about what it is doing now and what it will do in the future. Contact details :

Tel : Fax : Web : Email :

32/2-536.08.80 32/2-537.97.02 www.iiasiisa.be [email protected]

The World We Could Win G. Fraser-Moleketi (Ed.) IOS Press, 2005 © 2005 IIAS. All rights reserved.

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The World We Could Win A Preface Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi ∗ Two major recent happenings, in very different ways, have served to underscore the importance and the urgency of nascent global governance. One was the tragic disaster which visited millions in Asia in the wake of the tsunami; the other is the crisis brought on by the war on Iraq, where tens of thousands have perished. The earthquake off Sumatra, which sent huge tidal waves crashing on coastal townships from Thailand and Sri Lanka to Kenya and Somalia, brought into sharp relief the irrelevance of borders, and the deception of distance. It also brought to light, dramatically if too briefly, the strength of fellow-feeling of humans the world over. Cognitive and emotive, this growing sense of “we-ness”, widespread across timezones, represents a hopeful sign particularly in light of the persisting strength of national exclusiveness, which surfaced with the war and the relative fragility of instrumental structures which seek to bring about or to reinforce de facto and de jure, market-led, technology-driven and state-sponsored cooperation and integration on a global and regional basis. To the destructive forces and devastating blows unleashed by War and Nature, emerging global society opposed remedial action intended to contain the suffering and damage sustained by countless victims in West and Southeast Asia. The scale of the response is certainly heartwarming and augurs well for the future. Perseverence, however, is needed in order to secure long-term beneficent outcomes. To ensure that good intentions do not evaporate, but rather crystallize into constructive action and channeled to good purpose on a sustainable basis calls for coherent strategies and structures on the national, sub-national and international levels. How to develop these strategies; how to build, restore, renew and reinforce these structures; how to refine those instruments in order to ensure that they promote the welfare of the many, not merely of the few; advance their long-term interest not short-term personal gains may well be the most difficult assignment of the century. It is a critical challenge confronting both the governments and global civil society for both have a stake in its outcome. What the superb response of governments and citizens confronted with the havoc of the tsunami showed was the beneficent hand of civilization which intervenes to harness the blind forces of nature and remedy the inequities of Man and Nature alike.

∗

Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, Minister of Public Service and Administration, Republic of South Af-

rica, Chair of the Working Group.

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G. Fraser-Moleketi / The World We Could Win: A Preface

In nature, weaklings perish. Indeed, this was the fate of tens of thousands of children swept by the tidal waves or by man-made disasters in our own days. Humanity comes to the rescue. Thus, within a few hours of this December tragedy, organized civil society responded with alacrity and even, in some cases, had to force the hand of governments, which might have been inclined to look the other way. In so doing, civil society affirmed a set of principles – those of civilized humanity, the civitas humana, which has been in the making, almost throughout the world, for close to three millennia. Such principles in action not only seek to counter or neutralize the vagaries of nature, but also to spread the benefits and values of civilisation to all without distinction of race, religion, gender, ethnicity or social class. Society, not nature has, for three thousand years, enjoined us to respect and to protect the “stranger among us, the fatherless and the widow.” Indeed, it could be argued that the quality and the progress of civilization is measured by the extent to which we have been prepared to come to the rescue of the victims of misfortune or injustice and our readiness to apply our basic values equally beyond the clan, the tribe, the sect or nation state. It has been a slow process. For centuries, humanity has grappled with the need to establish and to enforce certain shared rules of the game in order both to limit the excesses of armed conflict and to secure the peace among the world’s empires and nation states. After many serious trials and tribulations, including two world wars in barely four decades of the twentieth century, the peoples of the world1 formed the United Nations “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…”, but also to promote the social, economic and technical cooperation among its Member States, as a far-sighted strategy of building the conditions of progress and peace. No less than the decades of relative world peace enjoyed since the foundation of the United Nations, it is the phenomenal growth of structured co-operation on almost every level and every field of activity which represents the hallmark of its success; arguably what distinguishes the record of the Charter and the United Nations from that of its predecessor, the League and its Covenant. In this year of its sixtieth birthday, it would be fair to argue that the United Nations has powerfully contributed to the incremental growth of a complex “international machinery” and a significant corpus of international law “for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples” in the words of the Charter.2 The war on Iraq notwithstanding, it has also helped develop and nurture a culture of peace. Considering the crises which attended the Cold War and the protracted process of decolonisation, the expansion and consolidation of multilateral activity through multifarious processes of complex, organized cross-border cooperation represent major accomplishments of the post-war decades. They gave concrete expression to the new global society in the making. An incipient sense of “we-ness”, which manifests itself more often and more forcefully at times of crises, cuts across linguistic barriers, races, religions and regions. In fact, it is giving rise to a global common weal, a sense of shared concerns transcending nation states and reaching out to embrace the entire human family. Still at a formative stage, this sense is drawing support from the close proximity of six and a half billion women and men inhabiting our crowded planet Earth and now acutely aware of the threats to its ecosystem.


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To be sure, the very forces which highlight the inter-dependence and call for solidarity among individuals and nations may also be the source of powerful counter-pressures pushing in other directions. New identities are forged in this process giving rise to rival claims often on behalf of groups which may have been excluded or were poorly represented in decision making processes when the multilateral system, currently in force, took shape. There can be little doubt that the United Nations structures and the international order which they represent have been largely the creation of the victorious powers, at the end of the Second World War. They reflect the preponderant influence of northwestern leaders, values, interest and ideas. As will be argued elsewhere in this report, most of the formative structures in the emerging global village still bear the indelible mark of the forces and traditions which shaped them over time. In six decades, however, partly as a sequel to decolonization and partly as a result of the robust performance of emerging large economies in Asia and Latin America, new clusters and new powers have seen the light of the day. They now begin to challenge a design for global governance which took shape more than half a century ago, and takes too little cognizance of the wishes and concerns of newcomers and new players. The ways of global governance are certainly in need of review. The SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations expressed this very thought in the following challenging words: […] While the post-war multilateral system made it possible for the new globalization to emerge and flourish, globalisation, in turn, has progressively rendered its designs antiquated. Simply put, our post-war institutions were built for an international world, but we now live in a global world. Responding effectively to this shift is the core institutional challenge for world leaders today.3

It is a pressing challenge. The world which our forefathers fashioned in their own image in the early twentieth century is becoming out of date, replaced by new realities. Transformed in many ways by technological progress and economic development, life in the “global village” is bringing out more starkly not merely the diversity of cultures, points of view, interests and beliefs, but also the disparities of living conditions and prospects and the degree of inequity which this entails. Addressing and resolving these troubling global issues in ways that take account of the significant differences in needs, conditions, interests and deeply held beliefs provide the rationale for giving serious thought to the design, the structures and modus operandi of the administration of global governance. It has been rightly argued, elsewhere in this report, that “global governance is not a synonym for multilateralism” (Higgott). The case for a global imperium is still made in some quarters. However, both the prospects for global hegemony and the prohibitive costs of the enterprise in human, economic and moral terms make it unrealistic, as well as most unpalatable. To say that multilateralism, indeed multipolarity, is the only sensible way may be true, but begs the question. We need to “flesh it out” and to define it clearly in operational terms. Far more important still, we need to make it work in manners that are seen to be effective, as well as democratic, participative and equitable.

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We may be past the stage where a “top-down” approach on any level of governance, domestic or international, would make sense and be accepted. The alternative, however, the “bottom-up” approach, though infinitely better, also comes up with some problems. In a world of great diversity, the quality and effectiveness of all consensual forms of governance, on any level, depend to a large extent on structures and a culture which favour a meaningful dialogue, constructive problem-solving and voluntary compliance. This, in essence, is the challenge of what this report is about, namely “administering global governance”. Administering means servicing. It means facilitating and causing things to happen. “Enabling” and “empowering” convey the same idea. In the case of global governance, at this early stage of its development, “administering global governance” sheds light on the importance of an iterative approach exemplifying the virtues of broad participation, painstaking consultation and consensus-building, where process and outcome merge. Designing, choreographing and managing the processes of global governance arguably represent some of those critical needs whose urgency and importance are measurable in terms of the high costs of crises with which the world is confronted: from war to HIV/AIDS; from abject destitution for 50% of humanity to threats from global warming. It calls for institutions, technologies and people; competent people especially. “Administering” reminds us of the critical requirements for sound design and planning; for vision, guidance, leadership, coordination and consultation in all complex operations. It is the essential antidote to the specialization which has become a feature of every field of activity. Excessive specialization easily breeds contempt for other spheres of knowledge and varying points of view, a type of fundamentalism, the dangers of which we have witnessed on all too many occasions in recent years and months. Awareness of these perils has been one of the prompters of this report. A keen sense of the role of public administration, its civilizing mission, its knowledge base and ethos underpinning its potential to service and facilitate the ongoing quest for answers on pressing controversies and major global challenges is another. Hopefully, this report offers a useful framework and helps to reconfigure the issues and the challenges in contemporary terms. Produced by representatives of many varying cultures, background and points of view, it represents an effort to accommodate a broad diversity of perspectives, both thematic and geographical. This report is just the beginning of a long exploratory process. It extends an invitation to scholars and practitioners, all the world over, to join in the debate and, more than anything else, to keep an open mind. Our world, the world of our children, is still in the making. Notes and References 1 2 3

“We the peoples of the United Nations” are the opening words of the Charter. Preamble of the Charter. Kofi Annan “We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century” New York, United Nations, 2000.


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Defining Terms and Delineating the Debate in Global Governance Michael Duggett ∗ This volume is intended to be a not unambitious contribution to a debate at the start of a century. The World We Could Win is one that we would like to see, and if it is suggested we have erred on the side of the normative as opposed to the realist, so be it. Our International Institute of Administrative Sciences in 2005 reaches its 75th birthday and speaks, from the confidence of experience, on the necessity of hope. Begun in late 2003 and guided by the distinguished Honourable Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, South Africa’s Minister for Public Administration, and by Professor Demitri Argyriades with his long experience at the United Nations – these experts who in themselves symbolise the Institute’s unique brigading of both practitioners and scholars – we set out to see what new could be said about an old question, namely “who governs?” at a global level. And in so doing we made a discovery. This set of essays is a pioneer exploration of a new continent, almost a new planet.1 Global Governance represents a new way of thinking about the world we live in. By “Global Governance” we do not only mean the United Nations, as we shall make clear. Maybe many organisations cannot quite speak their ambition; but the Institute has none of any kind other than speaking truth to power, or speaking for those that may not speak. This new vision of Global Governance is the result of two converging forces. One is historical, the other conceptual. One is the fact that the world is growing closer empirically, linked by the thousands of wires and streams of information and satellites and phones and screens and jet-planes that bind us now. We are becoming one world ineluctably. But for the fact to be noted there needs also somewhere from which it can be seen, a language that, in terms of our discipline of Public Administration, can make sense of the new reality. Conceptually, the world needs to be able to step outside itself and see itself and then develop a language to capture that new vision. Self-knowledge requires selfdistancing; as in December 1968 when we saw from Apollo 8 the first genuine images of our earth seen from deep space. That is me, that is us, I suddenly thought. A whole world, not just a city or country or even continent but a blue globe floating in space. Having somewhere else to stand enabled us to see ourselves as others could see us. In this sense we could and now we can view the globe as one unit with, not necessarily a government, but certainly a system of governance. ∗

Michael Duggett, Director General, International Institute of Administrative Sciences.

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M. Duggett / Defining Terms and Delineating the Debate in Global Governance

Just as the fact that there is no European Government does not mean that there is no European system of governance, the fact that there is no world government does not mean that there is no system of global governance. It is a place, it is a polity, it has a system by which authority is shared and spread and used; and for that the new word “governance” – and this is the conceptual development – that has emerged in the academic literature is the mot juste. It has no implication of entitlement to decide, it is simply a word to describe a process. So, it is possible now in 2005 to speak of Global Governance and the Administration of Global Governance without hyperbole as Demitri Argyriades and Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi show in their powerful prefatory texts. How have we gone about it? The Working Group on Administering Global Governance Over the spring and summer of 2003 the International Institute of Administrative Sciences in Brussels set up this group of experts to reflect upon the issue. As chair and leader the South African Minister for Public Service from one of the fastestchanging countries and one of Africa’s most dynamic, our Vice-President for Africa, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi; and to offer scientific leadership, to be our Rapporteur, Demitri Argyriades, a man who has been working in this field for many years, who holds British, and Greek nationality, who is fluent in French, Greek and Russian, who did British national service and who has worked in the United Nations, whose historic grasp is second-to-none. We needed also to involve experts from a wide geographical range, which is why the group also includes scholars from Europe (Germany, UK, Greece, and France) and Asia (South Korea and Japan). One member, also an African, works in New York for the United Nations but writes here in a personal capacity. This Group – full membership is listed in annex 2 – reflects much of the diversity of our Institute, including linguistic and gender diversity; but it is a scientific group and the prime consideration was the ability to contribute to the problematic we had developed and developed further with their help. This problematic – the terms-of-reference – is set out fully in Annex 1. Over 2003–5 the group met in Brussels (Belgium) at the United Nations in New York (USA) and in Seoul (Republic of Korea). Fabienne Maron and Juan CabreraClerget acted as its secretariat. We gave it a tight timetable – to report in time for the IIAS Conference in Berlin in 2005. All these targets have been met. Let me say a few words about the book that has emerged from this process and how it should be read. As the Director General of the IIAS I do not claim that we have expertise on all matters that relate to our world and its emerging global governance. Our field is the administration of the system. From that expertise, and that alone, gain we the right to speak at all about the question of global governance. And from that perspective to pose a number of questions that we would like to put to the political masters of the system from the standpoint of those who would have to administer it. The group decided to adopt a broad approach guided by the problematic rather than to be too tightly circumscribed, and that different experts would make their contribution in different areas. The first part, with six essays, looks thematically at different elements or facets of Global Governance and the issues that arise.


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Facets of Global Governance Andrew Massey’s essay is intended to give us a solid grounding in the concept of Global Governance, which he defines as “the activities and processes of government and governing…located at several different government levels; that is local, national, regional and global.” And of course in the world as it is today, involving civil society. (One might say that conceptually, Governance is the synthesis that results from the thesis of civil society and the antithesis of state. 2) Massey’s is a scholarly exploration of the meaning of the term, but it also discusses the recent European Commission “White Paper” on the term and recent debates about the role of NonGovernmental organizations, NGOs, particularly as they may be of value in a system of Global Governance where the United Nations, the prime actor, may need to call on the energies that are not restricted to those embodied by the State and States. I recommend his bibliography as a record of the state of the art in this discussion. Similarly, Richard Higgott’s important article on public goods and Global Governance provides us with a current account of one of the key actors on the process, the World Trade Organisation. Higgott’s is an avowedly economic analysis, but he also clarifies the sense in which Global Governance “…is no administrative science. It is a contested political process…” and he distinguishes between what he calls Type 1 Global Governance which is about better administration of the system and Global Governance Type 2 which implies that just as “good” governance implies democracy and accountability at a State level, so will it in the end demand the same at a global level. If I may interpret what he says, Type 1 could deliver efficiency; but the peoples of the world may in the longer run demand also more equality and a fairer distribution of resources across continents. This is what underlies the contest, and one in which the WTO (as indeed the World Bank and IMF) is both an agent and a playing-field. For the attempt is clearly being made to build a “bottom-up” global system in which bodies like the WTO are regularly contested because of their dominance by States and elites together (a placard in Cancun held by an antiglobalisation demonstrator read “WTO Obsoleto”). Higgott concludes that the effort to make global institutions more accountable is necessary and, should any success be achieved, he believes, that would “cast massive policy shadows”. We have always thought it vital to assert that the International Institute of Administrative Sciences works in our two official languages, that we walk on two legs. Jacques Ziller, a French expert working in the European University Institute in Florence, contributes a piece that epitomises the francophone, and typically “continental” (that is, the opposite of “anglo-saxon”) approach to our issue in his discussion of access to justice. As he argues, it is difficult to analyse global institutions as if they were simply a larger version of national ones, and to use national State-based categories for something that is not a State as such. The rule of law (“l’etat de droit”) is seen by him as a key element in globalisation, and he chooses to focus upon the access to justice as the point of approach to such a large issue. His is a subtle analysis of the tensions between openness and efficacity for bodies like the ICC and ICJ, and the need to balance right for individuals and rights for organisations. However, Ziller states that to seek to install a model of access to law at a global level on anything like the same manner that we do have developed national or European systems is “totalement utopique”. In particular he observes that the European model, sophisticated as it is, is simply not reproducible at a global level; where many states will

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lack necessary levels of justice system establishment, not to mention resourcing. But without some development of a Global Governance with a legal dimension, the very system itself will always be lacking. In recent years the world of Public Administration, like that of all areas of life, has become aware that the voice of Asia has grown in importance in our councils. In Seoul in 2004 the Institute held its 26th congress in the Republic of Korea because there seemed no better place to discuss the issue of e-governance; how has the dominant modern technology of computing changed the timeless art of governing? In his essay in this volume Pan Suk Kim, the Rapporteur General in Seoul, a sometime adviser to the Korean President and senior researcher from Yonsei and Georgetown Universities, reprises his discussion of this issue. He reminds us that it has become almost universal for governments to have programmes of “e-government” as part of their reform strategies; to deliver services better, to reach citizens more easily, to enhance efficiency. And as he notes, the new technologies and networks have also helped NGOs to organise their contestation of governance structures; which street event does not now benefit from the ubiquity of the mobile phone? The older hierarchies of information are totally subverted by the internet, even though not all have equal access to it as he notes. The important issue of intellectual property rights is also discussed and he looks in some details at the US/EU dispute eventually resolved by the Safe harbour treaty of 2000 as well as at the issue of names and numbers on the internet, managed now by a new body to regulate it the ICANN. After having discussed Korean developments Kim ends with a tribute to the need we shall have to mange complexity – “building global e-Governance is likely to be a muddled, complicated process, abundant with ambivalent, contradictory, and paradoxical effects…” In the next article the focus shifts to human resource issues, in particular the role of leadership in enabling Global Governance. Craig Baker, with Emily Christensen, both from A.T. Kearney, brings a distinctively private sector approach to our study. They compare the attributes needed by Chief Executive officers in multi-national corporations and those on the Global Governance context. They note that there are differences often of scale, diversity, dispersion and change levers that characterise the Global Governance environment as compared to a corporation, so they conclude, “…a global governance leader needs to be a lot more creative than is or her traditional counterpart…” Instead of the usual approach favoured by many private-sector based analysts, Baker and Christensen identify leadership competencies in the business sector and then instead of simply reading across, extend and amend these by taking account of the critical differences in the context of Global Governance leadership. The new group of leaders that they call for – a cadre of global governors – will thus need special development and training, and ambitiously the authors set out a model curriculum for a “Masters in Global Governance Administration”. The argument of Baker and Christensen is usefully and powerfully taken forward by the Rapporteur of this volume in an essay on the human factor. Demetrios Argyriades begins with an assumption that the world is in a crisis of Global Governance, as evidenced by the Iraq situation. He believes that the crisis results from an erosion of three elements on a world level – an erosion of values, of institutions and of personnel capacity. To rebuild public trust is he believes a necessity, and it will only be rebuilt if, among other things, we develop “…the men and women needed to


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bring life and give concrete expression to global governance on the national, the regional and the international levels…” Argyriades makes a powerful, if of course contestable argument about the 1980s and 1990s and the erosion of public service as a result of political and intellectual trends beginning with the leaderships elected in key States in 1979 and 1980, with their belief in the government as the problem and the market as the solution. No one can argue that his vision, deeply rooted as it is in classical arguments in political philosophy, going back to Plato, is a simplistic one, even if one does not fully accept it. The critique of new public management (NPM) in his essay is destructive and convincing, but more important perhaps is his proposed remedy or set of remedies, which revolves around strengthening institutions, managing diversity and growing a new or revived professionalism in the public service. More than any other contribution to our volume here, Argyriades addresses what is involved in developing a better administration for the world of Global Governance. He calls, in a way that I personally find inspiring, for a group of global governors who are “…moral, knowledge-intense, future-committed, consent-based, high energy but selective, deep-thinking, holistic, pluralistic and decisive” – and observes that with the whole world as the catchment area finding such people is not impossible. As always, the ability of Greek thinkers to set the agenda for the rest of us is evident. Regional Perspectives The second half of this volume deals with some regional perspectives on Global Governance, not only in the sense that some of them address in detail the developments in specific areas but in the sense that some also provide a perspective from a particular part of the world upon a generic issue in Global Governance. The main example of the former approach is exemplified in the revealing and insightful piece by Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi and John-Mary Kauzya (a Minister and an international civil servant, a South African and a Ugandan) on trends in regional integration in the continent of Africa. Since so much of global debate has been about how non-Africans can or cannot assist that continent it is important to read a balancing account of the determination with which Africans themselves are seeking both to learn from prior examples of continents pulling themselves up, integrating and capturing their collective energies, by their bootstraps, and to do so in future in their own way. As they put it, “…Africans increasingly have little choice but to collectively engage the administering of Global Governance through the process of regional integration…”. This is very much a report from a front-line, where you can sense a continent, with many States of different sizes, with linguistic diversities, with huge geographical variation and distinct historical heritages, struggling to find a clear path through. Our second piece from an Asian perspective is presented by Akira Nakamura from Japan. His is a subtle examination of a real concrete case of where global accords – in this case the IOPC – the law of the sea in relation to accidents that may cause pollution – run up against local political and economic realities. He looks at the case-histories of both a Russian and a North Korean ship (in the last case the Chil Song, which in December 2000 sank off Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan) whose sinking caused real problems for Japanese local authorities who faced local costs

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with little chance of their higher-level governance structures being able to help them. What is the use, one might conclude, of rhetoric and global agreement when noone ends up helping a small town the victim of geopolitical realities? As he says “…while local governments are not usually involved in the creation and conclusion of important global accords, they are frequently affected detrimentally by these agreements…” and he adds “…the global community must make a concerted effort to reduce those countries who do not comply with even the basic codes of international behaviour. Not only does this apply to developing nations but it is also pertinent to big powers…” and he lists the one he has in mind. As has been already mentioned, the continent of Europe has been critical in the conceptual development of the concept of governance, as it has in the actual thing itself. The European Union is a world-leading model that has redefined the language of public administration, since it is far beyond being an international organisation. Those who have understood the work of Jean Monnet and for whom the process of Brussels is a historic one (and I confess to claiming the first and believing the second) have in many ways created a new reality. Werner Jann from Potsdam, one of the leading German scholars in our field, has reviewed the use of the concept of Governance. As he says, Internet usage of the word to date has exceeded 15 million hits – “…it would be a true miracle of all that would indicate a clear understanding of the term…” And his discussion of the role of the NPM (New Public Managament) and of the public administration models, with special reference to Germany, Europe’s most powerful and populous State, is based upon a profound understanding. His analysis of the use of the term Governance in Weber’s own country, and how it has changed the nature of the debate there about bureaucracy adds to our understanding. And he reaffirms that this debate will not soon end – “…If somebody declares that from now on all problems of governance are solved, we would be in deep trouble indeed…”. Postscript and Recommendations Our final contribution from Anthony Makrydemetres, from Athens is of a different order than all our other essays. Most have not shrunk from normative statement or declaration or analysis where necessary; but Makrydemetres explicitly seeks to discuss the normative dimension as to whether the activity described in the concept of governance can be moral in itself; a subject touched on by Plato from the same city earlier. And Makrydemetres stresses the current relevance of the debate, “…the guarantees and requirements for administering global governance in a humane and rational way acquire a prominence and urgency as never before. Economy, technology and communication systems, (as well as the perils associated with them including…violence and terrorism) have turned global, but politics and administration has not…” The argument of Nakamura was of course the same, that our methods have not evolved to match our realities. In other words Makrydemetres argues for what he calls “…a novel and commensurate institutional armoury…” concerning the form and content of which he gives some intimations. As is proper in a senior scholar from Athens, Makrydemetres privileges “democracy” as inescapable in effective Governance, as “… a standard and measuring rod of the civility of all human interaction at the local and international level…”. He argues that a key first step is to set


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up and agree upon “…a framework of rules, standards and principles…” that would apply at all levels of Governance. Courageously he posits a raison d’humanité, a universalistic model for the way we all govern ourselves, that everyone could share across the world This would include, he thinks, the following elements: • Democratic accountability • Rule of law • Professional integrity and efficiency of public services • Responsiveness to civil society. I find that hard to beat as a summary of the key values that we share at the International Institute of Administrative Sciences and which all our members are working towards in some way. The Recommendations that we provide stand by themselves. I should stress that they are made by the Group to the International Institute of Administrative Sciences and in particular its Executive Committee and Research Advisory Council. I am certain they will shape our discourse and actions in the years to come. A Final Word on This Text The Ambrozio Lorenzetti fresco to which Anthony Makrydemetres refers dates from the 1300s in Europe, when the known world was much smaller than it is today. Our aim in this book is to raise our eyes beyond the currently known world in public administration – which is circumscribed by the State or even a system of States, and international organisations or even a system of them – and look at the new unit of analysis clearly. It is the world we could win.

Michael Duggett Director General International Institute of Administrative Sciences Brussels and London 2005 Notes and References 1

2

John Keats conveyed this sense of intellectual discovery in his sonnet on Chapman’s Homer – Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men Look’d at each other with a wild surmise — Silent, upon a peak in Darien. See T.M. Knox, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Oxford, 1952. Originally published in 1821.

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Administering Global Governance An Introduction Demetrios Argyriades∗ The sequence of events, which heralded the dawn of the twenty-first century, called for renewed attention to the urgency and importance of global governance. The concept is not new. In one way or another it can be traced to the farthest reaches of history, as well as to every shore. It was present in the vast multi-cultural empires, which dominated the landscape for centuries from China, India and Persia, through the Holy Roman Empire to the Ottoman Empire. Most Emperors considered their rule as indivisible and as divinely ordained; the globe as their dominion and their person as sacrosanct. Despite its many flaws, this concept of “one world”, which probably gave birth to the idea of Monarchy1 also nurtured and sustained a sense of shared humanity, over the rival claims of clans, tribes, sects and nations. True, “civitas humana” survived through many centuries more as a distant destiny or an ideal than as a working tool or a concrete design. Since the 1700s, however it has been overtaken by the rise of nation states which the German philosopher Hegel, in the early 19th century, eloquently described as the “march of God on Earth”.2 Initially a liberating force, sectarianism and nationalism later also demonstrated their potential for oppression and intolerance, in two destructive wars and several regional conflicts during the 20th century. Still, in two hundred years, the nation-state did serve as an important vector not merely of democracy but also of an incipient and ever-expanding framework of international law and global governance. It started with the struggle against tyranny and the “long train of abuses and usurpations” of which the US Declaration of Independence speaks so forcefully.3 It continued with the establishment of constitutional government under the rule of law. In the United States, in France and several other countries, the separation of powers was seen as a prerequisite against executive tyranny; as guarantor, in fact, of individual freedom. The Broadening Agenda on Human Rights During the 19th century, the onward march continued with the struggle against slavery, the extension of the suffrage and the relentless progress of democratic governance until, a century later and in our days, it has become at once the most accepted and probably the preponderant form of governance in the world. The basis of it all were: this firm belief in Reason, faith in the human potential and the related concept that government existed solely by virtue of consent and only to secure and ∗

Demetrios Argyriades, Rapporteur of the Working Group.

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to promote human rights and human welfare. What happened in the past one hundred years or so may aptly be described as the progressive expansion of the scope of human rights and the idea of freedom and enrichment of a model, whose roots lie in the soil of 18th century thought. Not only was the concept of human rights redefined to cover equal rights of all “without distinction to race, sex, language or religion,” in the words of para. 4 of the Millennium Declaration;4 it was also made to include entitlements and benefits, which added a new content to the “Pursuit of Happiness”, as well as “Life and Liberty.” These find eloquent expression in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Eleanor Roosevelt became a major contributor. Besides the formal rights of freedom of speech and assembly, this Declaration, adopted in December 1948, recognized “… the right to work … the free choice of employment … just and favourable conditions of work and … protection against unemployment.” 5 It also recognized “the right to rest and leisure,”6 “the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of (self) and … family …”7 and the right to education.8 This quantum leap took place between the two World Wars.9 The difference is reflected in the contents and, incidentally, length of the two foundation documents: the Covenant of the League and the Charter of the United Nations, respectively. Both documents proclaim the intent of their signatories to put an end to war, achieve peace and security, promote international cooperation and advance the cause of human rights and of the rule of law. But whereas in the League and the Covenant, the “High Contracting Parties” are Governments, by contrast, “We the Peoples” take centre stage in the United Nations and its Charter. This focus on the peoples has had a determining influence on both the configuration of the major functional areas of the United Nations and the changing organization which has emerged in the process of accomplishing these tasks. Far more than in the Covenant, International Economic and Social Cooperation has come to occupy a pivotal place in the Charter and the objectives which it lays out. Article 55 specifically mentions, with the pursuit of peace, the self-determination of peoples and the promotion of: • Higher standards of living and full employment, • Respect for human rights; and • Cooperation in solving the widest range of problems, from health and education to technical cooperation for economic and social development. This accent on development received an added boost through decolonisation, which almost quadrupled the membership of the United Nations and, without any doubt, ranks among the foremost accomplishments of its first three decades. In turn, this new situation transformed the Organization in many significant ways. Thematically and geographically, it reached out to every corner, encompassing not merely local and regional offices all the world over, but also a range of issues which have become the subject of either specialized or otherwise decentralized agencies within the U.N. system and the Bretton Woods institutions. The International Secretariat This galaxy of agencies and offices around the world are serviced by an International Secretariat, which may well be considered as one of the foremost institutional


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innovations of the twentieth century, as well as an embryonic framework for administering global governance. It was a slow development, which has yet to mature. In his pioneering work, some forty years ago, Professor Georges Langrod referred to the decades from roughly 1860 to 1910 as the “age of international organizations.” 10 Most of the organizations created in that period were highly specialized (e.g. postal union, telecommunications, weights and measures), very small and mostly staffed by nationals of the host country. However, they represented a significant beginning, which signalled the development of international standards and structures for the take-off and systematic management of multilateral programmes and intergovernmental regimes. The formal international organization received a hefty boost, after the First World War, with the birth of the League of Nations (Societé des Nations), which also saw the emergence of the first multi-national secretariat. An experiment, which failed on account of the protectionism and national exclusiveness which prevailed in the 1930s, came back with added strength after the Second World War. More forcefully and explicitly than anything set in the Covenant, provisions in the Charter of the United Nations bring into sharp relief “the exclusively international character of the responsibilities of the Secretary-General and the staff ” (Art 100). They call upon the staff “not (to) seek or receive instructions from any government” and ask the Member States not to attempt to influence them in the discharge of their functions. Perhaps it may be argued that neither Member States nor every member of staff, have invariably lived up to the Charter’s expectations in this regard. The principle, however, has lost none of its relevance. It remains a cornerstone of ethics and professionalism on the international level. Adherence to this principle represents a basic prerequisite of progress and success in the challenging task of securing a solid support structure and personnel for the duties of administering global governance. Like any organization, national or international, the United Nations has its share of rotten apples. Like any large “bureaucracy”, it may appear slow-moving, indeed “resistant to change”. In reality, however, it simply finds it difficult to accommodate and reconcile sharply conflicting values and interests which often clash and try to shift its course in opposite directions. Paradoxically, such conflicts and contradictory pressures have not substantially lessened since the end of the Cold War. On the contrary, the sudden demise of an ideology, which had been, rightly or wrongly, perceived by many people as closely associated to the practice of “big government”, has carried in its trail a campaign against the State and public organizations, national or international, whose activities were social, normative or humanitarian. Paradoxically also, the old right-left divide, which waned with the decline of socialist ideologies, gave way to multiple faults with re-emergence of sectarianism and nationalism across the board. This drastic change of landscape and the ensuing tensions have not altogether helped international institutions in the short-term. All public servants hover between competing demands: the pressures to comply with temporary exigencies and the overriding claims of public service professionalism rooted in standards of excellence and a notion of the general interest which reflects a broad consensus on lasting societal values. Their loyalty and morale may waver when this consensus is shaken.

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To a far greater extent than their national counterparts, international public servants labour in a highly volatile and diversified environment. Caught in a tug-of-war, they have to reconcile a vision of one world and civitas humana, which span two thousand years or more, with provisions in the Charter and the need to acknowledge and deal with the numerous constraints in pushing the global agenda in a world of nation states. On the international level, the centrifugal pulls of national pursuits assert themselves more powerfully than those from interest groups in any particular country. This makes standards of excellence, as well as the general interest on the international level much harder to define and to articulate. Global strategies in dealing with long-term global issues take correspondingly longer to work out and implement. These problems are not new. However, they have been compounded by the onslaught on government which peaked in the early nineties, but has yet to subside. Such vehement attacks, have come with added force, on the international level. That the United Nations, far more than the World Bank, the IMF or other international organizations, has been especially targeted is hardly symptomatic. For what was really at stake is not the cost-effectiveness of the United Nations, or any other public organization for that matter, but really the scope of what may be described as “public domain” and the prospect of expanding multilateral arrangements, correspondingly reducing the right of nation states to do pretty much as they please. Social Darwinism vs. Social Justice A product of the War and the early post war years, the Charter of the UN reflects some of the principles and ideals of the post-war Welfare State and development agendas. It clearly represents the twin effort to secure a lasting peace and build a new world order with the benefits of progress spread widely around the globe; not reserved for very few. This accounted for the ambit of the functions of the UN and development agendas, which encompassed the totality of socio-economic and environmental concerns, but focused more especially on the needs of the disadvantaged and the poor. This implied State intervention and political initiatives to address and to correct market failures where they arise. During the past two decades, by contrast the butt of neo-liberals have been government failures, whether perceived or real. Likewise, in recent years, it was the basic principles of international law that have been emphatically questioned. Contending that developments during the past decade have rendered the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) completely obsolete, neoconservative thinkers11 have argued with growing intensity in favour of doing away with such constraints on sovereignty as “continuity of States” (i.e. the concept that all governments are bound by such agreements as have been entered into by their predecessors) and the duty of all States to observe their treaty obligations (pacta servanda sunt). The parallels are unmistakable. Domestically and internationally, hostility to government and law reflect the same dislike for rules and regulations, however necessary. It must be stressed, however, that both government and governance imply self-limitation of some form or another. They entail the setting of norms, the establishment of principles, the regulation of conduct and the imposition of sanctions


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against transgressors, in general. Traditionally, the need for such self-imposed limitations or disciplinary action have been explained away in terms of costs and benefits. Thus, at the very Conference in San Francisco, which established the United Nations, President Harry Truman reminded his compatriots, as well as the rest of the world, that “no matter how great our strength… we must deny ourselves the licence to do as we please… This is the price each nation will have to pay for world peace… Unless we pay that price, no organization for world peace can accomplish its purpose. And what a reasonable price that is!”12 The virtues of compliance to a set of general rules provide the rationale for international law, as well as for the principles of rule of law and due process. Some centuries ago, they gave rise to the notion of government by consent and social contract theories. On a more basic level, they furnished the underpinnings for all institutions of governance, especially their normative and deliberative functions. The quest for definitions of global general interest and answers to the question on “what the world needs now” may well be said to represent the core of global governance but also to demonstrate its nature and importance. The range of views expressed on burning global issues like climate change; the acrimony and intensity of the ongoing debate arguably give the measure of complexities in reaching a consensus on issues of global importance through democratic processes. The alternative, however, to such painstaking processes is writ large on the pages of twentieth century history and starkly on the events of recent years. Only five years ago, at the dawn of the new century, a landmark Declaration which was signed by 147 Heads of State and Government, reiterated these fundamental principles: “We are determined to establish a just and lasting peace all over the world in accordance with the objectives and principles of the Charter. We rededicate ourselves to support all efforts to uphold the sovereign equality of all States, independence, resolution of disputes by peaceful means and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, the right to selfdetermination of peoples which remain under colonial domination and foreign occupation, noninterference in the internal affairs of States, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for the equal rights of all without distinction to race, sex, language or religion, and international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural and humanitarian character.”

In the preceding paragraph, the Declaration reads: “We reaffirm our commitment to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, which have proved timeless and universal. Indeed, their relevance and capacity to inspire have increased, as nations and peoples have become increasingly interconnected and interdependent.”13

In spite of the weight of such statements and the signal lessons of history, the target of attacks is still the very principles of shared responsibility, tolerance and solidarity so recently highlighted in the United Nations Millennium Declaration. Likewise in the cross-hairs, is the embryonic network of institutions and web of global governance endeavouring to foster a new world order based upon the rule of law, the peaceful resolution of conflicts and disputes, compliance with treaty obligations and respect for democratic processes of multilateral decision-making. To proponents of realpolitik but also to a large segment of conservative public opinion these values and these goals represent a flight from reality. Their stance betrays reluctance to accept a new reality, which is higher than that of the State and

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corresponding fears or suspicion of an international order, which is not predicated on “le droit du plus fort”. At the root of it all, is a philosophical difference, a fundamental conflict, which for more than twenty-five centuries has pitted liberals and advocates of secular humanitarian values against those who take the view that “might is right”. Put forward by Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic14 and roundly rejected by Socrates, lead person in this dialogue, this argument has resonated through the centuries, occasionally finding expression in writings as important as those of Macchiavelli and Thomas Hobbes.15 During the 20th century, it furnished the underpinnings of radical ideologies and totalitarian regimes. Echoes of it were heard during the recent debate which preceded the war on Iraq, with prominent neoconservatives berating Europeans for constant invocations of the United Nations and international law.16 These they saw as signs of weakness, as well as lack of realism. One “Global Village” … or Many? At the source of the ongoing debate on the emerging architecture for administering global governance are two rival models of Man and conflicting views of society.17 In deference to both, it needs to be emphasized that both claim a long lineage. Though one would be hard put to embrace them both, one would equally be unable to either prove or disprove them conclusively. In fact, one has to choose. Since the early days of antiquity, both have served as points of departure for rival views on ethics and political ideology. We may only assess their value in terms of final outcomes for, as it has been said, “from their fruits shall ye know them”. 18 Concern for social justice, as old as society itself, and belief in the human creative potential provided the foundations for democratic governance and peaceful cooperation, nationally and internationally. Their resonance was heard at the Millennium Assembly, as late as September 2000. Their antipodes, by contrast, have given vent to views which see the world as “jungle”, proclaim that “might is right” and, on that very basis, discount the limitations imposed by moral principle and international law. Legitimation of violence makes predatory behaviour and intolerance the norm in international or even domestic relations and, in the last analysis, saps the very foundations of multilateral governance and civilization itself. It cannot be denied that such perilous proclivities are still very much in evidence. In spite of hopeful signs of an emerging “we-ness” across time zones, recently manifested as global public opinion responded with alacrity to the tsunami disaster, the vision of the world projected by the Charter and the United Nations Millennium Declaration may still be a long way from realization. A democratic pattern of multilateral governance under the rule of law is urgently required to address the major problems which the Declaration highlighted. In a world beset with dangers, it is needed to preserve peace and collective security. The foundations have been laid, but the structures designed for conditions of the nineteen-forties and fifties might prove woefully inadequate for the 21st century. They no longer correspond to people’s expectations. It needs to be emphasized that the United Nations of 2045 will bear little resemblance to that a century earlier. As rightly pointed out by SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan,19 when the World Organisation was established in 1945, more than two thirds of its present members did not exist as sovereign independent States. Our planet barely counted 2.5 billion inhabitants against some 6.5 billion today. In


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1945, the PC revolution and many other technological accomplishments, which have transformed our lives, could scarcely be imagined. Political developments, the population explosion and scientific progress have rapidly transformed our universe. They continue to create “new facts on the ground” to which we must adjust and which will have to be taken seriously into account in designing the architecture of future global governance. As the ongoing debate on the reconstitution of the Security Council goes to show, this may prove to be difficult. It will be hard to adjust to post-cold war realities and make a chequered progress towards the distant goal of a new equilibrium in the multi-polar world which appears on the horizon. “Beati possidentes”, Bismark reportedly said. No major power is willing to part with a position of privilege and influence. However, in our world, which is in constant flux, several new contenders are coming to the forefront, seeking their place in the sun. The post-war international system, which has opened the way for “globalisation both to emerge and flourish,” is becoming out of date. Designed in the 1940s by the victorious Powers, or arguably earlier still, it takes too little cognisance of new regional clusters and emerging new perspectives from “other global villages,” whose wishes and concerns need to be voiced and heard. New actors and new players, many non-governmental, are coming to the fore, adding to the polyphony, which some find disconcerting. Transformed in many ways by demographic factors, by technological progress and economic development, life in the “global village” as we would like to call it, is bringing out more starkly not merely the diversity of cultures, points of view, interests and belief systems, but also huge disparities in wealth and opportunity, living conditions and prospects. What people found acceptable some eighty years ago does not go down too well; in fact is mostly experienced as altogether wrong by the bulk of the earth’s population. Raising the issues in earnest, heeding to people’s claims, and serious problem solving – what the Millennium Assembly and subsequent “Road Map” attempted to do20 – may greatly help defuse the growing discontent in large parts of the world. Building the structures and culture for meaningful debate, showing progress in addressing and beginning to make progress on pressing global issues, including global governance, arguably represent the toughest challenge facing the present generation of leaders the world over. It cannot be denied that so far such debate and such remedial action have all too often been marred by preconceived ideas and what might be described as the impatience of the few with the presumed nescience of the many. Manifestly, the gulf that divides the affluent twenty per cent from the bulk of the world’s population 21 is also a yawning gap in mutual understanding, mutual respect, communication and “levelling” between the two. Increasingly, the quest for compromise is thwarted by mounting suspicion and prejudice on both sides. Accommodation and consensus-building have suffered from “one best way” (my way), “one size fits all” approaches, which seem to take for granted that wisdom is vouchsafed to a chosen few; small elites of cognoscenti with knowledge and capacities, indeed an obligation, to lead the rest of the world, against its better judgment. In tandem with diversity, management of disparities is taking centre stage in building and sustaining the structures and the culture of dialogue which need to be writ large as one of the main challenges in administering global governance.22

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Among other things, it entails keeping the channels of communication open, building bridges among segments of world public opinion with clashing points of view, searching for common ground, enlightening the debate with objective information, balanced, consistent, responsible and sound advice and such constructive suggestions as might lead to workable solutions for ever-recurring problems. “Administering”: What does It Entail? The Millennium Assembly and the Secretary-General’s “Road map towards the implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration”23 represented a beginning of such a global debate. This Report, whose publication marks the 75 th anniversary of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS), is yet another step in this direction. Taking as points of departures the changing configuration of government and governance, together with the emergence of what may be described as an expanding range of global public goods, this document, prepared by a representative group of scholars and practitioners from all the world’s main regions, will seek to explore three questions concerning the administration of global governance. These may be expressed as follows: • the what • the how • the who Exploring, as it does, a still emerging trend, as well as new phenomenon, this IIAS Report makes no pretensions to authoritative statements, definitive opinions or comprehensive analyses. Rather, it seeks to help in charting the territory, highlighting certain areas which merit special attention and offering some valuable new regional perspectives on these several issues. It further tries to raise some fundamental questions concerning the modalities, criteria and guiding principles that should be applied in carrying out the tasks, which need to be discharged. Administering means servicing. It means facilitating, translating views into action and making things take shape. It means enabling governments and partners in civil society. It also means empowering not only those in power, but rather and most importantly the disenfranchised of our world. “The test of our progress” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt “is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”24 In a world of growing disparities,25 as well as great diversity, it may not be sufficient to prime the famed three E’s. Economy, efficiency and effectiveness are no doubt extremely important, but only on the condition that the decisions reached and goals pursued are ethical and equitable; and moreover that results obtained in administering global governance do promote the general interest and promote the public welfare of humanity as a whole; not only the good of the few. Indeed, it may be argued that much more is involved in administering global governance than the quest of the 3Es. Increasingly, as Part I of this Report will show, in discussing the “how” of global governance, the focus is on values and standards. These pre-eminently encompass: • access to justice; • adherence to due process and to the rule of law;


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• respect for human rights; • respect for and promotion of democratic values; • advancement of the cause of the disenfranchised; care for the needs of the poorest and vulnerable groups; • tolerance for diversity; • protection of the environment; • sustainability of outcomes; and • public service professionalism. Subsidiarity, involvement of stakeholders, popular participation, but most of all integrity, objectivity, transparency and accountability are other critical standards and qualities with which the activity of administering global governance must be infused. Making such high demands, however, begs the question: who is to enforce those standards and on whom? Who are the men and women, the public service professionals, on whom we make demands that they observe these standards? Most importantly, however, we need to ask ourselves what legislative measures, what policy provisions, what regulatory frameworks need to be put in place in order to attract, recruit, retain, develop and motivate the type of personnel needed, on the national, sub-national, global and regional levels, and to direct their energies towards the quest of the global public good. This is hardly a new concern. The need of public services around the world to bring into their fold the best fruit of the country’s schools, colleges and universities, as they mature, has been a main objective of public service reform since the late nineteenth century. It was reiterated, in more contemporary terms, by the Committee of Experts of the United Nations on Public Administration in its First Meeting report. The Committee enjoined all States to make a special effort “to recruit and retain their fair share of the best talent.”26 For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the principle of merit was generally accepted as a self-evident truth. Indeed, it guided practices in the recruitment of staff for the Secretariat of the League of Nations and was subsequently enshrined in Article 101.3 of the United Nations Charter. Though such terms as integrity, competence, character and knowledge have been routinely used to define the meaning of merit, there can be little doubt that it is culture-bound; a supple concept invested with time-specific content to accommodate new needs, as well as varying trends of public administration in different parts of the world. What is the requisite profile of senior public servants for the manifold critical tasks of administering global governance? Where to look for such a profile? How to attract, retain and build it? Confronted with the erosion of public service worldwide,27 the authors of this report propose no panaceas. They have no easy answers; no “one best way” solutions. They simply raise the question, draw attention to its complexity and hope to initiate a broad debate on the issue, which is of vital importance, but also one susceptible to a multitude of answers and definitions. It should not be overlooked that, what we seek to address, are policies and staff needs for the tasks of multilevel governance, as well as a diversity of global public goods. Such staff may include officials employed on the national level, by NGOs in some cases, by regional organizations like the A.U., E.U., ASEAN or OAS, but also global enti-

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ties like WTO, the U.N. Secretariat, the International Labour Organisation or the World Bank. What should they have in common? The reader of this Report will be exposed to differing viewpoints on facets of globalisation, as well as regional perspectives from Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia. These tend to show the extent to which globalisation, as both process and outcome, is seen in a different light depending on the needs, priorities, experience and prospects in each of these four regions. Though multilevel governance and the integration process have moved in these four regions at an uneven pace, what they all have in common is shared appreciation of the merits and potential of integration and close cooperation as strategies for coping with globalisation. Member States in different regions not only experience pressures from powerful trends that render them more vulnerable to winds of global change; they also scan the environment looking for opportunities and “lessons learned” in order both to avoid repeating the mistakes that other countries made but, more important still, to reap the yield of benefits that change may have to offer on the international level. Regional cooperation and integration appear to be two strategies that have been widely adopted throughout the world. What will become apparent by reading the four chapters from Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia is that both cooperation and integration have become important catalysts of change in both the internal structures of the government of Member States and the pattern of relationships among them. Even departments of government, which previously were known as mostly “domestic” in scope, indeed local authorities, now encompass an important international dimension in their work. The rapid proliferation of global public goods, which is the subject-matter of the two opening chapters of the report, and swiftly expanding areas of technical cooperation from health and education to trade, security and culture, have blurred or done away with the old generic distinction between “home” and “foreign” affairs. In “administering global governance”, national public services are being transformed at almost the same pace as international agencies, both regional and global. Still an emerging process, regional integration and globalisation are reshaping the ways of governance. This Report provides an outline of the principal parameters of this global process of change. This Report will focus on the leadership, needed to make things happen, and public service professionalism, albeit on a higher international plane. We shall explore the values, behavioural traits and attitudes, which must be shared by all in order to optimise the outcomes of a process involving many people coming from varying cultures, a multitude of disciplines and points of view. Once more, the Declaration of the Millennium Assembly sheds useful guiding light. The Declaration calls attention to “certain fundamental values” deemed to be “essential to international relations in the twenty-first century.”28 These include respect for freedom and equality of all; solidarity with all irrespective of race or religion, gender, age or social class; tolerance of diversity to promote a culture of peace; respect for nature and shared responsibility. Such values must be internalised by all irrespective of level, the region where they serve, their occupational background or the tasks which they perform, in order


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to reinforce much needed public trust, to enhance the emerging sense of global general interest and to combat parochialism which, in the name of “realism”, places national security and “patriotic duty” above human rights concerns and international treaty obligations.29 “My country, right or wrong,”30 like “results over process”; suggests a type of attitude and ‘one-track mind’ that are the very antithesis of public service values, as well as professional ethics, which are absolutely required in administering global governance. In place of the all too common ‘yes, minister!’ careerism and chauvinistic attitudes, what public organizations, on both the national and inter-regional levels, require is the principled, informed, balanced, consistent and responsible advice, guidance and leadership which true professionals offer. Notes and References 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14

15 16 17

18 19 20 21

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) De Monarchia, Epistolae, Eclogae and Questio de Acqua et Terra (1904), translated by P.H. Wicksteed, in Temple Classics, 1904. “Der Gang Gottes in der Welt”, G.W. Hegel “Principles of the Philosophy of Right (1821).” From Frederick Mosher (1976) American Public Administration 1776–1950: Basic Documents, New York, Holmes & Meier, p. 9. A/Res/55/2/8.9.2000 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, General Assembly Resolution 217(III) 10 December 1948, Art. 23. Ibid. Art. 24. Ibid. Art. 25. Ibid. Art. 26. See H. Stuart Hughes (1975) The Sea Change: The Migration of Social Thought, 1930–1965, New York, McGraw Hill Book Co. Georges Langrod (1963): La Fonction publique internationale, Leyde, Sythoff. Victor D. Hanson “Good bye Europe” in Commentary, October 2002, Vol. 114/3, pp. 21–25. Quoted by Stephen Schlesinger in “An Annoying, Necessary Friend; in most cases, the United Nations has helped to further U.S. objectives”, in Los Angeles Times, January 31, 2005, Home Edition. Resolution A/RES/55/2/8.9.2000. According to Thrasymachus, “justice or right is nothing but the name given by the men actually holding power in any State to any actions they enjoin by law upon their subjects; and that their laws are framed to promote their own personal or class interests. ‘Just,’ accordingly, means what is for the interest of the stronger, ruling party. Right or wrong have no other meaning at all.” See The Republic of Plato, translated with an Introduction by Francis Macdonald Conford, Chapter III, page 14, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1951. See Jűrgen Habermas (1973) “The Classical Doctrine of Politics in Relation to Social Philosophy”, in Theory and Practice, Boston, Beacon Press, p. 60 et. seq. V.D. Hanson, op. cit. “All Politics” wrote Paul Valéry, “implies a certain idea of Man”, See P. Valéry History & Politics, Pantheon, New York, 1962, p. 103. On this subject, see also Edmund Leach “Models of Man” in W.A. Robson (ed.) Man and the Social Sciences, Sage, Beverly Hills, CA, 1974. Mathew, 12:33. Kofi Annan (2000) “We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century”, New York, United Nations. A/RES/55/2 (18 Sept. 2000) and A/56/326 (6 Sept. 2001). “The benefits and opportunities of globalization remain highly concentrated among a relatively small number of countries and are spread unevenly within them. In recent decades, an imbalance has emerged between successful efforts to craft strong and well-enforced rules facilitating

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22

23 24 25

26 27

28 29


the expansion of global markets, while support for equally valid social objectives, be they labour standards, the environment, human rights or poverty reduction, has lagged behind.” (Report of the Secretary-General – the Millennium Assembly) “Something is wrong when the richest twenty percent of the global population receive more than eighty per cent of the global income. Our challenge is to make globalization an instrument of opportunity and inclusion – not fear”. James D. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, in his keynote address to the Global Finance Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Prague, quoted in the New York Times, 27 September 2000, p. A8. A necessary complement to Mr. Wolfensohn’s words appeared in the Overview to the UNDP Human Development Report, 1999. According to this report, against the dominant share (86 per cent) of global GNP that goes to the 20 per cent of the world population living in the highest income countries, a mere 1 per cent went to the bottom fifth. Worse still, the gap between them has grown exponentially in recent years. It stood at 1 to 30, in 1960. In 30 years, it doubled (1 to 60, in 1990) and in just seven years rose again substantially (1 to 74, in 1997). Twenty four centuries ago, Thucydides expressed this very thought, responding to those impatient with “talk”, in a remarkable statement (the “Funeral Speech”), which he attributed to Pericles: “Instead of looking to discussion as a stumbling block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all”. Thucydides, History B II para. 40 from M.L. Finley (ed.) The Portable Greek Historians, London, Penguin, 1952. A/56/326, 6 September 2001, op. cit. President F.D. Roosevelt, quoted by Bob Herbert in “a Radical in the White House” in The New York Times Op-Ed page, Monday, April 18, 2005, p. A19. “The growth of such disparities and the related trends, chiefly in the direction of concentration of power accompanied by wealth and by conspicuous consumption, were graphically portrayed by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Millennium Project and Special Adviser to the SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations on the Millennium Development Goals, at the 15th December 2004 Forum. Professor Jeffrey Sachs specifically stated, “As the Wall Street Journal showed yesterday, in its top left hand column, with the increasing size of the super-yachts, it is not good enough to have 80 ft. yachts, or 100 ft. yachts, may be they have to be 400 ft. yachts. It is not good enough to have $200,000 cars; now they have to be $500,000. It is not good enough to have $200,000 watches; they have to be one million dollar watches. What kind of world is it when other people are dying … because they do not have a few cents … to cure a malaria infection, or do not have a dollar ($1.00) a year to protect their children from malaria. That is not what we signed up to. We signed up to trying to make a safe world, in which everyone can stay alive, because there is plenty to make that possible, and in which everybody has a chance for development.” On this subject, see also M. J. Balogun (2002) “The democratization and development agenda and the African Civil Service: issues resolved or matters arising?” in International Review of Administrative Science; Vol. 68 (2002), pages 533 et. seq.; esp. 535. Report of the First Meeting of the Committee of Experts on Public Administration E/2002/26 July 2002, para. 18. “This was not just in the civil service, but in the armed forces, police and intelligence services, not only for public sector agencies but also for non-profit organizations, and not just in the United States but also in Canada, Western Europe and elsewhere. Meantime, the business sector has gone from strength to strength, especially for the top executives of multinational corporations, whose compensation packages, always superior to anything in the government sector in their home countries, have taken off beyond anything foreseen a decade earlier.” Gerald E. Caiden and Naomi J. Caiden, ‘The Erosion of Public Service’ American Society for Public Administration National Conference, Phoenix, AZ, March 2002 (Van Riper Panel): see also Gregory B. Lewis and Sue A. Frank, “Who Wants to Work for the Government?”, Public Administration Review 62 (4, 2002): 395–404; and J.S. Nye, “The Best and the Brightest You Show in the Public Service”, International Herald Tribune, 24 August 2001. A/RES/55/2 op. cit. See Raymond W. Cox III (2004) “Going to War: a Commentary on Ethical Leadership and Politics” in Public Integity, Vol. 16, No. 4, p. 321.


30

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A similar idea has been expressed by Professor Yehezkel Dror arguing in favour of moving beyond the traditional concept of ‘raison d’etat’ towards a broader concept of ‘raison d’humanite’. See The Capacity to Govern: A Report to the Club of Rome (2001), pp. 83–93.


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Contents The World We Could Win: A Preface Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi

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Defining Terms and Delineating the Debate in Global Governance Michael Duggett

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Administering Global Governance: An Introduction Demetrios Argyriades

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PART I: FACETS OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE Chapter I Multilevel Governance: Administering Global Governance in a Differentiated Political Context Andrew Massey Chapter II Public Goods, Global Governance and Private Actors: Learning from the WTO Richard Higgott

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Chapter III Administering Global Governance: The Issue of Access to Justice Jacques Ziller

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Chapter IV Global E-Governance: Toward Recreation of a Better Public Space Pan Suk Kim and Whasun Jho

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Chapter V Administering Global Governance – Making It Work Leadership – Making It Happen Craig Baker and Emily Christensén Chapter VI The Human Factor … Globally Demetrios Argyriades

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86

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PART II: SOME REGIONAL PERSPECTIVES Chapter VII Administering Global Governance: Making It Work in Africa Through Regional Integration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi and John-Mary Kauzya Chapter VIII A Quest for Improving Global Governance: A Japanese Perspective from the View of Crisis Management Akira Nakamura

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Chapter IX Modern Governance: A European Perspective Werner Jann

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Chapter X The Morality of Governance – A Postscript – Anthony Makrydemetres

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Conclusions and Recommendations Members of the Working Group ANNEX 1 Terms of Reference

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ANNEX 2

Working Group Members 2003–2005

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Author Index

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Part I Facets of Global Governance



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Chapter I Multilevel Governance: Administering Global Governance in a Differentiated Political Context Andrew Massey∗ The Notions of Governance and Multi-Level Governance: The Context Governance is a term that refers to the activities and processes of government and governing; including the relationship between the state and civil society. Its current usage reflects the fragmentation and complexity of the modern state (Lynn et al. cited in Peck, 2004, p. 196). The term represents activities simultaneously located at several different governmental levels; that is local, national, regional and global. This chapter argues that the evolving complexity of governmental policy-making processes may be understood with particular regard to the multiplicity of policy networks that have evolved around core executive functions and national government departments and are now an essential prerequisite to the delivery of policy; “they are a form of private government of public services… Commonly, welfare state services are now delivered by packages of organisations” (Rhodes et al., 2003, pp. 26–7). While service (or policy) delivery is thus characterised, so also is policy formulation, service quality evaluation and an increasing body of both public and private sector regulation and standards accreditation. It may be seen that globally, while there are hegemonic, or leading political systems, structured by US dominance in terms of liberal economic and political propensities, we remain a long way from the liberal political homogeneity some may have predicted following the collapse of Soviet style collectivism at the end of the Cold War (Etzioni, 1993; Friedman, 1962; 1980; Fukuyama, 1992). Governance represents the differentiation of government, government functions and governmental authority; it crosses the penumbra between the State and civil society weaving a seamless web between the two. As such, this chapter contends, there are serious implications for the authority and legitimacy of government in an age of governance. A successful administration of good global governance needs to take these issues into consideration. The remainder of this chapter explores ways of doing so, after expending a little more time seeking to understand the notion and context of governance. ∗

Andrew Massey, University of Portsmouth.

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A. Massey / Multilevel Governance

For the reasons outlined in the preceding paragraphs, the term governance has become prominent in the literature on organizations as well as political science and official governmental publications around the globe. Although Peck, amongst others, argues the need for caution regarding the ubiquity and utility of the usage (2004, p. 195–6), the dispersal of traditional governmental activities to the private sector and international NGOs, has made it a useful descriptive shorthand for the way policy is made and services are delivered in a growing number of jurisdictions and across a growing number of areas such as trade, welfare, and environmental policy. To this end, therefore, governance refers to ‘governing with and through networks” (Rhodes et al., 2003, p. 28). It is not a new term, and its first recorded use was in 1399, when Henry IV used it to justify his usurpation of the English throne, arguing there had been a “default of good governance” (Richards and Smith, 2002, p. 14). If an even longer view is adopted, however, it may be seen that many of the debates regarding governance, government, civil society and global civil society, within a political context or a legalistic constitutionalist context may be traced back to the work of the Chinese writer Shen Pu-Hai as long ago as 330BC (Hood, 1998, p. 15) or the work of King Alfred the Great in England in the 9th Century (Philips, 1982). The pertinent point to be made here is that the issues with which contemporary scholars and policy-makers wrestle; the nature of government, the locus of legitimacy, power, and authority, the relationship of States to each other and to civil society, are the kinds of issues debated across different social and political systems for millennia. The modern perspectives and debates, however, are informed by the steady post-Cold-War evolution of social and political structures alongside accelerating technological advances. These changes are occurring concomitant to huge disparities between (and within) countries in terms of their wealth and their citizens’ access to basic human needs such as clean water, adequate nutrition, health care, education, human rights and equal protection under the law. In some parts of the world the continuing disparities are actually worsening, even while the global economy expands (UN, 2003). As a result the answers to the kinds of questions posed by these atavistic debates are changing. A Marxist and economic determinist perspective would argue that our global wealth and accompanying political systems reflect the economic structures in society, but that is to miss the richness of broader cultural, political, historical and anthropological explanations for these developments. Other perspectives take the view that material wealth has been obtained at the expense of less tangible, but nonetheless important religious and cultural richness, as well as at great environmental cost (Bernstein, 2001; Bloch, 2004; Gray, 2004). Gruber notes the paradoxical implications of modernisation for governments: The contradictory coexistence of universalisms of global economics and telecommunications and particularisms of different contemporary social movements, especially ethnic and religious ones, cause problems for modern states at the domestic level and international order at the interstate level. The modern nation-state, emerging in the 19th century as the fundamental unit to which domestic social, political and economic action is bound on the one hand and on the other hand as the primary actor in international relations, is no longer able to answer the challenges of globalisation and localisation. The changing nature of the nation-state amidst the globalising features of contemporary politics is perhaps one of the most important aspects of ‘post-modern’ geopolitics (Gruber, 2002, pp. 202–3).


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Although disagreeing with the ‘hollowing-out of the state’ thesis, Gruber does, nonetheless, believe there is now a need to discuss the ‘redefinition’ of the nationstate (2002, p. 203). Clearly much of this reform is technology-enabled, if not technology-driven. The changes in information technology, medical advances and broader engineering developments are powerful tools that allow governments and societies to restructure, reform and re-organise the way services are planned, paid for and delivered. Technological advance is a major dynamic in the accumulation of global wealth and these developments provide the foundation for material benefits, but it is important to locate them within their political, social, cultural and economic context (Massey and Pyper, 2005). Modern governance, especially global governance is the often unplanned and haphazard result of these dynamics. What Is Governance? Some Definitions In its modern usage, governance has several interpretations. Across the globe changes in public administration, often labelled new public sector management (NPM) have impacted on governing and governance (Massey, 1993; Parsons 1995; 2000; Rhodes et al. 2003). In the main, however, governing may be seen to be: The totality of interactions, in which public as well as private actors participate, aimed at solving societal problems or creating societal opportunities; attending to the institutions as contexts for these governing interactions; and establishing a normative foundation for all those activities (Kooiman, 2003, 4).

Kooiman adds that governance may be seen ‘as the totality of theoretical conceptions on governing’ (2003, 4), but it must be noted that this is not a universally accepted definition; indeed it misses some of the richness and utility of much contemporary usage. Governance, therefore, may also be defined as: A descriptive label that is used to highlight the changing nature of the policy process in recent decades. In particular it sensitises us to the ever-increasing variety of terrains and actors involved in the making of public policy. Thus, governance demands that we consider all the actors and locations beyond the ‘core executive’ involved in the policy-making process (Richards and Smith, 2002, p. 15).

In other words, governance represents the inclusion of civil society and the economic, professional and social interest groups into the networks of policy formulation and delivery. That inclusion, though, is not comprehensive and neither is it on an equal basis. Some groups and networks are exclusive and dominant and it is this, as Higgott notes (in this publication), that raises questions regarding the democratic deficit and the means both national governments and civil society has as a whole to hold those involved in governance to account. The growth in the number and activities of NGOs is a particular issue raised by those with a concern with holding governments to account in the global age, especially when sovereignty, and therefore effective enforceable law is located at the level of the nation state. The European Union’s White Paper on Governance has begun the debate on these issues, seeking to define governance in its European context as: Rules, processes and behaviour that affect the way in which powers are exercised at European level, particularly as regards openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence (2001, p. 8).

Extending out from Europe to a more general perspective, at the heart of the concept of governance is a realisation that, with few exceptions, hierarchical and bu-

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reaucratically centralised government is no longer the dominant form of political system. With the demise of old-fashioned command systems has come a more pluralistic concept of power and service delivery. But although it may be pluralistic, it is not immune to being dominated by powerful coalitions of interests. This diversity and complexity is sometimes explained as the differentiated polity; or to use another expression, governing without a government. In this explanation the state has been transformed into the enabling State whereby the role of government is to ‘create the conditions in which other organisations, most notably those located in the private sector, can prosper’ (Richards and Smith, 2002, p. 20). Privatisation and the marketisation of government activity in response to the problems of command economies and the inflexibilities of ‘big government’ have created the rise of the ‘hollowed-out’ state (Gruber’s hesitation at the use of this phrase, as discussed in the foregoing section, notwithstanding). A nation’s core executive is less able to depend upon giving orders to ensure the effective implementation of its policies, but must rely instead on diplomacy and negotiation to ensure it gets its way. The membership of States in international organisations and their corresponding international commitments and obligations, has accelerated the dependency of governments across the globe upon these skills and underlined the interdependency of even global superpowers upon regional powers and also upon small nations (Rhodes, et al., 2003, pp. 23–35). Furthermore, this perspective recognises the expansion and strengthening of the private sector, especially those NGOs and international corporations engaged in performing a role in the delivery of previously government-owned and run services; an example being the contracting by several governments of the US company EDS to deliver and run revenue and welfare software systems for government departments (Margetts, 1997, pp. 87–104; Dunleavy, 1997, pp. 16–46). Such relationships create interdependency, indeed dependency by governments upon internationally operating corporations for the delivery of their policies, where previously there was no such relationship, beyond broad strategic aims in terms of trade and industry policies and a tax take from the profits and earnings generated as a result of corporate profitability. It may be argued from this that government and governance are multi-levelled and it is to this we now turn. Differentiated Politics, Multi-Level Governance and Good Governance The differentiated polity model, first developed by Rhodes to explain the changes occurring in the UK, changes accelerated by EU integration and evolution, may be applied to a variety of political systems within the internationalised polity. It recognises an emphasis on governance rather than government; power dependence and thus exchange relationships within and between networks and the actors that comprise those networks. It views: • Policy networks as a medium of policy making; a segmented and sometimes fractured executive; • Inter-governmental relations and an emphasis on diplomacy and negotiation; • A hollowed-out state (Rhodes, et al., 2003, pp. 151–167; Richards and Smith, 2002, p. 6).


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In other words, multi-level governance is a reality that exists in several forms in different contexts. It means more than simply recognising the fact of the limitations to national sovereignty within the family of nations comprising the United Nations. States, through their various signatories to the Charter and other treaties voluntarily limit their sovereignty in a number of ways. The notion of the differentiated polity also recognises the role of regional political organisations, devolution, federalism, professional groups, international corporations and other transnational organisations in governance. As a neutral model, it neither approves of this, nor disapproves of it; it simply draws attention to the reality of the situation. It is for policy-makers to draw further conclusions, but amongst those conclusions must be a realisation of the need to recognise the disparity of power and influence that exists within multi-level governance and between different polities. There must also be recognition of the weakness of some national powers and groups of powers to address wider issues of crime, economic exploitation and environmental degradation. Multi-level governance, then, takes place at the supranational level, both global and regional; the national level, where sovereignty remains legally located, but from which much has migrated, and at the sub national level. Through policy networks, powerful actors criss-cross the interstices that comprise the gaps around and between these levels and it is often difficult to track them, let alone to hold them to account. At the global level, the literature on global governance has focused on examining the evolving mechanisms of political coordination among states and private agencies that seek to resolve collective problems or realize common or complementary interests in an era of globalization (Held and McGrew, 2002a). Advocates of global governance contend that its domain includes states, international governmental organizations (IGOs), multinational corporations (MNCs), and international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs) – all of which seek to advance common international activities through regulation (Cutler, 1999; Held and McGrew, 2002b). Global governance marks the acceptance of regulations at the global level out of a conviction that such regulations will enable actors to seek wealth in an orderly fashion and in accordance with the norms of the international system (Halabi, 2004, p. 21). Halabi views global governance as an attempt to ‘manipulate the forces of globalisation’ in order to: “Mitigate globalization’s negative effects, and privilege states that follow global rules. Globalization, in turn, is a system-level variable. It refers to a state of affairs in which events that occur in one place may have instantaneous effects as well as long-term consequences in other places and are often beyond the control of states that can merely react to them” (2004, p. 23).

As already noted, these phenomena include global environmental changes as well as the extraordinary and far-reaching developments in transportation and communication technologies. But this means that for most if not all States, globalization is an external factor, it happens to states, they are affected by it or afflicted by its consequences. Global governance is an attempt to deal with the ‘challenges and constraints of globalization’, it is a series of mechanisms to govern and mediate its impact, to coordinate ‘among various local and global actors (States, MNCs, INGOs and so on)’ (Halabi, 2004, p. 23). In other words, global governance is something internalised by States both individually, through their adherence to new rules, regu-

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lations and laws, and collectively, through the adoption of these new rules together as a concerted and coordinated attempt to deal with the issues of globalisation; Global governance thereby is intentionally created to address the impact of the unintended and often unforeseen consequences of globalisation. The growing complexity, indeed sophistication of the global polity, combined with the uncertainties of technical innovation: (h)as eroded the ability of states to control what is happening. This complexity has made policy coordination among states an important but difficult task. Decision makers and even bureaucrats are in many ways unqualified to cope with the range of problems. Moreover, some global concerns such as those of global warming, HIV/AIDS, and contagious financial crises are affecting domestic politics. Much of this political void has been filled by INGOs, each specialising in one issue area and consulting with States on strategies for coping with that set of concerns. The elevation of INGOs to this prominent role in world affairs has often been referred to as the creation of a global civil society (Lipschutz, 1996) (Halabi, 2004, pp. 24–5).

National governments, however, have become wary of losing their ability to control the policy process within their own borders and have responded to the challenge by reforming the inter-governmental organisations responsible for addressing many of the more prominent issues, chief amongst these being (globally) the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, as well as the (regional) institutions of the European Union, NATO, NAFTA and so forth (Halabi, 2004, p. 25; Howse and Nicolaidis, 2003). Both prior to and after the reform of many of these institutions, however, there remains an obvious democratic deficit in terms of holding the policy makers in the institutions to account. Governments and NGOs have attempted to address this issue not only through institutional reform of international organisations per se (Howse and Nicolaidis, 2003), but also through an effort to create a kind of global civic society in order to nurture good governance. There are examples of attempts to define what is meant by the term ‘global civic society’. Indeed Omelicheva attempts such a definition, although it would probably be academically more accurate to refer to most such definitions as descriptive lists of traits or actors. Omelicheva’s attempt belongs in this category, but its descriptiveness makes it a useful tool for beginning to understand the institutions, issues and civil society actors involved. She argues that global civil society does not have territorial boundaries in the way states do, but operates globally through NGOs and complex networks of civil society actors and institutions. ‘Global civil society is composed of various interacting units that are often referred to as “agents” or “actors”’, but it is neither defined by international law nor given a legal status (Omelicheva, 2004, p. 5). She specifically excludes those institutions created by inter-governmental treaty from the realm of civil society, but this is perhaps an area open for debate. Taking these points into account, she argues, global civil society actors may be considered to be: 1. non-governmental, i.e., institutionally separate from the system of States, uncontrolled by a governmental entity, and not established by an intergovernmental agreement; 2. not-for-profit, meaning that profit making plays a secondary and subsidiary role in a spectrum of activities of global civil society organisations; and profits received from commercial activities are not distributed for the benefit of the members, boards, staff or shareholders;


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3. voluntary, i.e., the human and material resources come from voluntary contributions of time and money, membership is not legally required, and the members can leave the organization at any time; 4. having some institutional presence and structure expressed through the relative persistence of goals, activities, and/or a legal charter (bylaws, a written constitution etc.,) that demonstrate intent of (the) organization to continue in existence (2004, p. 6). By extension, therefore, global civil society, as described by Omelicheva, is the arena where these actors operate. Her hesitation to include agencies or organisations created by treaty or intergovernmental agreement may be seen to be overly restrictive. This is made more apparent when her own goals for global civil society are examined. She argues that global civil society developed partly as a response to the imposition of the liberal economic agenda following the fall of the Communist Bloc. The resulting social and economic dislocation in more vulnerable societies has meant that their governments have been unable to supply vital health, education and welfare functions and ‘civil society actors came forward to take over the functions reserved for the states and to advocate for harnessing processes of globalization by placing checks and controls on the global market’ by seeking to introduce good governance in the form of ‘accountability, transparency and democracy on the global scale’ (2004, pp. 6–7). Organisations that must be included in these activities, however, include UNHCR and a welter of EU initiatives, suggesting that we are witnessing something more akin to Rhodes’ version of the differentiated polity and multi-level governance, as discussed in the preceding sections. If, as this chapter suggests, we have entered an age of multilevel governance that includes a large and increasing measure of global governance, then it is incumbent upon observers and practitioners to seek to explain and pursue what constitutes ‘good governance’. Good Governance At the local level with regard to small polities or local government, good governance begins with democratic accountability, but at the global level this kind of democratic direct accountability is problematic. Global civil society organisations, NGOs and others, according to some observers, may (or perhaps ‘should’) aspire to be: 1. transparent; 2. accountable for their actions; 3. accountable not just for their actions, but also in terms of their management, project implementation, financial management, and information disclosure; 4. to operate ethically; 5. to operate regardless, or rather beyond the boundaries of, race, ethnicity, religion, culture and politics; 6. to respect and support individual human rights (Omelicheva, 2004, p. 8). Taken at face-value, these are fine-sounding aims, but to put them into practice it is necessary to define what is meant by some of the key phrases such as ‘transparency’, ‘ethical’, or ‘accountability’, let alone the notion of individual human rights as against group or collective rights, an issue much to the fore in societies where

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there is substantial inequality. For example, at what point does increased taxation or land redistribution on a few wealthy individuals equate to a breach of individual rights, when the collective benefits of these policies are aimed at improving the circumstances of a substantial collection of individuals? The work of Buchanan and other Public Choice theorists provides one set of proposals to this kind of conundrum, a set of proposals curiously similar in practice to Rawls veil of ignorance in his ‘Theory of Justice’. However it is a view that is heavily contested, not least in those societies experiencing considerable inequalities of wealth and power (Buchanan, 1999, pp. 23–24). Whatever the fine-sounding proposals, it is impossible to divorce decision-making in the real world from the context of history, struggle, ethnicity, wealth and power. It is perhaps more fruitful to explore ways of confronting these realities and making them work in favour of good governance than to adopt some abstract notion that pretends they do not exist. The European Union Commission’s White Paper on European Governance, goes some way towards defining what it seeks and considers to be good governance. The paper argues that good governance consists of: 1. Openness, with EU institutions working in an open manner communicating their activities widely throughout the EU and beyond, using language that is accessible and understandable to the general public, in order to improve public confidence in complex institutions. 2. Participation, while accepting that direct democracy has a limited applicability, the Commission seeks wide participation through what it calls the policy chain – from conception to implementation. This participation relies on national governments pursuing an inclusive approach when developing and implementing EU policies. 3. Accountability, in the form of a better defined role for the legislative and executive processes with each of the EU institutions explaining what they do and taking responsibility for this area. All institutions need to develop greater clarity and responsibility. 4. Effectiveness is the next element identified, with policies being effective and timely, delivering what is needed ‘on the basis of clear objectives’ with an ‘evaluation of future impact and, where available, of past experience.’ Effectiveness ‘also depends on implementing EU policies in a proportionate manner and on taking decisions at the most appropriate level.’ 5. Finally, the White Paper identifies ‘coherence’ as an essential element of good governance. ‘Policies and actions must be coherent and easily understood’. The growth of the EU, making the need for coherence that takes into account the Union’s diversity, ‘requires political leadership and a strong responsibility on the part of the Institutions to ensure a consistent approach within a complex system’ (COM, 2001, p. 10). These five elements, or principles, are located within the context of proportionality and Subsidiarity, where before action is taken the need for it is carefully considered and the minimum amount of interference and disruption sought, while the appropriate level of action is also addressed. That is, policy makers and those involved in the consultation process need to consider whether the issues under consideration should be located at the European, national or local level, or whether the EU needs to raise the issue at UN or WTO level for action.


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Taking this a stage further, Archibugi prefers to use the term ‘cosmopolitan democracy’, but the relationship to good global civil governance is clear. He argues, in terms supportive of the concept of multi-level governance, that: “The best way to conceptualize cosmopolitan democracy is to view it in terms of its different levels of governance. These levels are not bound so much to a hierarchical relationship, as much as to a set of functional relations. I indicate five paradigmatic dimensions – local, statewide, interstate, regional and global. These networks correspond to … networks of sociospatial interaction. The assumption of the universal value of democracy demands, I believe, testing how its norms can be applied to each of these levels” (Archibugi, 2004, p. 446).

There are seven assumptions in his model for a cosmopolitan democracy: 1. democracy is to be conceptualised as a process, rather than as a set of norms; 2. a feuding system of States hampers democracy within States; 3. democracy within States favours peace, but does not necessarily produce a virtuous foreign policy; 4. global democracy is not just the achievement of democracy within each State; 5. globalisation erodes States’ political autonomy and thereby curtails the efficacy of state-based democracy; 6. the stakeholders’ communities in a relevant and growing number of specific issues do not necessarily coincide with States’ territorial borders; 7. globalization engenders new social movements engaged with issues that affect other individuals and communities, even when these are geographically and culturally very distant from their own political community (2004, p. 439). Accordingly, procedures for decision-making are again in dispute, it has been ‘stressed that that democracy cannot be expressed solely in terms of the majority principle’, while ‘it is often proposed that consideration should not simply be given to the arithmetical sum of individual preferences, but also to how different individuals are affected by a given decision’ (Archibugi, 2004, p. 439). In the era of multi-level governance, where policy makers and citizens pursue notions of good governance, the issue becomes one of how these many competencies and activities may be shared, especially in terms of reconciling competing claims to sovereignty. Legitimacy often resides legally at the national level, yet some national governments will lack sovereignty (and competency) in one or more areas. With the nation state being the legal repository of sovereignty, global multilevel governance presents problems in terms of democratic accountability for the delivery of goods, services and the setting of international quality standards. Archibugi argues that the concept of national sovereignty is ‘a dogma to overcome:’ “The belief that a political or institutional body should be exempted from justifying its actions is incompatible with the essence of democracy. Each political player, whether a tyrant or a ‘sovereign’ people, must come to terms with other actors when competencies overlap…we must face up to the challenge of finding an effective replacement, since the formal claim of sovereignty is still needed today to curb the dominance of the strong over the weak” (2004, p. 452).

His suggestion, along with others, of some kind of global constitutionalism, possibly replete with a World Court is one that appeals to many. However, others find this idea profoundly disturbing, especially those in Europe and the US, who have already criticised the political role adopted by the European Court in the EU and the US Supreme Court (Berger, 1997; Massey, 2003; Sandholtz and Stone Smith, 1998).

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It may be preferable to accept the elements and principles outlined above, while retaining a major role for traditional politics (and policy makers) and eschewing a further move towards the juridicalisation of political life (Howse and Nicolaidis, 2003). Constitutionalising issues out of the political domain, de-politicising them, is only good governance if it advances democratic accountability. If it merely removes the likelihood of political change and places important decision-making within the remote realm of distant courts, unelected judges and lawyers, then it runs counter to the needs of the democratic process and will bring globalisation into further disrepute. The problems of global governance, when it clearly has to be a differentiated form of governance on many different levels, cannot be adequately addressed by retreating into a constitutional sanctuary, where obeisance is paid to the fanciful superiority of judicial decision making. This would be a retrograde step. A more fluid, responsive and responsible set of structures and processes that embrace the changing political dynamics at all levels is to be sought as a means of most effectively achieving a lasting method of administering global governance. Howse and Nicolaidis address these issues in exploring the potential for more advanced legal and institutional developments for the World Trade Organisation, They note that: “Constitutionalism is viewed as the means of placing law, or the rule of law, above politics. WTO constitutionalism is a solution to the limits of domestic constitutionalism in achieving such a result with respect to economic rights – limits that are attributed to the capture of domestic politics. In short, a constitutionalised WTO attempts to place economic freedom above politics. For us, however, just the reverse is necessary to address the legitimacy crisis of the multilateral trading order: more politics is needed, not less” (2003, p. 75).

The authors note that the connection between constitutionalism and legitimacy is a complex one (2003, p. 74), but the aspirations to convert such a contested notion as global economic liberalism into some kind of higher law demonstrates the limitations of such a process. As they note, ‘Why would states agree to the protection of individual rights at the international level when in many cases such rights are not recognized in their own domestic constitutions?’ (2003, p. 81). The movement towards some kind of constitutionalising of global governance is an attempt to emulate the EU’s federalising process whereby conventional treaties endowed with a judicial mechanism through the European Court have acquired, or been converted by degrees into a ‘genuine constitutional order’ (Howse and Nicolaidis, 2003, p. 84). It may be argued that the way to develop the administration of global governance, is not through constitutionalising issues out of politics, but rather by incorporating several basic principles, for procedure. Howse and Nicolaidis have suggested that it may be useful to begin with: 1. Institutional sensitivity; especially deference to the individual states, including transparency and due process in decision-making. 2. Political inclusiveness; the guiding principle being Subsidiarity and inclusiveness of all relevant interests in decision making. 3. Top-down empowerment; this will involve a recognition of the need to protect weaker and small states against unfair decision-making and unfair competition, specific agreements or laws (rather than constitutional amendments) that prohibit extreme competitive behaviour, ‘dumping’, environmental degradation or unfair tax advantage have a greater chance of successful imple-


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mentation if the preceding two principles are also employed (Howse and Nicolaidis, 2003, pp. 86–90). Given the huge disparities in wealth, power, population and access to natural resources, as well as the many forms of political structures and developments, it is clear that, in terms of multi-level governance and global governance, the subsidiarity principal will need to take priority. Furthermore, the way in which that subsidiarity takes effect and is recognised will vary over time and place and according to the issues and the actors who are involved. It will certainly (if it is to be successful) be a more fluid and flexible kind of subsidiarity than that used by the EU, and the way in which Article 5 of the Nice Treaty has been interpreted in practice (Van Hecke, 2003, pp. 55–64). There is always a risk in assuming that a policy or a lesson learned elsewhere can be simply transported, rather is it important to remember the wider cultural, historical and political context when doing so. Greater genuine subsidiarity is a key to developing this (Rose, 2005). Issues that need to be adequately addressed therefore include the role and rights of stateless nations, such as the Kurds or the Welsh, indeed those in multinational states as well as the Diaspora of nationalities spread via large-scale immigration across the globe. The EU’s Constitutional Convention began the process of engaging with these issues at the regional level (MacCormick, 2004, pp. 331–344). However it is something that epitomises the clash and conflict between good intentions in terms of good governance and the harsh reality of addressing the practicalities of making it work. The role of NGOs will be crucial and in many ways they have become one of the major lubricants within the wheels of the international governmental machine. But this in itself is not without some difficulties for the concept of ‘good’ governance. NGOs and Multi-Level Governance The use of the term NGO received its ‘first prominent mention’ in the UN’s 1945 Charter (Article 71) (Page, 2003, p. 1). It was used to describe largely charitable non-state groups such as the World Council of Churches. In recent decades however, the term ‘non-governmental’ has changed in usage to become somewhat more governmental and is now used by: Governments and international organisations to describe organisations with a close relationship with them, and also by many organisations which aspire to such a relationship with national and international public authorities. It is a term of incorporation into the governmental process, and not only in the context of organisations that can provide humanitarian, social, cultural and educational (among other) services, but offers outside groups a status in the process of policy making (Page, 2003, p. 1).

For much of the last fifty years, NGOs have been seen in a positive light, as a force for good, a kind of ‘benign face of civil society’ (Vibert, 2003, p. 5). However as their role and influence in global governance has expanded and been more widely recognised; as they have reached out beyond being simple charitable donors of ‘good’ services, so have they become open to criticism. The Czech President Vaclav Klaus referred to them as one of the forces of a new collectivism (ibid.). The traditional assumption, that a flourishing NGO sector aids the growth of civil society and thereby also democracy, has come under increasing scrutiny from some perspectives. Vibert argues that there are five main reasons for this:

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1. The idea that NGOS act as a kind of transmission belt to a more broad based democratic participation is now more suspect; that is, there is less sound evidence for this belief. 2. NGOs themselves have made more expansive claims. They claim they are themselves more representative and that they bridge the gap between civil society and distant politics, or more generally they claim to occupy the moral high ground in public debate. These claims themselves invite questions about the role of NGOs. 3. A minority of NGOs and their supporters have embraced what in some quarters are seen as ‘extreme views’ or ‘extreme tactics’. Issues so afflicted include international summits of the WTO and GM crop production and research. 4. NGOs occupy ambiguous and inconsistent territory in some highly visible and important areas. For example, some NGOs are at the forefront in protesting against the forces of globalisation, while others are at the forefront of wanting to universalise standards of human rights and their enforcement. There is nothing new in NGOs taking different sides in the public debate on these issues, but high profile inconsistency between NGOs presents them as representatives of factions, rather than standing up for the common good. 5. Finally, the idea that NGOs stand for the ‘bottom up’ involvement of individuals with the social good has become tainted. Instead of NGOs acting as a buffer between government and civil society, they are frequently trying to mobilise the powers of government. Instead of NGOs expressing the voice of grass roots sentiment, they often appear to enjoy a cosy and complicit relationship with organised government. They not only mobilise government, but become an instrument for top-down government (Vibert, 2003, pp. 5–6). Vibert is also concerned at the collusion between NGOs, the judiciary, regulators and some governments over the growing area of regulation, undermining some aspects of representative democracy (2003, p. 21). The answer to this is to establish a framework of rules that introduces a ‘greater congruence between the activities of NGOs and the well-functioning of democracies, without jeopardising their socially valuable roles outside politics – particularly in challenging accepted social norms’ (ibid.). To conclude this section, good global governance can only really function if NGOs are part of global public administration. But as their role and number have expanded very considerably, so they too must recognise their own governance must be modernised in terms of accountability and transparency. Conclusions and Recommendations Good governance in the context of the UN therefore must be governance that seeks to meet the aims of the UN’s Charter and meet the UN Millennium Development Goals through overcoming the weaknesses of governance as part of the differentiated polity, especially those pertaining to accountability to citizens and to the rule of law. There is also a requirement to address the weaknesses of governance through promoting greater transparency, which is transparency of behaviour by offi-


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cials in national public administrations and NGOs. To this end, good governance can seek to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals, including: • Eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; • Universal primary education; • Promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women; • Reduction of Child mortality; • Improvement of maternal health; • Combating HIV/Aids, Malaria and other diseases; • Ensuring environmental sustainability; • Development of a global partnership for development. The world posses both the resources and the knowledge to achieve these goals. It will do so by implementing good global governance through an effective system of public administration. Good governance may be achieved through addressing the implementation of effective public administration procedures at the national, regional and international levels; building on best practice wherever it may be found; ensuring that procedures, based upon due process transparently exercised, hold the exercise of power to account. Good governance also sets about meeting and addressing social problems through the effective and pragmatic delivery of solutions; solutions that are agreed upon and implemented in a responsible and democratically accountable way. In all of this, good governance is faithful to UN principles and values, as enshrined in the Charter and the Millennium Declaration. The focus of legitimacy and legitimate sovereignty is at the level of the State. But States pool their sovereignty to a greater or lesser extent. No State is truly sovereign in that it cannot ignore its neighbours or the wishes of the wider world community with impunity. The global governance being evolved is multi-level governance. We need to ensure it is also good governance. Through the principles of subsidiarity, transparency and accountability we can address the issues of good governance in its multi-level context. The UN should legitimately act as a ‘cartel buster’ on behalf of small States in order to facilitate subsidiarity in practice. For example, smaller states are vulnerable to capture by larger financial and industrial interests, even when they are themselves open and democratic. Likewise, larger States, that lack the democratic and legal protections of a system based upon due process, may find that their ruling elite is similarly ‘captured’ by criminal interests, leading to corruption and policy decisions that are not in the best interests of the citizenry. Practical ways in which this may be implemented are through strengthened international police cooperation and coordination, measures taken to speed up democratisation in some States, leading to a greater measure of independence for the resident population and enhanced ability to participate politically and socially within their own community and beyond; to recognise in fact, that ‘good government’ is ‘effective government’. In all of this, there is a need to underline and support the principal of subsidiarity. That which can be done at the lowest level, should be done at the lowest level, but with the utilitarian principle that the purpose of good governance is to maximise justice and sustainability globally, and minimise harm in its guise of inequality and environmental degradation.

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References Buchanan, J. (1999), The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Cutler, C. (1999), Locating “Authority” in the Global Political Economy, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 43, pp. 59–61. Dunleavy, P. (1997), “The Globalization of Public Services Production: Can Government be “Best in World”?” in Massey, A., (1997), Globalization and Marketization of Government Services: Comparing Contemporary Public Sector Developments, Basingstoke: Macmillan, pp. 16–46. Dunsire, A. (1973), Administration: The Word and the Science, London: Martin Robertson. Etzioni, A. (1993), The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda, New York: Crown Publishers. Friedman, M. (1962), Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Friedman, M. (1980), Free to Choose, Harmondsworth: Pelican Books. Fukuyama, F. (1992), The End of History and the Last Man, London: Penguin. Gray, J. (2004), Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern, London: Faber and Faber. Gruber, K. (2002), “Globalisation, Regions, Nations and Integration: Central and Western European Perspectives,” Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 200–228. Halabi, Y. (2004), “The Expansion of Global Governance into the Third Wold: Altruism, Realism, or Constructivism?” International Studies Review, Vol. 6, pp. 21–48. Held, D., and McGrew, A. (2002a), Governing Globalization: Power Authority and Global Governance, Cambridge: Polity Press. Held, D., and McGrew, A. (2002b), “Introduction”, in Held, D., and McGrew, A. (2002a), Governing Globalization: Power Authority and Global Governance, Cambridge: Polity Press. Hood, C. (1998), The Art of the State: Culture, Rhetoric and Public Management, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Howse, R., and Nicolaidis, K. (2003), “Enhancing WTO Legitimacy: Constitutionalization or Global Subsidiarity?” in Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration and Institutions, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 73–94. Lipschutz, R., with Mayer, J. (1996), Global Civil Society and Global Environmental Governance, Albabny: State University of New York Press. Lynn, L., Heinrich, C., and Hill, C. (2001), Improving Governance: A New Logic for Empirical Research, Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press. MacCormick, N. (2004), “The European Constitutional Convention and the Stateless Nations”, International Relations, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 331–344. Massey, A. (1993), Managing the Public Sector: A Comparative Analysis of the United Kingdom and the United States, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Massey, A. (1997), Globalization and Marketization of Government Services: Comparing Contemporary Public Sector Developments, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Massey, A. and Pyper, R. (2005), Public Management and Modernization in Britain, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Margetts, H. (1997), “The Automated State,” in Massey, A., (1997), Globalization and Marketization of Government Services: Comparing Contemporary Public Sector Developments, Basingstoke: Macmillan, pp. 87–104. Omelicheva, M. (2004), “Global Civil Society?” An Empirical Portrayal, paper to the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, APSA. Page, E. (2003), “Foreward”, in European Policy Forum, NGOs, Democratization and the Regulatory State, London, European Policy Forum, pp. 1–4. Parsons, D.W. (1995), Public Policy: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Policy Analysis, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Parsons, D.W. (2000), Public Policy as Public Learning: An Inaugural Lecture, London, Queen Mary: University of London. Peck, E. (2004), “Governance, Partnerships and Performance”, Public Money and Management, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 195–196. Philips, P. (1982), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, London: BCA.


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Rhodes, R., Carmichael, P., McMillan, J., and Massey, A. (2003), Decentralising the Civil Service: From Unitary State to Differentiated Polity in the United Kingdom, Buckingham: Open University Press. Rhodes, R.A.W. (1994), “The Hollowing out of the State”, Political Quarterly, 65 (2), pp. 138–51. Richards, D., and Smith M. (2002), Governance and Public Policy in the UK, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rose, R. (2005), Learning From Comparative Public Policy: A Practical Guide, London: Routledge. Sandholtz, W., and Stone Smith, A. (1998), European Integration and Supranational Governance, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shils, E. (1997), The Virtue of Civility, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Van Hecke, S. (2003), “The Principle of Subsidiarity: Ten Years of Application in the European Union”, Regional and Federal Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 55–80. Vibert, F. (2003), “NGOs, Democratization and the Regulatory State”, in European Policy Forum, NGOs, Democratization and the Regulatory State, London, European Policy Forum, pp. 5–22.

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Chapter II Public Goods, Global Governance and Private Actors: Learning from the WTO Richard Higgott∗ Introduction I have been asked to address the relationship between the private sector, global goods and global governance. This is a broad topic; so I start with some selfimposed boundaries and definitions on my remit. Firstly, I have taken the notion of private sector in its broadest sense to mean the opposite of public sector, rather than merely as a synonym for the ‘corporate sector’. In this sense, the notion of private actors, in the context of global governance, in addition to the corporate sector can also be taken to mean bodies such as banks, management consultants, ratings agencies, private international regimes (such as the increasingly important ICANN), NGOS, religious orders, think tanks, global social movements, terrorist organisations and indeed (pace George Soros or Bill Gates) influential individuals. Secondly, I have taken the notion of ‘global goods’ to mean global public goods, as opposed to individual or club goods in the global domain. The notion of a public good is not unproblematic. Goods proclaimed to be ‘public’—in theory ‘non excludable’, ‘non-rivalrous’ and beneficial to all—can, in practice, turn out to be club goods with limited beneficiaries and, indeed, their benefits can be questioned. This paper cannot deal with all the public goods, across the global policy spectrum, say from the provision of security to social welfare in general or environmental sustainability to water management as specific cases. For the sake of manageability, I illustrate the general arguments of the paper with one major economic good—the underwriting of an open global trading regime, and the role of a major international economic institution—the WTO—as the vehicle for its provision. The advantage of this approach is that it will allow an examination of the interaction between private and public actors in a major area of global governance. My third self-imposed constraint is on the understanding I place on the term global governance. I take a specifically economic approach conditioned by my choice of case study. Again, without this self-discipline, the paper would be unmanageable. Thus I take global governance (economic governance) to be those arrangements—across a spectrum from weak to strong in influence—that various actors at∗

Richard Higgott, Director and Professor, UK ESRC Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick.

R. Higgott / Public Goods, Global Governance and Private Actors

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tempt to put in place to advance, manage, retard, control, regulate or mitigate economic globalisation.1 At the core of this relationship between the market and the theory and practice of governance is a struggle over the continued pace of economic liberalisation. This is a political struggle about the distribution of global wealth; not merely a technical economic one about how best to produce that wealth. The struggle has become increasingly vocal since the growth of the anti-globalisation backlash in the closing years of the 20th century (see Higgott, 2000). At the risk of offending the IIAS, global governance is no ‘administrative science’. It is a contested political process that can be seen in a number of ways. In this paper, I work with two ‘understandings’ (as opposed to definitions) of global governance (see Higgott, 2001): Two Types of Global Governance … There are arguably two ways of broaching or approaching the subject of global governance. One type of global governance concerns itself essentially with the enhancement of efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of global public goods, chiefly through collective action problem solving. Type 2 or level 2 hinges on the development of representation, accountability and democracy. The problem here consists in the absence of a serious institutionalised system of checks and balances at the global level. And, as we have seen in the 21st century, those powers, especially a hegemon, should they/it choose to ignore them. Nor is there in any meaningful sense a global public sphere in either a legal or a sociological sense. (This argument is well enough understood not to need rehearsing here). Thus, the issue we need to address, if we are to enhance global governance type 2 is twofold: • How to disaggregate the notions of democracy and accountability? That is, we need to identify some principles of accountability that do not necessarily emanate from an essentially liberal, western theory of democracy. • How to separate the notion of legitimacy from accountability? Put as a question, is it possible to think about global accountability when there is no global democracy? Being accountable assumes the presence of ‘norms of legitimacy’, but this is not the same as being democratic. In contemporary analysis of global governance (including my own earlier work) democracy and accountability have, all too often and all too wrongly, been conflated. In the context of a given state, direct democracy, with full participation, is held up as the ideal type of representative government (see Dahl, 1999). Global governance is never going to approximate this ideal type. We thus need to think of a situation that, while sub-optimal to this ideal type, nevertheless makes provision for a meaningful degree of accountability. Fortunately, help is now at hand. In a yet to be published, but excellent, paper there are, according to Ruth Grant and Robert Keohane, two basic kinds of accountability—accountability as participation and accountability as delegation (2004: 7–12). They are underpinned by competing understandings of legitimacy. This has not been well understood and for too long has led to conflicting political judgements about the accountability of international/global actors.

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International institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, for example, are accountable to both the governments that have created them and then delegated powers to them, whilst at the same time they are increasingly accountable to those invariably poorer states that are meant to be helped by their policies and practices. The second sense of accountability is the participatory mode. It is in this second sense, with the implications of the empowerment of traditionally weaker actors, that accountability as participation and representation, and by extension democracy, are often conflated and confused. It is this confusion that, often wrongly, leads us to question the legitimacy of the international institutions. They can be legitimate, and in part accountable, without necessarily being democratic by the yardstick of the domestic analogy. But the rhetoric of illegitimacy has become increasingly powerful in the hands of the anti-globalisation movements. In many ways the international institutions are indeed accountable, and often more accountable than many of the NGOs that criticise them. These institutions, however, are not accountable in a way that satisfies those who equate legitimacy with democratic theory underwritten by the domestic analogy. For global governance type 2 to be meaningful—by which I mean acceptable to a large group of principal actors in global politics and supportive of governance type 1—it has to understand the fundamental differences between the currently unrealisable conception of cosmopolitan global democratic governance on the one hand, and systems of accountability that can have real political purchase in global public policy on the other. Claims to ‘legitimacy’, or rather the absence of it in global public policy are frequently a euphemism for the rejection by the weaker actors of the asymmetrical structure of power in the contemporary global order. This is an unfortunate political reality. Exercises to enhance the accountability of global governmental actors will do nothing to alter fundamentally the structural nature of global power in the short-term, although they will do so in the longer run. But, importantly, what they may do is make us better at resisting abuses of power. ‘… [S]tates and institutions are not ipso facto fundamentally illegitimate. A policy or institution can be legitimate—both in terms of the processes through which it was created and with respect to the outcomes it fosters—without being in any sense optimal. There is certainly room for improvement in accountability in world politics … and … the absence of democratic accountability does not necessarily render international organisations unaccountable’ (Grant and Keohane, 2004: 19–20).

Thus, the next step in the enhancement of global governance type 2 needs to be modest. It will certainly not appeal to radical transformationalists. It will not deliver an ideal type global democracy (with universalist participation) predicated, as it is, on the domestic analogy. However, it does recognise the ability to enhance, and in some instances consolidate, existing or nascent patterns of legitimacy and accountability. Legitimacy emanates from the extension of governance type 1. That is, the effective and efficient delivery of public policy based on best practice but also under-written by general norms of fairness (see Scharpf, 1999). Legitimacy must be embedded in shared norms (always of elites and, wherever possible, of national publics, of the major state actors) and be under-written by judicial instruments (such as the ICC and increasingly the dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO). Where judicial instruments are not available other calculations must be brought to the fore, especially ‘global public opinion’ as articulated by increasingly influential non-state actors in civil society. Without elaboration here, Grant and Keohane (2004; 23–36)


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identify seven mechanisms that can help maker actors in global politics become more accountable. • Hierarchical Accountability • Supervisory Accountability • Fiscal Accountability • Legal Accountability • Market Accountability • Peer Accountability • Public Reputational Accountability This makes our understanding of accountability increasingly complex and variegated, but no less important for that. For too long, and drawing on the domestic analogy, accountability has been equated with democratic accountability which, in turn, has been equated with widening participation. In order to take governance type 2 forward, we should not dream of instant and unattainable global democracy but, as Grant and Keohane argue (2004: 36), try “to figure out how to limit the abuse of power in a world replete with a wide variety of power-wielders, but without a centralized government.” As they go on to say, “if we focus on the conditions for the operation of a variety of accountability mechanisms rather then pure democratic accountability, we will see opportunities for feasible actions to improve accountability.” Three things can improve accountability: 1. Improved standards and the acceptance of norms of behaviour that are considered fair and just. This is difficult. However, there are signs of a new consensus on the evolution of democratic norms and on the growing lack of acceptability of entrenched and exacerbating patterns of inequality in the global economic order (see Sen, 1999). 2. Enhanced information provision and transparency. This is emerging strongly. Modern communication technology makes information, and hence transparency, more likely to be an important political tool than at any time in history (see Florini, 2003). 3. The ability to apply sanctions in an issue specific context where and when necessary. This is difficult. It has implications for sovereignty. But the WTO dispute settlement mechanism is an example of how this can happen. Enhancing our capabilities in these areas should be at the core of a reformist agenda. This is not abstract political theorising. Gradually, such activities may cast massive policy shadows. … and Two Fundamental Assumptions This chapter is underpinned by two basic assumptions. The first is to acknowledge that we are in a period in which the multilateral economic institutions are under considerable strain. The institutions face a range of problems of both a systemic and structural nature under conditions of troubled globalisation. Policy positions taken by the United States towards the contemporary multilateral endeavour in recent years are one source of strain. We are in era in which the United States possesses an unprecedented material preponderance (see Ikenberry, 2002 and Jervis, 2003) and in which its foreign policy exhibits, at best, a limited commitment to the international

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institutions of global governance. No understanding of global governance is complete without an acceptance of this ‘given’. This is not, however, to suggest that this preponderance is without limits, or that unilateralism is without costs for the US, nor is it to suggest that the United States is the only major state capable of playing fast and loose with the international institutions when it suits them. A second assumption is that we are witnessing a contest in the domain of international economic governance between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ under conditions of globalisation. The trans-nationalisation of market forces, although it increases aggregate economic wealth, is thought to exacerbate inequality. In so doing, it is not only reducing the capacity of international organisations to generate acceptable institutional processes that might mitigate growing inequality; it is also spawning an accompanying political resentment. The institutions of international economic governance, as currently constituted, reflect the interests of the powerful, not the poorer, states. Those global norms and rules that underwrote the institutional architecture of the last decades of the 20th century and attempts to reform these norms and rules in the domains of trade, investment, labour standards, the environment, transparency, capacity-building and ‘governance’ are still driven by ‘northern agendas’. The less powerful States remain ‘rule takers’ within international economic institutions (Hurrell and Woods, 1999). A process of political contest and transition is under way. It is too early to know the outcome of this process, but it may be that the rules on offer will either increasingly lack legitimacy and/or not be enforced by the poorer states or, as is also possible, many states may simply lack the necessary governmental effectiveness to enforce them even should they so wish. Either way, these processes have negative implications for a consensus-based evolution of global governance norms and institutional structures. The ‘top down’ global governance agenda of the late 1990s and early 21st century is still driven by an understanding of governance as effectiveness and efficiency, not governance as democracy, accountability and, indeed, justice. Rather than the top down agenda creating an array of global public goods of a reformist nature, it is generating new forms of resistance. Without an ethical and practical commitment to stem the globalisation of inequality, international order may be on the verge of the kind of combative politics that stalemated the North-South global economic relations during the 1970s. The paper is in three sections. Section one says something about the current state of the global economic institutions and especially the transformation of GATT into the WTO, as an instrument of global governance of the ‘type 1’ variety. It highlights the importance of ‘positive’—or, in more loaded terms, ‘benign’—hegemony in the process of delivering global public goods; in this instance, an increasingly open trading system. Section two looks at the role of private actors—or, my preferred term, non-state actors—under the changed conditions brought about by globalisation. It suggests that without a greater constructive, interactive and consistent engagement amongst these actors and between them and public actors, the prospects for developing ‘type 2’ global governance and hence legitimating type 1 global governance, is limited. Section 3 returns to the contemporary health of WTO to highlight the democratic dilemma at the heart of taking global governance forward in a positive way in the 21st century; namely the gap between global governance types 1 and 2. At the heart of this dilemma, it is argued, is the absence of positive hegemony.


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Multilateralism and Global Economic Governance: From GATT to WTO The role of international institutions as instruments of transaction cost reduction and coordination for the mitigation of the risks attendant on an open and deregulated global economy have become increasingly important (see Keohane, 1989). At present, the need to enhance effective and efficient policy-making, driven by the international institutions, remains very much the prevailing view of global governance within these institutions. Global governance is not a synonym for multilateralism. Multilateralism, relates to the management of transnational problems with two or more parties, but operating with a series of acceptable ‘… generalized principles of conduct’ (Ruggie, 1993: 11). That is, the principles of behaviour should, in theory, take precedence over interests. The key principles identified by Ruggie are indivisibility, non-discrimination and diffuse reciprocity. Overtime, the precedence of principle over interest should lead to a sense of collective trust within an institution amongst players of different strengths and sizes. A key element in the development of this sense of trust would be a feeling amongst the smaller players that major actors, especially an erstwhile hegemon, would be willing to accept what Lisa Martin (2003) calls the principle of ‘self-binding’. In the development of the world trade system—which for the purposes of this section of the paper I am assuming (which not all do) to be a global public good—it is possible to argue that principle prevailed over interest in the development of the trade regime. Perhaps, more precisely, it can be argued that principle and interest dovetailed in a strong enough fashion to ensure support for the development of the system for much of the Post World War II era. This is a fairly standard reading of the evolution of the GATT that developed as the default body following the US Congress refusal to ratify the ITO. Fortuitously, GATT survived the scrutiny of the US legislators because it fitted more neatly with, and required little or no adjustment in the prevailing US trade policy of the time (Milner, 1997: 137). Over a series of progressively extended rounds of Multilateral Trade Negotiations (MTNs) GATT, throughout the third quarter of the 20th century, was successful in its agenda to lower tariffs. But, overtime frustration set in for US policy makers. Given the changing structure of international trade—the growth in importance of services and the decreasing overall importance of agriculture and manufactured goods—demands for an extension of the mission of the international trade regime, grew. By the early 1980s, a view had emerged in the US—empirically sustainable it should be said (see Low, 1993)—that the progressive reduction in tariffs over the life of GATT had “opened up” the US economy more than that of many of its trading partners. Restricted sectoral coverage, and the wide use of NTBs by US partners, was seen to disadvantage the US. New sources of income, in new and rapidly expanding sectors such as services in general, or say intellectual property in particular, were being under-exploited. In this context, it became apparent to members of the US trade policy community (both public and private) that existing GATT rules and procedures would not help redress this imbalance and that only unilateral action would be likely to offset it (see Elliott and Hufbauer, 2002: 400). The US policy response turned out to be two-pronged.

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First in 1985, it advanced a policy of ‘aggressive unilateralism’ intended to prise open markets in the face of a mounting trade deficit with major partners, notably Japan, (see Bhagwati and Patrick, 1990). This policy made the second prong of its strategy seem more attractive. Aggressive unilateralism was accompanied by pressure on other G7 states to mount a new trade round. The Uruguay Round commenced in September 1985 and the agenda included those new issues deemed essential by the US to the priorities of its trade interests. The Round concluded in 1993 and the WTO was born in 1995. While it represented a continuation of the activities of the GATT, the WTO was a new organisation with a new remit central to which were new agreements on trade in services (GATS) and intellectual property (TRIPS) and a dispute settlement mechanism (DSM), all of which the US was keen to secure. The WTO retained the core principles of the GATT but took on tasks that extended into critical areas of domestic public policy. The real question, and one that we will address in section three, is whether the WTO advances ‘public’ or ‘club’ goods. A secondary question surrounds the use of aggressive unilateral strategies. Was it a stance supportive of the renewal of the multilateral system embodied in the WTO (pace Bayard and Elliott, 1994), or an act of cynicism that jeopardised longterm support for an open multilateral trading regime (pace Bhagwati, 2002)? The jury is still out. It is a question about hegemony and the degree to which it is benign/altruistic or selfish and destructive of a wider multilateral commitment. It remains the major issue of the day in the theory and practice of global governance. It is of direct interest to the IIAS and the purposes of this Report. It can be posed as a question: “Can collective decision-making be advanced by unilateral action without undermining the wider principles of multilateral governance?”

What can be said is that the WTO remit now intrudes more substantially into the domestic politics and economics of the contracting parties, including the United States, in a manner not fully anticipated during the Uruguay Round negotiations. Under the WTO, in marked contrast to the GATT, all parties must commit to full membership and a permanent, ‘single understanding’ of the rules-based nature of the system. Governments that signed on to the WTO, in effect, took the whole package. Moreover, this extended beyond the traditional instrument of protection—the tariff—to cover a whole range of non-tariff barriers. For general discussion of the WTO and its operations see Hoekman and Kostecki, 2001. Thus, the introduction of the dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) has seen the WTO develop into an international site at which the US cannot be guaranteed always to secure its own way. Keenly sought by the US, the DSM applies to it as much other states. Indeed, the US has lost several disputes under the new system, much to the alarm of a range of actors in the US polity. There was outrage in the US in 2003 at the ruling that allowed the EU to impose $US4 billion in trade sanctions on the US as compensation in a dispute it won over US tax subsidies to exporters. This has added to a general distrust of multilateralism in the USA, equally exacerbated by abortive Ministerial Meetings of 1999 (Seattle) and 2003 (Cancun). There is a widely held feeling in quarters of the political community interested in trade policy matters that, in signing on to the WTO and thus effectively swapping its aggressive unilateralist trade policy of the 1970s and 1980s for the ‘multilateral assertiveness’ of the DSM, the US had failed to appreciate the manner in which the DSM


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would bite it as much as, if not more, than other WTO contracting parties (Elliott and Hufbauer, 2002: 404–7). Historically, US commitments to multilateralism have always been stronger in the economic domain than in any other area of policy. But in the continual tension between unilateralism and multilateralism, the unilateralist urge is gaining the upper hand once again. The rhetorical commitment to a successful Doha Round must be contrasted with an increasing recourse to bilateral free trade, or more accurately preferential trade, agreements. In fact, the US has made it clear that a failure to progress the Doha Round could lead to it striding out more firmly along the unilateral path. USTR, Robert Zoellick2 noted both ahead of and immediately after the Ministerial Meeting, that failure at Cancun would see the US step up its efforts in the development of bilateral and regional free trade agreements. 3 The degree to which bilateral free trade agreements are sub-optimal when compared with multilateral trade is well explained in the theoretical economic literature. FTAs weaken the bargaining powers of poor countries in the MTN rounds by fragmenting or preventing the development of coalitions among developing countries as they abandon principle for small concessions from the powerful partner (see Bhagwati, 2002). They also weaken the multilateral institutional governmental structure more generally. Before looking at the specific implications of this set of theoretical assertions for the contemporary multilateral trading order lets us consider if, in general terms and as is often stated, the private sector can compensate for current limitations in a system of decision making that has traditionally been the preserve of States. The Emerging Role of Private Actors in Global Governance Theoretically, one of the functions performed by non-state actors is to hold States, and indeed inter-governmental organisations, to account. In much the same way that domestic civil society expresses itself via the public sphere, private actors, such as new social movements and NGOs, are attempting to voice their concerns in a global public sphere. While remaining outside the official realm of the institutions of States and international organisations, they seek to establish the interests and rights of those generally excluded from discussion. As embryonic as this global public sphere may be, it is possible to see the contours of an evolving arena where social movements, non-state actors and other ‘global citizens’ join with states and international organisations in a dialogue over the exercise of power and authority across the globe. The emergence of a global public sphere, albeit partial, impacts on citizens’ relationship with their State, with citizens of other States, and with international organisations. For some, global civil society has come to represent a domain that traverses the boundaries of the sovereign State, albeit in a range of contested ways. For others, global civil society is a substitute for revolution forgone. It is merely the domain of the new managerial class, the habitat of ‘Davos Men’. For others still, it can be the source from which a more just society might develop in an era when disillusionment with the ability of traditional forms of politics to deliver justice has never been higher. INGOs, GSMs and other kinds of non-state trans-national associations become the principal actors in the reconstruction of political authority at the global

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level. This section looks at elements of these merging relationships in the global sphere. It focuses on INGOS and corporate actors. INGOs: Trans-national associations bring together politically, culturally and territorially diverse organisations and individuals to advance a common agenda on one or another issue of global import. In empirical terms, the growth of INGOs has been dramatic. The number of international NGOs (defined by the presence of a secretariat in a given city) grew between 1992 and 2002 from 12, 173 to 17, 428 (Global Civil Society Yearbook, 2003: 331, Table 15). INGOs facilitate cross-national policy transfers and modify the policy process (see Stone, 2004). Needless to say, their behaviour is invariably normative, prescriptive, increasingly internationalised, highly politicised and at times, it should be added, very effective (Keck and Sikkink, 1997). Their influence is revolutionising the relationship between ‘old’ and ‘new’ forms of multilateral governance. If our old understandings of multilateral governance are constituted by the top down activities of the existing structures of international institutions (States in bodies such as the IMF, World Bank and WTO), then the new multilateral governance represents the attempt by social movements to ‘building a system of global governance from the bottom up’ (Cox, 1997 xxxvii ). The preferred strategy of the old multilateralism of the international institutions was to extend its remit geographically (wider institutional membership), functionally (deeper coverage of issues) and inclusively (by the cooption and socialisation of recalcitrant actors into the dominant neo-liberal market mode). By contrast, the new multilateralism (especially INGOs with development agendas) tries to change the prevailing assumptions regarding global order and thus alter policy outcomes. Whatever their agendas, the ability of social movements to affect decision making in international fora rubs up against the processes of economic globalisation. For example, throughout the late 1990s and early 21 st century, social movement resistance to ‘free trade’ related issues has invariably been characterised as protectionist or globophobic. While it may be the case that much INGO activity can be captured under a broad, if ill-defined, agenda to secure justice for those disadvantaged by globalisation, this is an overly blunt instrument that often leads to a simplistic analysis of what is a very complex pattern of INGO activity. Attitudes towards global trade, usually reflected in attitudes towards the WTO, are a good case in point. The INGO debate over trade is very complex. Not only does it span the political spectrum from both left to right and north to south, it must also be disaggregated with regards to issue-area such as agriculture, GATS, FTAs, TRIPS and new areas such as investment, government procurement, competition policy and trade facilitation (often called the Singapore Issues). To illustrate: following one recent study (Said and Desai, 2003), competing positions on all these issues can be broken down into at least four categories; isolationists (for example: Focus on the Global South, Third World Network); reformers (Oxfam, World Development Movement), supporters (most academic economists, Institute for International Economics, Evian Group) and regressives (conservative US think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation or the American Cause). INGOs mostly do represent alternative discourses to those reflected by those who benefit most from globalisation, and opposition to globalisation has become an inte-


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grating feature of much of the literature of ‘internationalised’ NGOs (Lynch, 1998). And in many policy domains, NGOS have become the discursive rather than formal opposition to major power initiative via the international institutions, as they have taken on many of the working practices of more traditional private actors in the global community. Approaches as to how to alter (resist) globalisation at the beginning of the 21st century have seen a shift in the modus operandi of INGOs. The movement from the field to the corridors of power has become increasingly sophisticated. More traditional agents—such as the established policy communities holding office in the major industrial countries and the inter-governmental financial institutions—only really began to recognise the significance of INGOs in the closing stages of the 20th century. Even though they have existed for a long time it was the last decade of the century that saw dramatic growth in both numbers and effectiveness, especially as they quickly learned to take advantage of the revolution in telecommunications. At times, established actors have lacked the skills to deal in other than combative fashion with these groups. Governments are now learning that they must secure their support or, at the very least, neutralise their opposition, but an ability to balance consultation and accountability with resistance to the pressures of lobby groups remains underdeveloped. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the ambiguity of the international institutions towards bodies purporting to act on behalf of one or another group within ‘civil society’. This is certainly the case at the IMF and WTO. It is perhaps less so at the World Bank, where there is now a long history of engagement with INGOs, at least on the ground in the developing countries, if less so in Washington, D.C., where involvement in the decision making process is still largely resisted. In short, it may be argued that the topdown driven neo-liberal globalisation project is under challenge in the early 21st century. The internationalisation of INGOs, empowered and enhanced by new technologies, allows them to address governmental policy from outside, as well as from within, the State. They represent, or at times purport to represent, interests conventionally excluded from the decision-making processes. As such, they are vehicles for strong normative ideas in global civil society. INGOs and other mission-driven agents are increasingly important actors in contemporary international governance. Securing a peaceful and constructive modus vivendi with them will be a major exercise for state actors in the global policy community in the 21st century. The Rise of the INGO: Keeping a Sense of Perspective. Some INGOs are global agents or players of influence, as evinced by the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for the campaign to ban landmines and the role INGOs in the defeat of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (Simmons, 1998). INGOs are clearly capable of setting agendas and changing international policy. But, the age of innocence is over. In some ways, INGOs are the victims of their own success. Longer standing actors in international relations, from States to inter-governmental organisations, now treat them more seriously, but also less tentatively. At present there is a discrepancy between INGO demands for the rights to be heard and also influence policy and acceptance of obligations that may be attendant on these rights (especially the duty to truthfully reflect one’s antagonists position).

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While a balance may be reached with time, to-date only minimal efforts to inculcate a ‘rights-duties’ balance within the larger INGO families have been made (Gordenker and Weiss, 1995). If INGOs and other non-state actors are to become legitimate agents in the contemporary structures of global governance, they will have to accept the need for transparent, accountable and participatory systems of decision-making of exactly the kind they require of national governments, multinational corporations and international organisations. That the activity and influence of INGOs over global governance agendas has greatly increased over time is in little doubt. It is however, naive to universalise the INGO experience. States still propose and dispose of international agreements and INGOs—as shown in their involvement in the activities of the international institutions—often still need governmental sponsorship, or at least governmental acquiescence, in order to secure access. Thus, the efficacy of the major international institutions remains a key normative and policy question for the 21st century. Will they remain the vehicles for the pursuit of state interests, as traditionally defined in “realist” understandings of international organisation? Or, can international organisations evolve into sites at which to accommodate multiple demands and interests of actors (public and private, state and non-state) throughout the widening policy communities and civil society? These are major normative questions, which cast long policy shadows. The contest between the ‘multilateralism from above’ and the ‘multilateralism from below’ is still in its infancy-stage. The Corporate Sector. For much of the second half of the 20th century, there was a tacit ‘grand bargain’ between the corporate sector and government in the advanced industrial societies. It is invariably referred to in John Ruggie’s (1982) justifiably famous phrase as the ‘embedded liberal compromise’. Capitalist countries “learned to reconcile the efficiency of markets with the values of social community that markets themselves require in order to survive” (Ruggie, 2004: 93). However, this operated in an international world inhabited by national, bordered, economies. Globalisation has unpacked this compromise (Devetak and Higgott, 1999) and as yet a global compact does not exist. There is, at this stage, no embedded global liberal compromise. That is to say, there is no compromise beyond the bounded modern State. As a consequence, the nature of the governance of the corporation under conditions of globalisation has become an increasingly important element in the overall debate about global governance. No longer can corporate governance, that is to say the governance of the private economic sector, be placed, as Gourevitch notes (2004: 305) in the box of “domestic politics”. Global differences in corporate governance practices have important implications for international relations in general, but only one element is discussed in this chapter: the links of the corporate sector with other private actors and public actors in global politics and how this may impact on the governance process. As Ruggie notes, embedding a global market “with shared social values and institutional practices represents a task of historic magnitude” (2004: 95). It requires a positive interplay between government and both the corporate and non-corporate elements of civil society at the global level, as well as the national level. This is truly a triangular relationship. It is as yet an under-developed, some would say un-developed, triangu-


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lar relationship. The most undeveloped leg of the triangle is certainly that which links corporate and non-corporate civil society in a constructive manner. Without strengthening this leg, the prospects for a global public domain—an arena in which the interests of private non-state actors can be advocated and negotiated and intermediated with the State – emerging are limited (see the essays in Drache, 2001). The emergence of domains of ‘private governance’ will surely prove to be important complements to the existing inter-state governmental order in two ways; firstly, as a way of linking the private domain back to the public order beyond the level of the territorial state; and secondly, as the site for an emerging, discrete, order in which acceptable decision-making, following a privatised principle of subsidiarity, might be developed with little or no public sector involvement. This is the growing domain of the international private regime (see Cutler, Haufleur and Porter, 1999), where bodies such as the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) establishes criteria for stock regulations; the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) develops criteria for bank inspection; and where the International Committee for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) provides guidelines for the control of the Internet. Although institutionally much larger than the NGO sector—with 63, 000 firms, 800,000 subsidiaries and millions of suppliers (World Investment Report, 2001) the private corporate sector has received less public attention than the NGOs in recent years. There is a range of reasons for this. Firstly, style is an important one. Corporate actors prefer to do things behind closed doors. NGOs, by contrast, tend to be more vocal and public. This is hardly surprising. Corporate actors usually have easier access to the policy process through influential networks and connections. They have established global reach and capacity of which many NGOS can only dream. More often, NGOs must battle to be heard; especially if they adopt positions critical to contemporary globalization. Secondly, and more importantly, corporate actors have been important drivers, as well as beneficiaries of neo-liberal globalization. Their wishes and views have, more often than those of NGOs, been found to be compatible with and supported by key public sector actors both domestically and internationally. For example, governments may well intervene quite deliberately to assist a major national corporation secure a positive outcome in another country. An obvious example of this would be the manner in which the US government, during the 1980s, took the battle to the Japanese government on behalf of corporate America in its struggle to prise open the Japanese keretsu system. More generally, through the widespread implementation of policies of liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation, especially in trade and finance, governments have created the space in which the ‘globalising’ corporate sector has been able to flourish in the fourth quarter of the 20 th century. Of late, as commonly understood in the literature, a view has been developed and increasingly articulated in a forceful manner by the NGO community that the pendulum has swung too far from the era of stronger regulation in the third quarter of the 20th century. This has not gone unnoticed in the corporate world, where a growing realisation has taken place about the need for dialogue with other sections of the private (that is non-state, non-public) sector. Without some form of dialogue regarding the negative aspects of globalisation, especially the weakened welfare safety nets

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and job losses in the developed world and issues of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in both developed and developing countries, private sector organisations are in danger of losing the public relations war with the anti-globalisation movement in the eyes of a growing global community of consumers. The bad press received by major TNCs over their roles in environmental disasters, the use of sweatshop labour, bribery and corruption, de-forestation or simply double standards have, justified or not, induced greater awareness and recognition of the need for a change in the balance between corporate rights and responsibilities. Major fora of corporate input into the debates over global governance have been at pains to stress a new ethos of CSR. This argument is illustrated in corporate sector support for the Global Social Compact pioneered from within the UN by John Ruggie while Assistant Secretary-General in the late 1990s. The aim of the Compact was to engage the corporate world, in a more positive and less antagonistic way than in the past, in the advancement of a broad range of UN-driven principles and major socio-economic developmental objectives, on the one hand and CSR objectives, such as enhancing transparency and mitigating corruption, as well as improving the companies’ social and environmental performance, on the other (see www. unglobalcompact.org and Ruggie, 2004: 111–14). But we are still at the beginning of this process, rather than the end of it. The evolution of the global public domain, or what others call the ‘global polity’ (see Ougaard and Higgott, 2002) while not as negligible as “realist” international relations scholars or just cynics would have us believe, is nevertheless rudimentary. We may not, pace David Held (1995 and 2004) be in an era of cosmopolitan democracy or cosmopolitan multilateralism. However, we are in an era of global politics (as opposed to simply international relations). Global distributional problems—as issues of both a practical and an ethical nature—are as strong as ever, and growing, in the world order. Moreover, as the subsequent discussion of the WTO will show, questions of accountability and representation, within the existing international institutions, remain as intractable as ever. Multilateral Institutional Governance: The Continuing Democratic Dilemma ‘Is global governance—the structure of international institutions—democratically legitimate, or does it suffer from a “democratic deficit”? This is emerging as one of the central questions— perhaps the central question—in contemporary world politics’ (Moravcsik, 2004, forthcoming).

The paper offered an initial articulation of global governance as effective and efficient policy-making and management (type 1) on the one hand and as enhanced accountability and representation (type 2) on the other. This dichotomy is at the heart of Moravcsik’s question. Unfortunately, there is no escaping the fact that a key element in contemporary constraints on the multilateral international economic institutions arises from the structural power and intellectual purpose of the USA. This is not to suggest the presence of neo-conservative conspiracy in contemporary Washington. US attitudes towards multilateral institutions cannot be based simply on a reading of the Bush era. US foreign policy has always been an exercise in what some call ‘Ambivalent Engagement’ (Stewart and Forman, 2002) and others call ‘Instrumental Multilateralism’ (Foot, et al., 2003).


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The US has accorded greater, but never unconditional, support to multilateral problem solving in the economic domain. The principal distinction is the longstanding difference in US attitudes towards the financial institutions, in which it has demonstrated a high degree of intrusion and desire for control (see Elliott and Hufbauer, 2002), and the governance of international trade (via GATT and now the WTO), in which it has been prepared to underwrite, and largely accept, rules-based governance. Ironically, it may be argued that the creation of the WTO has pushed the writ of that organisation farther into the domestic political processes of the Member States than many, including the United States, may in fact be prepared to tolerate. This is something we shall not know for sometime to come. In terms of governance as the effective and efficient management of the global economy (type 1), the international economic institutions have served the interests of the US well. This was the case in the bi-polar era of the Cold War and continues to be the case in this unipolar era. But unless the US takes greater account of the need for type 2 understanding of governance—governance defined as accountability, responsibility, representation (and justice)—this may not long continue to be the case. Even ignoring good ethical reasons for considering it as an essential component of global governance, there are good instrumental reasons for advancing type 2. The continued globalisation of the world economy—freer trade, freer capital flows, freer movement of technology—cannot continue without developing structures of accountability and representation in these processes. Leaving it to the market won’t do. It ignores the degree to which markets are not just some organic or spontaneous development. Rather, they represent the outcome of the acts of purposive social agents. We have a well-recognised problem (see Rodrik, 2002b). There is incompatibility between the continued existence of (i) the nation state (to ensure selfdetermination), (ii) the development of democratic politics beyond the State (to ensure that public policy is accountable) and (iii) the continuing economic integration the global economy to enhance global living standards. At best, as Rodrik argues, we can secure two of these three goals, never all of them and, as is now increasingly recognised even amongst the most avid of free marketers, global markets, i.e. economic integration without global governance are likely to prove unsustainable. The current neo-liberal agenda, evidenced for example, in the Doha MTN round up to the Cancun Ministerial—with its emphasis on service trade, intellectual property and capital movements and its refusal to address developing country concerns on the issues of agriculture—reflects the continued drive of the US and Europe for deeper global economic integration. However, such attempts to speed up integration also sits at odds with the clamour for democratic politics and representation, both within States and between States. It thus remains neither feasible nor desirable, to continue towards global economic integration at a rate greater than is compatible with the desires of nation states, either via traditional forms of representation, or their peoples through new discursive, non-statist forms of representation, for democratic input into these processes. We need to think more pragmatically of what can be achieved. For Rodrik, the alternative is a renewed Bretton Woods Compromise, the aim of which should be: “To preserv[e] some limits on integration, as built into original Bretton Woods arrangements, along with some more global rules to handle the integration that can be achieved. Those who

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R. Higgott / Public Goods, Global Governance and Private Actors would make different choices—towards tighter economic integration—must face up to the corollary: either tighter world government or less democracy. … [We might need to] … scale down our ambitions with respect to global economic integration … [and] … do a better job of writing the rules for a thinner version of globalization” (Rodrik, 2002b: 1–2).

Rodrik’s views may as well be expressed as a question: ‘Can we have global economic integration without global governance?’ To pose the question is not to resist the central importance of markets. Rather it is to require an ethic of global governance that suggests global governance as effective and efficient problem-solving and global governance as democratic accountability (see Brassett and Higgott, 2004). In theory, the multilateral economic institutions should play the major role in this process. They should underwrite and enhance cooperation in the interests of all participants. Their aim should be to ensure the stability of the global economy (assumed to be an unalloyed public good) and provide problem-solving strategies for new stresses on the system as they emerge. The problem, of course, is that many sections of the world policy community, both public and private, do not accept these theoretical assumptions. Or, even if they do, they see the organisations fulfilling only one part of this bargain. The other half of the equation—the need to make these institutions more accountable to, and representative of the majority of their members—is deemed un-realised. To revisit our case study, the international economic institutions in general and the WTO in particular have a legitimacy deficit. This is now widely accepted. One does not need to have been on the barricades at Seattle or Cancun to think this. Indeed, many officials in the institutions are sensitive to this charge. The lack of accountability of the international economic institutions to all but their most powerful members is not new. Indeed, it has always existed.4 What has made it no longer acceptable is the articulation of a series of telling and increasingly well-understood critiques, not all of which are merely anti-globalisation rhetoric. ‘Mission creep’ at the WTO, but not just the WTO (see Higgott, 2004a on the IMF too), has generated resistance. Calls to address ‘new issues’, before many States have come to terms with expectations on them from the Uruguay Round have—when coupled with the absence of any movement by major powers on issues such as agriculture and ‘governance’—stretched the WTO to breaking point. Progressive enhancing of remits of the international institutions in the late 20th/early 21st centuries, when coupled with the absence of democratic reform in their governance structures, is a major source of the ongoing backlash. Nothing demonstrates this better than the deadlock at the 2003 Cancun Ministerial Meeting to progress with the Doha Round. Without details (but see The Financial Times, September 15, 2003) Cancun represented a major stand against mission creep on the part of the developing countries. The newly created G21 (now G20) of developing countries, led by Brazil and India, thwarted European efforts to introduce a series of new issues—the so-called ‘Singapore’ issues on investment, transparency in government procurement policy, trade facilitation and competition policy—into the negotiating agenda of the Round. The firmness of the stand by the developing countries, in the face of considerable pressures from the major States, represents something of a watershed since the birth of the WTO. It was a position which has been called for and welcomed by those bodies keen on dismantling the organisation (see for example, Focus on the Global South at www.focusweb.org).


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Indeed, many in the anti-globalisation movement, especially those who believe that the US is less concerned about the future of the multilateral trading system than interested in building a series of bilateral and regional trading regimes in hub-andspoke fashion, or a trade empire that mirrors the realities of its unrivalled power, would dismantle the existing institutions altogether (see Bello, 2002; Jawara and Kwa, 2003; Peet, 2003). From a diametrically opposite political position, those in the USA of a ‘sovereigntist’ (Spiro, 2000) or ‘new exceptionalist’ (Hoffmann, 2003) persuasion (Spiro, 2000) would shed few tears at the end of the WTO. These groups believe that the US would be better off liberated from WTO intrusions. This is not, of course, to suggest that there has been no internal reform. Woods (2003) demonstrates that there have been serious attempts to make decisionmaking procedures more transparent in the IFIs and at the WTO. Nor is it to suggest that there is no continued momentum for reform. Rather, such internally generated reforms as there have been to-date have focussed on an understanding of global governance as effectiveness and efficiency almost to the exclusion of an understanding of global governance as democratic accountability. Thus, the reform to-date has not warded off the challenges to the credibility of the institutions. We have not yet reached the crisis point for the WTO. However, two out of its four ministerial meetings, since its inception in 1995, have ended in breakdown. If the early 2004 attempts to restart the Doha Round, in train at the time of writing this paper, are not successful then questions about the longer-term viability of the WTO will increase. Major rethinking about the way forward will have to take place on two fronts: firstly, on the immediate front, how to keep the Doha Round going is crucial. This will clearly require stepping back from some or all of the new ‘Singapore’ issues and serious proposals for agricultural reform from the EU and the USA (see Rollo, 2003). Secondly, in the long run, it may be more important to restore a wider principled believe in multilateralism as a modus operandi for global problem solving becomes the key question. However, both dismantlers and reformists (see for example, Verweij and Josling, 2003 and Howse and Nicolaidis, 2003)—albeit with their different agendas—appreciate that if institutional change capable of addressing legitimate demands for accountability and representation of the smaller but weaker members cannot be found, the continuance of the governance of the global economic order will become increasingly difficult to sustain. Conclusion: Living with the USA and the Limits to Global Governance The success of collaborative endeavours to advance global governance will be marginal whilst the US maintains the stance towards multilateralism that has emerged under the Bush Administration. Notwithstanding the US military and economic preponderance, changing structures of authority—or more accurately power—that pertain under conditions of globalisation sit badly with US theory and practice and are unlikely to induce dramatic policy change in Washington. To understand why, we must appreciate that a key element in the contemporary theory and practice of global governance—the evolution of global networks at the expense of international hierarchies—is not welcomed in Washington. Networks pursue their activities, such as waging unconventional war on states, by using systems of sprawling, horizontally interconnected, networks of private power and authority. (Rose-

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nau, 2002, Hall and Biersteker, 2002). In such a context, the dilemmas of reconciling its security instincts with these new patterns of activity—influenced not only by States, but non-state actors, trans-national forces and new kinds of threats—is proving too hard for US Governments to come to terms with. The blurring of the borders between what is domestic and what is international in the policy process has challenged its traditional understandings of national interest, especially in those policy domains where trans-national decision-making clashes with US domestic law or runs up against a US conception of national security. Moreover, Washington has not adjusted well to ‘discursive’, networked or internetled conference style diplomacy that diminishes state control over the policy process (see Wedgwood, 2000: 35–40). This is not to argue that the US has repudiated multilateralism as an institutional form of governance. But multilateralism, for large sections of the US policy community, at best implies the opportunity for others to free ride on the material support of the US. At worst, it implies sovereignty dilution and unwanted entanglements. Rather, the US has become more instrumental in its choice of issue areas in which it will adopt a multilateral approach. It has adopted a ‘pick and mix approach’. It will accept ‘legitimating’ and burden sharing multilateral engagements provided they do not constrain its ability to manoeuvre (Stewart, 2002: 12–13). But, as I have suggested, following Ruggie, multilateralism is not just one tool in a pick and mix strategy for the pursuit of foreign policy. Rather, it should be seen as a trust-enhancing commitment to principled behaviour, and as an institutional form. As Lisa Martin (2003) has persuasively argued, the United States has effectively rejected this view in favour of an opportunistic ad hoc approach, in which the very notion that the dominant global power might need to act in a self-binding way in the interests of multilateralism as an important institutional form of governance has been disregarded. For multilateralism to work, rules must bind the hegemon, as well as the smaller players. Historically, especially in the immediate post World War II, era the US behaved in such a way, with an eye to the future. The current Administration, may step back from the harshest phase of its antipathy to multilateralism of 2002/3. But given its continued difficulties in securing the post-war settlement in Iraq, it still resists the notion of investing in multilateral principles and norms. As Martin notes: ‘Turning to multilateralism only under duress and when it appears convenient demonstrates a lack of commitment, even an implicit rejection of the principles of multilateralism. … This hollows out the core of such organisations, as they no longer provide the self-binding function they once did. … Without the self-binding of the hegemon, multilateral organisations become empty shells’ (2003: 14).

If we follow Martin’s logic, then even with a change of Administration, in Washington, the trust deficit that has been created is likely to remain for some time to come. The reputation of multilateralism as a principal (and principled) element of global governance, in both the economic and the security domain, in the early years of the 21st century, has been damaged. It will take time to tell whether this damage is irreparable or if it can be rebuilt. Whatever other players do, individually or collectively, be they private or public, this rebuilding will be constrained while the US remains selective in its approach the multilateral system. This is not to suggest that all


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that is required is a change of heart in the US. This is a necessary, but not sufficient condition to build positive structures of global economic governance. The desired basic goods for a ‘just’ global era—economic regulation, environmental security, the containment of organised crime and terrorism, and the enhancement of welfare—will not be provided just by States, or on a State by State basis. Public goods must be provided collectively. Private sector actors, from both the corporate world and civil society, will continue to grow in significance in intergovernmental negotiation processes as issue-linked coalitions increasingly operate across borders to set agendas and, by extension, require governments to generate policy compliance mechanisms. However, even in less stressful times for global policy-making than the early 21st century, change is likely to be slow. Notwithstanding the increasing importance of non-states actors, inter-state cooperation is still at the heart of successful policy-making at the global level and it is still driven by domestic actor preferences in the most powerful countries (Milner, 1997). Despite impeccable normative arguments in favour of collective action problem solving, the prospects for regular successful international cooperation amongst States must not be exaggerated. Notes and References 1

2 3 4

Globalisation here is the tendency towards increased international economic integration beyond the sovereignty of the territorial state. This is essentially the neo-liberal understanding of the term. Note his clarion call to ‘Can Do Nations’ to seek deals with the US. For a discussion of contemporary US policy in this domain see Higgott, 2003 and 2004. Woods (2001b) and Woods and Narliker (2001) have provided detailed empirical studies of the limits of accountability through their Executive Boards of the international institutions to their member governments.

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Foot, Rosemary, MacFarlane, Neil and Mastanduno, Michael (2003), “Instrumental Unilateralism in US Foreign Policy” in Foot et al. (Eds.), US Hegemony and International Organisations, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gordenker, Leon and Weiss, Thomas G. (1995), “NGO Participation in the Global Policy Process”, in Third World Quarterly, 16 (3): 543–55. Gourevitch, Peter (2004), “Corporate Governance: Global Markets, National Politics”, in Miles Kahler and David Lake (Eds.), Governance in a Global Economy: Political Authority in Transition, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hall, Rodney Bruce and Biersteker, Thomas J. (Eds.) (2002), The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haufleur, Virgnia, Cutler, Claire, and Porter, Tony (Eds.) (1999), Private Authority in International Affairs, Albany: State University of New York Press. Held, David (1995), Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Global Governance, Cambridge: Polity. Held, David (2004), “From Executive to Cosmopolitan Multilateralism”, in David Held and Mathias Konig-Archibugi, Taming Globalisation: Frontiers of Governance, Cambridge: Polity. Higgott, Richard (2000), “Contested Globalisation: The Changing Context and Normative Challenges”, in Review of International Studies, 26, 131–54. Higgott, Richard (2001), “Economic Globalisation and Global Governance” in Volker Rittberger (Ed.), Globalisation and Governance and the United Nations System, Tokyo: United Nations University, 2001, 127–57. Higgott, Richard (2004a), “After Neo-Liberal Globalisation: The ‘Securitisation’ of US Foreign Economic Policy in East Asia”, in Development and Change, forthcoming. Higgott, Richard (2004b), The Limits to Multilateralism, Berlin and Tokyo, Council for Asia Europe Cooperation, Task Force on Global Governance, 1–37. Hoekman, Bernard and Kostecki, Michel (2001), The Political Economy of the World Trade System: The WTO and Beyond, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hoffmann, Stanley (2003), American Exceptionalism: The New Version, Harvard University: Weatherhead Centre for Science and International Affairs, 1–17. Howse, Robert and Nicolaidis, Kalypso (2003), “Enhancing WTO Legitimacy: Constitutionalization or Subsidiarity”, in Governance, 16 (1): 73–94. Hurrell, Andrew and Woods, Ngaire (Eds.) (1999), Inequality, Globalisation and World Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ikenberry, John, G. (2002), “Introduction” in John G. Ikenberry (Ed.), America Unrivalled: The Future of the Balance of Power, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Jawara, Fatoumata and Kwa, Aileen (2003), Behind the Scenes at the WTO: The Real World of Trade Negotiations, London: Zed Books. Jervis, Robert (2003), “The Compulsive Empire”, in Foreign Policy, July – August: 83–7. Kaul, Inge, et al. (1999), Global Public Goods, New York: Oxford University Press for the UNDP. Keck, Margaret and Sikkink, Katherine (1997), Transnational Issue Networks in International Politics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. Keohane, Robert O. (1989), International Institutions and State Power, Boulder: Westview Press. Low, Patrick (1993) Trading Free: The GATT and US Trade Policy, New York: Twentieth Century Books. Lynch, Cecilia (1998), “Social Movements and the Problem of Globalisation”, Alternatives, 23 (2): 49–173. Martin, Lisa (2004), Multilateral Organisations after the US-Iraq War of 2003, Harvard University Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs, August: 1–17. Milner, Helen (1997), Interests, Institutions and Information: Domestic Politics and International Relations, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Moravscik, Andrew (2002), “Is There a Democratic Deficit in World Politics? A Framework for Analysis”, in Government and Opposition, forthcoming. Moravscik, Andrew (2003), Globalisation, Domestic Politics and Regionalism: The ASEAN Free Trade Area, London: Routledge. Ougaard, Morten and Higgott, Richard (Eds.) (2002), Towards a Global Polity, London: Routledge.


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Peet, Richard (2003), Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and the WTO, New York, Zed Books. Rodrik, Daniel (2002), “Feasible Globalisations” http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~drodrik. Rollo, Jim (2003), “Reviving the WTO Doha Development Agenda: Eight Modest Proposals”, Lausanne: Evian Group, December, http://www.eviangroup.org/p/369.pdf. Rosenau, James N. (2002), “Governance in the New Global Order”, in David Held and Anthony McGrew (Eds.), Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance, Cambridge: Polity Press. Ruggie, John, G. (1982), “International Regimes, transactions and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Post War Economic Order”, in International Organisation, 36 (2). Ruggie, John, G. (Ed.) (1993), Multilateralism Matters: The Theory and Praxis of an Institutional Form, New York: Columbia University Press. Ruggie, John, G. (2004), “Taking Embedded Liberalism Global: The Corporate Connection”, in Held, David and Mathias Konig-Archibugi (Eds.), Taming Globalisation: Frontiers of Governance, Cambridge: Polity. Said, Yahia and Desai, Megnad (2003), “Trade and Global Civil Society: The Anti-Capitalist Movement Revisited”, in Global Civil Society, Oxford: OUP, 59–85. Simmons, P.J. (1988), “Learning to Live with NGOs”, in Foreign Policy, 111: 82–97. Spiro, Peter (2000), “The New Sovereigntists: American Exceptionalism and its False Prophets”, in Foreign Affairs, 79 (6): 9–15. Stewart, Patrick (2002), “Multilateralism and its Discontens: The Causes and Cosequences of US Ambivalence”, in Patrick Stewart and Shepard Forman (Eds.), Multilateralism in US Foreign Policy: Ambivalent Engagement, Boulder, CO: Lynn Reinner. Stewart, Patrick and Forman, Shepard (Eds.) (2002), Multilateralism and US Foreign Policy: Ambivalent Engagement, Boulder, CO: Lynn Reinner. Stone, Diane (2004), “Transfer Agents and Global Networks in the ‘Trans-nationalisation’ of Policy”, in Journal of European Public Policy, 11(3). Verweij, Marco and Josling, Timothy (2003), “Deliberately Democratizing Multilateral Organization” in Governance, 16 (1): 1–22. Wedgewood, Ruth (2000), “Courting Disaster: The US Takes a Stand”, in Foreign Service Journal, 77(3): 34–41. Woods, Ngaire (2001a), “Who should govern the world economy: the challenges of glolbalisatin and governance”, in Renewal, 9 (2/3): 73–82. Woods, Ngaire (2001b), “Making the IMF and the World Bank More Accountable”, in International Affairs, 77 (1): 83–100. Woods, Ngaire (2003), “The United States and the International Financial Institutions: Power and Influence within the World Bank and the IMF”, in Foot, Rosemary, Neil MacFarlane and Michael Mastanduno (Eds.), US Hegemony and International Organisations, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Woods, Ngaire and Narliker, Amrita (2001), “The WTO, the IMF and the World Bank”, Accountable to Whom? in International Social Science Journal, 170 (November).

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Chapter III Administering Global Governance: The Issue of Access to Justice Jacques Ziller∗ English Summary The product of political and economic trends during the closing years of the twentieth century, globalisation received a powerful boost from technological progress, which revolutionised the available modalities of transport and communications. Although in many ways, it represents a sequel to currents and developments that were already in progress, notably after the end of the Second World War, globalisation differs from internationalisation which it replaced as a trend. Specifically, globalisation is very closely tied to the dissemination of democratic values and of the rule of law, that have so far been shaped and brought to maturation within the nation state. The problems of spreading those values world-wide, making them operational on a global scale, are nowhere more starkly apparent than in access to justice, a fundamental principle enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is as if disparities produced or perpetuated by the digital divide were not merely replicated in the administration of justice, but further magnified by global market forces and the attenuation of the equalising pressures and moderating influences engendered by the Welfare State. It is to advance the cause of equal access to justice that the Access to Justice Movement was first developed in Europe during the 1970s and 1980s. The movement has endeavoured to reach across the borders of nation states, as well as legal systems and traditions, in order to establish and to consolidate certain fundamental rights of citizens; the right to a fair trial exemplifying due process and a professional judgment by an independent court. High costs of litigation in several parts of the world have recently led to the quest for alternative mechanisms of dispute resolution. These put the stress on efficiency and speed, but less on professional rigour and independence. No system can be perfect, especially under conditions of growing resource scarcity. However, the dilemma between speed and efficiency, on the one hand, and equal access to justice, on the other, is nowhere more apparent than on the global ∗

Jacques Ziller, European University Institute, Florence.

J. Ziller / Administering Global Governance: The Issue of Access to Justice

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level. Recent decades have witnessed the growth and proliferation of supranational courts. Best known on the regional level are the European Court on Human Rights, in Strasbourg and the Inter-American Court on Human Rights in San Jose, Costa Rica. The WTO Appeals Court, the recently established International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Administrative Tribunal of the United Nations provide noteworthy examples of global institutions in the judicial sphere. They share a common problem: access to justice. The more direct and wider the access to these courts, the longer the delays in processing the caseload. Mention needs also be made of numerous quasi-judicial entities, which have seen the light of the day. Less formal and more flexible, they mostly exist to safeguard and to promote socio-economic, political and civil rights. However, here again it is collective rights, not individual grievances, that can be addressed. Thus far, under the existing practice, only sovereign States and inter-governmental organizations (IGOs) are recognized as subjects of public international law. The rigours of this pattern have slowly but progressively been attenuated, partly on account of pressures arising from the lowering of barriers and the emergence of global markets. Still, progress has been hesitant, due largely to the paucity of enforcement mechanisms on the supranational level, but mostly because of the scale and complexities involved. Two significant departures in recent decades consist in measures taken on both sides of the Atlantic with a view to contesting trade barriers. In the case of the EU, the system which went into force on 1 January 1995 has the advantage of transparency and relative autonomy vis-à-vis interest groups. It may serve as a model for other regional entities. Experience demonstrates that a global justice system on the model of the one available to nation states has very limited prospects of seeing the light of the day, in the foreseeable future. However, globalisation has been accompanied by a proliferation of multilateral treaties which are self-executing and may, therefore, be invoked by ordinary citizens or corporations in their courts of their respective countries. Progressively, in this manner, through multilateral treaties and international law, globalisation exerts a certain impact on domestic institutions at the level of the nation states, but increasingly also the level of regional institutions like the European Union. Developments in this regard have certainly proved catalytic in many spheres of activity. It must be recognised, on the other hand, that progress is uneven, with certain Member States being well in advance of others in securing for their citizens the benefits, with regards to their access to justice, which have long been enshrined in international law. * * * * La mondialisation est un phénomène difficile à appréhender si l’on cède à la tentation de voir dans les organisations régionales ou universelles une réplique plus ou moins développée de l’Etat – fût-il fédéral – ou si l’on approche la problématique avec les catégories nationales, notamment celles du droit public et du droit privé. L’utilisation du concept de la gouvernance – ou parfois de la phraséologie de la gouvernance – par les organisations mondiales a notamment attiré l’attention sur le caractère inséparable entre démocratisation et Etat de droit, entre un bon

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fonctionnement de l’administration et l’existence d’institutions politiques et judiciaires solides, indépendantes et efficaces. La cohabitation entre des Etats souverains d’une part, et des systèmes juridiques englobant de façon diverse ces Etats au niveau régional ou mondial d’autre part, n’empêche pas la protection des droits et intérêts des particuliers, mais elle empêche la construction d’un ensemble systématiquement organisé de protection par le droit. La mondialisation, telle qu’elle se manifeste tournant du XXème au XXIème siècle, comme conséquence à la fois des changements technologiques (qui permettent une communication quasi instantanée et facilement accessible au niveau mondial), de la fin de la division du monde industrialisé en deux blocs antagonistes, et enfin du changement d’échelle des marchés qui en résulte, se distingue de l’internationalisation, phénomène propre au XXème siècle. La mondialisation est en particulier indissolublement liée à la diffusion des valeurs démocratiques et de l’Etat de droit (rule of law). La question du caractère démocratique et du respect du droit par les institutions, réseaux et modes de gouvernance propres à la mondialisation, acquiert de ce fait une importance particulière. En même temps, la perception de la mondialisation comme phénomène mondial, c’est-à-dire touchant de manière relativement égale toutes les populations de la planète, ne correspond guère à la réalité. Il s’agit d’une perception propre aux élites économiques des pays industrialisés ou en voie d’industrialisation rapide, et partagée par nombre de décideurs politiques des pays industrialisés plus ou moins coupés des réalités sociales. Des thématiques récentes comme celle du fossé technologique nord-sud, montrent comment les différences de développement économique, social et sanitaire en particulier accompagnent la mondialisation, ce qui met au premier plan des interrogations sur la gouvernance mondiale la thématique de l’exclusion. La combinaison des thématiques des valeurs démocratiques et de l’Etat de droit avec celles de l’exclusion, fait à son tour ressortir de manière aiguë la question de la légitimité de la gouvernance mondiale. L’objectif de la présente contribution est à la fois restreint et sans doute trop ambitieux. Il ne s’agit pas d’évaluer l’apport du droit à la mondialisation, qui fait l’objet de réflexions renouvelées de nombres de juristes, notamment à la lumière de la révolution que connaît le droit pénal international. 1 Il ne s’agit pas non plus de réfléchir à l’émergence d’un « droit administratif mondial » (global administrative law), qui fait l’objet de travaux de recherche encore en cours de développement.2 Mon propos est d’examiner comment la problématique de l’accès à la justice – qui a connu son heure de gloire en particulier dans le cadre des travaux conduits à Florence dans les années soixante-dix par Mauro Cappelletti 3 – pourrait contribuer à faire progresser la compréhension des voie et moyens d’un accroissement de la légitimation de la gouvernance mondiale. La problématique de l’accès à la justice nécessite une compréhension des mécanismes parfois très complexes qui garantissent cet accès. Elle est de ce fait souvent négligée dans l’étude de la mondialisation. Elle est pourtant très directement liée aux questions qui font l’objet nos réflexions sur la gouvernance mondiale. Le Mouvement d’Accès à la Justice (Access to Justice Movement) des années soixantedix – quatre-vingt, lié aux travaux de droit comparé conduits par Cappelletti notamment,4 a beaucoup fait pour diffuser parmi les juristes universitaires, mais aussi au sein des professions judiciaires (juges et avocats) et chez les législateurs, la connaissance des solutions, de type procédural et économique, permettant au plus


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grand nombre de bénéficier en tant que de besoin des mécanismes de décision juridictionnelle, construits pour assurer l’effectivité du droit. Une partie importante de ces solutions et en particulier celles qui ont pour objet d’éliminer les obstacles dus aux coûts directs et indirects des procédures (en particulier tous les dispositifs d’aide judiciaire5) sont difficiles, sinon impossibles à transposer au niveau mondial. Par contre la réflexion sur les obstacles non économiques, ou plus généralement sur les obstacles qualitatifs à l’accès à la justice, peuvent être particulièrement utiles à la compréhension des mécanismes permettant à la gouvernance globale de n’être pas une simple accumulation des solutions techniques sectorielles fonctionnant au bénéfice des seuls intérêts solidement représentés. La notion d’intérêts diffus est ainsi particulièrement liée à des mécanismes techniques tels que les conditions permettant de saisir la justice : qualité de justiciable, liée à la possession de la personnalité juridique, intérêt pour agir, nécessaire pour qu’une demande en justice puisse être inscrite à l’ordre du jour des juridictions, etc. Cette notion permet de faire ressortir comment la construction classique des systèmes juridiques occidentaux à partir de la notion de droits – qu’ils soient matériels (substantive rights) ou procéduraux (natural justice) – a pour effet, si l’on n’y prend garde, de faire du droit un outil protégeant seulement les plus puissants, que ce soient des êtres humains (des personnes physiques comme dit le droit) ou des groupements d’humains (des personnes morales). La prise en compte des intérêts diffus, au-delà des seuls droits individualisables, permet d’inclure le plus grand nombre et les plus faibles. Des outils procéduraux tels que les « class actions » qui se sont développés dans le droit des Etats-Unis pour permettre la protection des consommateurs ou des victimes de dégâts environnementaux, 6 ou encore telle que l’élargissement des conditions de l’intérêt à agir, très utilisée pour les associations de défense de l’environnement, ont leur prolongement ou sont repris directement, ou sous forme d’équivalents fonctionnels, dans certains outils développés récemment dans le cadre des problèmes liés à la mondialisation. Les considérations qui suivent, sur les thèmes de la justice (pourquoi l’accès à la justice ? de quelle justice parlons nous ? comment accéder à la justice ?) sont le prolongement direct des réflexions et propositions développées il y a quelques décennies dans le cadre du Mouvement d’Accès à la Justice. Pourquoi la justice ? L’accès à la justice comme instrument d’inclusion dans la gouvernance mondiale Dans le cadre des Etats nationaux et de leurs administrations publiques, l’un des points d’attention fondamentaux de la modernisation à ce tournant de siècle est la façon dont la société répond à la problématique de l’inclusion et de l’exclusion, notamment celles des individus et groupes les plus faibles, qui n’ont pas par euxmêmes les ressources économiques, technologiques et de connaissance nécessaires à faire entendre leurs voix. Dans ce cadre, l’une des tâches fondamentales d’un système judiciaire efficace est la protection des droits, et notamment ceux des plus faibles (que ce soient de simples particuliers ou des groupes sociaux) contre le plus forts (particuliers, entreprises, groupement sociaux ou Etats). L’organisation des tribunaux en termes institutionnels, mais plus encore de l’ensemble des mécanismes permettant d’y accéder, va bien au-delà de la solution des litiges qui sont le lot

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commun de toute société plurale, où les intérêts des différents groupes sociaux sont divers. L’étude de cet aspect de la justice est apparue dans le cadre national en lien avec la thématique de l’Etat providence,7 mais la remise en cause de l’Etat providence n’ôte rien à la pertinence des réflexions produites à ce sujet. L’administration de la gouvernance mondiale ne peut à mon avis que bénéficier d’une transposition au plan mondial des principes, règles et mécanismes de l’Etat de droit (Rule of Law) et notamment du droit au juge, du droit d’accès à la justice, du droit à un procès équitable, ou plus généralement à une procédure juste (due process). Chacun de ces droits correspond à des aspects différents du point de vue technique. Le droit au juge ou droit au juge naturel, que l’on retrouve dans de nombreux textes constitutionnels, insiste sur la nécessité de pouvoir bénéficier du jugement d’un organisme indépendant, professionnel et compétent, pour toute personne engagée dans un litige, et pose de redoutables problèmes économiques auxquels l’on essaie de faire face notamment par le développement de mécanismes alternatifs de solution des litiges (alternative dispute resolution) qui insistent moins sur l’indépendance du juge que sur la simplicité et l’économie des procédures. Mais si ces mécanismes alternatifs peuvent garantir efficacement l’accès au droit, il n’est pas évident qu’ils remplacent l’accès au juge. Le droit d’accès à la justice, qui est un concept un peu plus abstrait que le droit au juge, englobe une série d’éléments divers. Les uns sont relatifs à l’organisation des professions judiciaires, en particulier l’existence d’obligations de représentation des parties par des professionnels, voire de monopoles de représentation. D’autre se rapportent à l’organisation des tribunaux, et notamment à la tension entre d’une part les nécessités de la spécialisation pour garantir la compétence technique et juridique nécessaire à un jugement éclairé, et d’autre part les inconvénients liés à la multiplicité des juridictions et donc des critères juridiques établissant la compétence géographique et matérielle de ces juridictions. Le droit à un procès équitable – pour prendre la terminologie de la Convention européenne des droits de l’Homme de 1951 par exemple –, ou plus généralement le droit à une procédure juste (due process of law) recouvre une série de principes et de règles de technique des procès, parfois complexes pour les non spécialistes, et destinées à garantir en particulier l’égalité entre les différentes parties à un litige. Il se manifeste de façon différente selon les types de justice : justice civile concernant les relations entre particulier, justice pénale assurant la répression des crimes et délits par la société, et justice administrative concernant les relations entre les administrations publiques et les particuliers, notamment. Même dans les pays qui ne différencient pas l’organisation des tribunaux selon ces spécialités, les procédures propres à chacun de ces types de justice sont différentes. De même les solutions techniques propres à garantir un procès équitable diffèrent selon les traditions juridiques, notamment, mais pas uniquement, entre pays dits de common law,8 pays dits de droit romano germanique ou de civil law,9 et pays ne se rattachant pas à ces groupements10 ; les différences sont également fréquentes entre pays appartement à chacune de ces grandes familles.11 L’étude de l’accès à la justice dans des cadres régionaux et mondiaux reste à mener à bien. Elle est susceptible de donner un éclairage nouveau et surtout des


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éléments très concrets sur l’organisation de voies de participation des individus, de la société civile et des Etats à la gouvernance globale. En effet, même si les systèmes juridictionnels et les voies de recours (remedies) ont un caractère embryonnaire dans la société internationale, des mécanismes différents de ceux qui fonctionnent dans le cadre des Etats s’y sont développés. Ces mécanismes juridictionnels ou para juridictionnels représentent des formes parfois rudimentaires, parfois très sophistiquées au contraire, de justice internationale ou mondiale et mériteraient une attention accrue des spécialistes de sciences administratives comme des praticiens non juristes de la mondialisation. Quelle justice ? L’accès à la justice comme moyen d’accès au droit de la mondialisation Une définition simple, universelle et opératoire de la justice n’existe pas, même pas en termes techniques. Dans les langues romanes et en anglais, le même « justice » terme couvre des aspects différents : la langue allemande fait ressortir cette pluralité de concepts en utilisant deux termes différents, de manière révélatrice. D’un côté la notion de Justiz est utilisée pour tout ce qui couvre l’organisation et le fonctionnement du pouvoir judiciaire, des tribunaux, et la solution des litiges. D’un autre côté la notion de Gerechtigkeit, est utilisée pour ce qui relève de la répartition et de la distribution des biens et avantages entre particuliers et groupes sociaux, quel que soit le mécanisme institutionnel utilisé. Les deux phénomènes ne sont pas toujours aisés à séparer, en ce sens que le but ultime de la justice dans le premier sens (Justiz) est d’assurer la justice dans le second (Gerechtigkeit). L’organisation technique de la justice au sens de Justiz est souvent susceptible de produire de l’injustice au sens de Gerechtigkeit, un problème connu de tous les Etats qui ont développé des systèmes sophistiqués de règlement des litiges. Une des illustrations les plus connues en est l’apparition de l’equity en Angleterre aux XVIème et XVIIème siècles, comme ensemble de voies de recours inédits, devant une nouvelle juridiction à l’origine plus informelle que les cours de justice, et destinées à compenser les effets pervers des voies et recours établies du common law. L’illustration est d’autant plus pertinente si l’on prend également en compte la transformation du système d’equity en un ensemble encore moins juste que celui du common law, du fait de la formalisation accrue des voies de recours. Les mêmes causes produisant les mêmes effets, on retrouve en droit international public une problématique de l’équité en partie voisine de celle du droit anglais. L’étude de la justice dans le cadre de l’administration de la gouvernance mondiale doit toutefois se limiter au premier aspect de la justice (Justiz), car le second aspect (Gerechtigkeit), plus que des sciences de l’administration, relève des choix idéologiques et rapports de forces politiques entre Etats et groupes d’Etats comme à l’intérieur des Etats, ou même de la philosophie. Les institutions les plus visibles de la justice mondiale sont les juridictions et organes de règlement des litiges dont le champ d’action et la compétence dépassent la sphère d’un seul Etat. Les cours de justices internationales (Cour Internationale de Justice, Cour Criminelle Internationale, Cour Internationale d’Arbitrage, Organe d’Appel de l’Organisation Mondiale du Commerce (OMC), Tribunal Administratif des Nations Unies pour n’en citer que quelques uns) ont un certain nombre de traits

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communs qu’il conviendrait de rappeler dans toute étude sur la mondialisation, mais se distinguent l’une de l’autre par beaucoup d’aspects. Il en va de même pour les cours régionales (Cour Européenne des Droits de l’Homme de Strasbourg, Cour Interaméricaine des Droits de l’Homme de San Jose de Costa Rica, Cour de Justice des Communautés européennes de Luxembourg). Parmi les problèmes classiques de l’accès à ce type de justice internationale ou régionale, il faut citer en premier lieu évidemment la question du droit de recours individuel, c’est-à-dire de l’accès direct des individus et groupements privés aux procédures de protection de leurs droits. C’est une problématique trop connue pour mériter d’être reprise ici. On notera simplement qu’il existe une tension, bien connue au niveau national et régional, entre deux tendances. D’un côté l’on cherche à limiter l’exclusion par l’ouverture des recours, ce qui implique la réduction des obstacles formels, à commencer par les définitions restreintes de la qualité pour agir en justice, qui est d’habitude réservée aux seuls Etats en droit international public classique, mais peut être accordé à des individus ou groupements. De l’autre il faut lutter contre l’allongement des délais de jugement, qui résulte de l’augmentation inévitable du recours au fur et à mesure que la connaissance de l’existence de ces voies de recours et la confiance en leurs décisions augmentent. Plus l’accès à la justice est facile et plus elle risque de perdre en efficacité et en rapidité. Cette tension ne faisant qu’augmenter au fur et à mesure que la population concernée est plus nombreuse, a pour conséquence que la transposition au plan mondial des mécanismes nationaux – voire régionaux – de justice est pour une large part condamnée à l’utopie. Qui plus est, les cours résolvent des problèmes individuels au gré des litiges qui leurs sont soumis, et ces litiges restent typiquement individuels mêmes s’ils concernent un grand nombre de cas semblables. Il peut de ce fait se passer des années avant que des problèmes sociaux et économiques les plus brûlants ne rencontrent des individus disposant des ressources économiques, intellectuelles et morales nécessaires à l’engagement d’un recours en justice. D’autres institutions mondiales et régionales, sans être à proprement parler des cours internationales, partagent beaucoup de points communs avec les juridictions au sens strict, en particulier dans la définition de leurs tâches. Leurs modes de fonctionnement sont en général moins strictement formalisés que ces cours. C’est notamment le cas des Commissions internationales et régionales chargées de la protection des droits civils et politiques ainsi que des droits économiques et sociaux. Une attention toute particulière devrait être accordée aux organismes de protections des droits sociaux fondamentaux : Comité des Nations Unies, Organisation internationale du travail, Comité du Conseil de l’Europe, notamment. En effet ces organismes ont su développer des mécanismes d’accès et de règlement qui reposent essentiellement sur des actions collectives, introduites par des organisations non gouvernementales (ONG). L’avantage essentiel de ces mécanismes, par rapports aux mécanismes juridictionnels au sens stricts, est qu’ils permettent une bien meilleure adaptation entre d’une part les ressources disponibles et de l’autre les possibilités de porter des problèmes à l’attention de ces organes. Certes ces organes n’ont en général pas le pouvoir de résoudre des cas individuels, et ils n’ont qu’un pouvoir de recommandation et non un pouvoir de décision. L’absence de mécanismes de coercition au plan mondial – par opposition aux Etats qui disposent d’huissiers, de forces de police et d’autres mécanismes de contrainte – réduit déjà les conséquences


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qui s’attachent en droit national à la distinction entre organes juridictionnels et non juridictionnels. Qui plus est ces organismes ont le plus souvent la possibilité d’émettre des recommandations générales allant bien au-delà des cas particuliers qui leurs sont soumis, et possèdent de ce fait une possibilité d’influence plus large que les juridiction sur un grand nombre de situations individuelles qui ne seraient souvent pas portées à l’attention des cours et tribunaux. En termes d’inclusion et d’exclusion, il ne fait guère de doute que cette deuxième catégorie de mécanismes est mieux à même d’élargir l’accès à la justice, et donc l’inclusion du plus grand nombre et des moins puissants, que le recours aux seuls cours et tribunaux. Il faut donc se garder d’idéaliser la justice internationale au sens strict, mais il faut également réfléchir à l’adéquation des procédures et organes existants, en gardant à l’esprit que le plus souvent, les deux types de mécanismes sont complémentaires et non antagonistes. La question du choix n’en reste pas moins posée face à des ressources limitées. Elle doit être abordée en terme de priorités et de planification, non en termes de choix définitifs et radicaux. L’accès à la justice mondiale par les Etats : avantages et limites pour la protection des intérêts diffus Le paradigme classique du droit international public veut que seuls les Etats et organisations internationales gouvernementales (OI) soient des sujets juridiques à part entière. Il a pour corollaire le maintien de mécanismes de sanction fondés sur la réciprocité (inapplication d’obligations résultant d’un accord, représailles, etc.). L’on assiste à un développement quantitatif incontestable de la justice internationale, notamment par la création de nouveaux organes juridictionnels tels que l’organe d’appel de l’OMC à Genève, le Tribunal International du droit de la mer à Hambourg, ou la Cour de justice criminelle internationale à Rome. Il faut néanmoins rappeler le caractère limité de celle-ci de la justice internationale, démontré notamment par la régression de la compétence obligatoire de la Cour Internationale de Justice dans trois dernières décennies du XXème siècle et par les refus de participer à certains de ces organes d’Etats puissants, au premier rang desquels les Etats-Unis. Il faut également rappeler le caractère incomplet de la justice internationale du point de vue des critères classiques du règlement juridictionnel, et en particulier du mécanisme mis en place dans le cadre de l’Organisation Mondiale du Commerce. L’une des conséquences principales de cette situation est que l’outil de la protection diplomatique12 reste le principal moyen pour les personnes (physiques ou morales, de droit privé ou de droit public interne) de mettre en jeu la responsabilité des Etats pour leur violation du droit international. Cet outil reste souvent le seul moyen d’accès à la justice pour des personnes ou groupements autres que les Etats et OI, dans bon nombre de situations où le recours à des tribunaux nationaux ou régionaux est soit impossible du fait des règles délimitant les compétences de ces organes, soit illusoire quant aux résultats qui peuvent être obtenus. La protection diplomatique est le mécanisme par lequel un Etat prend fait et cause pour l’un de ses ressortissants dont il estime les droits lésés par un autre sujet du droit international (Etat ou OI). L’Etat demande réparation de cette lésion par les moyens qu’il juge appropriés. Les principes du droit international public relatif à

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l’exercice de la protection diplomatique sont fort simples, et n’ont pas pour but la promotion de l’accès à la justice des particuliers et groupements privés. L’exercice de la protection diplomatique est une simple faculté pour les Etats, jamais une obligation. Le pouvoir discrétionnaire de l’Etat est limité par l’existence d’un lien de nationalité effectif ainsi que par la doctrine “des mains propres” – qui veut qu’un Etat ne puisse pas prendre fait et cause pour un de ses ressortissants qui aurait luimême violé des règles de droit international – et enfin par le principe de l’épuisement des voies de recours internes qui veut que les particuliers s’adressent d’abord aux tribunaux de l’Etat qui les aurait lésés avant d’en appeler à l’action de l’Etat dont ils sont ressortissants. Le mécanisme de la protection diplomatique conduit à une mise en jeu de la responsabilité internationale de l’Etat, soit par des actes bilatéraux (accords entre Etats), soit par le recours à la justice internationale, soit par l’exercice de mécanismes multilatéraux appropriés. Selon les principes du droit international, l’Etat est valablement représenté par le Chef d’Etat ou le Ministre des relations extérieures, ou par toute autre personne accréditée, cette dernière devant en apporter la preuve. Tout, ou presque, a sans doute été écrit en droit international public sur la protection diplomatique. Il s’agit par contre d’un champ d’études à peine défriché par les sciences administratives. Les principes de droit national applicables à l’exercice de la protection diplomatique peuvent varier selon les pays, ils n’ont pas fait l’objet d’une étude systématique permettant d’en évaluer le champ pratique et les limitations. Dans la plupart des pays, la décision de mettre en œuvre ou non la protection diplomatique, de même que la façon de la mettre en œuvre, sont considérées comme un pouvoir discrétionnaire du gouvernement national. L’idée est que seul ce gouvernement peut effectuer la nécessaire pondération entre d’un côté l’intérêt de la victime des actes d’un autre Etat ou d’une OI et de l’autre côté l’intérêt national. Cet intérêt national peut aller dans le sens du principe du respect du droit international ou dans une autre direction considérée comme plus importante pour le maintien de bonnes relations diplomatiques. Non seulement la décision d’exercer la protection diplomatique en faveur d’un ressortissant est un pouvoir discrétionnaire, mais qui plus est, il est soumis à des contrôles extrêmement limités à l’intérieur des Etats. Le contrôle parlementaire est très faible dans la plupart des Etats modernes, s’agissant d’un domaine relevant par excellence de l’exécutif. Le contrôle juridictionnel interne est le plus souvent inexistant, que ce soit par le jeu de dispositions écrites expresses de la législation processuelle ou par celui de théories jurisprudentielles comme celle des actes de gouvernement en France par exemple. Si le contrôle juridictionnel n’est pas impossible du fait de principes d’irrecevabilité, il restera extrêmement limité du fait des limitations du pouvoir d’injonction (comment un juge peut-il enjoindre au Président ou au Ministre des relations extérieures une action diplomatique précise ? ). Il sera également restreint par l’effet limité des principes de la responsabilité publique en droit interne : à supposer que le droit d’un Etat permette la mise en jeu de cette responsabilité sans tenir compte de la nature particulière des relations extérieures, toute une série de problèmes se posent, à commencer par celui de la causalité, le dommage invoqué étant le fait d’un Etat étranger (ou d’une OI), et


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l’effet potentiel d’une mise en œuvre de la protection diplomatique étant extrêmement difficile à évaluer. A supposer résolus les multiples problèmes de droit administratif liés à l’exercice de la protection diplomatique, reste le problème principal, qui échappe largement à une appréhension en termes juridiques : l’appréciation de l’intérêt national méritant d’être protégé. On peut supposer que la protection diplomatique est exercée uniquement lorsque les autorités gouvernementales pertinentes sont convaincues qu’il y a un intérêt national qui mérite d’être protégé. L’intérêt dans le cas d’espèce peut être celui d’un particulier, d’un groupement, d’une entreprise, ou encore d’une collectivité territoriale ou d’un autre organisme public. Il peut s’agir d’un intérêt direct de l’Etat ou de l’un de ses démembrements, ou d’un intérêt économique ou politique de la nation. Il peut s’agir d’un intérêt individualisable ou d’un intérêt diffus. Il est clair qu’il devrait non seulement s’agir d’un intérêt légitime mais surtout d’un intérêt capable de se faire entendre. Le rôle des administrations publiques, et en particulier en l’espèce de l’administration des relations extérieures, qui devrait avoir un rôle déterminant et fondamental dans cette perspective. L’une des questions majeures à examiner du point de vue de la gouvernance mondiale serait celle du degré d’effectivité du mécanisme de la protection diplomatique pour contrer l’exclusion. Mais la condition juridique d’un lien d’effectivité risque d’être opposée à l’Etat demandeur. Il en résulte une protection extrêmement difficile des intérêts diffus dans tous les cas où ils ne font pas l’objet d’une politique nationale spécifique de l’Etat concerné. L’accès des intérêts individuels à la justice mondiale: comment ? L’un des principes de la mondialisation est le démantèlement progressif des barrières au commerce international. A supposer que ce démantèlement doive bénéficier directement aux entreprises exportatrices et indirectement à l’ensemble de la population de par les effets bénéfiques du développement du commerce international sur la croissance, une question essentielle est celle de l’effectivité du droit qui interdit de telles barrières, qu’il s’agisse d’accord multilatéraux au premier rang desquels le GATT, ou d’accords régionaux ou bilatéraux entre Etats. Cela implique notamment possibilité d’un recours à un organisme impartial doté de pouvoirs de décision efficaces. De tels mécanismes de recours sont essentiels en l’occurrence pour la protection de trois types d’intérêts diffus : ceux des innovateurs et en particuliers les individus ou les petites entreprises qui ne trouvent pas de relais immédiat de la part d’une grande entreprise puissante, ceux des consommateurs, et ceux de la population en général – à supposer encore une fois que le démantèlement des barrières commerciales conduise à une augmentation suffisamment diffusée du niveau de vie. Le développement du commerce international dans le dernier quart de siècle a été la cause de deux innovations particulièrement intéressantes de ce point de vue, des deux côtés de l’Atlantique nord : l’article (Section) 301 du de la loi sur le Commerce international (Trade Act) de 1974 aux Etats-Unis d’Amérique Section d’une part, et plus encore le Règlement du Conseil de l’Union Européenne n° 3286/94 du 22 Décembre 1994 (Règlement barrières commerciales).13 L’article (Section) 301 du Trade Act est la première tentative de régulation par le droit de la

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possibilité de demander au gouvernement des Etats-Unis de contester des barrières au commerce international opposées par d’autres Etats. Il s’agit à première vue d’un instrument à la disposition à la fois des entreprises américaines exportatrices et des organisations ayant pour objet de protéger des intérêts diffus, voire des biens collectifs. Il y a toutefois une sérieuse limitation dans la pratique, car pour que l’administration américaine donne suite à de telles plaintes, il est indispensable d’obtenir le soutien de membres du Congrès. Cela signifie qu’à côté des grandes entreprises, qui auraient sans doute été capables de faire entendre leur voix même sans la loi de 1974, les seuls intérêts susceptibles de déclencher une action sont ceux qui touchent un nombre suffisamment important d’électeurs conscients dans des circonscriptions électorales fédérales dont les élus sont actifs. En réponse à la loi de 1974, la Communauté européenne a adopté en 1984 le Nouvel instrument de politique commerciale,14 mais l’expérience ne se révélant pas concluante, elle a mis en place en 1994 un nouveau système, couramment désigné sous le nom de Règlement barrières commerciales, entré en vigueur le 1er janvier 1995,15 qui était plus innovant. La procédure européenne a trois avantages considérables : en premier lieu, elle est beaucoup plus formalisée que la procédure américaine, et ne nécessite pas d’être appuyée par un effort de lobbying politique ; ensuite, elle est gérée par un organisme supranational (la Commission) dont la raison d’être est la recherche d’un intérêt général commun dégagé d’une série d’intérêts nationaux plus spécifiques et qui ne ressortent d’ailleurs pas de sa compétence ; enfin et surtout, elle est marquée d’un très grand degré de transparence, beaucoup plus adapté à la protection des intérêts diffus. L’intérêt du système européen est aussi de montrer en quoi l’intégration régionale peut innover : il me paraît que des mécanismes semblables au Règlement barrières commerciales ont peu de chances d’être adoptés dans le cadre d’un Etat et qu’au contraire ils pourraient être imités dans le cadre d’autres groupements régionaux. L’instauration d’une justice mondiale sur le modèle de la justice étatique, ou même sur le modèle de la justice Communautaire, me paraît totalement utopique, ne fût-ce que pour de simples considérations quantitatives ressortant du nombre de litiges et de requérants potentiels. C’est pourquoi l’impact juridictionnel de la mondialisation ne me paraît susceptible de se développer que dans le cadre de l’accès à la justice interne, que ce soit celle de l’Etat ou celle de la Communauté européenne. L’importance du contrôle juridictionnel tient moins à son exercice fréquent qu’à sa capacité dissuasive : le glaive de la justice est plus efficace en tant qu’épée de Damoclès que comme instrument du bourreau. Un problème essentiel se pose en la matière. La mondialisation s’accompagne certes de la multiplication des traités multilatéraux à directement applicables dans les Etats parties (self-executing) et pouvant donc être en principe invoqués devant la juridiction des Etats parties – tout au moins dans les Etats disposant de mécanismes d’adoption des traités d’inspiration moniste. Mais l’effectivité de ces droits, en particulier pour ceux qui visent à la protection d’intérêts diffus ou de biens collectifs, est sérieusement limitée par des principes et règles de droit processuel qui restent pour l’essentiel de la compétence des Etats et varient d’ailleurs considérablement d’un cas à l’autre. L’un des corollaires les plus récents de la mondialisation est un impact nouveau sur les règles de procédure, certes encore limité mais très important dans un certain nombre d’Etats. De ce point de vue, le cas


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de la protection l’environnement est particulièrement intéressant et mérite d’être suivi avec attention. La Convention d’Århus en juin 1998,16 a été considérée par la doctrine comme « l’instrument universel de la démocratie environnementale 17 ». La disposition la plus intéressante pour notre sujet est l’article 9, relatif à l’accès à la justice. « 1. Chaque Partie veille, dans le cadre de sa législation nationale, à ce que toute personne qui estime que la demande d’informations qu’elle a présentée en application de l’article 4 a été ignorée, rejetée abusivement, en totalité ou en partie, ou insuffisamment prise en compte ou qu’elle n’a pas été traitée conformément aux dispositions de cet article, ait la possibilité de former un recours devant une instance judiciaire ou un autre organe indépendant et impartial établi par la loi. Dans les cas où une Partie prévoit un tel recours devant une instance judiciaire, elle veille à ce que la personne concernée ait également accès à une procédure rapide établie par la loi qui soit gratuite ou peu onéreuse, en vue du réexamen de la demande par une autorité publique ou de son examen par un organe indépendant et impartial autre qu’une instance judiciaire. […] 2. Chaque Partie veille, dans le cadre de sa législation nationale, à ce que les membres du public concerné a) ayant un intérêt suffisant pour agir ou, sinon, b) faisant valoir une atteinte à un droit, lorsque le code de procédure administrative d’une Partie pose une telle condition, puissent former un recours devant une instance judiciaire et/ou un autre organe indépendant et impartial établi par loi pour contester la légalité, quant au fond et à la procédure, de toute décision, tout acte ou toute omission […]. Ce qui constitue un intérêt suffisant et une atteinte à un droit est déterminé selon les dispositions du droit interne et conformément à l’objectif consistant à accorder au public concerné un large accès à la justice dans le cadre de la présente Convention. A cet effet, l’intérêt qu’a toute organisation non gouvernementale […] est réputé suffisant au sens de l’alinéa a) ci-dessus. Ces organisations sont également réputées avoir des droits auxquels il pourrait être porté atteinte au sens de l’alinéa b) ci-dessus. […] 3. En outre […] chaque Partie veille à ce que les membres du public qui répondent aux critères éventuels prévus par son droit interne puissent engager des procédures administratives ou judiciaires pour contester les actes ou omissions de particuliers ou d’autorités publiques allant à l’encontre des dispositions du droit national de l’environnement. 4. En outre, […] les procédures […]doivent offrir des recours suffisants et effectifs, y compris un redressement par injonction s’il y a lieu, et doivent être objectives, équitables et rapides sans que leur coût soit prohibitif. […] 5. Pour rendre les dispositions du présent article encore plus efficaces, chaque Partie veille à ce que le public soit informé de la possibilité qui lui est donnée d’engager des procédures de recours […] » Il est certes aisé de mettre en lumière toutes les imperfections d’un système qui s’en remet au droit interne pour déterminer les conditions de recevabilité des recours et qui, contrairement au système des Communautés européennes, n’est pas garanti

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par une juridiction supranationale. Il est plus intéressant de souligner qu’il s’agit là du premier accord international qui prenne à bras-le-corps les problèmes les plus importants qui doivent être résolus pour garantir l’effectivité du contrôle juridictionnel et donc aussi sa force dissuasive : l’existence conjointe de recours juridictionnels et administratifs, la définition de l’intérêt à agir, la possibilité de prononcer des injonctions, le coût des procédures et enfin la publicité qui doit leur être donnée. Le paragraphe 2 est particulièrement important en l’occurrence puisqu’il donne de façon assez générale aux associations en charge de la protection de l’environnement. Il pourrait être considéré comme un modèle d’inclusion pour d’autres secteurs, à condition bien sûr que les ONG des secteurs concernés soient suffisamment développées, consolidées et indépendantes des pouvoirs publics et privés qui disposent par ailleurs d’instruments comme la protection diplomatique pour faire valoir leurs intérêts. Par ailleurs l’un des intérêts principaux de la Convention d’Århus est qu’elle tante de projeter au plan mondial une approche qui a particulièrement bien réussi dans le cadre de la Communauté européenne. Le système juridictionnel de la Communauté européenne repose en effet sur la constatation désabusée que les Etats ne sont pas à même de prendre en charge le fonctionnement effectif de systèmes de contrôle juridictionnel au plan international en dehors des cas où un intérêt d’importance majeure est en jeu. Le plus souvent ils préfèrent éviter le recours à la justice internationale pour ne pas porter atteinte à la qualité de leurs relations avec un autre Etat par une attitude qui serait considérée comme inamicale. Dans le cadre de la Communauté européenne du charbon et de l’acier, établie en 1951 et plus encore lors de la mise en place de la Communauté économique européenne à partir de 1958 les experts ont donc imaginé un système original. Celui-ci repose pour partie certes sur la justice supranationale : la Cour de Justice des Communautés européennes CJCE, qui contrairement à la plupart des Cours internationales peut être saisie non seulement par les Etats, mais également par les particuliers et par un organisme indépendant des gouvernements Etats, la Commission européenne. Mais l’originalité du système communautaire repose surtout sur l’implication des juridictions nationales des Etats membres dans le contrôle du respect des règles adoptées en commun sous forme des traités institutifs et du droit dérivé (règlements directives et décisions). L’idée était que les intérêts sectoriels susceptibles d’être lésés par une absence d’application ou une mauvaise application du droit communautaire seraient plus prompts à saisir la justice que les gouvernements. De plus, les décisions des juridictions nationales sont accompagnées des mécanismes de coercition qui font défaut à la justice internationale. Un mécanisme particulier, celui de la question préjudicielle à la CJCE, a de plus été imaginé pour assurer une application aussi homogène que possible du droit communautaire dans tous les Etats membres, à travers un dialogue entre juridictions nationales et supranationale. Le système juridictionnel de la Communauté européenne a néanmoins deux caractéristiques qui en rendent les mécanismes difficiles à transposer avec efficacité dans un cadre mondialisé.18 En premier lieu, son efficacité a été démontrée dans le secteur de l’économie, mais il s’agit précisément d’un secteur ou les intérêts sont forts, individualisables et relativement faciles à mobiliser. Il n’est pas dit que dans


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d’autres secteurs, dominés par les intérêts diffus, l’effectivité puisse être assurée. Plus important encore, les Etats membres de l’Union européenne bénéficient de systèmes juridictionnels bien établis, disposant – malgré bien des défauts – de ressources assez convenables, de compétences bien établies et de ressources suffisantes pour fonctionner. Cela en fait un complément efficace de la coopération régionale. Mais dans un cadre mondial, de tels mécanismes risquent de ne fonctionner efficacement que pour les régions développées, au risque donc d’accroître encore le fossé entre inclus et exclus. Conclusion Cette brève série de considérations sur l’accès à la justice dans le cadre de l’administration de la gouvernance mondiale est plus conçu comme une incitation à la recherche – recherche universitaire certes, mais surtout recherche pratique de solutions concrètes – que comme discours prescriptifs. Le développement de l’accès à la justice est un des éléments nécessaires à la légitimation de la gouvernance mondiale, en particulier parce qu’une justice indépendante et effective est le corrélat indispensable au respect de l’Etat de droit, et que ce dernier est directement lié aux valeurs démocratiques telles qu’elles sont comprises à ce tournant de siècle. L’accès à la justice est cependant limité, autant sinon plus que les autres aspects de la gouvernance mondiale lorsqu’il s’agit de garantir l’inclusion du plus grand nombre et des moins puissants dans un processus de décision qui reste dominé par les gouvernements des Etats disposant de ressources suffisantes pour être des acteurs globaux et les groupements économiques les plus puissants. Notes and References 1

2

3 4

5

6 7 8 9

Antonio Cassese, Mireille Delmas-Marty, Juridictions nationales et crimes internationaux, Paris : Presses universitaires de France, 2002 et Mireille Delmas-Marty, Trois défis pour un droit mondial, Paris : Éditions du Seuil, 1998. Voir en particulier Benedict Kingsbury, Nico Krisch et Richard Stewart, The Emergence of Global Administrative Law’, IILJ Working paper 2004/1 – Administrative Law Series, ainsi que Jean-Bernard Auby, Globalisation, le droit et l’Etat, Paris : Montchrestien, 2003, Giacinto Della Cananea, L’Unione europea : un ordinamento composito, Roma : GLF editori Laterza, 2003. Voir notamment Mauro Cappelletti (dir.), The Judicial Process in Comparative Perspective, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989. Voir notamment Mauro Cappelletti, John Weisner et Monica Sccombe, Access to Justice and the Welfare State, Alphen aan den Rijn/Bruxelles/Stuttgart/Firenze : Sijthoff/juridictionnels/ Klett-Cotta/Le Monnier, 1981. Pour un tableau comparatif récent, voir Lua Kamal Yuille, ‘No One’s Perfect (Not Even Close) : Reevalutation Access to Justice in the United States and Western Europe’, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, Vol. 42 n°3, 2004. Le grand public a pu avoir un aperçu de ce qu’est la « class action » à travers un film à succès comme « Erin Brokovitch », tiré de faits réels. Voir en particulier Cappelletti, précité. 4, et en particulier le chapitre écrit par André Tunc, « The Quest for Justice », pp. 315–359. Pour faire bref il s’agit de l’Angleterre et de ses anciennes colonies – y compris les Etats-Unis d’Amérique. Pour faire bref il s’agit des pays d’Europe continentale occidentale et centrale ainsi que de leurs anciennes colonies, y compris l’Amérique latine.

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10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17 18


Il faut toutefois noter l’importance des droits civils et administratifs français et allemande dans des pays comme le Japon et la Turquie, du fait qu’ils ont été largement importés dans le cadre de la modernisation décidée par leurs élites politiques dans le dernier quart du XIXème et le premier quart du XXème siècle. Il y a souvent plus de différences entre le droit américain et le droit anglais qu’entre le droit anglais et le droit français, par exemple – voir notamment Jacques Ziller, « Public Law: a Tool for Modern Management, Not an Impediment to Reform », International Review of Administrative Studies, Volume 71, June 2005. Voir Jean-François Flauss (dir.), La protection diplomatique : mutations contemporaines et pratiques nationales : actes de la Journée d’études du 30 mars 2001 organisée à la mémoire de Georges Perrin, Bruxelles : Bruylant, 2003. Voir notamment : M.C.E.J. Bronckers, « Private Response to Foreign Unfair Trade Practices – United States and EEC Complaint Procedures », Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business (1984), p. 651–759 ; K.W. Abbott, “Defensive Unfairness : The Normative Structure of Section 301”, in J.N. Bhagwati & R.E. Hudec, Fair Trade and Harmonization – Prerequisites for Free Trade? Volume 2, Legal Analysis, Harvard : The MIT Press, 1996 ; J.R. Silverman, « Multilateral Resolution Over Unilateral Retaliation : Adjudicating the Use of Section 301 Before the WTO », University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Economic Law (1996), p. 233–294. Règlement (CEE) n° 2641/84 du Conseil, du 17 septembre 1984, relatif au renforcement de la politique commerciale commune, notamment en matière de défense contre les pratiques commerciales illicites, JOCE n° L 252 du 20. 9. 1984, p. 1, modifié par le règlement (CE) n° 522/94 (JOCE n° L 66 du 10. 3. 1994, p. 10). Règlement (CE) n° 3286/94 du Conseil du 22 décembre 1994 arrêtant des procédures communautaires en matière de politique commerciale commune en vue d’assurer l’exercice par la Communauté des droits qui lui sont conférés par les règles du commerce international, en particulier celles instituées sous l’égide de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC), JOCE n° L 349 du 31/12/1994 p. 71. Convention sur l’accès à l’information, la participation du public au processus décisionnel et l’accès à la justice en matière d’environnement signée à Århus le 25 juin 1998. Texte disponible sur http://www.unece.org/env/pp/documents/cep 43f.pdf. Prieur, M., « La convention d’Aarhus, instrument universel de la démocratie environnementale », in La Convention d’Aarhus, Revue Juridique de l’environnement, n° spécial 1999, p. Voir notamment Mauro Cappelletti, Monica Seccombe, and Joseph Weiler, J., Integration Through Law, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1986 ; Paul Magnette, Contrôler l’Europe : pouvoirs et responsabilité dans l’Union européenne, Bruxelles: Université de Bruxelles, 2003 ; et Jonas Tallberg, European governance and supranational institutions: making states comply, London ; New York : Routledge, 2003.

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Chapter IV Global E-Governance: Toward Recreation of a Better Public Space Pan Suk Kim and Whasun Jho∗ Introduction: Global Governance and International Organisations Craig Murphy1 asserts that global governance is poorly done and equally poorly understood, although much can be learnt about it by exploring developments in international organisation. Global governance is distinct in at least two ways. The first is recognition that it comprises an array of actors, not only those visible entities of world political-economic authority, such as the United Nations and the World Bank, but also quasi-formal inter-governmental gatherings such as the Group of 7; combinations of State and non-State actors such as the UN’s Global Compact and the International Labour Organisation; private associations such as the International Chamber of Commerce; mercenary groups such as Sandline International and Executive Outcomes; non-governmental organisations like the World Wide Fund for Nature; transnational religious bodies; transnational political movements; financial markets; global accountancy and law firms; and transnational business. 2 The second distinguishing feature is the way in which varieties of actors are increasingly coming together to manage – and, in many cases, micro-manage – a growing range of political, economic and social affairs. In this way, global governance can be thought of as the various patterns in which global, regional, national and local actors combine to govern particular areas. Global governance, then, is not defined simply by the emergence of new actors or nodes of authority; rather, it manifests a growing complexity in the way in which actors interact and interrelate. Certainly, some of the agents of global governance have newly emerged; others, however, are much longer established. Nevertheless, key to an understanding of contemporary global governance is the capacity to identify the broad range of actors involved in the act of management, as well as to uncover the variety of ways in which they are connected to one another around the world.3 GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG ∗

Pan Suk Kim, Professor of Pubic Administration in the College of Government and Business at Yonsei University and Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University in 2005 and Whasun Jho, assistant professor in the Graduate School of Public Policy and Information Technology at Seoul National University of Technology in Korea.

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P.S. Kim & W. Jho / Global E-Governance: Toward Recreation of a Better Public Space

The roles and influence of international organisations in global governance are rapidly growing, but a series of events have underscored the problems and limitations of international organisations.4 In an age of globalisation and the information society, international organisations play a greater role than ever before; however, state sovereignty and lack of political will as well as lack of financial supports inhibit the long-term prospects of those organisations to create effective structures of global governance. The range of their activities and processes, moreover, are often hidden from public view, giving rise to transparency and participation concerns. For example, lack of information, lack of transparency and openness, and limited access to international organisations are great obstacles for many stakeholders and the general public to active fair participation and information sharing. In an era of globalisation, the role of international organisations is growing, but there are two predominant yet conflicting views of international organisations. 5 The first is a ‘cynical’ view emphasizing their lack of ability to deal with vital problems. According this view, international organisations should be treated as insignificant actors on the international stage. The other view is ‘idealistic’. It envisages global solutions to the major problems facing the world today. A proper understanding of international organisations and global governance probably requires that neither view be accepted in its entirety, nor be wholly rejected in reality. International organisations play an important role in international relations, but their influence differs according to issue, area and situation. Accordingly, it is necessary to take a balanced view of their impact. International organisations are neither irrelevant nor omnipotent in global politics. Furthermore, they must be careful not to approach the needs of any single country or organisation exclusively.6 The study of international organisations entails knowledge of how, where, and why they operate in order to understand their limitations and their possibilities. There might be various ways to understand such issues. As a way to promote understanding of global complexity in a technological dimension, this paper focuses on the issue of e-governance. Around the world, it has become almost universal for governments or international organisations to have electronic programmes as part of their public sector reform strategies.7 However, this is likely to be a complicate process, abundant with ambivalent, contradictory and paradoxical effects. Therefore, it would be necessary to discuss the construct of a better global governance through the establishment of egovernance. One way to accommodate such needs would be the utilisation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in international organisations and the various governments to foster a better understanding and active participation in the global community. This chapter aims to build on an open discussion purporting to promote good governance (accountability, transparency, participation, responsiveness) via ICTs at the international, as well as domestic level. In so doing, this chapter seeks to contribute to the development of a more complete understanding of global governance in terms of e-governance. Electronic Transformation in Global Governance Generally speaking, governance is understood as coordination and interaction in the policy-making processes. In other words, it is the process of decision-making


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and the process by which decisions are implemented or not implemented. Governance can be used in several contexts such as global governance, national governance and local governance. An analysis of governance focuses on the formal and informal actors involved in decision-making and implementing the decisions made and the formal and informal structures that have been set in place to arrive at and implement the decision.8 Electronic transformation of these processes refers to the fact that the development of an information society profoundly affects relationships among the different actors, forms, and channels of communication and interaction and the entire fabric of networks and partnership relations. E-governance is about the whole spectrum of relations between people in the public management process using ICTs. In brief, electronic transformation in global governance is about how ICTs can be utilised in developing global governance practices and how these e-enabled practices, in turn, change the preconditions of governance in a global age. 9 The transformational aspect of global governance leads us back to the issue of the information society, which forms the background for understanding the wider transformative nature of ICTs.10 An information society is the social setting in which the informational mode of development re-structures every realm of society, thus changing production, consumption, communication, and regulatory processes from industrial to informational. Consequently, in the public domain, there is a gradual transition from centralised, hierarchical and territorially defined governments to e-governance adaptive to networking, space of flows, virtual reality, knowledgebased practices, and global interdependencies.11 ICT is now fast becoming the major source of reform, innovation and transformation in many countries. Governments around the world have been eager to seize upon the massive potential of the Internet as a means of initiating public sector reforms and to find new paradigms in order to overcome the inefficiencies of previous administrations. According to a United Nations report, the majority of UN members have embarked upon some form of e-government as a universal strategy for government renovation. This adoption of ICT in public administration has certainly enhanced efficiency and transparency in many countries, yielding significant benefits. Global governance in the information age means, to a large extent, working with and through a broad range of networks. This is a great challenge to international and public organisations that should be able to reinvent their role as public authorities, that is to say to define functions and then build up new institutional and technological configurations that support a networked and distributed model of global egovernance. The transformative power of e-enabled practices owes not only to its streamlining existing processes but also to its required rethinking, re-structuring, reorienting, and re-engineering in all aspects of global governance. In this way, it helps to tackle novel problems and trends that relate to such recent challenges as innovativeness, civic competence, international tension and conflicts and increased competition.12 The development of electronic provision of public services and electronic democracy will provide a spur to the use of e-governance systems. The availability of data and analyses could well become part of the common culture of policy working and feed into the policy formulation process, just as it has begun to move into the

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boardrooms of many business enterprises. It is quite possible that, as public consultation over electronic networks becomes more common, cultural spillovers will take place in the ways that policy makers within the international service, the civil service, local councils and their policy staff conduct their policy work. Using egovernance tools will become the daily work of politicians, chief administrators, policy advisers, and even street-level bureaucrats. 13 These factors provide spurs for greater use of ICTs in policy work, leaving the content of that work more powerfully shaped by the institutions of the policy process. 14 As ICT becomes increasingly important in the conduct of public and private sector services, several new phenomena have surfaced. One of the changes brought about by ICT lies in the conduct of administration, where new technologies and the Internet are transforming the way officials interact and communicate with each other and citizens. The focus of adopting ICT in administration has targeted the improvement of citizens' involvement in policymaking. Indeed, ICT has become a powerful tool for promoting active information transactions between countries, within a government, between governments and businesses and between governments and citizens. For this very reason, today’s agencies are more sensitive about the need to acquire the consent and cooperation of their stakeholders and citizens. The business sector is also being proactive in applying ICT to their businesses, increasingly offering their services online. It is possible for anyone to make the prediction, then, that “ubiquitous computing” will soon be a reality in the public and private sectors. Ubiquitous computing is a paradigm shift where technology becomes virtually invisible in our daily lives. Instead of having a desk-top or lap-top machine, the technology we use will be embedded in our environment. Such a new trend demands a radical departure from the tradition of putting machines out for our use, and having us adapt to them. Instead, in the world of ubiquitous computing, technology will be implicit in our lives, built in to the things we use, including the spaces we live in.15 ICT certainly enhanced speedy communications and efficiency. ICT has brought new ways for citizens to communicate and participate in political and administrative processes. The existing window for citizens to communicate with policy-makers has been well noted for its limitations. However, the development of ICT has opened diverse options for civil society to communicate with policy-makers through direct political discussions and conversations. The Internet has made simultaneous, interactive communications possible among stakeholders and citizens, who now find themselves greatly empowered to learn far more and much faster than before. Internet users are now connected with each other, one way or another, via ICT applications such as homepages, e-bulletin boards, e-mails, and chat groups, creating virtual communities online. It is now possible for citizens to find virtually any information they need within seconds, widening the opportunities for the public to participate in political and administrative matters.16 For example, no human on the planet is more than six acquaintances away from anyone else. This has been a part of the folklore for ages. 17G Hence, citizens in the ICT era have abandoned their passivity and have started actively to provide or demand the information they need to or from other citizens and the government. From this point of view, citizens are active and vocal actors. Citi-


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zens in the ICT era not only search and find the information they need, but also process it in order to present it to the government or other organisations, thus becoming active participants within the political and administrative processes. This trend is likely to accelerate as more and more people gain access to the Internet in a connected age.G Domestic and transnational non-governmental organisations also now have greater opportunities to organise and spread their views through ICT applications. In the case of civil organisations in search of public interest, it is a fact that they must utilise the Internet in order to acquire public support for their respective causes. Some organisations carry out their activities mainly on the web while others have established solidarities in order to support off-line activities, proving that the importance of the Internet within non-governmental organisations has greatly increased. In particular, the Internet and the cellular phone have been instrumental in enabling many activists to mobilise support from overseas and home. Such trends tend to increase rapidly. This change has helped raise the level of the debate surrounding global governance in cyberspace, affecting social organisation structures that govern the protocol between policy-makers and among multiple stakeholders. Global Governance and E-Governance: Toward Recreation of a Better Public Space No matter where we look, we are overwhelmed by the phenomena brought about by new ICTs. New technologies enabled us to recreate a better global and public space. We could now step forward beyond e-government. E-governance differs from e-government. E-government represents the way public sector institutions use technology to conduct administration and to enhance the delivery of existing services, such as government to citizens (G2C). E-governance, by contrast, is not simply about applying technological or physical applications to public affairs, but rather about the ways political and social powers are organised and used. E-governance is the totality of governing utilizing ICTs.18 E-governance deals with how the citizens interact with the government or influence the international or public sector processes. E-governance is that which motivates the achievement of such a goal in a more tangible and efficient way, using ICT. For democratic global e-governance to emerge, we need to ensure that good governance become reality. One of the key theoretical and practical questions is the issue of the impact of ICT on transparency, democracy, citizens and their lives. Good governance has several major characteristics. It is participatory, consensus-oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive. It adheres to the rule of law. It assures that corruption is minimised, the right of minorities duly taken into account and that the voices of the most vulnerable groups in society are heard in decision-making. It is also responsive to the present and future needs of society.19 In addition, e-governance raises many questions as to what extent the government and international organisations will change their identities in adapting to new paradigms. An appropriate initial step along this uncharted path is the development of a supporting information infrastructure for democratic e-governance and policy

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consideration for the digital divide. A legal framework is also necessary to prevent unintended and unwanted side effects and consequences. Democratic E-Governance One of the key questions about e-Governance is how ICT can foster and enhance interactive and participatory administration, as well as accountable and legitimate administration. Another issue linked to this question concerns the social, cultural and historical preconditions for an optimal utilisation of ICT in achieving these constructive goals. Introducing ICTs into government can enhance democracy, transparency, and many other aspects of organisations. Transparency, which provides the foundation for trust and confidence, has become a key power resource for governments and NGOs. In e-governance, non-governmental actors may contribute to enhancing participation and democracy. The transformation of governance, then, requires new strategies and tactics for popular participation in public and social administration. The government these days, while no longer exercising exclusive control over information flows, allows more freedom for citizens to bypass the government in their search for information and services. This has the effect of altering the traditional citizen-government relationship. The introduction of ICT promises to bring about far-reaching changes in the international, national and local scene, ranging from Internet-voting to interactive online services for the public and further to virtual diplomacy. Nowadays, citizens can now easily find and contact their representative using a new website developed by various political actors. 20 This, however, also raises serious new concerns in e-governance. For example, what are the prospects for e-democracy in terms of soliciting voter sentiment, electronic voting, and public rights? Going a step further, political opinions need to be coordinated in harmony with governments and international organisations. While much interest surrounds the concept of improving democratic participation using modern technology, e-democracy is a relatively new policy and practice area. Many countries have established organisations to oversee e-democracy and to create a strategy for its development and role, allowing the citizen to participate in the policy agenda. E-democracy represents the use of ICTs and strategies by democratic actors within the political and governance processes of local communities, nations and on the international stage. Democratic actors/sectors include governments, elected officials, the media, political organisations, and citizen/voters. Such opportunities can be provided by public kiosks, cyber-cafes and community centres as well as via TV and other digital platforms.21 The new information technologies have facilitated increased interaction throughout the world. Technological advances have laid both governments and NGOs open to influences from their members. The more technologies advance, the more they open up both governments and NGOs to bottom-up and horizontal processes. These have greatly complicated the tasks of governance on a global scale. For national governments, those changes–and the vast proliferation of interconnections which they have fostered–have confounded the traditional practices of diplomacy and the long-standing premises of national security, thereby necessitating a rethinking of


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how to pursue goals in relation to the demands of other States and the innumerable collectivities in the multicentric world. For NGOs, increased connectivity has provided opportunities, as well as challenges, as they seek to network and to build coalitions with like-minded actors and contest the coalitions which stand in the way of their goals. There is no doubt that the opening phrase of the UN Charter, “We the peoples of the United Nations,” has been given a new meaning by the recent growth in the participation of NGOs throughout the UN system. Now, they must conduct their UN involvement not only with a system-wide UN strategy but also with one that links people in their respective local communities to the UN system. In light of the fact that all political institutions, from the local to the global, now face similar agendas, they must be linked together as they attempt to cope with the same problems. It would seem that major responsibility for achieving this must be shouldered by NGOs.22 The Digital Divide With the progress of the information revolution, unintended consequences such as information inequality have also emerged. There is little doubt that the benefits of the information revolution have been fully enjoyed by a relatively small portion of the world’s population and that the gap between those who are rich and poor with respect to their access to information is enormous.23 The digital divide is a sociopolitical issue closely related to the socio-economic gap between communities that have access to computers and the Internet and those who do not. The term also refers to gaps that exist between groups regarding their ability to use ICTs effectively, due to differing levels of literacy and technical skills, as well as the gap between those groups that have access to quality, useful digital content and those that do not. 24 Anyone whose circumstances disconnect them from the knowledge economy is in danger of becoming a victim of the digital divide. They can be individuals, communities, employed or unemployed people. A central worry in many countries has been the fact that unequal access, lack of proper infrastructure and low adoption of technology create a digital divide that excludes many—particularly those in already socially vulnerable groups and communities—from the perceived benefits of the information society. This breach is often described as the gap between those who have access to and can effectively use new information and communication tools, and those who cannot. For some time now, the vision of an information society in many countries has been accompanied by strategies to bridge the digital divide. The digital divide is not just about socio-economic factors. Although low income levels, low levels of education, low-skilled jobs, unemployment and lack of technological skills are barriers to the adoption and use of ICTs, research has highlighted socio-personal factors as also being important. These factors include low levels of awareness, interest, understanding, and acceptance of ICTs.25 The type of government we are pursuing is a government with full citizen participation. This kind of ideal participatory government requires integration of opinions. A number of innovative initiatives are underway to address the digital divide but, we can not deny potential problems. The stakes are high, as ICTs are now an integral part of the social fabric and serve as catalysts for the emergence of “new economies.” Exclusion could threaten the ICT “have-nots,” whether individuals,

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groups or entire societies. New ICTs could have the potential to broaden perspectives, promoting new technologies for their perceived benefits, but existing inequalities might also be escalated. The important thing to remember is that technology is only an enabler and not a panacea. Studies show that a country’s adaptation to technological innovation does not guarantee the realization of democracy or the welfare of its citizens. With advances in the application of ICTs, it becomes clear that fundamental governance issues determine the applicability of e-services, the possibility of direct democracy and deliberative democracy.G While it is possible to design technologies specifically to support local authorities in taking a creative, flexible and democratic approach at the international and public levels, the ways in which technology may be developed and implemented to support broader democratic participation is not easy. An added difficulty is that because each authority is charged with representing multiple communities with diverse needs, they may need to use different e-democracy processes in different ways in different communities. This highlights a gap in knowledge about the different ways in which e-democracy systems can be tailored to suit the democratic needs of dissimilar communities. In addition, there is the question of ensuring authentic participation of citizens in ways that reflect their views and experiences about issues which they consider as relevant to their own communities and beyond.26 Legal Measures for E-Governance The legal and institutional framework for supporting e-governance is gradually improving. The increasing adoption of ICT raises a new set of questions regarding the existing legal and institutional frameworks. There are several threats that accompany the wider use of ICT, such as computer viruses, identity theft, data manipulation, piracy, and the risk of lost data privacy. Many argue that the current legal structure is not safe enough to protect property and citizens’ rights. Moreover, there have been problems in applying offline-centric law and regulatory frameworks to the virtual community. There are emerging areas requiring online governance such as privacy protection, ICT security and information quality assurance. With a stable and firm legal framework, the development of e-governance can be successfully managed. The protection of privacy looms is a pressing legislative and regulatory problem. Furthermore, ICT security has been a policy problem. One of the tasks with which we have to deal is how best to protect public safety and prevent power abuse, while simultaneously promoting organisational flexibility. The debate on e-Governance in relation to developments in law is extremely complex. The cultural and legal traditions of nation states may differ, but we find common concerns. Yet again, the Internet has to be mastered and policies purposely defined. Good e-governance cannot seek recourse in legal and technical rules that have been submitted or accepted without debate; policy choices must be made with the participation of the civil society; legal, economic, political and social balances are at stake. Some regulations, for instance, for setting up the standards for privacy protection, are necessary in making the information society effective. Two different kinds of regulations may be considered. First is self-regulation, which is a way to make the


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actors themselves accountable. Thus, users draft directives for etiquette on networks, and professional branches draw up charters and codes of good conduct. Coregulation consists in bringing together actors with a view to reaching a consensus that can then be used by government and translated into a legal framework. The development of a legal framework for e-Governance, therefore, needs to be accelerated and diffused for both advanced countries and countries in transition or in the process of development. This is because no human or individual rights should be jeopardised and also because of the necessity to accomplish a risk-free e-governance. Initiating systems like an e-ombudsman can be a potential solution to seemingly intractable issues arising from the development of e-governance. Ombudsman, a system for inspecting the legality of administrative implementation, is currently being considered in various fields of activity by many countries. G Coordination of Rising Issues for Global E-Governance As the amount of information flowing through cyberspace increases, new spheres in need of international cooperation and policy coordination are beginning to emerge. Developments in information technology have created new issues in the information sphere which need examination: the construction of human and material infrastructures, security of e-commerce, rules over Internet substance, intellectual property rights, freedom of expression and censorship in global communications networks. The management and resolution by individual States of supranational ICT-related problems has its clear limits. No single State by itself can any longer control the extravagant amount of information flows in and out of the country. Furthermore, a country’s domestic law may be inappropriate for the worldwide computer communication network. These phenomena are closely linked to the establishment of a global information infrastructure coupled with world-wide market liberalisation. This has reduced the cost of information production, supply, circulation, and group networking. What is important to note is the fact that the development of global networks facilitates direct communication among people from various regions. As a result, it has brought about a positive effect to individual and non-governmental actors by increasing their chances to participate in important local and global issues. However, the problems concerning coordination and understanding of rules created within this development process and expansion are appearing as important issues within global governance.27 The main reason why the issue of maintenance of cyberspace order needs to be incorporated within the global governance problem is that the boundary of cyberspace is not quite in accord with that of the sovereign State system. In other words, it is because the information in cyberspace can cross national boundaries freely, but the rules or systems concerning the governance of cyberspace are based on territorial boundaries and lack a global dimension. This is one of the reasons why an international management system 28 such as global governance becomes necessary.29 A good example among the current global governance issues would be the intellectual property right problem. In this case, the intellectual properties under transaction within the cyberspace cannot be handled by individual States because of systematic and technological insufficiencies, as well as limits within domestic law. That

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is why efforts are being made to create a new form of global governance within the framework of international organisations such as the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). Due to the quick development of science, technology, and society, WIPO does not include intellectual property right rules. However, it does contain supplementary rules for protecting intellectual creations with economic values, the distribution problem in the digital era and the protection of new intellectual properties.30 The flow of private information through international e-commerce is another issue that causes conflicts among nations and, therefore, is in need of international policy coordination. For example, in 1998 the US and the EU came into conflict because of their differences in domestic laws concerning the flow of private information-gathering and management. The US based its opinion on the rules of liberal transaction and promotion of e-commerce, while the EU urged a strong legislative rule in order to protect individual privacy. The main reason for such conflict is the discord between the supranational character of cyberspace and the economics of national sovereignty. As previously mentioned, there is a clash between the liberal flow of information over national boundaries and cyberspace. Therefore, the rules and systems concerning governance must be coordinated in a global dimension. 31 As result of the USEU dispute, a temporary agreement, known as the Safe Harbour Treaty, was signed 2000. It is a treaty which combines the liberal rules of commerce and government control.32 Another dispute concerning private information broke out once again between the US and the EU in 2004, this time around concerning the personal data of passengers. As in the former example, this new problematic sphere has a high possibility of provoking conflicts among nations or international actors. In the case of the Internet domain management, a new organisation known as ICANN (Internet Cooperation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has been created in order to bring about cooperation among nations. The management of the Internet domains through ICANN is an attempt to create a new kind of governance led by both governmental and non-governmental actors.33 The board of directors within ICANN which makes the final decisions for Internet address policies is not composed of national representatives, but by representatives elected by the Internet Related Supporting Organisation and selected members of net-citizens. The close relationship between ICANN and its subsidiary or supporting organisations, decisionmaking by elected representatives and regional representatives and finally a partially direct election system suggests an emerging form of global governance. With the progress of informatisation, a government’s choice of policies and its effectiveness might decrease. Accordingly, a new form of policy coordination process between States and non-governmental actors, that matches the new environment, may become necessary in order to settle world-wide problems. Therefore, establishing e-Governance is equally important on the international level. Especially, we must intensify our system of global governance through an open and deliberate process of decision-making in order to resolve new problems. Global governance has been pursued in security, trade, finance, human rights and other spheres through the establishment of international organisations. In the same manner, the establishment of global governance with links to ICT can be achieved


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by means of international systems, networks and agreements which promote international cooperation. The existing multilateral agreements are not completely secure but do provide a general framework for global governance. In other words, the current international system can play the role of a linking pin between States and nongovernmental international organisations that will entail the sharing of conflicts and the corresponding efforts to resolve them. The United Nations has been playing a leadership and catalytic role in helping to form partnerships involving national governments, bilateral and multilateral development agencies, the private sector and other stakeholders that are putting the ICT in the service of development.34 The United Nations has formed the Task Force Team and addressed the mission (1) of providing overall leadership in helping to formulate strategies for ICT development and putting them at the service of development, (2) of forging a strategic partnership between the United Nations system, private industry, financial trusts and foundations, donors, programme countries and other relevant stake countries, and (3) of mobilising new resources for ICT-for-Development activities and projects.35 Global Governance and Bridging the International Digital Divide: The Case of Korea The introduction of an information society has left many people in the developing countries out of the loop, causing the digital divide to emerge as a major global issue. According to the 2003 ITU report, the Internet utilisation rate in advanced States reached 43.7 per cent, while in developing countries, it barely reached 1.4%. This clearly reflects the fact that the difference of the information capacity is in direct proportion with the countries’ wealth. Accordingly, unless participation of developing countries increases, widespread scepticism towards global governance will prevail. A fundamental issue is that many developing countries do not have the human, financial and technical resources to implement e-governance through IT. To help bridge the digital divide, therefore, major advanced nations and international agencies, such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the ITU have increased their assistance in manpower and materials for developing countries. A good example is the UNITeS (United Nations Information Technology Service) which, under the UN, is unfolding plans to increase the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) capacity of people in developing countries. Another good example is the OECD, which is conducting a forum for “Exploiting the Digital Opportunities for Poverty Reduction.” This forum places emphasis on sharing information related to e-commerce and the realisation of e-government between OECD nations and developing countries. One other serious impediment to the global information society is the language barrier. This is due to the fact that most of the content on the Internet is in English. Thus, the facilitation of inter-lingual communication is of great importance. In order for the Internet to solve this language barrier, it is essential to upgrade software tools that will help users understand the information which is available and to provide the content in the maximum number of languages. Another noticeable hindrance to the realisation of a global information society is the monopoly of the diverse application tools and O/S by certain corporations. De-

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veloping countries have no other choice but to purchase these tools at high cost. This situation creates a heavy burden for these countries. It hinders the progress of informatisation and makes it difficult to narrow the digital divide among nations. Currently, international organisations such as the UNDP, are stressing the importance of co-developing software (S/W) based on open source that the international society can share. Moreover, they contend that the countries must combine the open source issue with the intellectual property rights issue, protecting not only the interest of the developers, but also the rights of the users. Considering the fact that numerous developing countries are supporting the expansion of open source S/W and the fact that the Republic of Korea pays an enormous amount of royalty for foreign S/W, it is imperative that Korea participate in the movement for open source S/W. The Republic of Korea emphasizes cooperation between developed and developing countries as a method to solving the problem of the international information gap. Cooperation can be classified into four large programmes: support for constructing IT infrastructures; support in training human resources that engage in IT spheres; technical and policy support to increase the perception of developing countries’ IT; and, finally, support for contents and IT application. One of the ways to bridge the digital divide at the international level is to establish IT centres with the cooperation of international organisations. This could help countries in need of establishing e-Governance within the country. In light of the achievements in promoting an IT society in Korea, the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) has taken cooperative steps to share knowledge and experiences in order to close the digital divide at the international level. The Korean Government has reiterated its commitment to bridging the global digital divide when it attended the ASEM Summit meeting in October 2000, and the World Summit on the Information Society, in October 2003. The Korean Government works hard to forge strong collaborative ties with other countries in realizing a participatory information society world-wide.36 The MIC of Korea has joined forces with the Development Gateway Foundation to create the Development Gateway Foundation-Korea Training Centre (DGF-KTC). Established in November 2002 and hosted by the Korea Information Strategy Development Institute (KISDI), the DGF-KTC supports programmes to reduce poverty and support sustainable development in developing countries by providing ICT education and training. As a part of the Development Gateway Foundation's Research and Training Network, DGF-KTC invites people in the ICT area from developing countries and trains them in the advanced information and communication technologies and best practices of Korea and other developed countries. In addition, DGFKTC provides the distance-learning courses that will expand the training opportunities. These courses are targeted to government officials involved in ICT policy formulation and implementation, as well as NGO professionals such as the Development Gateway’s Country Gateway. This fulfils a critical role in sharing ICT knowledge and experiences between countries. To put knowledge on-the-ground and as a complement to DGF-KTC, the Development Gateway and Korea’s MIC agreed to establish the Advisory Services for Informatization (ASI), which will focus on assisting developing countries in creating an information society by identifying areas of capacity enhancement and implementing methodologies for the use of IT building countries’ e-government.


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Once Korea successfully implements its information society, ASI will leverage its expertise in providing advisory services to developing countries aimed at the assessment of needs and requirements for e-government, the assignment of priorities, guidance in implementation of action plans and methodologies, provision of direction for the enhancement, and building of the blocks for an Information Society. Conclusion Recent technological innovations have had enormous consequences. They have collapsed both time and space and thus added substantially to the complexities that mark our era. Perhaps most notably, they are the prime source of distant proximities.37 The electronic mechanisms render close-at-hand what once was remote and, in so doing, transform the linear into the nonlinear and the sequential into the simultaneous. In future governance, cooperation and coordination among relevant agencies and officials will become increasingly important, as will the ability to predict and respond to potential pitfalls of ICTs such as security breaches.38 In the future, citizens’ participation will also take on an ever-greater role in policymaking. As advances in ICT will help the progress towards democratic governance possible, governance will be more citizen-oriented, thus providing the services citizens and various stakeholders need. However, we are not completely out of the woods yet. The future will bring tough challenges. Rapid digitalisation is widening the knowledge and information gaps. Furthermore, deepening divisions in civil society do not guarantee the realisation of true democracy; coordination and cooperation are necessary to integrate citizens into the international, national, and local systems. Serious clashes between the rich and poor could erupt as a result. The capabilities of various countries in transition differ widely. Developing countries and those in transition need to establish strategies that are both based on a thorough analysis of models and custom-tailored to the dominant social, technological and political positions. Strategically drawing a stage-by-stage development model can be an option for the countries in transition. The stages may be from a bureaucratic model to an information management model, followed by a citizen participation model and finally to a governance model. One of the fields mostly affected by the changes in government structures and processes is human resources management (HRM). Various e-HRM systems are being developed. However, still many obstacles lie ahead. At the initial stage of planning, certain rules must be followed for successful HR management. Firstly, employees should participate in the process so as to facilitate employee leadership and commitment to realising the change. Secondly, managers must confirm their visions and find their roles within the vision boundaries. Thirdly, they must help educate employees on information system skills and the social changes brought on by an increasingly “online” world. Finally, they must continue vigilant monitoring of the stresses imposed on workers as a result of new ICT application. The decisive consideration is whether a government will improve or deteriorate its human resources. In that sense, HRD becomes one of the urgent policy agendas making training a basic human right.39

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E-governance serves not only as an enabler of administrative changes but also as a strong catalyst of organisational change. International organisations are rapidly becoming connected through networks, and they are using such networks to produce and deliver services. As we proceed more deeply into the information age, administrative structures and processes are expected to change, reflecting the increased use of new technologies and new ways of collaboration. Perhaps hierarchy and authority cannot be replaced in international organisations because hierarchy and authority provide enduring strategies for both coordination and accountability in democratic entities. Still, complex networks, layered on top of hierarchical organisations, must be managed efficiently in order to adapt to the transformation of governance. 40 Together with globalisation and informatisation, national borders are waning in importance. Without international cooperation, national policies are likely to end in failure. With the advancement of ICT, the necessity for international cooperation will inevitably increase. Hence, a good global e-governance should be established in which advanced countries and countries in transition or in the development process are tied together in close cooperation and coordination to build sustainable governance. However, ICTs are still only in their first stage of growth, and there is much room for future development. Technologies do not deliver once-for-all improvements in rationality.41 In fact, the information revolution has introduced not only positive developments but also serious negative consequences. What can be hoped for, from an intelligent use of technologies, is the development of disciplines, occasions and prompters for asking more relevant questions and seeking information more constructively. Based on a thorough recognition and understanding of history, scholars and practitioners must concentrate their resources to bring about a sustainable information society and further strengthen related areas in order to achieve full democratic e-governance in the world. There are still many unresolved issues. Firstly, important barriers to entry and economies of scale remain in some aspects of power that are related to information. Secondly, although it is now cheap to disseminate existing information, the collection and production of new information often requires major costly investments. Thirdly, first movers are often the creators of the standards and architecture of information systems. The path-dependent development of such systems reflects the advantage of the first mover. Use of the English language and the pattern of top-level domain names on the Internet is a case in point. 42 In sum, the bifurcation of global structures has led to a vast decentralisation of authority in which global governance becomes less state-centric and more the sum of disordered quilt-like patterns between dispersed, overlapping and somewhat contradictory collectivities seeking to preserve coherence and advance their goals. More than that, the interconnection of these patterns “is likely to deepen and become the defining characteristic of the 21st Century. The information revolution is what makes this possible; it provides the capability and opportunity to circuitise the globe in ways and to degrees never seen before.”43 Cyberspace has no territorially based boundaries because cost and speed of information transmission are independent of physical location enabling interactions between people regardless of the locality. Around the world, nowadays, information on the World Wide Web is available simultaneously to anyone with a connection to the global network. Hence, building global e-governance is likely to be a muddled, complicated process, abundant with


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ambivalent, contradictory, and paradoxical effects. All the stakeholders in international and public organisations, therefore, should have shared norms and mutual obligations for good global e-governance. Notes and References GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG 1 2 3 4

5 6

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Craig Murphy (2000) “Global Governance: Poorly done and Poorly Understood,” in International Affairs 76 (4): 789–795. Rorden Wilkinson and Steve Hughes (eds.) (2002) Global Governance: Critical Perspectives. New York: Routledge, pp. 1–13. Ibid. Reflecting on the remarkable development of the potential of the UN system, it might be necessary to utilise the potential of UN more effectively. This potential might be more fully employed by (1) drawing the UN system closer to “We the peoples of the United Nations”; (2) diminishing the international inequities within the UN system, particularly those between the North and the South; (3) adopting a longer-term approach to violence prevention, that involves more of the UN system (Alger, 2001, 504–505). Paul Diehl (ed.) (2001) The Politics of Global Governance: International Organisations in an Interdependent World. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. We can identify inequities in the relations between the rich and powerful and the poor and weak; the UN system-inequities that the rich and powerful are unwilling to diminish. We can examine their occurrence in UN financial institutions, the new law of the sea treaty, the Security Council and the dependence of UN-system financing on more than 50 percent on voluntary contributions. These inequities contradict the widespread celebration of the growth of democracy within States throughout the world. Without a significant decline in these inequities, the UN will not have the legitimacy required for competently coping with its broadening agenda (Alger, 2001, 504–505). Pan Suk Kim (2000), “Administrative Reform in the Korean Central Government,” in Public Performance and Management Review 24 (2); Elaine C. Kamarck and Joseph S. Nye (eds.), (2002). Governance.com: Democracy in the Information Age. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press; and Pan Suk Kim (2005), “Symposium on E-Governance: Introduction,” International Review of Administrative Sciences 71 (1). R.A.W. Rhodes (1997), Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflectivity and Accountability. Buckingham: Open University Press; B. Guy Peters (1996), The Future of Governing: Four Emerging Models. Kansas: University Press of Kansas; Andrew Gamble (2000), “Economic Governance.” in Jon Pierre (ed.), Debating Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko (2004) “Introduction to Democratic e-Governance,” in Matti Malkia, AriVeikko Anttiroiko and Reijo Savolainen, (eds.), E-Transformation in Governance. London: Idea Groups, pp. 22–49. Ibid., pp. 37–38. M.A. Warren and L.F. Weschler (1999). Electronic Governance on the Internet,” in G.D. Garson (ed.), Information Technology and Computer Applications in Public Administration: Issues and Trends. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing, p. 118. Ibid., p. 125. Ignace Snellen (2002), “Electronic Governance: Implications for Citizens, Politicians and Public Servants,” International Review of Administrative Sciences 68 (2). 6 Perri (2004) E-Governance: Styles of Political Judgment in the Information Age Polity. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 73–74. Richard Hunter (2002). World Without Secrets: Business, Crime and Privacy in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing, New York: Wiley. Mark Buchanan (2002). Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks, New York: W.W. Norton; and Duncan Watts (2003). Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected

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20 21 22

23 24 25

26 27

28 29

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Age. New York: W.W. Norton. It is known as the small world hypothesis. For more details, see Buchanan (2002). op. cit. Jan Kooiman (ed.). (1993). Modern Governance: Government-Society Interactions. London: Sage. United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP). Homepage at http://www.unescap.org/huset/gg/governance.htm (accessed on December 30, 2004). There are many available websites on such issues: www.e-democracy.org and www.edemocracy. gov.uk. Malina and Macintosh (2004), pp. 267–269. Chadwick F. Alger (2001) “Thinking About the Future of the UN System,” in Paul F. Diehl (ed.). The Politics of Global Governance: International Organisations in an Interdependent World. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, pp. 483–508. Pippa Norris (2001) Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. For more details, visit http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org (accessed on January 31, 2005). Until relatively recently, the digital divide was taken to mean the divide existing between those who had access to ICTs and those who did not have access to ICTs. This simple “have” and “have-not” access definition attracted considerable criticism, because the information underclass can be defined in terms of access. What remains missing from the previous definitions is the broader context of a person’s information-seeking behaviour, media use patterns and cultural and environmental contexts. For more details, see Anna Malina & Ann Macintosh (2004). “Bridging the Digital Divide – Developments in Scotland,” in Matti Malkia, Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko and Reijo Savolainen, (eds.). E-Transformation in Governance. London: Idea Groups, pp. 256–257. Ibid., pp. 267–269. A. Nichael Frookmin (1997) “The Internet as a Source of Regulatory Arbitrage” in Border in Cyberspace: Information Policy and the Global Information Infrastructure, edited by Brian Kahin and Charles Nesson. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 129–163. A system that includes States, non-governmental and other diverse actors as members and that controls and coordinates international order. Martin Hewson and Timothy J. Sinclair (1999), “The Emergence of Global Governance Theory.” in Hewson, Martin and Timothy J. Sinclair (eds.). Approaches to Global Governance Theories. New York: State University of New York Press; James Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (1992). Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) is an international organisation dedicated to promoting the use and protection of works of the human spirit. For more details, visit its homepage at http://www.wipo.int. Whasun Jho (2004) “The Rise of New Issues in Global Governance: U.S.-EU conflict on Transborder Transaction of Personal Information in the Cyberspace.” (in Korean). Paper presented at the meeting of The Association of US Politics, Seoul, KOREA (2004.11). Henry Farrell (2003) “Constructing the international Foundations of E-Commerce in the EUU.S. Safe Harbor Arrangement.” International Organisation 57 (Spring), pp. 277–306. Cutler, A. Claire, Virginia Haufler and Tony Porter, eds. (2000). Private Authority and International Affairs. New York: State University of New York Press. Of course, the UN and other international organisations have their innate limits in that they have no choice but to reflect the profits of leading nations and, therefore, they show a large gap with the ideals of global governance. In order to overcome such limits and to achieve a more democratic international organisation the role of NGO’s should be taken heavily into consideration. We should also put all of our effort to its increasing role. Refer to http://www.un.org/esa/coordination/ecosoc/itforum/ict_consul.pdf. MIC (2003). White Paper 2003. Seoul: Ministry of Information and Communication.


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GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG 37 38

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40

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James N. Rosenau (2003). Distant Proximities: Dynamics Beyond Globalisation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Various corporate, governmental, and other collectivities experience security breaches of their computers. Such cases are found in major mass media including The New York Times (June 22, 2000; April 29, 2001) and Financial Times (June 7, 2000). Pan Suk Kim (2002). “Strengthening Administrative Capacities and Using Human Resources for Growth and Development,” Proceedings of the Second Specialized International Conference of IIAS, New Delhi, India, pp. 71–91. Donald F. Kettl (2002). The Transformation of Governance. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press; Jane Fountain (2001). Building the Virtual State. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press; and Charles Goodsell (1994). The Case for Bureaucracy. New Jersey: Chatham House. Perri, op. cit. Robert O. Keohane & Joseph S. Nye Jr. (1998). “Power and Interdependence in the Information Age.” in Foreign Affairs 77 (5), pp. 81–94. Rosenau, Ibid. p. 272.

Anttiroiko, Ari-Veikko (2004), “Introduction to Democratic e-Governance,” in Matti Malkia, AriVeikko Anttiroiko and Reijo Savolainen (Eds.), E-Transformation in Governance, London: Idea Groups. Alger, Chadwick F. (2001), “Thinking About the Future of the UN System,” in Paul F. Diehl (Ed.). The Politics of Global Governance: International Organisations in an Interdependent World. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Buchanan, Mark (2002), Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks, New York: W.W. Norton. Diehl, Paul F. (Ed.) (2001), The Politics of Global Governance: International Organisations in an Interdependent World, 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Fountain, Jane E. (2001), Building the Virtual State, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Gamble, Andrew (2000), “Economic Governance” in Jon Pierre (Ed.), Debating Governance, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goodsell, Charles (1994), The Case for Bureaucracy, New Jersey: Chatham House. Hewson, Martin and Timothy J. Sinclair (1999), “The Emergence of Global Governance Theory” in Hewson, Martin and Timothy J. Sinclair (Eds.), Approaches to Global Governance Theories, New York: State University of New York Press. Farrell, Henry (2003), “Constructing the international Foundations of E-Commerce in the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor Arrangement.” International Organisation 57 (Spring). Frookmin, A. Nichael (1997), “The Internet as a Source of Regulatory Arbitrage.” in Border in Cyberspace: Information Policy and the Global Information Infrastructure, Brian Kahin and Charles Nesson (Eds.), Cambridge: MIT Press. Jho, Whasun (2004), “The Rise of New Issues in Global Governance: U.S.-EU conflict on Transborder Transaction of Personal Information in the Cyberspace” (in Korean). Paper presented at the meeting of The Association of US Politics, Seoul, KOREA (2004.11). Kamarck, Elaine C. and Nye, Joseph S. (Eds.) (2002), Governance.com: Democracy in the Information Age, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Keohane, Robert O. & Nye Jr., Joseph S. (1998), “Power and Interdependence in the Information Age,” in Foreign Affairs 77 (5). Keohane, Robert O. & Nye Jr., Joseph S. (2002), “Power and Interdependence in the Information Age,” in Elaine C. Kamarck and Joseph S. Nye (Eds.), Governance.com: Democracy in the Information Age, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Kettl, Donald F. (2002), The Transformation of Governance, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

Kim, Pan Suk (2000), “Administrative Reform in the Korean Central Government,” in Public Performance and Management Review 24 (2). Kim, Pan Suk (2002), “Strengthening Administrative Capacities and Using Human Resources for Growth and Development,” in Proceedings of the Second Specialized International Conference of IIAS, New Delhi, India. Kim, Pan Suk (2005), “Symposium on E-Governance: Introduction,” in International Review of Administrative Sciences 71 (1). Kooiman, Jan. (Ed.) (1993), Modern Governance: Government-Society Interactions, London: Sage. Malina, Anna & Macintosh, Ann (2004), “Bridging the Digital Divide – Developments in Scotland,” in Matti Malkia, Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko and Reijo Savolainen (Eds.), in E-Transformation in Governance, London: Idea Groups, pp. 255–271. MIC (2003), White Paper 2003. Seoul: Ministry of Information and Communication. Murphy, Craig N. (2000), “Global Governance: Poorly done and Poorly Understood,” in International Affairs 76 (4). Norris, Pippa (2001), Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peters, B. Guy (1996), The Future of Governing: Four Emerging Models, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. Perri 6 (2004), E-Governance: Styles of Political Judgment in the Information Age Policy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rhodes, R.A.W. (1997), Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflectivity and Accountability, Buckingham: Open University Press. Riley, Thomas B. “E-Government vs. E-Governance: Examining the difference in a changing public sector climate.” In International Tracking Survey Report, number 4. Commonwealth Center for E-Governance, Ottawa, Canada (http://www.electronicgov.net). Rosenau, James N. (2003), Distant Proximities: Dynamics Beyond Globalisation, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rosenau, James and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (1992), Governance Without Government: Order and Change in World Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Perri, 6 (2004), E-Governance: Styles of Political Judgment in the Information Age Polity, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Sens, Allen and Peter Stoett (2002), “Global Politics and the Information Age,” in Global Politics: Origins, Currents, Directions (2002), Canada: Nelson and Thomson Learning. Snellen, Ignace (2002), “Electronic Governance: Implications for Citizens, Politicians and Public Servants,” in International Review of Administrative Sciences 68 (2). Warren, M.A. and Weschler, L.F. (1999), “Electronic Governance on the Internet,” in G.D. Garson (Ed.), Information Technology and Computer Applications in Public Administration: Issues and Trends, Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing. Watts, Duncan J. (2003), Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, New York: W.W. Norton. Wilkinson, Rorden (2002), “Global Governance: A Preliminary Interrogation,” in Rorden Wilkinson and Steve Hughes (Eds.), Global Governance: Critical Perspectives, New York: Routledge. Wilkinson, Rorden and Hughes, Steve (Eds.) (2002), Global Governance: Critical Perspectives, New York: Routledge.


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Chapter V Administering Global Governance – Making It Work Leadership – Making It Happen Craig Baker and Emily Christensén∗

Introduction As the world becomes ever more complex and interconnected, organisations and groups look more and more to leaders to make sense of this complexity and steer a path through it to help them succeed. Nowhere is this complexity more acute, and hence the need for skilful and forward-looking leadership greater, than in the area of global governance. This paper sets out the importance of leadership in the global governance context and tries to identify how it differs from traditional forms of leadership in four ways: scale, diversity, dispersion and levers of change. These factors give rise to the need for different behaviours for successful leaders in the global governance context. Differential behaviours are explored and case studies are introduced to show examples of these behaviours. Finally, we turn to a brief examination of how we could achieve better leadership in the global governance context through specialised training and development programmes.

Part I Leadership in the Global Governance Context What Do We Mean by Global Governance Although the term is discussed and defined elsewhere in this Report, it is worth being explicit in this chapter on leadership, about how we are using the term ‘global governance’. Specifically, Higgott uses two ‘understandings’ of global governance:

∗

Craig Baker, Global Head of the Government Practice, Government Practice Research and Emily Christensén, A.T. Kearney’s Manager.

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C. Baker & E. Christensén / Administering Global Governance

Type 1: the enhancement of effectiveness and efficiency in the delivery of global public goods via collective action problem solving, underwritten by the emergence of an international managerial class. Type 2: the emergence of representation, accountability and democracy; reflecting the assumption that, as the role of the nation state as a vehicle for democratic engagement becomes more problematic, the clamour for democratic engagement at the global level becomes stronger. To clarify our interpretation of these two definitions, we do not see global governance in any way as suggesting government or a defined organisational structure, but rather as a loose framework of rules which facilitate “democratic engagement at a global level”. Within this framework of rules sit a wide variety of state, non-state, intra-state and supra-state actors, all of whom are responding to different driving forces to deal with global issues. The need to change the way in which we address these issues was explained by Kofi Annan in his paper introducing the Millenium Goals: […] While the post-war multilateral system made it possible for the new globalisation to emerge and flourish, globalisation, in turn, has progressively rendered its designs antiquated. Simply put, our post-war institutions were built for an international world, but we now live in a global world. Responding effectively to this shift is the core institutional challenge for world leaders today.1

This study of leadership for global governance is an attempt to grapple with an important aspect of this challenge. How Does Leadership in This Context Differ from Traditional Leadership Roles? There is a wide overlap between the leadership skills required for ‘traditional’ leadership roles in the private sector, say, that of the CEO of a multinational corporation (MNC) and those required by a leader in the global governance context. Both are required to provide clear vision and set goals for their organisation or their network; they need to build relationships with and understand the needs of the stakeholders they represent (shareholders in the case of the MNC; interested parties from States, intra-state organisations, non-state organisations and supra-state actors in the case of the global governance context); and they need to deliver results against their stated vision if they are to retain the trust of those stakeholders. Moreover, leaders of MNCs increasingly need to be aware of the global context within which they operate. As the recent work of C.K. Prahalad2 has highlighted, such companies have the power to shape markets and wield influence in developing countries. It is crucial that they exercise their power responsibly and with conscious respect for the need to achieve mutual advantage, within the framework of their traditional responsibilities to their shareholders. There is, therefore, a growing need for leaders of MNCs to learn not only from each other and from business school leaders, but also from their counterparts in government, NGOs and the wider public sector. Despite the fact that many of the leadership skills required for traditional leadership roles are also required for global governance, we believe there are four differentiating factors which, individually or combined, add a further level of complexity


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and impose greater demands on individuals in global governance leadership roles. These four factors are: • Scale • Diversity • Dispersion • Levers of change Scale: Although there are some very large private and public sector organisations, the number of actors involved in and impacted by global governance issues is quite different and the leadership strategies in this context must take scale into account. If we take, for example, the actors involved in the global governance of climate change, these include national governments and environmental and energy agencies; international environmental and energy agencies; national and multinational companies (and lobbies of companies) involved in the energy or forestry business; national and international environmental NGOs, charities, and community groups (not to mention those that are involved in other manifestations of climate change, including indigenous rights advocates, wildlife protection groups, health care groups etc.); and others. Diversity: Global issues around which global governance has developed tend by their very nature to be multifaceted. Multinational issues cannot be resolved by traditional, single-discipline, bureaucratic, siloed structures. As we saw above, climate change involves state, non-state, intra-state and supra-state actors from a variety of industry sectors, interest groups and disciplines: environmental, indigenous rights, wildlife protection, energy, transportation, forestry, healthcare, scientific, legal, economic, a swathe of governmental bodies and probably countless others, as well. Other issues, such as international trade and sustainable development, Third World debt, HIV/AIDS and other public health issues, water management and others involve similarly diverse lists of interested parties, who work in loose coalitions to achieve their different but interrelated objectives. Leaders within these coalitions and networks must be able to recognise and understand the impact that such diversity can have on achieving objectives – and develop effective approaches for moving the agenda forward. Dispersion: In addition to the scale and diversity factors identified above, dispersion adds a further complicating factor. The participants are not all physically located within the same building, group of buildings, or country. Nor are they immediately contactable via a pre-defined e-mail distribution list. In order to influence or even communicate with all the actors involved, a global governance leader needs to be a lot more creative than his or her traditional counterparts. Levers of change: Traditional organisations have a number of conventional levers of change at their disposal to achieve key objectives within their organisation. These include the hierarchical structure to control resources and priorities, bonuses and other monetary and non-monetary incentives, as well as various penalties, to influence individual behaviours. In the global governance context, by contrast, these levers of change are not available. Instead, leaders must rely on influencing and negotiating skills, as well as on the exertion of public, media and political pressure.

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So, the challenge for leadership in administering global governance is to turn these four differentiating factors from weaknesses into strengths and to orchestrate inter-connected webs of actors into strong instruments of change in a global context. How Important Is Leadership in This Context? The first question to address is what we mean by leadership. In the context of these global governance networks and coalitions that we have been looking at, who do we consider to be a ‘leader’? Leadership in this context is very fluid. Although it can be associated with a country or a group of countries (e.g. the Quad in the WTO: consisting of the US, the EU, Japan and Canada), or an organisation (e.g. World Wide Fund for Nature in the context of trade in endangered species), we are using the term to refer to an individual; either someone who has been appointed to a leadership role within one of these networks (e.g. James Wolfenson, former President of the World Bank Group, or a state representative appointed as chairman on an issuerelated sub-group within a network), or an individual who assumes a leadership role (e.g. Ann Pettifor of the Jubilee 2000 campaign, in the context of Third World debt relief). Benner, Reinicke and Witte, in their paper “Shaping globalisation: the role of global public policy networks” identify four key variables that determine the success of global network cooperation: trust, leadership, coordination and inclusion. Their requirement for leadership in the global governance context moves away from definitions based on power and influence, and towards what they term “political and social entrepreneurship”.3 This is the understanding of leadership that we explore below. It is important to recognise that the leadership to which we refer encompasses more than those in formal leadership roles. Whilst the leadership of an organisation falls to one individual or a small team, the responsibility for leadership behaviour is much more broadly spread to everyone in the organisation. The more an organisation or network can achieve a culture of leadership throughout, with an aligned vision of what it seeks to achieve and how it seeks to achieve it, the more cohesive and successful it will be. The need for this clear, aligned leadership applies to both the political and official levels. Indeed alignment between the two is particularly important. This does not mean that senior officials should be political appointees; there is great merit in the balance between the political agenda and the permanent civil service. However, in execution, alignment of purpose and focus on results of the entire leadership, team is crucial. Our previous research on what makes individual government organisations agile, while clearly more limited than the global governance context, shows that strong leadership is perceived as the single most important factor. 4 As we have just seen, leadership in global governance networks is more complex, in terms of identifying who the leader is and the four complicating factors identified earlier, but we believe these differences make strong leadership ever more important in this context.


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A Model for Leadership in Global Governance We now turn to an investigation of the leadership skills required by global governance leaders. We have based this study around competencies for traditional leadership roles in the private sector, and then applied our analysis of the four differentiating factors to determine the particular behaviours required by global governance leaders. Anne Deering’s model of Alpha Leadership5 identifies three critical competencies for effective leadership: • Direction: How leaders provide clear direction through understanding the needs of all stakeholders and translating these into a vision and strategy for the organisation; the ability to lead from the future, anticipating stakeholder needs in order to direct proactively. • People: How leaders align the organisation so that its people act effectively; the ability to align, inspire and enable teams to create coalitions for change, to embody the organisation’s values. • Results: What leaders do to deliver the necessary results; ability to focus on what really matters; to act effectively in order to achieve results. These are underpinned by a number of specific leadership behaviours. Our intention here is to identify what these behaviours look like in order to meet the requirements of leadership for global governance. The outcome is summarised in the table below. Leadership competency

Behaviours for effective leadership for global governance

Direction

• • •

People

• • •

Results

•

Identify stakeholders and clarify their diverse needs Give clarity of purpose and direction by identifying common ground and articulating achievable objectives Think strategically and manage complexity around long-term and short-term goals Understand what motivates stakeholders and how to get them to act as coherent agents for change Improve capabilities and skills to strengthen reputation Build trust among stakeholders and create opportunities for interaction and cooperation Reinforce common ground and focus on delivering key outcomes

So, let us now look at these seven behaviours in greater detail. Direction • Behaviour 1: Identify stakeholders and clarify their diverse needs. There is no defined and identifiable ‘customer’ on whom a global governance leader can focus and whose needs inform the direction of the organisation. There is no real ‘customer’ for a global governance network. Different stakeholders within the network represent and are answerable to a wide range of different actors. The global governance leader needs to first identify the stakeholders

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who influence the network – often a diverse and ill-defined group. He or she then needs to understand how to communicate with the different parts of the network in order to clarify their different needs and objectives. The case study below Behaviour 3 shows how important this factor can be. • Behaviour 2: Give clarity of purpose and direction by identifying common ground and articulating achievable objectives. The diverse actors will not have a common goal, purpose or direction. Global governance networks will tend to coalesce around some overlapping common ground, but this cannot be imposed; rather, the complex stakeholder objectives need to be analysed and synthesised to identify the common ground. A major challenge here will be to convert nebulous common ground objectives into single-issue points which can become a focal point for action within the network. This will then require articulation, communication and negotiation in order to persuade the different stakeholders to identify with and support the common ground. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former Secretary General of the United Nations has explained this key behaviour as follows: “Vision and the ideas through which it is defined are crucial. Ideas are what mobilise people and galvanise them to join in an action for shared benefit. […] But ideas are not in themselves enough. Ideas must be woven together into a viable and coherent strategy. […] Even a viable and coherent strategy cannot be fully effective unless it is communicated to the public in a way that will gain their support, and it is put into effect cooperatively with others.” 6

• Behaviour 3: Think strategically and manage complexity around long-term and short-term goals. The diversity of a global network means short-term and long-term goals will not be clear: the leader will need to steer a path through a collection of competing aims to identify a common long-term objective and persuade stakeholders that it aligns with their own short-term and long-term objectives. This will require an ability to manage (and be comfortable with) complexity and to synthesise and articulate multi-faceted issues, as well as strong communication and negotiation skills. According to Harland Cleveland, former American diplomat: “[T]here is a lesson for those of us whose chosen super-profession is to point the way and take the lead. The lesson is that, if you are serious about being a leader, you had better fall in love with chaos and complexity. You have to come to think of complications as the norm, not as passing aberrations from a tidy norm. […] If a situation seems too complicated for you to understand, that doesn’t mean it is more complicated than the reality with which you are going to have to deal. It is a clue for you to think even harder.” 7

Case study: The Debt Relief campaign The debt relief campaign in the late 1990s and 2000 was an example of an issue-based network of actors working together to try to achieve debt relief for developing countries. Within the network, there were a number of leading, influential organisations, including the G8, the IMF, the World Bank, Jubilee 2000, Cafod and a range of other NGOs, state governments and various individuals within each organisation. The achievements of this network include bilateral debt for-


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giveness (e.g. by US, British and Canadian governments), as well as the multilateral (IMF and World Bank), Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative for debt forgiveness, an initiative that has had mixed reviews, but which has been cited as “proof that cooperation between groups like Jubilee 2000 and the international financial community is possible”.8 The ‘leader’ we focus on for the purpose of this case study is Ann Pettifor, Director of the Jubilee 2000 Coalition. The Jubilee 2000 campaign started in the mid-1990s with a focus on raising awareness and activism around the issue of Third World Debt. She was aware that, although they needed to analyse large volumes of abstruse data, the campaign would only be successful if they could communicate their key messages in a way that would be understandable and motivational for their stakeholders. Ann Pettifor has described her role in this context in the following way: [A]ssembling the evidence and analysing it so that it can be recognised by a wide audience is a bit like looking at a diamond before you cut it. The diamond is a big lump which is dug out of the earth somewhere and it is probably ungainly when you are looking at it, but if you are a diamond cutter you may well spend years looking at it before you decide to make the cut and, when you do, you cut the stone in such a way as to maximise the reflection of every facet of the true stone. […] that is the only analogy I can make to explain how, having collected all the evidence, one analyses it in such a way as to invite recognition and understanding from those who are looking at it.9

She showed an ability to focus on her stakeholders, establishing their interests and their requirements, and using experts where necessary to help her communicate effectively to them. In her words: “What I think Jubilee 2000 succeeded in doing was mobilising people by saying that this was something that they could do something about.”10 Ann Pettifor and her colleagues also had a clear understanding of their unconventional levers for change: grass-roots activism (the campaign brought together a coalition of more than 100 organisations); high-profile celebrity support; and continual media and popular pressure that the first two levers can bring to bear on politicians. The Jubilee 2000 campaign also had a very clear objective: a one-off cancellation of all unpayable debts owed by the world’s poorest countries by the end of the year 2000. There was a point of focus for the network and a clear deadline that motivated people to act quickly. Although the objective was not met in its entirety, the objective, the deadline, and the political pressure generated by the campaign succeeded in making the topic of debt relief an important multinational agenda item and ultimately led to a number of bilateral debt cancellations as well as the introduction of the HIPC initiative in the World Bank and the IMF. Its success was summarised by a World Bank spokesman as follows: It [Jubilee 2000] has managed to put a relatively arcane issue – that of international finance and development – on the negotiating table throughout the world. The pledges Clinton and Brown have made would not have happened without Jubilee 2000. It’s one of the most effective global lobbying campaigns I have ever seen.11

From a learning perspective, leadership of the Jubilee 2000 campaign exhibited a number of key behaviours that contributed to making it an effective network: • It gave clarity of purpose and direction; • It identified and focused on the needs and requirements of stakeholders;

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• It communicated effectively with those stakeholders; • It identified creative levers for change; and • It motivated those stakeholders to act as agents for change. (See behaviour 4 below.) People • Behaviour 4: Understand what motivates stakeholders and how to get them to act as coherent agents for change. This will use the same skills of motivation as any leader would use, although traditional levers like financial reward and organisational penalties are not available to global governance leaders, nor is the power structure based on hierarchy. Nevertheless, strong leaders in any type of organisation are able to inspire people to act through understanding what motivates the stakeholders and how the leader can guide them to act in a way that contributes to the organisation’s objectives – and this also applies in the global governance context. According to Mikhail Gorbachev: “My own experience is that it is much more effective (not to mention more pleasant for leaders and followers) to solve administrative tasks not by decree but by persuasion. […] Certainly, it represents a type of power, but it is a power based predominantly on intellectual and moral authority and not on the authority of the leader’s throne or chair. This is the power of persuasion not of the fist, not a necessity to obey blindly the superior force, but an inner need to follow the advice that you yourself consider reasonable and correct.” 12

In addition, the diversity of individuals and nationalities requires a global governance leader to recognise and value difference (particularly cultural differences) and develop strategies to maximise the creative benefits that can arise from bringing people from different backgrounds and cultures together – and to minimise or prevent prejudice, which invariably distracts people from giving their best. • Behaviour 5: Improve capabilities and skills to strengthen reputation. This behaviour is based on the understanding that leaders must be “perceived as qualified to lead”,13 in order to inspire good performance from and job satisfaction in others. This is a required behaviour for global governance leaders, in particular because their ability to inspire performance will rest largely on their personal reputation, capabilities and skills, as they usually have no formal hierarchy to support them. The scope of some global issues explored above shows what a challenge this can be – but successful case studies indicate that this is vital in order to maintain credibility with stakeholders. Ambassador Harland Cleveland, in the book “Leadership in Global Governance”, reinforces the importance of this behaviour in the context of the Bay of Pigs episode, when a military operation failed in part because of John F. Kennedy’s failure to familiarise himself with the details of the operation before taking the decision to act. He goes on to say: “President Kennedy […] learned an important lesson about leadership: If the leader is not personally engaged in the staff work that leads to an important decision, he is merely presiding while others decide. Eighteen months later, when he had to deal with the Soviet missiles in Cuba, he immersed himself in the staff work, personally weighing the alternative courses of action and insisting that the probable consequences of each be thought all the way through.” 14


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• Behaviour 6: Build trust among stakeholders and create opportunities for interaction and cooperation. Without cooperation, global issues cannot be resolved. A key prerequisite to cooperation is building trust – which must be achieved in spite of diversity and dispersion and the dangers of cultural misunderstandings. Benner, Reinicke and Witte quote “lack of trust and misperception among network actors”15 as one of the most common obstacles to successful cooperation in global governance networks. A leader’s ability to use influencing and relationship-building skills to overcome this will be critical. Effective internal relationships and external partnerships also require the leader to create opportunities for collaboration and discussion within a dispersed network. This includes setting up meetings both within and outside any formal structured sessions which invite participation and, through creative use of new technologies (internet; email campaigns), mobilise networks and coalitions. Results • Behaviour 7: Reinforce common ground and focus on delivering key outcomes. This involves the ability to identify the key objectives, which will make your role successful and to focus the organisation on delivering the same. As we saw above, even identification of the key objectives is often difficult, let alone focusing on achieving them. A leader must be prepared to continually reinforce the common ground with stakeholders – so that the network does not lose focus or splinter. It also requires what Boutros Boutros-Ghali describes as political intuition: “Leaders must sense where, when, how and with whom progress can be made.”16 He believes that this requires: – Timing – when have warring parties reached a susceptible moment of fatigue? When will the public demand or reject action and how does that public opinion fall into phase, or fail to do so, with the needs of the moment? – An awareness that “everything counts”, that no issue is too small or too remote to be potentially significant.17

Case study: Leadership in the WTO The World Trade Organisation is a complex global governance network comprising an intra-state organisation that develops and attempts to enforce trading rules between states. Although the WTO itself is made up only of states, their decision-making process is influenced by a broad network of actors including trading blocs or coalitions made up of member states, members of the WTO secretariat, other international institutions, multinational corporations and a range of lobby groups representing different economic, social or political interests. The nature of leadership in the WTO is as varied as its participants, and leaders will change depending on the subject matter of the meeting or subset of actors present. In his paper on reform proposals for the WTO, Robert Wolfe provides a se-

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ries of illustrations that demonstrate how the success or failure of some negotiations can depend on the leadership capabilities and the credibility of the person in the chairman’s role, reinforcing the importance of behaviour 5 above: In the year before Seattle, the Chair of the General Council fell, by rigid agreement, to an African, and the African group nominated the Ambassador of Tanzania. In an atmosphere poisoned by the fight over the choice of Director-General, he was unable to bring parties together and so the draft text that he forwarded to Ministers was festooned with square brackets signalling areas where compromise was yet to be found. In contrast, the chair in 2001 was held by the Ambassador of Hong Kong, a widely respected ex-colonial administrator who took risks, forcing issues farther than some Members wanted in a short text forwarded to ministers with few square brackets.18

All decisions within the WTO are taken by consensus. As Wolfe points out, this increases the importance of informal procedures. In this context, one of the critical roles that the chairman (of the relevant WTO body) plays is to meet with the different states and coalitions of states to identify where the consensus lies. In order to do this, the successful chairman builds strong relationships and creates opportunities for the different stakeholders to meet and come to an agreement. Although the chairman will typically attend all the formal meetings, …often the real business of learning what matters most to particular Members takes place, not in meetings of close to 150 people, but ‘in the corridors’, meaning all of the occasions, social and otherwise, in and out of Geneva, when participants have opportunities to talk to each other. One way [the chairman] structure[s] such conversations is the practice of holding ‘Friends of the Chair’ and ‘Green Room’ meetings.19

The importance of leading through embodiment in the WTO is highlighted by Heidi Ulrich in her paper on trade liberalisation and leadership. She argues that political representatives of the G7/8 need to show strong leadership in order to motivate other stakeholders (including their own state representatives) to move the agenda forward.20 In particular, she argues that their leadership needs to manifest itself in three areas: 1. Pledges of personal commitment. She argues that past experience shows that leadership shown during multilateral trade negotiations only has an impact if the leaders demonstrate ongoing personal commitment and involvement in the progress of the negotiations. 2. Political courage. The ability to advance the global governance agenda around trade requires political leaders to take the sometimes unpopular step of trying to convince their protectionist stakeholders of the benefits of increased trade liberalisation. 3. Effective political leadership. Ulrich argues that the political leaders can serve as powerful catalysts for trade liberalisation, if they demonstrate effective leadership that moves beyond political rhetoric. As we have seen above, the factors of scale, diversity, dispersion and levers of change that make leadership in a global governance context differ from traditional forms of leadership, give rise to a number of identifiable leadership behaviours. What we have seen is that some of these behaviours are recognisable as exaggerated forms of traditional leadership behaviours, while others require quite different skills, without which a leader will not succeed in a global governance context.


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Part II How Do We Achieve Better Leadership for Global Governance? To build substantial leadership capability to make global governance work and sustain will require many leaders from across the world, who are truly representative of the diversity of cultures they serve. Leadership qualities need to be developed within different actor organisations and coalitions, in different countries and across different levels of experience to ensure that a growing cadre of ‘global governors’ have strategies for success at their fingertips, despite the challenges of working within an unstructured global governance context. This will require targeted programmes of professional development around the world – and will need to include not only learning programmes but also mentoring, exchanges, networks and knowledge sharing. In addition, Benner, Reinicke, and Witte call for an agenda for action which includes “new models of career development that encourage and support a ‘revolving door’ between different jobs in business, government, academia and the NGO sector”.21 Although not pursued here, this revolving door concept deserves to be explored as an effective way to develop networks and knowledge-sharing within global governance. In the context of Higgott’s second ‘understanding’ of global governance, capability building must be available to developing as well as developed actors, and nonstate, as well as state actors. Effective inclusion and broad representation is a critical pre-requisite for “democratic engagement” in global governance. One of the key challenges in implementing a vision of global governance leadership capabilitybuilding will be to ensure that it is not just the developed world institutional actors who have the opportunity to develop the necessary skills. Exchange programmes with universities and organisations in developing countries need to be put in place and funding for these exchanges needs to be explored. Training – From MPAs to MGGAs There is clearly no quick fix for creating a cadre of competent and effective global governors. Nevertheless, we believe that targeted training can and should be developed as one aspect of the initiative. As we identified earlier in this chapter, many of the skills required by traditional leaders are also applicable to global governance leaders – but, as already explained, the differentiating factors of scale, diversity, dispersion and levers for change require global governance leaders to exhibit different skills or differential strategies in the desired behaviours, compared with traditional counterparts. From our research, it appears that although there is no ready-made, tailored programme available to meet all of the needs of an effective ‘global governor’, there are several programmes around the world that provide a solid, core platform that could be readily adapted. The closest fit to a notional ‘Masters in Global Governance Administration’ is a Masters in Public Administration. However, this would need to be enhanced to include training in the specifics of required behaviours outlined in our analysis above.

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A Masters level course for global governance leaders would need to include a mix of methodological courses and policy courses, which may vary depending on the area of interest. Taking the Kennedy School of Government curriculum as a basis, an outline might look as follows: • Policy areas (multi-disciplinary study of global issues) • Methodological areas: – Analysis of policies and institutions: ○ Economic analysis ○ Empirical analysis ○ Modelling and Applications ○ Institutional analysis and design ○ Policy design – methods and applications ○ Values in public policy ○ Historical analysis ○ Research methods – Strategic management of public organisations ○ Organisational strategy and implementation ○ Political management – negotiation and management of policy development ○ Managing production – quality and innovation ○ Financial management ○ Developing and motivating human resources ○ Additional case-study based courses around stakeholder mapping and management in a global context – Political advocacy and leadership ○ Leadership and mobilisation of public resources ○ Elective politics and political leadership ○ Additional case-study based courses around managing complexity Graduates of this programme should go some way toward fulfilling the four critical competences identified by Demetrios Argyriardes elsewhere in this book: • high-level policy analysts and advisers; • high-level programme managers; • high-level resource managers, an area which includes financial, information, material and human resources; • performance measurement, monitoring and evaluation specialists. He identified these as a set of critical competences, which cut across specialist fields and are specially relevant to the discharge of functions in administering global governance. Possible implementation approaches include those currently undertaken by the World Bank Institute, which runs a series of leadership and capacity development programmes in developing countries. Most of these are focused on developing skills within particular countries to improve governance at a national level, but they could fairly easily be extended to encompass global governance. Their initiatives include peer-to-peer leadership programmes in low-income countries under stress, in which a group of former leaders prepare case studies on leadership to work through in a


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three-day seminar with ministers and senior government leaders from the lowincome country.22 Other approaches include partnerships between the WBI and local organisations, and twinning programmes for institutional capacity development, which provides institution-to-institution relationships on the model of long-term, sustainable cooperation and using a mix of learning activities (staff exchange, placement of experts, and training events).23 The promotion of exchange programmes between institutions could also prove extremely powerful. Building on the “global learning” model of the INSEAD MBA programme, where students can undertake their studies in France, Singapore and the US,24 we can envisage a programme for potential global governance leaders that is delivered, say, partly in Harvard or London, partly in Tokyo or Melbourne, and partly in Nairobi or Mexico City. Such a diverse programme could offer the advantages of both exposure to the latest thinking from developed countries, and the contextualisation for learning in the local cultures of the developing countries themselves. Similarly, some of the teaching should be delivered by ‘outsiders’, who are able to provide an external perspective and bring models of good practice; whilst other elements of the programme should be delivered by local people with direct experience of leadership in the local culture and context. In addition, beyond the formal training programme, there should be a strong emphasis on networking, including the provision of tools to support continuous networking, information exchange and learning after the programme has ended. The WBI, for example, has used a variety of approaches tailored to local circumstances. Apart from formal training programmes, it has organised cabinet level retreats; brought together private sector CEOs with Ministers to promote the investment climate; involved young people in a youth parliament to bring the voice of youth in tackling corruption; and provided programmes for journalists and opinion leaders to enable them to become better advocates for change. It has also established the Global Learning Development Network, a video network to provide this kind of support. To date, these programmes have been aimed at country-level support, but similar approaches could serve just as well for global governance applications. Conclusions and Recommendations This chapter has identified the importance of strong leadership in the context of complex, multi-disciplinary global issues. We believe that in order to be successful, global governance leaders must demonstrate a number of skills and qualities over and above those of their counterparts in traditional organisations. This paper has identified the key additional requirements for success in such roles. We believe that a concerted programme of development for potential leaders is crucial to better administration in global governance context and, moreover, that this is an achievable goal. What difference would this programme make to the current situation? We asked these questions in the context of the Commission for Africa. The Commission was established by Tony Blair in February 2004 to look at what role the international community can play in accelerating and sustaining Africa’s growth and development, with a view to agreeing clear recommendations for the future.

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This context is a strong example of the complexities of global governance: the scale of the remit is vast; the actors involved include the Commission itself with its 17 Commissioners, the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), individual African governments from different geographies and cultures and their ministers and citizens, individual western governments and their ministers and citizens, a range of private sector companies from large multinational businesses to small African family farms, and NGOs involved in African development issues. The diversity of issues to be addressed is equally broad, with a remit covering the economy, natural resources, governance, peace and security, human development, culture and participation. The actors are dispersed across three continents, and there are no traditional, institutional levers of change that can be applied to achieve key objectives . Success will be dependant on influence and negotiation. A concerted effort to develop and encourage a wide range of global governors with strong leadership skills and an understanding of the complexity of the issues being addressed by the Commission for Africa could help to ensure success. This is an opportunity for the Commission to sponsor, in partnership with NEPAD, the establishment of programmes that could lead to the creation of a powerful network of leaders across Africa to take forward the work of the recommendations of the Commission and the ongoing work of NEPAD. In addition, any leadership programme in Africa should seek to tie in with the objectives and networks of the new African Leadership Council, launched by a collection of respected current and former African leaders, “to confront Africa’s pathology of poor stewardship by deeds as well as words”.25 Given Africa’s recent history, the importance of investing in global governance leadership initiatives in Africa cannot be overstated. In this context, Robert I. Rotberg in a recent article poses the following questions: Is there some law of diminished accountability that prevails in Africa? Is the reverence for African chieftainship at fault? Is it because of weaknesses in civil society? Or is it the sheer rawness of democracy in Africa, and the absence of a long period of preparation for participatory government?26

He goes on to argue that, “it makes no sense to assert that traditional African culture somehow inhibits the exercise of democratic leadership,” but raises the importance of the African Leadership Council in influencing those leaders who do not meet the Council’s standards. Graduates of the programme would have a range of skills and strategies at their fingertips and a network of colleagues and contacts from their studies and exchanges. The programme might include the partnering of universities across the African continent and in Europe and North America, with a flow of students and teachers in both directions teaching and learning practical skills for leading and managing complexity in the African context. It might also include the development of threeway partnerships between African and European or North American regional or municipal authorities and NGOs for the purpose of exchanges and meetings at different levels of leadership within the organisations to facilitate a sharing of ideas, strategies and experience. These initiatives might be funded by a Global Governance Learning Fund, set up by donor countries and international organisations.


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Developing the capabilities of leaders at all levels and in all component parts of the global governance network is going to be an important enabler for democratic engagement at a global level. Notes and References 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26

Kofi Annan, “We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century”, New York, United Nations, 2000. The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, Wharton School Publishing, 2004. Thorsten Benner, Wolfgang H. Reinicke, Jan Martin Witte, “Shaping Globalisation: the Role of Global Public Policy Networks”, www.globalpublicpolicy.net, 2002, p. 16. The results of the research were published in a White Paper prepared jointly by A.T. Kearney and the London School of Economics: “Improving Performance in the Public Sector”, A.T. Kearney, Chicago, 2003. Anne Deering, Robert Dilts, Julian Russell, Alpha Leadership, John Wiley & sons, Chichester, 2002. Boutros Boutros-Ghali in Leadership and Global Governance, op. cit., pp. 157–159. Harland Cleveland in Leadership and Global Governance, Adel Safty, ed., Universal Publishers, USA, 2002, p. 104. Justin Forsyth, Policy director of Oxfam Great Britain, speaking at a seminar at the World Economic forum in 2001, quoted in www.weforum.org. Ann Pettifor, “Policy Entrepreneurship”, talk delivered at the Overseas Development Institute, 11 June 2003, published on www.odi.org.uk. Ibid. Anthony Gaeta, spokesman for the World Bank, quoted in pr week, 16 April 1999. Mikhail Gorbachev in Leadership and Global Governance, op. cit., p. 253. Deering, Dilts, Russell, op. cit., p. 88. Harland Cleveland in Leadership and Global Governance, op. cit., p. 105 Benner, Reinicke, Witte, op. cit., p. 15. Boutros Boutros-Ghali in Leadership and Global Governance, op. cit., p. 162. Ibid., p. 162. Robert Wolfe, “Reform Proposals for the WTO”, prepared for the International Development Research Centre Conference, Canada, published on the Queens University website, www.queensu.ca, 2003, pp. 4–5. Ibid., pp. 5–6. Heidi Ulrich, “Trade Liberalisation and Leadership: Challenges for the Doha Development Agenda and Lessons Learned from the Uruguay Round”, published on the German Council of Foreign Relations website, www.dgap.org, 2002. Benner, Reinicke, Witte, op. cit., p. 23. “World Bank Institute Annual Report 2004”, p. 30–31. Ibid., p. 47. INSEAD has campuses in both France and Singapore and an established exchange programme with Wharton in the US. Ibid., p. 12. Robert I. Rotberg, “Leadership in Africa”, Chimera Volume 2 Issue 2 Summer 2004, p. 11.

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Chapter VI The Human Factor … Globally Demetrios Argyriades∗ “… the human factor is the ultimately uncertain and wayward element in social life and in all social institutions. Indeed this is the element which ultimately cannot be completely controlled by institutions … for every attempt at controlling it completely must lead to tyranny, which means to the omnipotence of the human factor – the whims of a few men, or even of one” K.R. Popper “The Poverty of Historicism”, p. 158.

Introduction The crisis over Iraq has served to underscore the critical importance of global governance and the related dangers of playing fast and loose with international law, the comity of nations and treaty obligations. Although the world at large is not out of the woods and lessons from this crisis are slow to come to light, it is possible to interpret the crisis as the outcome of a threefold erosion: of values, institutions and overall capacity in the design and conduct of the tasks of global governance. The decline of public trust, which results from this erosion, highlights the pressing need to restore the requisite measure of equity, consistency, integrity and effectiveness to enable global governance to meet the growing challenges on many fronts: from peace, security and disarmament, through poverty alleviation, to socio-economic progress, human rights and human development. These daunting tasks, however, call for a two-phased strategy. Phase I requires us all, through the United Nations but also the institutions of civil society globally, to take stock of what happened during the past few years and where the salient trends of the past quarter-century have led the world. We need to figure out how best to arrest the erosion, which still is visibly with us, in order to move forward with Phase II, the critical phase of rebuilding and greatly reinforcing the available capacity for administering global governance. It must be emphasised that, to bring forth results, this task of capacity-building encompasses three levels: institutional reinforcement for international governance; highlighting the values and principles which underpin it; and last but not least, development of the critical human factor, i.e. the men and women needed to bring to life and give concrete expression to global governance on the national, the regional and the international levels. Values, structures and human resources represent the essential facets of a triptych; the interdependent factors whose quality and whose synergy condition the re∗

Demetrios Argyriades, Rapporteur of the Working Group.

D. Argyriades / The Human Factor … Globally

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sult. The outcome is none other than ability to meet the emerging global challenges; capacity to administer a range of public goods and manage global commons for the good of the world as a whole; and ultimately of course, safeguarding the survival, peace and progress of humanity.

Part I The Erosion of Public Service The erosion of public service is certainly not new. It arguably dates back to the early 1980s.1 It began with the onslaught on government prompted by Ronald Reagan and Mrs. Margaret Thatcher. When the crisis reached a crescendo in the mid-1990s, the institutions of government were plainly on the defensive. The public service profession was on the decline – “en perte de vitesse” – and the timehonoured concepts of civic responsibility, public or general interest, and “civitas humana”, the global common weal were summarily dismissed as outmoded and fictional. Inspired by the radical right, an onslaught which drew substance from “neoliberal” doctrines and the Theory of Public Choice effectively called into question two hundred years of progress towards the “good society”, democracy and the état de droit. Nationally and internationally, the upshot of it all was to undermine the principles and institutions which serve as the foundations of the public service profession in almost every field and on almost every level. According to Gerald and Naomi Caiden: “This was not just in the civil service, but in the armed forces, policy and intelligence services, not only for public sector agencies but also for non-profit organisations, and not just in the United States but also in Canada, Western Europe and elsewhere. Meantime, the business sector has gone from strength to strength, especially for the top executives of multinational corporations whose compensation packages, always superior to anything in the government sector in their countries, have taken off beyond anything foreseen a decade earlier.”2

Verba volent, in Latin and Greek, but here they carried weight. In Ronald Reagan’s words, at his inaugural speech, in 1981, “government was the problem”, not “the answer to our problems”. Public service was discounted as the “deadweight” of “bureaucracy” and “public goods” dismissed as an antiquated concept. Disparaging the government routinely went in tandem with lavish praise for enterprise; the weakness of the former contrasted with the vigour and “robustness” attributed to business, in stereotype. On the unproved assumption that whatever the government did, the private sector concerns, unhampered by state interference could accomplish more efficiently, advocates of reform extolled the virtues of drastic cutback management through privatisation, deregulation, downsising and outsourcing. Such measures were pursued or advocated even in countries where the appropriate institutional framework was virtually non-existent; where private sector alternatives to state-provided services could not be made available at an affordable price; and where a management culture predicated on work ethic had yet to be developed. “Hollowing out” the State became a hallowed principle and seen as the precursor of converting not just government, but democracy itself to private sector ways. The market was projected as model for the conduct of all political life.

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D. Argyriades / The Human Factor … Globally Instead of renewing the idea of the ‘noble science of politics (Collini et al., 1983) and working out its implications for governance in the twenty-first century, [governance] is captive to fashions, genuflexions before the idols of the market, and is passive in the face of the declining quality of much of politics.”3

The Market Model of Government The market model of government, which reached its apotheosis during the early nineties, equated its activities with mere service delivery, and citizens with clients or customers of services. A recipe for populism, this model chose to ignore the normative, deliberative, distributive, judicial and decisional functions of government. It considerably narrowed the scope of public service and relegated citizens to the role of passive onlookers or greedy beneficiaries rather than active partners in the conduct of public affairs. Firmly rooted in the Theory of Public Choice, the market model of government might be dismissed as fiction; as biased and misleading. Still, its influence has been widespread and, thanks to the support of certain Western governments and financial institutions, its impact has been widespread and profound. At the source of it all is a certain Idea of Man. Inspired from the radical right and favoured by the economists of the Chicago School, it views all men and women as basically driven by economic, “rational”, acquisitive, self-centred, gain-maximising proclivities. No one escapes this pattern, which rules both markets and politics; 4 the public and the private and even the voluntary spheres.5 In the words of a noted scholar, student of US government: “The world inside government, according to this reform tradition, is populated by individual egoists, merely out for their own gain, not the collective good nor society welfare. It is a Darwinian world of survival of the fittest entrepreneurs with the appetites of voracious predators, who not only eat each other but gobble up the public (you and I), as well through imposing higher and higher taxes. That, in turn, shrinks the private sector where “real” productivity and community wealth are generated. Public choice theorists thus largely focus upon ways to economise, limit, reduce, even eliminate government agencies through imposing a variety of market incentives to induce internal or external competition”.6

The concept is not new. It can be traced to Hobbes7 and, arguably, to antiquity. An analogous position was defended, in Plato’s Republic, by the well-known sophist Thrasymachus and roundly refuted by Socrates, lead person in this dialogue.8 It lies at the antipodes of classical approaches, the weight of ethical teachings in several parts of the world9 and, as already stated, the doctrines of the Enlightenment, notably articulated in the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the French Constitution of 1792. Though it has resonated in the debates, which accompanied the rise of democratic government and the web of global governance, as well as the institutions of the Social Welfare State, the thrust of this Hobbesian argument has been consistently hostile to the logic of equality, of shared responsibility, of caring for “the underdog”, and human rights in general. It has bred elitist approaches, the belief that “might is right”, refusal to be tied down by international law and treaty obligations and, ultimately, contempt for ethical injunctions and multilateral governance. It lies at the antipodes of the principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter and Millennium Declaration.10


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In recent years especially, this mindset found expression in the actions and pronouncements of “neo-conservative” leaders, notably on Iraq. Departing only slightly from “neo-liberal” stances, it has pursued the aggrandisement of State, but chiefly in two directions: defence and internal security. Correctional facilities, police and the armed forces have been the main beneficiaries of this expansion. Health, education and welfare have suffered, by comparison. The inherent contradictions, apparent in this approach, have seldom been brought to the fore. Mostly exempt from criticism when dealing with the military, public organisations come under heavy criticism when seeking to promote environmental and human concerns. Then, they are stereotyped as “wasteful”, “bloated” and “bureaucratic”. This mindset and approach have helped to advance the purposes of privatisation, deregulation, “offloading” and “outsourcing”. At the crest of the new wave of managerial thinking, in the early 1990s, “from government to governance” became a favoured motto, suggesting that the former was properly legitimated, not through the popular vote, but chiefly when in partnership with agents of civil society, notably the private sector. A “Bottom-Line” Mentality The purport of this argument should not be taken to mean wholesale rejection of policies and trends of recent years, but rather of the uncritical promotion of those policies even in circumstances where none of the prerequisites for their success is present. The pivotal role of “consultants” in such reforms explains, to a large extent, the nature of these measures and language used to promote them, which gained the reputation of “one size fits all approaches”.11 The damage to most countries from such reforms is now a matter of record.12 What has been less apparent and so far less discussed is the13 damage to critical thinking which resulted from addiction to hyperbole and “spin”.14 Pitting “new” against “old-fashioned”, professing to be modern and “cutting edge”, proponents of “reform” have marketed their wares paying scanty regard to the particular needs of the situation at hand. Long lists of “dos” and “don’ts” were presented to the world as “irrefutable principles” of universal validity. They came with stereotypes and rigid “either-ors” (e.g. “old” vs. “new”, “modernity” vs. “tradition” “closed” vs. “open”, “steering” vs. “rowing”), which mostly led to impoverishment of the discourse on management and governance. A message which the advocates of the market model of government assiduously promoted was the idea that the markets not the States were the forerunners of “progress”. It carried in its trail denial of the identity of the public service profession, its overriding role and its distinctive ethos. Taken to inordinate lengths, this leveling proclivity produced nefarious outcomes, nationally and internationally. It has compounded the damage which resulted from the erosion of public service and has made the reconstruction needed for global governance more difficult to accomplish. The leveling proclivity and “bottom-line mentality”15 intrinsic to this mindset exude a narrow focus and “instrumental reasoning” (Zweckrationalität), which preclude or reject out of hand all “value rationality” (Wertrationalität). 16 This instrumental reasoning has found a forceful expression in slogans, which have set the tone of the discourse in the past twenty years: • “let the managers manage” (i.e. in any which way?); and

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• “results over process” (i.e. ends justify the means?) In spite of much lip service to the contrary, the import of these messages has pushed in the direction of greatly de-emphasising the role of ethics in government, obscuring the significance of public service professionalism, and further undermining due process and the rule of law. Under the overall dominance of economic orthodoxy, the tendency prevailed to view “the rule of law more like an element of the traditional structures of governance that (must) be minimised as … they might interfere with the effectiveness and efficiency of the performance of Public Administration in economic terms.”17 The upshot of it all the world has seen in the form of corruption, arbitrariness and maladministration, but even flagrant breaches of international law and the norms of civilised behaviour. The cult of the 3Es18 and the persistent quest of short-term gains regardless of the damage to fundamental principles, as well as long-term objectives, went in tandem with “style over substance” and a patent addiction to “spin”. It all came at a price. In terms of public trust, the cost to our institutions has been extremely steep. It represents a burden that may not go away for several years to come; a legacy of scepticism which, like a cloud, may well cast a long shadow over efforts to rebuild and to reinforce the necessary tools for inter-governmental cooperation and global governance. The Casualties Coherence, continuity, consistency and credibility, so vital to the quest for consensus and cooperation in administering global governance, became the earliest casualties of these last years of crisis. The crisis helped create a policy environment where all commitment to principle came at a discount. Priming “results over process”, some of the major players engaged in dubious practices designed to circumvent their treaty obligations, evade the rule of law and even disregard some basic moral constraints. Often the methods used paradoxically betrayed a concern to clear the State from the appearance of transgression, whilst encouraging the same either by resorting to proxies or by other indirect means. The practice of “outsourcing” served as major conduit for serious violations of international law, constitutional provisions, and even human decency. The rule of law and due process were certainly two casualties of this recourse to methods and subterfuges like “outsourcing”. The standard of conduct for governments implicit in the concept of “model employer” was yet another. The idea that the State because it is the State should set a clear example in all employment practices may have been pushed aside as a result of “outsourcing”. It needs to be remembered that the model employer concept served as catalyst for changes which, in the twentieth century, transformed personnel management in the public sector and beyond. After WW II in particular, equity, transparency and accountability became important concerns in endeavours to design proper employment practices and formulate new policies in the recruitment, retention, motivation and development of public service staffs. At the source of this development was an idea of Man which provides a striking contrast to the one exemplified in later management theories. 19 Briefly stated, with


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the advances of democracy and of the Welfare State, the world moved from a mindset in which the human factor was merely a passive tool, to one which stressed the importance of meeting the employees’ higher needs for self-fulfillment. A view of men and women as, to all intents and purposes, a cost or liability which ought to be contained, progressively gave way to one which looked upon them primarily as an asset, indeed as the component on which “all else depends.”20 During the early 1960s, Douglas McGregor compared these two clashing perspectives on the human personality, human needs and motivation as “Theories X & Y.” 21 Largely thanks to this development, the principle gained ground that governments should manage their human resources without either fear or favour; that in the public sector, they should show respect for, indeed exemplify the standards and norms of good governance; and certainly carry out all of their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights22 and relevant provisions in the Constitution of the International Labour Organisation.23 Remarkably, however, as the century drew to its close, the narratives veered back towards narrow perceptions of the Human Factor. This was now commonly perceived less as an asset than as a cost of production and administrative deadweight. This view brought in its trail “downsizing” as the core of public service reform. It also drastically altered the whole configuration of public personnel policies away from the progressive, developmentoriented approaches of the past, towards more disciplinarian, “lean and mean”, “take it or leave it” stances. It may be fair to argue that the “model employer” concept became the latest casualty of these shifting paradigms. What is striking, in this regard, is the widening disparity between the employment practices which the public sector endorses and those which private sector contractors working for the government apply or tolerate.24 This is especially true of pay and job security. “A string of corporate scandals in recent years, from Enron and WorldCom to Tyco, have revealed senior executives apparently plundering their companies with little regard to the interests of shareholders or other employees”.25 During the 1980s, the average pay for CEOs was roughly 80 times higher than that of the average employee. Now the ratio comes closer to 1 to 400.26 Whether governments at large and inter-governmental organisations should allow themselves to appear as the accomplices of practices, let alone legitimate such harmful tendencies, is at least open to doubt.

Part II Reinforcing Public Trust … Rebuilding Public Service One of the best known maxims of F. La Rochefoucauld contends that “hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue”. Could this be an apt description of the tendency of some governments to look the other way when principles and practices by government contractors ostensibly depart from those that governments preach and profess to apply? It is difficult to say. What one cannot deny is the appearance of inconsistency and the damage this has done to the public image of government and public trust in government. Rebuilding public trust in public service represents an

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essential prerequisite for effective global governance; and it begins with consistency. 3Es Are Not Enough Experience demonstrates that in public personnel management, as in other areas of government, it is not always easy to reconcile the cult of the 3Es and claims for flexibility with the degree of rigour implicit in legality and in the rule of law. Moreover, though economy, efficiency and effectiveness, together with due process and the rule of law, are critical components of the concept of good governance, one would be surely right in giving greater weight to rule of law and due process because they are the principles which underpin all else. In the field of human rights, as in public personnel management, we are dealing in effect, with basic standards and norms. They have evolved over time. That varying political cultures account for major differences in their interpretation and implementation neither invalidates them nor diminishes their importance. The State – and civil society – fulfil a major role in establishing these norms. Considering, moreover, the fact that governments remain the principal employers of high-level skills in most countries and that the human capital, constitutes a valuable asset, perhaps the nation’s greatest, one may be right to affirm that proper norms and policies, that favour its development, represent a critical aspect of what we call good governance. Although it is one that governments must share with civil society, they may not abdicate the initiative in this regard or surrender responsibility by invoking market forces. Quality global governance depends, in the final analysis, on the level and the quality of the human resources available to manage public goods, conduct multilateral processes, safeguard the bonum commune and administer the global commons. Talking of human resources, we need to specify that what we really mean are inputs of: • deep knowledge and true mastery of a field; • definable high-level skills, cognitive and interpersonal; • influence and commitment, which are predicated on knowledge and come with belief systems, values, behaviours and attitudes exemplified at work in the service of humanity. The bulk of these resources originate with governments of Member States. They represent the product of widely heterogeneous socio-economic environments and diverse management cultures. Although this great diversity may be the source of richness, it is also a cause of problems. The challenge it presents arises on all levels, national and international. NGOs and CSOs also play a pivotal role in the design, development and implementation of global standards and policies. Both international treaties and inter-governmental regimes depend for their effectiveness on the quality of the inputs received from national governments and civil society agents. Without in any way discounting the significance of international – global or regional – organisations, we need to recognise that they cannot do much without the cooperation of able counterparts in Member States. Increasingly today, this also


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means support from “We the peoples” at large, as stated in the Preamble of the United Nations Charter. Accordingly, meeting the challenges of administering global governance implies a number of issues, but certainly entails the following: first, reinforcing and supporting institutions on the national, sub- national, regional and global levels, which help to attract, recruit, retain, train, motivate and develop men and women for the multifarious tasks which the Millennium Assembly articulated recently,27 i.e. from peace and security, through poverty alleviation and sustainable development, to human rights, sound governance, protection of minorities and vulnerable groups and preserving the ecosystem; second, diversity management, combining the duty to ensure that, none should be denied an access and opportunity to serve and to be heard, that all should have a voice, who have a legitimate stake in a project or decision, with the need to build consensus in order to accomplish results; and therefore

third, promoting a culture of tolerance and commitment to humanity at large. Transcending cultural barriers may not be an easy task, but forms part of the duty of building and developing the tolerance, integrity, objectivity, critical judgment and equity, which are the mark of the true professional. What more than anything else, the present crisis has shown are the perils of boundless loyalty to any single cause; the dangers of obedience to patently immoral commands; and last but not least, the folly of injunctions and beliefs inherent in the slogans “my country right or wrong” and “results over process”. “Speaking truth to power”28 and the superb example of those few who had the courage to do it may be said to represent the one redeeming legacy of the ongoing crisis.29 They exemplified the spirit and values that, more than anything else, are needed in administering global governance and the management of the global commons. Public Service Professionalism, Ethics and Responsibility Replete with costly failures, the lessons of the past bring into sharp relief the importance of professionalism30 in all its chief dimensions: deep knowledge and experience, borne of study and commitment to lifelong work and learning; high-level skills developed through consistent practice over time; high ethical behaviour, which flows from the internalisation of public service values; commitment to the common good; tolerance for ambiguity; objectivity and impartiality, respect for truth and independent judgment coupled with accountability. These values, to be sure, are very old. They lie at the very origins of civilisation and underpin the structures of organised society from the beginnings of history. They represent the substance and furnish the underpinnings of all professional ethics. The progress of humanity may, arguably, be measured by our readiness to extend those principles we value beyond the clan, the tribe, the in-group or the nation state. The litmus test of progress lies in the implementation of these professional principles, which are also the marks of civilised behaviour, to all without distinction. There can be little doubt, on the other hand, that progress in this direction has not

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proved irreversible or linear over time. With nationalist exclusiveness and other forms of intolerance sharply on the rise, we may sadly, be witnessing the symptoms of regression, as values deeply ingrained in our collective heritage are suddenly contested as out of date or come under attack in the interest of expediency. This only underscores the urgency and importance of firming up the structures and building up capacity for administering global governance, on solid foundations of principle. Universality of values furnished the motive force for the growth of many professions. It provided the underpinnings of all professional ethics. The Hippocratic oath made simply no distinction between a friend or foe. The injunction to save life, 31 to do no harm, and the professional duty to serve to the best of one’s capacity, knowledge and skill have been internalised by generations of doctors, as well as public servants, for more than two millennia. So have the values of truth, integrity, equity, charity, justice and solidarity. It is the twin idea of “civitas humana” and universal values that has come under attack in recent years. It has also been said that such values are conditional on overriding loyalties to one’s organisation or in-group. In line with this approach, people have come to argue that reprehensible actions migrate to a higher plane if they can be portrayed as duty to one’s country or one’s political chief. There are no easy answers to such contentions. Nor can it be maintained that global responsibilities and their discharge will ipso facto exempt a public servant from such complex dilemmas. Agreed upon parameters must be delineated and ethical injunctions, though difficult to articulate, will be required and need to be defined. If public service professionalism has any substance, this surely is the primacy of principle and knowledge over expediency. It signifies the opposite of mercenary opportunism and obsequiousness to power. Personal responsibility must, therefore, take its place at the hub of professional ethics. Personal responsibility means “ownership” of projects and decisions of which a public servant may have been the principal agent or merely a participant. Fragmentation of activities and a long chain of command have been a fact of life of complex organisations for quite some time. Often, they have had the effect of perversely dispersing responsibility and of obscuring its focus to the point where none of the main actors is ever held to account. The rapid spread of corruption and the related practice of “scapegoating lowly grunts32” may well be viewed as outcomes of this confused situation. Professionalism means that action and advice come with responsibility. High-level skills and knowledge, no matter how significant, are merely the prerequisites for proper action. The expression “neutral competence” suggests that professionals will place them at the service of any rightful cause or leader, whether or not they share their underlying philosophy and objectives. The operative words are “rightful cause”, otherwise expressed as “legitimate purpose”. In terms of global governance, these need to be defined. Two Complementary Models How to cultivate these traits; how to favour their development; how to sustain and reproduce these qualities which clearly represent core competences and values for public service professionals responsible for tasks of administering global governance? That is a complex question to which we must focus attention. Improving


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service delivery is only part of the answer. Enhancing the prestige of these important functions depends on their performance but this, in turn, conditions the ability of governments and inter-governmental organisations to “attract, retain, develop and motivate the right people and to direct their energies towards the public good of the world as a whole”.33 In the world at large today, two complementary models purport to address these challenges in very different ways. Both, in reality, offer institutional responses to questions which represent the substance of Human Resources Management and Human Resources Development. They are the job-oriented model, favoured by New Public Management (NPM); and the more traditional career system, which has been widely adopted for decades. We must focus our attention on core personnel requirements for the tasks of global governance on the national, the regional and global levels. Though these may be as diverse as the range of the “global commons” and “international public goods”, one may nonetheless discern a set of critical competences, which cut across those fields and are specially relevant to the discharge of functions in administering global governance. Specifically, we refer to: • high-level policy analysts and advisers; • high-level programme managers; • high-level resource managers, an area which includes financial, informational, material and human resources; • performance measurement, monitoring and evaluation specialists. How can one best secure a cadre of such people for international governance? Is the job-oriented model, with frequent recourse to the market, adequate for this purpose? Or should we put our trust in structured career frameworks, which may combine the regular movement of people between the global, regional and national levels, with a deliberate effort to build, in such careers, continuity and consistency required for life-long learning? Most probably a mix of structured careers and the joboriented model may be preferred. There can be little doubt, on the other hand, that if a rapprochement of “national” and “international” is needed and with it the development of an incipient sense of the global public interest, or what Professor Dror called “raison d’humanite”,34 then intertwined career patterns with training as lifelong learning would probably be best. Administering global governance is making growing demands for know-how and for skills in many different fields – from health and food security to economic development – and also on many levels. For some, frequent recourse to an emerging market for high-level skills, with special service agreements or other fixed-term contracts of limited duration, would be the preferred strategy. For other tasks, however, longer career appointments may be required. We need to be reminded that loyalty and commitment are not won overnight; nor is institutional memory a competence which people may acquire without hands-on experience over a number of years. A range of diverse strategies may be required, but making appropriate choices is a function of the structures established for these purpose and of the personnel who make them operational. Commitment to the purposes and a deep sense of the importance of sound administration of global governance represent fundamental conditions of success. In essence, this is the challenge and mission of Human Resources Management and Human Resources Development.

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Part III Human Resources Management & Development (HRM & D) Administering Global Governance calls for appropriate structures, a culture of commitment and dedicated service to humankind, policies and resources. Resources, in turn, are multiple: financial, material and human. But though financial resources, at time of resource scarcity and technological competence, have risen in relative weight, there can be little doubt that, in the last analysis, it is the human factor that, more than anything else, determines both the quality and quantity of outputs in this regard. It is the human factor through knowledge, vision, skills, leadership and perseverance, that brings to life a programme ensuring proper synergy and an effective use of all the other inputs. It is the human factor that, other things being equal, accounts for the success and impact of some programmes compared to dismal failure in others. It follows that the advancement of global or regional governance depends, to a large extent, on the quality of the human resources, which are applied to this purpose or purposes. Human Resources Management is the task of bringing together much needed human resources, creating and sustaining a healthy work environment, enabling men and women to give their very best and to direct their energies towards the accomplishment of their assigned tasks in the framework of the overall organisational goals. Human Resources Development, by contrast, is a dynamic function consisting of preparing for future needs and, with this aim in view, raising the competence level of men and women officers in order to enable them to adjust to new situations, adapt to new technologies and face up to new tasks. Making the System Work One cannot overestimate the difficulty and complexity of Human Resources Management and Development in administering global governance. These are due to several reasons: firstly, the field is new making the definition and identification of knowledge areas, skills and attitudes required for global governance more problematic, certainly more controversial; secondly, the diversity of fields of activity, structures and inter-governmental regimes, which the concept of global governance has come to embrace, has grown pari passu with the problems and concerns which require the cooperation of actors and stakeholders on many different levels, global, regional and national;

thirdly, the sum of those activities and structures make very heavy demands on the stock of high-level skills and competences available worldwide. Not only are these demands much greater qualitatively than those for national governance, but also the available skills may still be spread unevenly throughout the world. For developing countries especially, effective participation in the realm of global governance entails steep costs and calls for sacrifices – the price they have to pay in order to be heard and not to be left out or marginalised;


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fourthly, experience demonstrates the importance of diversity in the representation of relevant disciplines, views and interest groups. How can these be reflected in the decision-making processes on global issues? Viable approaches and sustainable solutions are borne of consultation, negotiations, convergence and consensus. The downsides of these processes, however, lie in the great complexity of many global issues coupled with the growing heterogeneity of interests, perspectives and points of view; and lastly, on this account, effective communication is obviously of the essence, but also predicated on overcoming barriers of language, ideology, field of interest and culture.35

Under these circumstances, making the system work, administering, in other words, global governance, in ways that make it effective but also beneficial, not only to the few, but really to the many depends, to a large extent, on men and women officers both capable and willing to make the difference. Too often have the flaws of present global governance been tied to the shortcomings of processes and structures exclusively. That these should be reformed and modernised is not in doubt. It should not be overlooked, on the other hand, that even the best structures will be of no avail without human resources committed to making them work. We need this type of people in administering global governance to really make the difference. Moving in the direction of building such a cadre of dedicated people may well be time consuming, but is a feasible project. It is also more than necessary; “imperative” aptly describes it. It should not be overlooked, on the other hand, that notwithstanding the growth of public international organisations in our days, and the proliferation of INGOs worldwide, it still is national governments – the governments of nation-states, which provide the motive force and take most of the initiatives in the realm of global governance. Effective global governance, is largely predicated on synergy and convergence between the two. How to build such cooperation between national leaders and international staff must be viewed as a concern of paramount importance. It calls for adequate structures, but also for a mindset and a culture of service that need to be refined, but surely must include respect for knowledge and learning, high-level interpersonal and leadership skills, tolerance of diversity, integrity, sophistication and the pursuit of excellence. On the national, the regional and the international levels, what we need are vision and integrity; professionalism, not opportunism. The creation of adequate structures, but more than anything else, the painstaking task of developing a propitious service culture and a “globalist mindset” cannot be left to happenchance. They call for deliberate action. On all levels, the requirements of administering global governance call for a group of people who are “moral, knowledge-intense, futurecommitted, consent-based, high-energy but selective, deep-thinking, holistic, pluralistic and decisive”.36 With the world as catchment area, recruiting and retaining such a high-level group should not be an impossible task. It calls for the development of institutional frameworks which keep them motivated to serve humanity at large. This, to be sure, may sound as overly idealistic, but nothing less will do. The crises and the failures of recent years and months should warn us against the pitfalls of the ethical indiffer-

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ence so clearly verbalised in the slogan “results over process”. They also clearly point to the dangers of what Professor Newland described as the “seamlessness of politics, business and government”.37 At all levels, global, regional and national, a degree of separation that comes from structured careers and life-long commitment to service, may be needed to secure the coherence, continuity, consistency and credibility which, together with creativity amount to high performance in administering global governance. The Required Profile and How to Put It Together These are qualities and values which must be internalised and duly exemplified in people’s work-a-day lives. They seldom grow overnight and, though they may be developed, they can seldom be sustained under the pressure of market forces. They require a degree of maturity and sophistication, which not too many women and men possess; that must be nurtured and, more often than not, grow out of stints of public service with increasing responsibilities in an organisational culture which is globally oriented and professionally led. Understanding a complex reality, which also changes fast; weaving together the threads of multiple opinions, distinct professional inputs, diverse community interests and often conflicting priorities in the design of policies and the execution of programmes are the combined activity of politicians and public administrators. Increasingly, their functions dovetail. Though, to be sure, the leadership lies clearly with the former, experience demonstrates the valuable role of professionals in government, the importance of safeguarding it and, correspondingly also, the dangers of discounting the need for quality professional inputs. Professionals provide substantive knowledge, skills, a broad long-term perspective, objective neutral competence and institutional memory to the political leader’s in-depth appreciation of a changing electoral landscape. How to cultivate these traits; how to favour the development of these qualities and skills which clearly represent core competencies and values for public service professionals responsible for tasks of administering global governance? A range of diverse strategies will be required, but making appropriate choices is often a function of structures established for this purpose and of the personnel who make them operational. The objective in those strategies cannot only be limited to meeting staffing needs; together with recruitment come the related tasks of retention, training, development and motivation with quality performance and public service professionalism in view.38 Human Resources Management and Human Resources Development have, since the 1930s, received significant inputs from a wide range of disciplines, notably from sociology, psychology, economics, political science and law. They are widely recognised as one of the principal branches of public – or business – administration. It is, therefore, a matter of surprise and concern that still, in several countries, the management and development of public service staffs is left to inexpert hands and clientelist list practices. These have proved very damaging to the prestige, morale and overall performance of the public service profession, considerably reducing its capacity to meet head on new challenges, notably in global governance.


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Human Resources Development represents a structured, strategic response to the rapid pace of change and never-ending challenges present in global governance. The needs of global governance straddle a number of levels and multiple fields of activity. Therefore, they call for structures and processes, policies and practices which facilitate the growth of a corps of high-level, like-minded people with mastery of the intricacies of global issues whether they work on the national, international or regional levels. One of these tasks before us is to come up with proposals on various structures, processes, policies and practices – in sum the enabling framework which would move the administration of global governance in the right direction, and on a higher performance level. The new Committee of Experts on Public Administration, during its two first sessions held respectively in July 2002 and April 2003,39 provided some of the elements towards the elaboration of a long-term strategy in the right direction: • One is building knowledge bases and learning organisations; • Another is the need to foster life-long learning as one of the critical elements of human resources development in public organisations; • Third is the pressing need to build or to reinforce an ethics infrastructure; one that articulates the highest ethical standards, helps governance officials to adopt and internalise them and makes enforcement possible. Asking ourselves “who governs?”, on a global level especially is, in fact, to ask what type of people handle the vital issues of governance and act on our behalf. Are they as good or better than their national counterparts? Do they work as a team? Do their values and methods converge? Are they as honest, accountable, efficient and democratic as their responsibilities demand? If not, what should be done about it? “The current world situation is a time of accelerating global change, but also global threats. Never before has there been such a need to look objectively at the world’s present ways of global governance”.40 There has also never been such a pressing need to revisit and review the profile of the people whom we place in charge of these tasks on the national, transnational, global and regional levels; the ways in which we seek to attract, select, retain, develop and motivate those who must direct their energies towards the greater good of humanity, as a whole. 41 What arguably the crisis, which still affects us deeply, may have brought to the fore is a sense of and commitment to the global general interest and public good. Though slow to emerge, it has been manifested not only through opposition to aggression and transgression of basic moral principles and international law, but also in shared causes as varied as poverty alleviation, protection of the environment, security, disarmament and human rights. Both governments of Member States and partners from civil society have been active in promoting these causes. They do so by mobilising support and building up consensus for particular courses of action intended for the benefit not of specific countries, but the good of the world as a whole. We may still be a long way from reaping the fruits of a well-administered system of global governance. But an incipient structure, however incomplete, may well be in place already. We need to strengthen this structure and reinforce those competences, values and standards which, put together properly, make up the profile of public service professionalism. The main recommendations at the close of this Re-

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port address this twofold need. They are geared to the development of a cadre of dedicated professional policy analysts, advisers and managers, on the national, regional and global levels. They are also calculated to encourage and promote mobility between these levels, with a view to cultivating a strong esprit de corps and shared responsibility among public service professionals entrusted with the delivery of global public goods, managing the global commons and advancing the global agendas through peaceful, constructive, responsive and democratic processes, which engage both Member States and other major actors, governmental and nongovernmental, in the quest for viable policies on the basis of consensus and compromise. We have a long way to go. But progress on this journey is well worth making. Notes and References 1

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Gerald Caiden and Naomi I. Caiden, “The Erosion of Public Service” American Society for Public Administration National Conference, Phoenix, AZ, March 2002 (Van Riper Panel); see also Gregory B. Lewis and Sue A. Frank (2002) “Who Wants to work for the Government”, Public Administration Review 62 (4, 2002): 395–404; and J.S. Nye, “The Best & the Brightest You Show in the Public Service”, International Herald Tribune, 24 August 2001. Ibid. Yehezkel Dror (2001) Capacity to Govern: Report to the Club of Rome London, Frank Cass, p. 31. Barry Clark (1998) Political Economy: A Comparative Approach, 2nd edn. (Westport, CT: Praeger, Ch. 7 esp: and Douglas Yates, The Politics of Management (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 1987) p. 41 et. seq. “Society does not exist”: an expression attributed to Mrs. M. Thatcher. Richard J. Stillman II, “Twenty-First Century United States Governance: Statecraft as Reform Craft and the Peculiar Governing Paradox It Perpetuates” in Public Administration 81 (1, 2003): 33. See also Mark Bevir and R.A.W. Rhodes, “Searching for Civil Society: Changing Patterns of Governance in Britain”, in this same volume, dedicated to “Tradition of governance; history and diversity”, especially p. 57. See Jürgen Habermas (1973) Theory and Practice, Boston, Mass., Beacon Press, p. 66. See Alexander Nehamas (2000) The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault, Berkeley, CA, University of California, p. 79. Bernardo Kliksberg (2003) Social Justice: a Jewish Perspective, Jerusalem, Gafen Books p. 96. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly, A/RES/55/2 dated 18 September 2000. “NPM has made it clear that implementation or execution is someone else’s responsibility – it is “operations”, not “policy” or “strategy”. The reputation of management consultants rests on a successful interaction, usually a limited duration. Later difficulties can be put down to poor implementation.” Christopher Pollitt (2001), “Convergence: The Usefully Myth? in Public Administration 79 (4, 2001): 942–3. This is hardly a new phenomenon. In Ancient Greece, for instance, sophists, according to Socrates, were “merchants or peddlers of learning”: they “praise their products indiscriminately whether they were good or bad”. See Alexander Nehamas, op. cit. p. 79. See Joachin Hesse, Public Sector 2000: Central and Eastern Europe: Report to the XVth Meeting of Experts on the United Nations Programme in Public Administration and Finance (2000); also Chester Newland, “Transformation Challenges in Central and Eastern Europe an Schools of Public Administration” in Public Administration Review 56 (4, 1996); Rune Premfors, “Reshaping the Democratic State: Swedish Experience in a Comparative Perspective” in Public Administration 76 (1, 1998): 143.


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See also M.J. Balogun (2002) “The democratization and development agenda and the African civil service: issues resolved or matters arising? in International Review of Administrative Sciences, Vol. 68/4 pp. 533–556. See Alexander Nehamas, op. cit. “A shift away from a collective morality, with a value orientation of community benefits (utilitarian ethics), to a personal-competence morality with a value orientation of individual benefits (egoistic ethics) (Rokeach and Ball-Rokeach, 1989) has fostered methodologies and a bottomline mentality that support financial success as the only value to be considered, promoting short-term solutions that are immediately financially sound, despite the fact that they may cause problems for others … in the long term”. Kakabadse A. Korac-Kakabadse, N. and Kouzmin “Ethical Values and Behaviours: Comparison of three Case Studies Examining the Paucity of Leadership in Government” in Public Administration, Vol. 181 (2003), p. 479. See A. Makrydemetres (2003) “Rationality in Administration: and Outline of the Weberian Perspective” in Essays in honour of Professor Apostolos Lazaris, Piraeus, University of Piraeus. Karl Peter Sommermann, “The Rule of Law and Public Administration in a Global Setting”, in Interim Report to the International Congress of Administrative Sciences, Athens, 9–13 July 2001, p. 2. Carol Harlow, “Public Administration and Globalisation: International and Supranational Institutions”, in Interim Report to the First Regional International Conference of the IIAS, Bologna, Italy, 19–22 June 2000. Vid R. Stillman II, op. cit. Lewis Likert The Human Organisation, McGraw Hill Company, New York, p. 1. Douglas McGregor (1960) The Human Side of Enterprise, McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, pp. 36–76. General Assembly Resolution 217 (III), 10 December 1948. As amended by the ILO Constitution Instrument of Amendment, 1946. On this subject, see “Just like Fiscal, Monetary and Labor Policy, Downsizing the Federal Government and Shifting work from Government to Corporation Have Serious Economic Consequences for All Americans, While Giving Corporations the Upper Hand Paper” prepared by Ray Oman, Ronald Gabriel, Jacqueline Garrett and Kenneth Malmberg for the 63rd National Conference of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), at Phoenix, AZ, March 2002. “Where is the stick? Something has gone wrong with bosses pay…” in The Economist, October 11th–17th 2003, p. 13. Ibid. A/Res/55/ dated 18 September 2000. Aaron Wildavsky (1987) Speaking Truth to Power, New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Books. Hans Blix (2004) Disarming Iraq, New York, Pantheon Books. For yet another example, see Bob Herbert “Lifting Censor’s Veil on the Shame of Iraq.” in The New York Times, Op-Ed page, Thursday, May 5, 2005. “Professionalism in government, or any other field, rests on two foundations: one is a competence base, a special body of knowledge or a definable skill acquired through study and practice. In Europe, Plato’s “Statesman” began the quest for answers on what particular knowledge is needed in order to rule. Of course, the quest continues. The concept of professionalism, however, also suggests a shared values system, a code of ethical conduct that manifest themselves in the application of knowledge, the use of particular skills, and in the exercise of control over practice. To Aristotle we owe the idea that ethical behaviour is the result of socialisation and habit, as ethics, a derivative of ethos (habit) implies”. United Nations (1999) Public Service in Transition, Enhancing Its Role, Professionalism Ethical Values and Standards, DESA/SEM/97/New York, p. 97. Bernardo Kliksberg, op. cit. p. 88. See Bob Herbert “On Abu Ghraib, the Big Shots Walk” in The New York Times, Op-Ed page, Thursday, April 28, 2005. United Nations: “Work of the Fifteenth Meeting of Experts on the United Nations Programme in Public Administration and Finance” Report, E/2000/66, Recom. 19.

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Yehezkel Dror (2001), The Capacity to Govern: A Report to the Club of Rome, London, Frank Cass, Ch. 6. See Geert H. Hofstede (1997) Cultures and Organisations: Software of the Mind, New York, McGraw Hill. Yehezkel Dror (2001) Capacity to Govern: A Report to the Club of Rome, London, Frank Cass, p. 63. Elsewhere, Professor Dror remarks, “On a more theoretical level, senior governance elites in Western democracies share in widespread social anomie, in Durkheim’s sense of ‘passions getting out of control’. The exaltation of self-interest, however enlightened it is supposed to be, as a perfectly valid motive for human behavior, cannot but have a strong adverse impact on senior governance elites (for a contrary view, see Burke, 1993). The rejection of any measure of asceticism, with its resistance to temptation (Harpham, 1987), further characterizes realities that undermine virtue in politics and do not even expect or demand it” (p. 98). Quoted by Demetrios Argyriades “Values for Public Service” in International Review of Administrative Sciences, Vol. 69, 203, p. 524. For a detailed exploration of this subject see United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Public Sector Report, 2005: Unlocking the Human Potential for Public Service Performance, New York, United Nations, 2005. See Reports E/2002/26 July 2002 and E/C/6/2003/4, respectively. A New IIAS Working Group: Administering Global Governance p. 1. “Above all Nations is Humanity” Motto of the Cosmopolitan Club and the University of Hawaii. See web: http: //webdata.soc.hawaii.edu/fredr/welcome.htm.

Part II Some Regional Perspectives



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Chapter VII Administering Global Governance: Making It Work in Africa Through Regional Integration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi and John-Mary Kauzya∗ Introduction: Africa’s Stake in Global Governance This chapter explores the relationship between global governance and African regional integration as the latter emerges as the pivotal process shaping Africa’s prospects in the global system. Inescapably, regional integration operates as the governing interface between the individual African territorial-state and the larger international community. It has emerged as the mediating agent between the African state and the global governance architecture that Member States and other governance actors such as civil society and the private sector within the African Union (AU) must, in varying degrees, relate to. There is a general belief that in union lies strength. In Africa this is amplified by the limitations of governance actors – the State, civil society and the private sector – which can only be overcome through a collective drive toward integration; Africans increasingly having little choice but to engage, collectively, the administering of global governance through regional integration. The challenge this poses for Africa at regional/continental, sub-regional and national levels is what will inform this contribution. The Scope of the African Integration Governance Terrain What this specifically entails, first and foremost, is the African Union’s (AU) navigation of the macro-framework of continental integration as Africa’s link to global governance. This framework, in turn, steadily mutates out of an evolving pattern of sub-regional and cross-border governing arrangements centred in state-led regional cooperation and capacity-building initiatives in the form of sub-regional economic communities (RECs) and associated structures and regionalisation projects. These RECs, as sub-regional pillars of the macro-continental integration framework, present an uneven terrain wherein some have advanced (or are advanc∗

Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, Minister of Public Service and Administration, Republic of South Africa, Chair of the Working Group and John-Mary Kauzya, Chief, Governance and Public Administration Branch, Division of Public Administration and Development Management, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

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G. Fraser-Moleketi & J.-M. Kauzya / Administering Global Governance

ing) toward higher levels of economic cohesion in the form of market integration through customs unions. In effect, as in other regions of the world, integration in Africa, whether entailing economic cooperation or market-deepening and trade expansion, is a function of state intervention, not market initiative. Such efforts, however, in turn, are accompanied by a plethora of cross-border and multi-country regionalisation initiatives. They link sub-national regions within and between States in a range of functional enterprises of a spatial development and/or trans-frontier cooperative governance nature (of which South Africa’s Spatial Development Initiatives involving Trans-Frontier Conservation Areas are indicative); undertakings that introduce what may be considered ‘meso-governing’ levels of interaction between participating countries. While the focus of interrogating this terrain necessarily forces an examination of regional integration from a state-centric perspective, civil society and the private sector, as non-state actors, are of increasing importance. They are in as much need of strengthening as the State. However, within the ecology of governance, the strengthening of African civil society and the private sector cannot happen in a vacuum. Their strengthening must necessarily be anchored in a central pivot. This can only be supplied by government or, more broadly, the ascendant coalition of forces within and outside government, including allied elements of civil society which, combined, define the parameters of the State. Within this context, to what extent will the State allow maximum participatory governance and space for such participation by nurturing an environment in which civil society and the private sector can flourish? Beyond that, civil society – of which the private sector is a component – is the strategic intermediary between government (and/or the State in the broader context) and community. The State, however, is inescapably the anchor in this paradigm. To complicate matters further, African governments, with all their limitations – along with those of civil society and the private sector – are rapidly finding themselves overtaken by the globalizing imperatives driving regional integration. They are being forced to institutionalise supra-national inter-governmental structures and processes which, dialectically, are forcing these self-same national governments into state-strengthening regimens. Paradoxically, this process also erodes sovereignty. Thus, even as they struggle to consolidate ‘national democratic revolutions,’ they are being swept up in what amounts to a new phase of pan-African transnational democratic revolution. Africa has little other choice but to embark on this path. Still, the State, whether national or ‘transnational’ in the inter-governmental sense, remains central to the process under examination. The Rise of Global Governance: A Summarized Political History Contemporary global governance is challenged by the existence of what, in effect, are two ‘global villages’: one in which the rich of the developed world are getting richer and more powerful, in effect the beneficiaries of globalisation; the other in which the poor of the developing world are getting poorer and more marginalised. This global polarisation replicates itself within many developed and developing economies in variations along a theme of ‘two nations’ within one polity. This predicament confronts a global governance architecture dating back to the immediate


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post-World War II period; a product of the post-war settlement aimed at erecting a global peace and security regime in order to avoid renewals of catastrophic international conflicts. The United Nations and its Security Council embodied this settlement. International peace and security was, in turn, complemented by an ensemble of economic and financial stabilising institutions – the Bretton Woods Institutions comprising the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – relied upon to spur post-war recoveries in a devastated Europe. The geopolitical urgency driving these arrangements, including the Marshall Plan, was to stave off further political upheaval posed by Soviet-aligned Euro-communist parties in western Europe. This U.S.-led Western strategic imperative dictated the underwriting of European recovery largely through direct state grants rather than loans, in U.S. terms, a national investment in “peace and prosperity,” enabling governments to plan purposeful economic activity and mobilise productive resources. Out of these post-war dynamics, the United Nations (UN), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) emerged as the core of global governance. Based on this post-war legacy, global governance can be defined as an international institutionalised framework for pre-empting, managing and resolving tensions and conflicts, on a geopolitical level. This would be accompanied by regulatory oversight of the global economy – or, with reference to Richard Higgott’s definition of global economic governance: arrangements that “various actors attempt to put in place to advance, manage, retard, control, regulate or mitigate economic globalisation.”1 Through these structures and arrangements, the victorious Allied Powers set about determining how power in the international system would be exercised and managed in the interest of global stability. Much of the Afro-Asian world was invisible as this new post-war architecture became operational. Provisions were made, however, through the UN’s trusteeship system to facilitate their post-colonial emergence into an expanded UN membership starting in the late 1950s and accelerating over the next decade. This process led to a reconfiguring of the global system into a vertical north-south axis of developed and developing countries – the basis of the ‘two global villages’ paradigm – interacting with the ideologically-defined horizontal east-west axis. Only now, post-cold war, is this system coming under sustained restructuring pressures. This is reflected in the current process of reporting back to the UN Secretary-General on the future of the UN system. This process also includes a discourse on the role of civil society in the devising of new and more accountable global governing arrangements. Fast-forward to the late 20th and turn-of-the 21st centuries, the post-war settlement foundations of global governance have little changed apart from their amended augmenting by the G8 global economic directorate of the world’s major industrial/post-industrial economies, the closely aligned Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) – the WTO representing, essentially the post-cold war ‘settlement’ following the demise of Soviet bloc economic commandism. Hence, administering global governance, at present, reflects a core ensemble comprising the UN system, the Bretton Woods Institutions, the G8/OECD and the WTO.

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The global governance periphery clamouring for major alterations in this system comprise regional inter-governmental and economic blocs such as the AU and its various allied sub-regional RECs, the Organization of American States, Mercosur, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and alternative economic alignments to the northern G8 such as the G20, G90, etc. More recent non-governmental dialoguing and opinion-moulding vehicles complementing global governance – north and south – are the Davos/World Economic Forum (WEF) and its counterpoint in the World Social Forum. The former represents northern political, economic and intellectual elites; the latter, serves as a point of mobilisation for southern-based social movements interacting with northern-based anti-globalisation tendencies. The global governance ‘core-periphery’/two villages paradigm brings into sharp relief what has given ‘global governance’ its visibility: globalisation and its uneven impacts and benefits and the way these have resonated in the re-opening or reemphasising of the north-south (‘global north’ and ‘global south’) divide between developed and developing countries reflecting gross imbalances in power and resources; a divide that once resonated in the developing world’s campaign for a New International Economic Order (NIEO). NIEO marked the initial surfacing of a geopolitics of redress that was sidetracked by the sharpening of the cold war amid the ideological forerunners of neoliberalism in the Anglo-American rise of Reagan-Thatcherism. This trend ushered in the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) in the developing world. Deemphasised was state agency in development in favour the market agency; the introduction of Western conditionalities on the dispensing of aid to spur development along with a de-emphasis on the magnitude of direct state grants to underwrite it as had been the case with the Marshall Plan driving Europe’s post-war recovery. The military-strategic ‘Reagan Doctrine’, corollary to this process, supported anti-communist third world insurgencies as prelude to an eventual east-west accommodation and relaxing of tensions. This brought with it the implosion of the Soviet bloc and a new democratic wave beginning at the end of the 1980s. In many respects, these dynamics set in train the current rise of major developing country actors in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This process resurfaced the politics of redress underpinning an accelerated bid to transform the global governance status-quo. These developments reflect the reality of the growing power of major regional state actors in the developing world in an international environment that has become increasingly multipolar. These trends have interacted very closely with what has been a long evolving trend toward economic regionalisation and sub-regionalisation within all major continents linked to reforming the global trading system. With the depredations of structural adjustment on developing economies and social fabrics, amid a trend toward declining official development assistance (ODA), accessing developed country markets has become an increasing preoccupation among developing nations. These preoccupations, coupled with the growing power of several developing country actors in Africa, Asia and Latin America has exerted a major influence in shaping the international agenda within multilateral institutions. This includes mounting pressures for the reform and restructuring of those institutions and deci-


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sion-making mechanisms which impact on the lives of ordinary citizens in developing countries. Issues pertaining to the more equitable ‘weighting’ of decision-making authority within multilateral institutions, coupled with critiques of neo-liberal globalisation and its corollary, neo-liberal regionalisation, have gained increasing international credibility in the evolving global governance debate. This has been accompanied by important domestic political changes and/or policy shifts in a number of leading developing countries. What many of them have in common are widening socioeconomic gaps between rich and poor; between developed and opulent urban megalopolises and environmentally degraded and impoverished rural areas; between hellish shanty-towns and townships and gated suburban communities. These widening cleavages within the social fabric of the south has propelled a growing critique of neo-liberal globalisation featuring market fundamentalism at the expense of developmental state intervention, on behalf of the many whom markets have left behind. The coming to power of the Workers Party in Brazil, the more recent electoral ouster of India’s BJP regime by the Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance, the shift toward rural recovery by China’s National People’s Congress and South Africa’s recommitment to a more interventionist role for the State in alleviating poverty are also all indicative of this trend is the poverty alleviation facility launched by the trilateral India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) forum. The emergence of IBSA and the prospective Asia-Africa Sub-Regional Organisations Conference (AASROC), marking next year’s 50th anniversary of the Bandung Conference all point to the new global south multilateralism which is taking shape among major developing powers. The 50th anniversary commemoration of Bandung is being coconvened by Indonesia and South Africa. The socio-economic, ‘two nations’ cleavages within major developing economies are accompanied by similar disparities between these countries and neighbouring States in their respective regions. Overcoming such imbalances represents one of the formidable challenges to regional integration. Given the fact that widespread under-development is an impediment to intra-regional trade and commerce within Africa, both market-oriented and state-driven developmentalist strategies are reflected in Africa’s unfolding integration process. These trends underline the continent’s vested interest in pursuing revisionist geopolitics of redress within a rules-based global governance system. Within a broader historical and contemporary context, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) amounts to the continent’s Marshall Plan and its European Union Regional Policy rolled into one; the EU Regional Policy addressing Europe’s aim to eradicate poverty among the new accession states of the former Warsaw Pact.2 Apart from the cold war-inspired post-war recovery plans for Europe and Asia and the 1960s Alliance for Progress aimed at Latin America, Africa has never benefited from a comparable recovery plan in spite of the cold war and apartheid-inspired destabilisation and dislocation attributable to the SAPs, until the launching of NEPAD. NEPAD challenges efforts to formulate a new global governance regime; one facilitative of genuine intra and interregional partnerships for development that bridge the ‘two global villages’ divide.

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As the AU’s guide to advancing developmental governance, NEPAD has become a ‘contested terrain’ in African intellectual circles regarding market-led versus more state-driven developmentalist approaches to confronting Africa’s challenges. In navigating this discourse, there are no simple answers. Perhaps one of the more insightful approaches to the conflicting tendencies regarding development strategy has been advanced by Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. At a 2002 symposium, he suggested that: The question that must be asked is not…whether NEPAD is a rehash of the neo-liberal paradigm or not. After all it is a framework and not a blueprint, and as such it can go either way when the blueprints are developed by each member country. As a framework it encompasses the rational elements of the neo-liberal paradigm and points the way to going over and beyond it. It cannot be expected to do more than that. The real question is, given the structure of our economy and politics, are we in a position to interpret and implement NEPAD in a manner that will enable us to break out of the cycle of poverty and political turmoil? There are not and cannot be easy answers to that question. But one thing is certain. NEPAD does provide us with the framework for doing so.3

The Fragmented African Regional Terrain Does this mean that NEPAD is neutral on the role of the State in African governance and development? In South Africa’s case, economist Iraj Abedian recently observed that one of the basic impediments to domestic investment was that “the State’s role in the economy had been diluted too much and should be resuscitated.”4 He cited as examples, the country’s “poor port infrastructure” and “the State’s creaky rail-transport infrastructure” which fails to deliver enough volume in time to South Africa’s harbours; a problem that extends as an impediment to regional integration in Southern Africa as a whole.5 This point is crucial because, however navigated by African governments, NEPAD is intended to give infrastructural momentum to regional integration. This necessitates a resuscitation of the State’s role as the engine of African economic development. How crucial regional integration is to Africa’s future is perhaps best captured by Alex de Waal, who, in his critique of “The African State and global governance,” observed that “Africa can only make sense as a single economic space. Regional economic integration is an absolute prerequisite for expanding markets, attracting investment and increasing savings. Without it, economic development and Millenium Development Goals for poverty reduction and increasing the quality of life will not be achieved.”6 However, the endemic and external obstacles to integration are formidable. De Waal continues: “Unfortunately, there are powerful interests that stand in the way of Africa’s integration. Many of these are familiar figures: politicians and bureaucrats who extract rent from their possession of sovereign privileges to tax and regulate. Some figures are less familiar: the international aid bureaucrats who certainly have no intention to impede the continent’s growth, but whose operations may, at times, do exactly that. Other figures are the executives of international oil corporations, who are avowed globalisers, but in practice the friends of regressive political economies. There are tangible benefits to statehood – and the smaller the State, the bigger the relative rewards.”7


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This last observation alludes to one of the debilitating European legacies bequeathed to Africa through its decolonisation into geographically fragmented territorial-states; a state of affairs ratified by the AU’s predecessor, the Organization of African Unity (OAU). While the AU, in conjunction with NEPAD and the RECs must overcome this legacy, de Waal suggests that “a simple survey will show that across Africa, the smaller the country, the more aid it receives per capita. Partly, this is simply because most nations have a desk officer in every large aid bureaucracy and thus a champion in the system; in part too, it is important in some critical international forum… Small countries are also more attractive as sites for military bases; their domestic problems are more manageable and their loyalty is more easily obtained than larger ones.”8 To drive home the vested interests that must be confronted in overcoming Africa’s fragmentation, de Waal cites the cases of Ethiopia/Djibouti and Gambia/Senegal. The prospects, a few years ago, of a federation between Ethiopia and Djibouti, which would have allowed the latter to take advantage of Ethiopia’s “federal constitution and the significant powers it awarded to states” was ultimately ruled out by “the rents that Djibouti’s rulers can extract from the international system,” whereas on the other side of the continent, “tiny Gambia broke up its sensible confederation with its sole and much larger neighbour, Senegal, because its leading officials were profiting too little from the arrangement.”9 Moreover, “many small countries possess oil or other mineral resources which they would rather not share with their neighbours” and yet they are all “aid recipients as well as seat-holders at the United Nations.”10 Reinforcing the debilitating governance implications of the continent’s fragmentation, which were described by de Waal, has been the post-colonial degeneration of constitutional States into personalised patriarchal States; what many expert students of African governance term neo-patrimonialism wherein, what is described as a “genuine public realm”, embracing “basic principles as the rule of law, justice, and respect for others (including things public)”, has been systematically eroded by a fusing of traditional patriarchal forms of personal rule with “access to the enormous resources that a modern State can mobilise” without offsetting checks-and-balances of public accountability.11 This personalising of power is at the expense of a strong State and, by extension, a vibrant civil society and private sector. By “undermining the rational and legal foundations of state policy after getting to power,” many African leaders have inevitably subjected their countries to stringent global governance regimes of structural adjustment.12 These are policed by interventionist international finance institutions (IFIs) “in collaboration with the dominant countries in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).”13 Post-colonial neo-patrimonialism accompanied by its twin, ‘prebendalism,’ “the use of public offices for the personal benefit of office holders and their support groups,” (i.e. “…constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements…”) are the opposite of what NEPAD-committed African governments, institutions like the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and donor institutions consider as “good governance.”14 Good governance here, is depicted as characterised by “predictable, open, and enlightened policymaking, a bureaucracy imbued with a pro-

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fessional ethos; a strong civil society participating in public affairs; and all behaving under the rule of law,” inclusive of “respect for human rights.”15 The challenge that the neo-patrimonial/good governance dichotomy poses for African regional integrationists – African and non-African alike – is the urgency of confronting the extent to which neo-patrimonial prebendalism may replicate itself in the institutional and political cultures of the continent’s regional and sub-regional institutions. This may tend to be reflected in various and sundry national, subregional and sub-national patronage networks dominating programmatic, policy and decision-making ‘turf’ within such structures. To counteract this, there needs to be a process of engaging civil society and the private sector in reversing and forestalling the development of such undermining tendencies in regional and sub-regional institutions. The same considerations hold for the regional offices of international organisations and multilateral institutions forming the global governance presence on the continent. This terrain is complicated further by the proliferation of RECs with overlapping jurisdictions and duplicative mandates. Counter-Trends Toward Integration The OAU’s transition to the AU, with NEPAD as its economic recovery framework, endeavours to transform Africa’s culture of governance; hence, NEPAD’s pre-conditionalities pertaining to political governance, on the one hand, and economic and corporate governance, on the other. From an administrative governance perspective, the preconditions must be put in place to achieve the objective of “enhancing and improving the role and potential of regional” and sub-regional African institutions as a means of delivering on AU/NEPAD mandates; mandates that are intended to be implemented through the RECs.16 A major challenge facing effective regional integration administration is the rationalising of the RECs as the primary roll-out vehicles of NEPAD. A closely related problem is a lack of clarity among REC Member States regarding their own priorities as a member of one or several RECs, whether the focus is on economic cooperation and integration, the main raison d’etre of the RECs or security considerations or some other interest. Some have observed that, in many instances, the search for ‘security communities’ appears to be an underlying motive behind what ostensibly are ‘economic communities.’ This confusion compounds the alignment of REC priorities and programmes with NEPAD’s agenda.17 Sorting through this morass of conflicting sub-regional identities and priorities viz-a-viz REC and NEPAD priorities has slowed NEPAD implementation. At one end, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is widely regarded as having moved the farthest along the route of aligning itself with the NEPAD agenda by declaring itself a ‘NEPAD development community.’ East, southern and central Africa, on the other hand, must still unravel overlapping memberships and alignments of REC/NEPAD commitments in the East African Community (EAC), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS).


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The global trend toward regional and sub-regional trading blocs is forcing southern economies to integrate with one another in order to access the benefits of international trade and, in the process, to expand trade among themselves. This is only possible through regional integration and the infrastructural development that this entails. All African States, even those most resistant to reform, feel compelled to participate in such developments. Donor institutions, at the funding level of global governance, and all that this entails in terms of project development engaging governments and RECs, require that their African partners sort out their sub-regional identities and priorities in moving ahead on sub-regional infrastructural project implementation. To the extent that NEPAD has become the mechanism for mediating this process between governments and RECs on the one hand, and donors and investors on the other, it has become the AU’s driving force for rationalizing the muddled REC terrain. In global governance terms, NEPAD has emerged as Africa’s interface between continental and sub-regional governance and the broader sphere of global governance in mediating how a range of governmental, inter-governmental, nongovernment and private sector actors relate, as partners, in Africa’s development/ recovery. Another inexorable integrating force, referring back to global trade dynamics involving regional and sub-regional blocs, is the evolution of economic integration toward more advanced levels of engagement between member states of such blocs. Here, while NEPAD’s African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) process has raised questions about its leverage to drive political governance reforms, the evolution of development communities and preferential trade areas into customs unions may offer further incentives via the APRM for promoting economic integration. The point is that Afro-pessimism aside, there are external and internal forces – the interplay between globalisation and regional/sub-regional and national adaptive adjustments driven by pragmatic survival – that are generating incentives that may be tipping the balance in favour of greater integration. The African Institutional Challenges of Administering Regional Integration Administering global governance at the level of regional integration in Africa ties in neatly with Anthony Makrydemetres’ recognition that “a common understanding of many a people and enlightened leaders the world over is that emerging problems and challenges need to be buttressed by novel and commensurately adequate institutional armour.”18 In the African context, the evolution of “novel and commensurate institutional armoury” translates into complex institution-building challenges interacting with the myriad of nation-building challenges of the Member States of the AU and its affiliated RECs. The resulting unevenness in state level nation-building, interacting with uneven development among the RECs to which they belong, is broadly suggestive of the magnitude of the institutional challenges confronting African regional integration. This level of complexity is further complicated by the multiple memberships of many countries belonging to several RECs and the overlapping geopolitical scope of

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these RECs – all of which impacts on the broader AU/NEPAD agenda for Africa’s recovery. Rationalising this inter-African institutional terrain to include not only state, regional and sub-regional organs but also civil society and the private sector becomes, therefore, a major precondition to ensuring that global governance works for Africans via regional integration. This is especially so in as much as the regional arms of the international community operating on the continent are the natural global governance partners of the AU’s NEPAD economic recovery programme. Making Sense of the Sub-Regional Pillars of African Integration The RECs, meanwhile, are at the coalface of the challenges of administering global governance in Africa. Ideally, this could become reflected in a global/regional (and sub-regional) governing nexus embracing the RECs, NEPAD and regional arms of international organisations and multilateral institutions. As the OAU began its transformation into the AU, the ongoing challenges confronting the RECs and NEPAD have demanded the harmonising of REC and NEPAD priorities interacting with the imperative of rationalising Africa’s multiple RECs into the AU’s five recognised sub-regions. Here, a distilling of concerns and decisions emerging from the “Conference of Regional Economic Communities (RECs) Chief Executive Officers on NEPAD” held in Abuja, Nigeria, 29–30 October 2003 could be helpful as a point of reference for engaging issues that have major implications for coordinating interAfrican governance among and between RECs and RECs and AU/NEPAD: • The RECs as the “essential building blocks” for the integration and economic development of Africa; • Rationalising the multiplicity of RECs and member state alignments within RECs; • REC roles and responsibilities within the AU/NEPAD framework: how to motivate or facilitate NEPAD’s delivery at sub-regional, national levels; • Aligning NEPAD and REC programmes; and • Capacity-building and resource mobilisation. 19 These issues confronting the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee (HSGIC), in essence, reflect the preconditions that must be established for the effective administering of global governance in Africa through regional and sub-regional institutions. In this vein, the preconditions established by NEPAD for national governments (“Conditions for Sustainable Development”) – peace, security, political and economic (and corporate) governance; sectoral priorities; and mobilisation of resources – extend to the effective administering of governance at the sub-regional and continental levels as well. Harmonising priorities and programmes between and among REC Member States, the RECs themselves and NEPAD will enhance the effectiveness of administering regional integration overall and the delivery on goals that have been agreed upon. REC restructurings aimed at such harmonisation has been at the centre of several REC institutional initiatives over the past few years.


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Institutional Progress in REC/NEPAD Harmonizing In West Africa, ECOWAS has designated itself a ‘NEPAD development community’, as a means of focusing Member States’ priorities on a sub-regional integration programme built around NEPAD emphasising good governance, public-private partnerships and conflict prevention. This has resulted in a NEPAD Focal Point being established within the ECOWAS Executive Secretariat. This has been complemented by national NEPAD focal points of ECOWAS member governments, thereby constituting something of a ‘meso-governance’ level of connectivity between Member States, the larger west African sub-regionalisation process and external actors supporting this process.20 A similar process has been underway within SADC regarding the adoption of a Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) for restructuring SADC and its secretariat into four directorates: trade, industry, finance and investment; food agriculture, natural resources; social and human development and special programmes; and infrastructure and services. This reorganisation was coupled with SADC undertaking a study of its new organisational structure as a means of operationalising the new structure involving a review of personnel issues and policies, procedures and regulations. While ECOWAS has established its NEPAD focal points at secretariat and national levels, coordinating NEPAD programmes and priorities among SADC Member States should gain momentum through the activating of SADC National Committees (SNCs) by member governments.21 Additionally, however, South Africa has complemented southern African regionalisation through SADC with its own crossborder Spatial Development Initiatives (SDIs) and Trans-Frontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) that are intended to deepen integration and, in the process, link the subnational regions of cooperating States in new layers of development administration and project management interacting with provincial and local governmental spheres of authority within these countries. This is suggestive of a whole ‘meso-governance’ terrain within SADC which also includes transport-communications corridors and other areas of cross-border/inter-state sectoral cooperation and functional entities like the Southern African Power Pool. The EAC, on the other hand, appears to be emerging as the focal point of a consolidated NEPAD sub-region of “Eastern African Countries & Indian Ocean Island States” (comprising overlapping memberships in the following RECs, as well as the EAC: Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa/COMESA; InterGovernmental Authority for Development/IGAD; the Indian Ocean Countries /IOC; and SADC to which Mauritius and Tanzania belong).22 Coordinating NEPAD programmes and priorities within and between Member States and RECs is being facilitated by a Nairobi-based NEPAD secretariat for this consolidated sub-region. This unfolding East African approach to country-REC-NEPAD harmonisation is seen as a promising sign of institutional progress that will facilitate the implementation of NEPAD Short-Term Action Plan (STAP) projects and perhaps, over time, help in rationalising the sub-region’s REC profile viz-a-viz multiple REC memberships. Institutional progress toward the more effective administering of regional integration through country-REC-NEPAD harmonisation will facilitate urgently needed

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investments by development partners in the continent’s priority infrastructural development initiatives. Here, delivering on regional integration implies African institutional capacity to generate resource mobilising momentum for infrastructural development; infrastructure being one of the strategically critical requirements for advancing the continent’s integration and, flowing from that, economic recovery and dynamism. This process will advance Africa’s development of larger sub-regional markets for attracting increased trade and investment and, in the process, enhance Africa’s role in south-south cooperation. Leveraging a ‘Variable Speed’ Approach to Integration Beyond shorter-term project objectives being accelerated through harmonisation, sub-regional market development toward higher levels of regional integration will also demand increased institutional capacity and development. The Southern African Customs Union’s post-apartheid overhaul into a more equitable administering of benefits among member countries (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland), by the establishment of a multilateral trade administration, points in this direction. This, in turn, should facilitate the customs union’s progressive expansion into a SADC Customs Union, thereby, advancing southern Africa toward a higher level of integration. The same possibilities are contained in the EAC’s protocol which launched an East African customs union in January 2005. In both cases, this sets up another incentive – in addition to country participation in NEPAD projects – for African governments to move beyond the stagnation of neo-patrimonialism, toward more effective governance. If there is a ‘variable speed’ approach to future EAC’s customs union expansion and to SADC’s implementation of the free trade area in 2008 and customs union in 2010, this opens up a heretofore unavailable opportunity for leveraging good developmental governance. Specifically, the AU, in articulating the final draft of vision of its commission emphasised that “integration at variable speed should be conceivable” within a context where “integration momentum should be embarked upon by groups of countries that will serve as the engine of integration within and among the Regional Economic Communities (RECs)…”23 Under a ‘variable speed’ approach, accession to customs union membership, in both cases, would require prospective Member States to harmonize economic and corporate governance policies and practices and, by implication, attend to more sensitive domains of political governance. This integration through conditionality could enhance NEPAD’s leverage within the framework of the APRM.24 Of course if, in the case of SADC in particular, the 2008 and 2010 targets are based on the assumption that all SADC members should simultaneously buy into more advanced levels of economic integration, leverage could well be diluted. 25 Furthermore, given the unevenness in developmental governance among Member States, this could hold regional integration hostage to those least prepared and/or committed to comply with the process.


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The Question of AU/NEPAD Integration and Related Issues Meanwhile, alongside, REC/NEPAD harmonisation, a related challenge in “fleshing out” the AU’s institutional architecture, is NEPAD’s institutional integration into the AU system; a sensitive issue in terms of full African ownership of NEPAD and, by implication, South Africa’s relations with the Addis Ababa-based AU Commission in terms of its mentorship of NEPAD. This is an issue that has obvious implications for the smooth administering of the overall regional integration process; in particular, how the RECs relate to the AU, as well as to NEPAD in the institutional and operational development of African integration. This is also where the issue of capacity enters the picture. While the AU, in 2003, provided a three-year window for NEPAD’s integration into the Commission’s Addis headquarters, the pressure for “maximum ownership” by the AU raises legitimate concerns about how effective NEPAD can be in its delivery within an AU structure which is, itself, below capacity. Even with the capacity that NEPAD’s current Midrand domicile brings to it in terms of profiting from South Africa’s considerable institutional and skills background (re: “swaths of economists and engineers and political theorists in universities and think tanks, as well as in the administration…”), NEPAD, on its own is struggling to gain more impetus through securing more partnership deals on the substantial infrastructure initiatives it is promoting in conjunction with other institutions such as the African Development Bank (ADB) and the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA).26 One line of opinion holds that NEPAD needs to be allowed to gain sufficient momentum in the delivery on such initiatives, so that when it does become absorbed into the AU’s expanding institutional complement, it is “handed over as a going concern rather than as a limping infant.”27 From the perspective of effectively managing regional integration, “the key to expanding the AU’s influence may then lie not in taking on formal control of programmes for which it does not yet have institutional capacity, but to build up that capacity, first by ensuring that it is better funded,” a point on which South Africa and others on the HSGIC have given the uppermost priority.28 Donors, meanwhile, seem more forthcoming on funding the AU’s peace and security agenda – an urgent necessity as a precondition for building developmental momentum – though “the difficult part will be to find the massive resources needed for the social and economic parts of Nepad’s programme.”29 From an institutionalcultural transformation vantage point, this may not necessarily mean that a phased process of AU/NEPAD institutional integration should not move forward. By the end of 2004, progress toward sorting out the modalities of this integration exercise could reinforce tendencies favouring NEPAD’s integration within the AU as an autonomous entity. This would be comparable to the UN’s autonomous branded agencies like the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Moreover, this autonomy does not mandate their centralised headquartering within the UN’s New York-based administration. Similarly, there is a feeling that NEPAD need not become another cog in the AU’s centralised bureaucracy in Addis Ababa. Rather, it is felt that the AU will

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benefit from NEPAD’s branding as a programme that focuses on its core mandate as the continent’s economic development and investment framework. Toward that end, NEPAD’s peace, security and political governance pre-conditions may be confirmed as functions best implemented by the AU Commission, given what are seen as its comparative advantage in these areas. Such a disaggregated realignment of NEPAD functions could accommodate and facilitate broader programmatic synergies between the AU and NEPAD with resonance for administering regional integration at the REC/NEPAD level. Given the complementarities and a degree of overlap between NEPAD’s political and economic governance preconditions – apart from its infrastructural initiatives – and the calabashes of the AU’s Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation for Africa (CSSDCA), there is no reason why programmatic synergies could not be promoted between these two programmes in conjunction with the AU’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC). For good measure, such a process could be informed by a further mainstreaming of the African Charter on Popular Participation in Development and Transformation. The fact that the ECOSOCC is being organised as something of a popular assembly of African civil society indicates that such mainstreaming is already underway. By emphasising the importance of participatory governance, The African Charter encompasses civil society and the private sector with government in what, in essence, should define the optimum governing partnership. An AU programmatic initiative aimed at instituting a bottom-up international review of the charter within the ECOSOCC framework, starting at the REC level and implemented under the joint sponsorship of CSSDCA and NEPAD along with ECOSOC, could kick-start such an all-inclusive process. Giving life to this charter, within the context of building synergies between the CSSDCA and a more economically focused NEPAD programme, could provide the means for opening up a more participatory ‘bottom-up’ dimension to NEPAD, programmatically, and to the AU’s overall development. Linked to such REC/NEPAD structures such as the NEPAD focal points within ECOWAS or the SNCs of SADC, this process would ensure that regional integration moves beyond being a ‘topdown’ inter-governmental enterprise to one more inclusive of the non-governmental and private sectors and African civil society as a whole. This could foster a broader sense of regional citizenship and identity amid RECs grappling with such thorny issues as the free movement of people across borders. African Administrative Governance: The Capacity-Building Problematic Referring back to the October 2003 Abuja conference of REC chief executives on NEPAD, there was broad agreement stressing that “the speed of implementation of programmes adopted under the NEPAD framework should be accelerated and that this is hampered by the limited capacity of the principle coordinating and/or implementing institutions particularly the NEPAD Secretariat, the RECs and national Governments.”30 Articulated in such comprehensive, multi-tiered terms, “capacity-building” is a central, if not critical, precondition for effectively administer-


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ing global governance in Africa through the implementation and management of regional and sub-regional integration. Manifestly, however, capacity-building extends beyond the human resources. It also encompasses institution-building, systems design, organisational structuring (and re-structuring), creating conducive policy environments, networking and resource mobilisation, as well as attitudinal change and facilities development – all constituent components in a capacity-building matrix. Taken all together, this matrix confronts the continent with an enormous task in their being synergised for the purposes of administering global governance as it relates to Africa. In resource mobilisational terms for NEPAD implementation, this will have to translate into a multipronged process of Africanising the process of initiating and implementing African capacity-building initiatives on the continent. These are estimated to cost US$4 billion annually in underwriting approximately 400,000 international experts who constitute the core of professionals leading such exercises. 31 Resource Mobilisation I: Networking Capacity-Building To redress this situation, resource mobilisation under NEPAD involves more than generating the financial means to support project implementation. At least of equal importance is the coordinated mobilising and deployment of African institutional and human resources. This necessitates networking of inter-African institutional partnerships and African professional expertise geared to implementing NEPAD’s multi-sectoral priorities within the context of harmonised REC/NEPAD priorities. To some extent, this is already happening through African development financial institutions interacting with one another and with the RECs to generate a momentum in harmonising and implementing NEPAD priorities, as is reflected in the infrastructural initiatives of the STAP. For such a networking process to develop more depth in terms of maximising African capacity (as opposed to dependence on external expertise), there should be a greater involvement of African higher education institutions. Their interaction with African national, sub-regional and continental institutions within the governmental domain, as well as with sector-relevant African research organisations and individual and institutional actors in the non-governmental and private sectors, could facilitate the consolidation of African resource capacities. The Harare-based African Capacity-Building Foundation (ACBF) has been called upon to serve as a resource for financing targeted human resources development and capacity-building within the RECs, in order to accelerate NEPAD implementation. In this regard, the ACBF’s role can be augmented by complementary initiatives. One such undertaking is the East African Regional Consultation on “Enhancing & Aligning Africa’s Human Assets and Institutional Strengths With Africa’s Capacity Needs” involving the University of Witwatersrand (through its Centre for Africa’s International Relations capacity-building project), in conjunction with counterpart institutions in the EAC.32 Besides targeted skills training and professional enhancement of African human resources, the networking which is involved in such consultations can further a range of interrelated objectives as the East African initiative aims to do. Among other things, it is intended to:

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• Provide a platform for policy-makers from ministries of finance and planning, and higher education together with university strategic planners, to share experiences and aspirations for NEPAD-relevant capacity-building in East Africa; • Enable a discussion on how best to spearhead collaboration in order to align African higher education assets and institutional comparative strengths with national, sub-regional and continental needs; • Agree on terms of reference for comprehensive, enhanced needs assessments of partnering institutions, in light of challenges faced by Africa’s public and private sectors and civil society; • Establish a mechanism and process for implementing such collaboration beyond the consultative level (e.g. small secretariat, electronic newsletter, special taskforce).33 Ultimately, a more expansive higher education networking initiative, possibly, including the Association of African Universities and allied or affiliated subregional bodies, could be considered. This would expand on the East African Regional Consultation to generate similar initiatives in other sub-regions. From a broader NEPAD perspective, the human resource dimension to capacity-building relates to other NEPAD sectoral priorities. These include: • Poverty reduction; • Bridging the education gap; • Reversing the brain drain; and • Health. Resource Mobilisation II: Managing Human Resource Flows Among these priorities, devising strategies for reversing the brain-drain and/or networking the diasporas, that have emerged from this phenomenon in a manner that incorporates them into NEPAD implementation, should receive priority attention. Within the context of globalisation and the networking capacity it has unleashed, the global governance challenge facing Africa is that of managing human resource flows from and into Africa. This also entails managing financial inflows and deployment of expertise that which Africa’s immigrant and historical diasporas have in abundance. Thus, at this stage in Africa’s developmental history, much more than reversing the brain drain is at stake. This particular dimension of human resources mobilisation could be elaborated to enhance the operational effectiveness and delivery of the RECs as sub-regional vehicles of delivery and facilitation. A number of countries, as diverse as Ghana in West Africa to internationally unrecognized Somaliland, in the Horn of Africa, are already benefiting from their expatriates. They generate substantial revenues from remittances and are engaged in a steady stream of back-and-forth international travel linking various business, professional and community-based activities in which they are involved. Reversing the brain-drain and/or benefiting from expatriates abroad, at least in part, is what inspired the AU’s decision to recognise the African diaspora as Africa’s Sixth Region. This amendment of the AU’s constitutive act effectively incorporates


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overseas African immigrants and peoples of African descent into Africa’s regional integration framework. This decision inspires further policy dialogue, discourse and development relating to country-specific, sub-regional and continental approaches to the ‘sixth region’ (or sub-region). Such deliberations will need to define the parameters of the diaspora rigorously, as a means of developing appropriate outreach strategies for diaspora support, recruitment and deployment in implementing AU/NEPAD/REC/country initiatives. The AU, in conjunction with RECs and member governments, may want to proactively develop carefully considered outreach linkages to African diaspora leadership networks that inclusively recognise at least two sub-constituencies: non-African nationals of historical African descent, as well as African expatriate nationals. This would ensure that both diaspora sub-constituencies work cooperatively on behalf of Africa’s developmental interests. The African diaspora-derived states belonging to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) represent yet another dimension to our defining the AU’s sixth region. From a resource mobilising capacity-building perspective, there are any number of African expatriates, Afro-West Indians, African-Americans and others of African descent – especially retirees – who have professional, administrative or managerial expertise in any number of fields. They might be recruited on contract to fill senior administrative/managerial positions in African regional or sub-regional institutions and/or provide in-service or other kinds of training, within such structures or at national governmental levels as well. Resource Mobilisation III: Deploying Skills for REC/NEPAD Project Implementation The African diaspora human resources mobilisation dimension is simply one aspect of a broader policy emphasis. This is one that addresses the urgent need to recruit skilled personnel from other developing countries, including non-African countries, within a south-south cooperation framework to compensate for gaps in skills that limit institutional capacities to deliver. Such an outreach is aimed at enhancing African capacities, including the diaspora dimension. It extends the African regional integration enterprise well into the arena of global governance from within a southsouth exchange as opposed to a north-south dependency model. More importantly, capacity-building in the service of strengthening Africa’s selfmanagement of its development must be internalised to the maximum extent possible. RECs should be able to draw upon retired African civil servants with distinguished records of service to fill key posts and/or to transfer skills and experience as in-service trainers. The professional skills of retirees coming out of the NGO and private sectors could also be recruited within such a process. This would add NGO and private partnership dimensions to REC capacity-building. In such instances, reversing the brain-drain could be complemented by REC member states formalising a system of recruiting retired civil servants and/or retired NGO and private sector individuals to REC secretariats within a dedicated REC/NEPAD coordination and implementation programme. The aim of such a

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strategy would be to mitigate the uncertainties of ‘temporary permanent’ secondments of civil servants from member governments pending the identification and recruitment of more long-term permanent African specialists for REC position from within their respective sub-regions. Such a programme could revolve around contracted, project-specific assignments and, among other things, entertain teambuilding dimensions in training and developing core REC/NEPAD project management capacity. Within such a framework, REC/NEPAD focal points and/or national committees could serve as the administrative interface for matching specific REC/NEPAD project needs with available skills from the civil service alumni of Member States or similarly from among NGO and private sector partners – or with specialists who might be recruited from the diaspora. This is where, from an administrative perspective geared to building capacity, the establishment of strong nodal points within each AU/REC Member State becomes critical in terms of how the regional integration process is approached at the national level. Such nodal points could, among other things, become national databank repositories on each country’s skilled and specialist human resources that could be fed into a sub-regional and continental human resource databank system. Such interfacing mechanisms of connectivity between (and among) Member States and RECs would strengthen the coordinating role of the RECs, reinforced by the identification and recruitment of African and/or diasporan skilled specialists for filling REC posts. The same would apply for NEPAD, which is also in need of beefing up its specialist staffing complement as a means of enhancing its coordinating interface role amongst the RECs. Beyond the human resource dimension, this framework might also facilitate the incorporation of a more popular participatory dimension to the development and transformation process, which is often not seriously factored into regional cooperation and integration initiatives. Again, here is where the neglected African charter on popular participation could play a role. Resource Mobilisation IV: REC Reconstruction and Development & Building Local Capacity Given the urgent infrastructural construction and rehabilitation needs confronting the RECs and their individual Member States, serious consideration should be given to coordinated labour intensive public works programming by African governments. At the continental level, the AU could motivate each REC to develop a Works Progress Administration with REC national committees and/or NEPAD national focal points serving as the designated implementing agencies. Their mandate would be to coordinate labour intensive public works projects that might emerge as components of or as spin-offs from NEPAD infrastructural initiatives.34 Such a framework might facilitate more localised community-based participation in such schemes by recruiting the youth and the unemployed into reconstruction and development ‘brigades’ for undertaking basic rehabilitative or construction projects. The ECOSOC’s development of a social reconstruction component to accompany such initiatives could immeasurably enhance such undertakings. Beyond that, such a strategy could link with the promotion, at national level, of decentralised grassroots


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development activities. Such activities might come on stream as part of a broader matrix of national-to-REC and/or cross-border reconstruction and development schemes allowing for the building of local capacities at the community level. In the case of DBSA, which is already intimately engaged in NEPAD implementation within SADC, it is also being called upon to play a greater role in forming partnerships with poor municipalities, to become more “proactive and take more risks to build capacity in poor, institutionally weak areas of SA.”35 This was called for with reference to revenue collection. But there is no reason why such development finance institutions could not go further in establishing special grassroots development funding facilities.36 Their aim would be to work in partnership with local governments and authorities, grassroots community organisations or associations, NGOs and/or the private sector in supporting grassroots development initiatives linked to broader national and sub-regional development objectives. 37 Regional Integration Transition Management: Africa’s Evolving Governing Framework Building capacity at the sub-regional level for REC delivery within a global governance context raises an additional and very fundamental issue for the AU and the RECs: that of arriving at the desired level of REC institutionalisation. Should REC secretariats be beefed up at the risk of bureaucratisation or should they facilitate spin-off structures for addressing specific challenges (e.g. river basin commissions)? The choices here are not necessarily mutually exclusive. However, they pose a fundamental identity conundrum within the larger context of regional integration operating as the interface between national governance and global governance. Administering Regional Integration as ‘Effective Bureaucracy’ The rationale behind some, if not all RECs (certainly in the case of the SADCC which became SADC), was to avoid developing costly, top-heavy bureaucratic structures that, in effect, would duplicate or rival the national departments of Member States. The problem, now, however, is that the AU’s emergence out of the OAU presents Africa with a continental proto-government (which the OAU was not), with ancillary organs like the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) and a central bank and common currency for the continent. The RECs, in effect, become potential sub-regional proto-governments (replete with sub-regional parliaments/legislative assemblies) in something akin to what AU Commission Chairperson Alpha Konare has likened to a union ultimately “built around a confederation of States consisting of Africa’s five sub-regions”, accompanied by the “free movement of peoples and the establishment of a common African passport.”38 Here again, in harking back to AU’s vision, it is foreseen that “the powers of the State will have to be transferred, in part or in totality, to a supra-national organ” wherein “political integration should be the raison d’etre of the African Union, the objective being to achieve federation or confederation in the long run.” 39 As futuristic as this may appear, projected African demographic trends, where it is estimated the continent will reach more than 1 billion by mid-century, are likely to

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propel such an evolution in governance, sooner or later. New more effective structures will be required to manage the interdependencies of intra and inter-state political and economic stability, as well as the interconnected ecosystems containing the energy and natural resource endowments upon which inter-African economies are based. Under such circumstances, the administrative imperatives of conflict prevention, mediation, management and resolution are likely to be at a premium. Thus, administering the governance of African regional integration will have to incorporate scenario contingency planning in anticipation of the challenges that will have to be managed as the AU system evolves along with a still fluid configuration of RECs, many with overlapping memberships. Among other things, this is likely to include revisiting the adequacy of the current REC secretariat structure and framework in delivering “public goods” to citizens who will not only be citizens of Member States but of larger sub-regional entities, as well. In the real world, these are considerations that are already belabouring the SADC restructuring process, as reflected in the reported comments of Botswana President Festus Mogae, at the 2004 SADC summit in Mauritius. Pointing out that SADC is good at making decisions which are never implemented, he is reported to have said that “the progress that has been achieved in adopting principles and making decisions must be reflected on the ground…We should be as good as our word. For words are like leaves: where they most abound, little fruit of substance resides.”40 These comments were interpreted as reflecting how much of SADC’s problems may lie “at the bureaucratic level, where most of the key positions remain unfilled despite having been advertised in 2001”. This prompted President Mogae to speak of how most SADC secretariat staff “had become ‘permanently temporary’; a demoralising situation” 41. President Mogae warned that “without an efficient bureaucracy… SADC would not be able effectively to carry out its newly adopted economic development blueprint, the Regional Indicative Strategic Development” which has been aligned with NEPAD.42 This reported statement by President Mogae reflects back on the crisis in the recruitment of skilled African and diasporan professionals and specialists to fill, not only key REC posts, but those of NEPAD as well. SADC’s predicament is indicative of the capacity-building challenges facing African regional integration. It shows how REC member governments will have to cooperate more closely in the recruitment, deployment and development of human resources – African, diasporan, as well as from other parts of the developing world – devoted specifically to executing REC/NEPAD mandates. President Mogae’s critique of the functioning of SADC speaks directly to the administrative imperatives of making regional integration in Africa work for ordinary Africans. By implication, RECs may face no choice but to ‘bureaucratise’ their secretariats in the process of “RECs evolving to the confederal stage.”43 Within the process envisioned by the AU, the administration of regional integration would evolve “from intergovernmental management to confederal and, later, federal management.” 44 This in turn would “dictate the evolution of the African Union, that is from intergovernmental management with transfer of sovereignty, followed by confederal management leading to federation…”45


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Toward Regional Integration Transition Management Ultimately, it “is needful” according to the AU, “to establish an organic relation between the Commission and the Secretariats of the RECs; and the latter should ultimately transform themselves into regional Commissions.” 46 RECs would, in effect, evolve into sub-regional integration communities (or RICs); a process that will challenge RECs and their member governments, in conjunction with the AU Commission to very consciously scope out a medium-to-long-term Regional Integration Transition Management process. Such a process should be holistic, integrated and inclusive of the type of AU/REC programme integration required between, for example, NEPAD and CSSDCA; one that should involve inputs from the AU’s ancillary organs such as ECOSOCC, PSC and the Pan-African Parliament, as well as the envisioned “Council on the Future of the Union.” Here again, REC nodal points for NEPAD or REC national committees could play a role in developing programmatic synergies which move in the direction of implementing the AU vision in a manner that would also build and enhance inter-African institutional synergies. Programmatic synergies and institutional synergies should be mutually reinforcing. As the AU “fleshes out” its evolving governing framework, special attention should be given to the development of the emerging organisational framework for the African diaspora sixth region. This ‘region’ potentially links the administration of African regional integration within the larger realm of global governance, given the global dispersal of African expatriate nationals and the peoples of African descent. It has become imperative in terms of resource mobilisation in the service of NEPAD implementation, in both human and financial terms and with a view to building greater support constituencies for Africa throughout the world. Not being a REC, the non-state African diaspora could, nevertheless, develop into a RIC by way of the type of coordination framework that once obtained in southern Africa under the old SADCC. Hence, a ‘coordination conference’ might be explored – in conjunction with diaspora members – by the AU, the RECs and governments in search for an optimum framework for building synergies between Africa and the diaspora which would do justice to its rich diversity. CARICOM, as an inter-governmental organization of diaspora-derived state actors, is a REC. As such, it could be offered special status as an associate REC within the AU, while linked to an overall AU diaspora coordinating framework. To effect this process, the AU and the RECs should consider the establishment of a regional integration transition management team embracing Africa and the diaspora. Because of the need to ensure that regional integration transition management is a constantly proactive process of planning, exerting an influence on how decisions are made and implemented within African governmental and inter-governmental institutions, such a team may need to be centred in the envisioned council on the future. This council could serve as a think tank linked to a training institute or network for team-building purposes. Whatever the way in which such a council is structured, regional integration transition management should be established as an interactive relationship between the AU Commission and a decentralised network of sub-regional integration transi-

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tion management teams. Such teams would draw upon ‘the best and the brightest’ among intellectuals, professionals and practitioners from a variety of fields that RECs and member governments can draw upon both from within the public and private sectors and civil society. Non-governmental ‘think tank’ inputs from such organisations as the Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation (which has already developed a political federation blueprint for an expanded EAC), would also be critical in such team-building. The role of such teams need not, and should not be purely futuristic. Rather, they could serve a very real and practical function of clarifying ‘the way forward’ on many REC decisions that have already been made and are in need of accelerated implementation. Such ‘real time’ relevance could also contribute to sorting out confusions that may exist as to REC roles and priorities viz-a-viz economic integration versus peace and security imperatives and/or both of these concerns and their need to be harmonised with the NEPAD agenda. Sorting Out Priorities and Managing Organizational Proliferation Addressing these concerns within the context of an evolving inter-African governing framework is important, given the observation of some practitioners close to REC/NEPAD interactions, that economic integration is not necessarily the primary motivation behind a country’s membership of a given REC and that indeed it explains multiple memberships. On the other hand, the role of RECs, from the perspective of administering NEPAD-related regional integration, may need to be separated from their affiliated peace and security organs. This, in turn, might provide sharper resolution to ‘security communities’ as sub-regional pillars of the AU/PSC. The aim: to delineate more clearly the spheres of economic integration as the function of RECs from the primarily political and security function of security organs. As economic communities evolve into integration communities within the AU envisioned confederal framework, these discrete functions – economic and security – could better co-exist as different but complementary and interrelated governing dimensions of the envisioned RICs in sub-regional federations within a loosely confederated AU. A closely related concern is the bedevilling issue of overlapping REC memberships and geographical jurisdictions. This may require re-defining and/or prioritising geopolitically overlapping RECs. A case in point may be the relationship between the Kenya-Tanzania-Uganda EAC which – based on the vision of the Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation – would eventually expand to take in Rwanda, Burundi and DRC and the recently revived Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries (CEPGL) encompassing these countries.47 As a peace-building initiative, revival of the CEPGL is to be welcomed as a potentially stabilising factor in what is a still unsettled region. Before its collapse in 1998, it included a development bank of the Great Lakes and a Great Lakes International Electricity Company, as well as a Great Lakes Energy Organisation, all of which are intended for reactivation.48 There existed an inter-state security commission for the region as well. There is no reason why CEPGL’s revival should further complicate the AU’s REC rationalisation hopes if the EAC were to serve as an overarching RIC-integration nodal point for greater East Africa within the AU/NEPAD


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sub-regional framework. CEPGL could serve as a Great Lakes east-central African sub-community within an expanding EAC. Ultimately, the question to be answered will be whether or not Congo-Kinshasa and Tanzania remain in SADC or opt for the EAC. Alternatively, countries with overlapping REC memberships might choose between different levels of engagement in sorting out their degrees of integration into one or another economic community in its transition to an integration community. Tanzania, for example, could conceivably align itself with the EAC as it evolves into a RIC while remaining in SADC, but limiting its SADC involvement to either an economic and trade engagement or to a purely security involvement. Being a member of the East African Legislative Assembly, Tanzania could opt out of an eventual SADC legislative assembly. In short, while the AU vision seems headed toward a variable speed preference in achieving higher levels of integration, the AU – and the RECs (as they evolve into RICs) – may need to consider differentiated country memberships to more than one REC as one option or component of a REC/RIC rationalising strategy. This would also be a possible means of reconciling a relationship between the Great Lakes CEPGL and the EAC and/or SADC. Yet another possibility in Africa’s evolving governance framework is the merger of different sub-regions. East and southern Africa, for example, form a natural geopolitical-economic axis. In fact, the organic connectivity of the two sub-regions is rooted in the continent’s paleo-history associated with man’s evolution. The more recent political history of the two sub-regions further reinforces these links. Both sub-regions also share in common customs unions which could potentially serve as focal points for applying a variable speed approach to regional integration within the AU/NEPAD framework. It is not far-fetched to contemplate a time when SADC and the EAC (including the Indian Ocean island states) might merge into a greater southeast African regional integration community, in the process, resolving long-standing contradictions between SADC (and possibly the revived EAC) and COMESA. Such a scenario, in turn, might give greater coherence to a northeast African/Nile Basin configuration revolving around IGAD’s evolution into an integration community. This would further reinforce a geopolitical process of reconciliation between Ethiopia and Egypt. While such prospects may bring more coherence to the process of administering regional integration, the need to clarify REC priorities and functions surrounding commitments to economic integration on the one hand, and building common security on the other, still requires that these two functions develop synergies in stabilising post-conflict situations. This realisation is increasingly being conceptualised as a tripartite linkage between governance, development and security as comprising a holistic governance matrix in the African setting. Developmental Governance: The Economic Integration/Common Security Nexus In what could be a further refinement of this definitional matrix, the regional integration process might be advanced by factoring in the concept of “developmental peacekeeping”, which was recently introduced by former South African Deputy De-

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fence Minister (and now Deputy Minister of Health), Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge.49 In a paper which proposed the creation of an “African action plan for developmental peacekeeping and reconstruction,” she noted the crucial disconnect between peacekeeping missions and post-conflict reconstruction and recovery. 50 To overcome this gap, developmental peacekeeping would be distinguished from conventional peace support operations in two ways: “First is the focus on human security. Traditional definitions focus on the application of security and military apparatus in ensuring the security of the State, as opposed to the security of individuals and communities. Second, developmental peacekeeping does not distinguish between peacekeeping and peace-building.”51 Developmental peacekeeping, as outlined by Deputy Minister MadlalaRoutledge, could conceivably go a long way toward building post-conflict stabilising synergies between NEPAD-driven REC economic integration and sub-regional common security concerns. In the process, within a broader evolution of integration communities, as envisioned by the AU, a developmental peacekeeping doctrine might well facilitate the necessary administrative linkages between discrete REC/NEPAD economic integration and sub-regional peace and security functions, tying in with the AU Commission and the Peace and Security Council. Such a doctrine would contribute to Africa’s articulating a broader, overarching, Continental Zone of Peace doctrine; one that might link peace and security within our continent to inter-oceanic imperatives of securing maritime traffic and commerce within and outside our territorial waters, protecting our marine resources and environment and combating terrorism and piracy. This doctrine would link Africa’s regional integration imperatives in the security field to the broader security dimensions of global governance and the type of multilateral cooperation it entails. Conclusion: The Global Governance/African Regional Integration Nexus The linkage between administering global governance and delivering on African regional integration extends across the entire gamut of the continent’s human security challenges. These are the challenges that must be addressed in fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals. Since many international organisations and institutions have regional presence on the continent, their operation in helping us address these challenges forces us to revisit the issue of transforming the institutional governance cultures throughout African institutions at all levels. It touches directly on how administering global governance affects the lives of ordinary Africans. The challenge this entails is perhaps best illustrated by an opinion piece which recently appeared in one of South Africa’s major dailies under the heading: “Political club or African health agency? The World Health Organisation’s African regional office needs to be transformed.” In terms of the administrative nexus between global and regional governance, the author observed that “WHO’s regionalised structure, where real, albeit limited, authority is vested in the regions, is clearly preferable to the more centralised organisation of other UN agencies…”52 Then, going into the need for transformation in the workings of the regional office: “WHO/AFRO’s weaknesses are typical of a large organisation: ineffective and self-serving central management and demoralised and unsupported rank-and-file staff. At the heart of the re-


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gional office’s ineffectiveness is its acting as a political rather than a technical agency. Recruitment of senior staff is rarely based on competence or qualification. In particular, appointments of country representatives, who should coordinate WHO efforts in their countries are often paybacks for political or other favours. The regional office thus has strong, some might say incestuous, relations with African governments at the ministry level, to the extent that senior health ministry officials see WHO/AFRO as their future retirement home. As a result, the culture of leadership within the regional organisation tends to be autocratic, excessively bureaucratic, and highly centralised – a culture that dismally fails to motivate staff at the country level.”53

Among the remedies proposed, it is suggested that “there are strong arguments for decentralisation of WHO/AFRO to at least four or five sub-regions.”54 Apart from the fact that this would align the organisation with the sub-regionalisation of AU/NEPAD and its health sector agenda, “such action could allow better assessment of the array of health problems within the 46 countries that make up the African region and more tailored support to struggling country offices.” 55 Whatever the actual dynamics operating within the WHO/AFRO, its case is illustrative of the broader challenge facing the interrelationships between global governance and African regional integration. This situation is not limited to Africa. Throughout the world, all international organisations and multilateral institutions are fraught with variations along the same theme of tensions between satisfying local political pressures and imperatives versus accommodating the meritocratic demands for ensuring effective delivery. In the African context, NEPAD is intended to help African governments rise above such short-term political parochialisms and move toward more objective criteria governing the functioning of governmental and inter-governmental institutions, programmes and processes. The extent to which such politically-driven institutional cultures are transformed will accelerate progress in other areas which have been touched on in this chapter: building local, national, sub-regional and continental capacities in the acquisition, maintenance and development of competent human resources; rationalising subregional governance in implementing the AU/NEPAD agenda; building synergies between inter-African programmes and institutions and the development and implementation of coherent African integration initiatives; and reinforcing this regional integration momentum with more effective interaction between global institutions and their regional programmes and offices in Africa and AU/NEPAD. Progress on these interrelated fronts will dialectically impact on Africa’s ability to manage its own diversity in a manner that contributes to transformative empowerment of the global south in a changing world order. This will entail the forging of genuine interregional partnerships transcending the ‘two global villages’ divide in the interest of global peace, security and the delivery of global public goods to the most disadvantaged of our citizens, the world over. Notes and References 1

Richard Higgott, “Public Goods, Global Governance and Private Actors: Learning from the WTO,” unpublished paper prepared for the International Institute for Administrative Science: task Force on Global Governance, April 1, 2004, pp. 2–3.

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“Approaches to poverty eradication and economic development: Beware of the Natives!” ANC Today, October 14, 2004, pp. 4. H.E. Ato Meles Zenawi. Contribution by Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia at a Symposium Organized by the ADB on NEPAD. Addis Ababa, 27 May 2002. pp. 11–12. “SA can grow without foreign investment: Economist calls for new attitude to FDI and its role in country’s economic development,” Thisday, August 27, 2004, p. 14. Ibid., p. 14. Alex de Waal, “The African state and global governance,” openDemocracy.com, May 30, 2003. p. 2. Article from a collection of essays published by the foreign policy centre (www.fpc. org.uk) entitled Unbinding Africa: Making globalisation work for good governance. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 3. Goran Hyden, “The Governance Challenge in Africa,” In: G. Hyden, D. Olowu, H.W.O. Okoth Ogendo, eds. African Perspectives on Governance, Africa World Press, 2000. pp. 1–32. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., p. 17. Francis C. Enemuo, “Problems and Prospects of Local Governance,” In: G. Hyden et al., eds. p. 186. Peter Wanyande, “Structural Adjustment and Governance,” In: G. Hyden et al. p. 238. This definition is taken from the World Bank 1994: vii. See reference to “administering governance,” by Anthony Makrydemetres in “Administering Global Governance: a normative dimension,” among the collection of unpublished papers of the International Institute for Administrative Sciences: Task Force on Global Governance, 1994, p. 4. A comprehensive comparative review of REC/NEPAD alignment problems and issues is contained in NEPAD: Infrastructure Short-Term Action Plan (STAP): Review of Implementation Progress and The Way Forward. Tunis, The African Development Bank Group, 2003. pp. 72. Anthony Makrydemetres, Chapter X below. NEPAD Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee. Conference of Regional Economic Communities (RECs) Chief of Executive Officers on NEPAD, Abujja, Nigeria, October 29–30, 2003. pp. 19. Summary proceedinga of the confrerence. NEPAD. NEPAD Infrastructure Short-Term Action Plan (STAP): Review of Implementation Progress and The Way Forward. Tunis, The African Development Bank Group, 2003. p. 9. Section surveying the achievements of different RECs in promoting NEPAD. Ibid., pp. 23–28. Also: F. Kornegay and C. Landsberg. South Africa’s Role in Regional Integration and United Nations Support: Exploring a Relationship. Johannesburg, October 2002. pp. 49. Unpublished paper on the SADC restructuring process, featuring the planned role of SNCs in developing SADC national constituencies within member states. Ibid., pp. 19–20. Also: Diagram outlining the NEPAD consolidation of RECs encompassing “Eastern African Countries & Indian Ocean Island States.” African Union. Vision of the African Union and Missions of the African Union Commission: Final Draft. Addis Ababa, March 2004. p. 18. The issue of variable speed integration was discussed here within the context of the role of AU parliamentarian participation in a process of political integration though generally, ‘variable speed’ is applied to economic integration. There is an interesting discussion of “Europeanization as Conditionality,” in an unpublished paper by Richard Ek titled “From Democracy to Dromocracy: The European Citizen in an Age of Mega-Corridors,” The Department of Service Management, Lund University, Campus Helsingborg, Box 882, S-251 08 Helsingborg, Sweden, 2004. See, for example: “Common Tariff Vital, Says Customs Chief,” The Times of Zambia, August 17, 2004. (allAfrica.com) Cites comments by Zambia Revenue Authority Customs and Excise Commissioner, Kingsley Chanda on how the adoption of common external tariffs are essential in formation of a “full Customs Union” and that “The SADC Customs Union is scheduled for


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2010, two years after the full implementation of the SADC Free Trade Area scheduled for 2008.” “AU seeks to bring Nepad fully under its control,” SouthScan Vol. 19, No. 14, 9 July 2004. p. 3. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 4. Op. cit. Summary of Proceedings of the Conference on Regional Economic Communities… p. 7. In section on “Strengthening the Capcity of RECs and NEPAD Secretariat” of communiqué of October 29–30, 2003 Abuja conference. East African Regional Consultation on Enhancing & Aligning Africa’s Human Assets and Institutional Strengthes with Africa’s Capacity Needs: Nairobi, Kenya, 28–30 September 2004. p. 1. Draft report and planning paper on East African capacity building consultation under Wits University, Centre for Africa’s International Relations capacity-building project, outlining rationale, objectives, stakeholders, comparative strengths of educational/training institutions and participation from the EAC, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda. Ibid., p. 1. Ibid., p. 2. Reference to a ‘Works Progress Administration’ is based on the Roosevelt New Deal programme by this name, which was part of a plethora of employment generation and public works initiatives established as temporary emergency measures to overcome the Great Depression. This reference is purely illustrative. “Development bank ‘must take more risks’,” Business Day, August 17, 2004, p. 2. Reports comment by SA finance minister Trevor Manuel. The African Development Foundation, an independent U.S. government agency, with its own congressional appropriation (since 1984), is mandated to provide direct funding to grassroots, community-based projects without channelling funds through intermediary organisations, American private voluntary organisations or host-country governments (though the foundation does not operate in countries with government agreement). Another take on the same themes regarding India is providede in “Riddle of good governance: India has world-class skills, but government services in most areas are failing miserably,” by Andy Mukherjee, Thisday, Johannesburg, August 18, 2004. (Bloomberg) Suggests that “to improve governance India needs more decentralisation” where “elected associations of villagers would know local priorities better than provincial governments…”. Adekeye Adebajo, “A ‘Western wolf in African sheepskin’,” Mail & Guardian, November 14–20, 2003, p. 15. Comments on confederal vision articulated by AU Commission chairman in course of discussing concerns about AU/NEPAD relationship. African Union, op. cit. p. 18. S’Thembiso Msomi, “Not the neighbourhood bully: South Africa should quit treading so carefully and give the Southern African region the leadership it needs….” Sunday Times, August 22, 2004, p. 21. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., p. 21. African Union, op. cit. p. 21. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., p. 24. “CEPGL: Great Lakes countries get their act together,” Africa Analysis, London, No. 452, 23 July 2004, p. 17. Ibid., p. 17. Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, “The future of African peacekeeping: the current failed approach emphasises military solutions as opposed to developmental economics,” Thisday (Johannesburg), July 15, 2004, p. 11. Article was an edited version of a keynote address to the African Defence Summit. Ibid., p. 11. Ibid., p. 11.

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Pierre Virot, “Political club or African health agency?” Thisday (Johannesburg), August 11, 2004, p. 11. This article first appeared in Elsevier (The Lancet, 7 August 2004, Vol. 364, No. 9433). Ibid., p. 11. Ibid., p. 11. Ibid., p. 11.

Adebajo, Adekeye, “A ‘Western wolf in African sheepskin’,” Mail & Guardian, November 14–20, 2003, p. 15. African Capacity Building Foundation. Quarterly Newsletter. Harare, vol. 1, no. 1, 1st quarter 2004. Maiden issue of the newsletter of the African Capacity Building Foundation: “ACBF 2004 Programs: Taking Africa a Step Further in Capacity Building for Development Management and Poverty Reduction.-“ACBF and NEPAD Secretariat sign Memorandum of Understanding for collaboration and partnership in capacity building in Africa.-“Knowledge Management: The Role of the African Union (AU) in Realizing Africa’s Renaissance,” interview with Ambassador Vijay S. Makan (Ex-interim Commissioner of the AU). African Development Bank Group. NEPAD: Infrastructure Short-Term Action Plan: Review of Implementation Progress and The Way Forward. Tunis, Tunis Temporary Relocation Agency, ADB, 2003. pp. 72. African Union. Vision of the African Union and Missions of the African Union Commission: Final Draft. Addis Ababa, March 2004. Argyriades, Demetrios (rapporteur of the Working Group). The Human Factor… Globally. “AU seeks to bring Nepad fully under its control,” SouthScan vol. 19, no. 14, 9 July 2004, pp. 3–4. “CPGL: Great Lakes countries get their act together,” Africa Analysis, No. 452, 23 July 2004, p. 17. De Waal, Alex. “The African state and global governance,” In: Unbinding Africa: Making Globalisation Work for Good Governance. www.fpc.org.uk. 2004. pp. 10. Online article in www.openDemocracy.com. East African Regional Consultation on Enhancing &Aligning Africa’s Human Assets and Institutional Strengths with Africa’s Capacity Needs. Johannesburg, Centre for Africa’s International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand, 2004. Draft (unpublished) report pertaining to forthcoming September 28–30, 2004 consultation. Held, David. “Globalisation: the dangers and the answers,” May 27, 2004, www.openDemocracy.com. Online publication: “The crisis of globalisation.-“The Washington Consensus.-“From the Washington Security Agenda to a human one.-“Towards a New Global Covenant.-“A Global Social Democratic Consensus.-“The Argument Laid Out as a Diagram.” Himbara, David. Weak State Capacities in Sub-Saharan Africa: Achilles’ Heel to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. Johannesburg, 2003. pp. 4. Unpublished concept paper pursuant to proposal to the Centre for Africa’s International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand. Hyden, Goran, Dele Olowu, Hastings W.O. Okoth Ogendo, (eds.) African Perspectives on Governance. Trenton, N.J. Africa World Press, 2000. pp. 323. Landsberg, Chris. The United Nations: Fighting for a Rules-Based Global Order. Johannesburg, 2004. pp. 5. Submission to UN panel of Eminent Persons on UN-Civil Society Relationships. Madlala-Routledge, Nozizwe, “The future of African peacekeeping: the current failed approach emphasises military solutions as opposed to developmental economics,” Thisday, Johannesburg, July 15, 2004, p. 11. Msomi, S’Thembiso, “Not the neighbourhood bully: South Africa should quit treading so carefully and give the Southern African region the leadership it needs…,” Sunday Times, August 22, 2004, p. 21. NEPAD. Conference of regional Economic Communities (RECs) Chief Executive Officers on NEPAD, Abuja, Nigeria, October 29–30, 2003. pp. 19. Summary proceedings of conference of the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee (HSGIC). Panel of Eminent Persons on Un-Civil Society Relationships. We the Peoples: Civil Society, the UN and Global Governance (Draft Report). New York, 2004. pp. 47. Panel of Eminent Person’s


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draft report to the UN Secretary-General on “enhancing the interaction between the UN and civil society, including parliamentarians and the private sector…” “Symposium on quality governance for sustainable development,” by Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, guest editor, in: International Review of Administrative Sciences, vol. 69 no. 4, December 2003, pp. 463–533. Contents: “Quality governance for sustainable development: India’s obligation to set a model,” by V. Subramaniam.-“Between the ‘governance’ model and the Policy Evaluation Act: New Public Management in Japan,” by H. Kudo.-“Governance and diversity within the public service in Canada: towards a viable and sustainable representation of designated groups (employment equity),” by B. Benhamadi.-“Values for public service: lessons learned from recent trends and the Millennium Summit,” by D. Argyriades. Virot, Pierre, “Political club or African health agency?” Thisday, Johannesburg, August 11, 2004, p. 11. Zenawi, H.E. Ato Meles. Contribution by H.E. Ato Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia at a Symposium Organized by the ADB on NEPAD. Addis Ababa, 2002. pp. 22.

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Chapter VIII A Quest for Improving Global Governance: A Japanese Perspective from the View of Crisis Management Akira Nakamura∗ Introduction Convenient and appealing, the term governance has become international, even though it eludes precise definition and has various connotations in different cultures. In Japan, this catchword has received considerable public attention. A Tokyo publisher, for instance, has brought out a successful quarterly journal entitled Gabanansu (Governance). This carries articles relative to local government management. Part of its popularity seems to lie in its eye-catching title. One may hypothesise that had the magazine been called Local Government Management, it probably would not have generated as many subscribers. As this example shows, people find the term governance beguiling, possibly because it carries a sense of going beyond the seemingly worn-out systems of government. They utilise it perhaps without clearly understanding it (Pierre and Guy, 2000 provide a concise summary of the significance of the governance concept).1 In this respect, governance is in many ways akin to the term democracy. Both appear to rest on common global assumptions, although neither offers a universal definition that transcends cultural and historical boundaries. Similarly, both words are normative and value-laden, carrying a strong emotional appeal: in fact, calls for “democracy” have touched off revolutions and wars in recent times. Similarly, governance has recently become a buzzword representing one of the most important social prerequisites for improvements in developing countries. At least, this view is held by such influential funding organisations as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Unlike democracy, the definition of governance has not yet been tested through strenuous intellectual and empirical discourse. The word itself is relatively new in the area of public management. It carries varying overtones for both leaders and voters. Moreover, it is culturally and geographically bound: for instance, when a European leader speaks of governance, it does not necessarily carry the same ∗

Akira Nakamura, Dean of the Graduate School, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan.

A. Nakamura / A Quest for Improving Global Governance

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meaning as in Asia or other regions. It is also socially bound: civic leaders and citizens do not always share the same assumptions that are found in the term. In fact, the concept of governance has frequently been mobilised by those out of power to discredit the incumbent government. 2 Although by now, numerous studies on governance exist, especially in English, many of them offer only theoretical and conceptual perspectives with little or no practical application. 3 Various countries, developing countries especially, are searching for effective and practical solutions to the governance problem; yet many academics and practitioners from the developed regions continue to discuss governance in an isolated conceptual incubator. The author of this paper believes this situation to be unfortunate. He contends that the idea of global governance ought to be examined in a real and empirical context. He similarly argues that the intellectual debates must be conducted with reference to actual and concrete examples; otherwise, debate will not produce practical outcomes which relate to the needs of the various countries concerned. Accordingly, this chapter deals with empirical and practical questions regarding governance on the global arena. From this writer’s vantage point, the idea of governance is inextricably linked to an effective set of international accords. International laws appear to be a critical means of facilitating global governance and of introducing order to the relationships among different countries. Unfortunately, however, global agreements all too often disclose serious flaws. Amazingly, these flaws frequently impact local authorities, while they also introduce disorder in global relationships. The central argument that some international accords are defective and fail to function as tools of global governance is supported by actual cases of international incidents involving Japan’s central and local governments. In light of these deficiencies, global governance has suffered; a situation which has been exacerbated by an increasing number of countries which neither honour nor comply with international accords in critical policy areas. Furthermore, this chapter focuses on relationship between global accords and local governments, since the local dimension of global governance has not been closely studied. To date, many arguments about the governance issue have been confined to discussions regarding the relations among sovereign States. The chapter highlights the significance of local government to a proper understanding of the global governance concept. It maintains that, under current conditions, international agreements do not sufficiently protect local authorities and argues that, in fact, local government often undergoes hardships because of prevailing discords. They frequently incur serious financial burdens, due to the lack of effective global accords. To demonstrate these points, the chapter will present two recent incidents of crisis management in Japan, both of which are fully germane to the debate on global governance. The first is an oil spill caused by a Russian tanker in 1997, when the vessel ran aground off the coast of the Sea of Japan. The second, another shipwreck in 2002, was caused by a North Korean cargo boat which sank off the shore of the Ibaraki Prefecture, approximately 100 kilometers north of Tokyo. Although a large number of preventive global accords are in effect, the risk of serious accidents remains very high. Taking these different issues into consideration,

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this chapter argues that there is an urgent need for a set of new international rules. A fresh global mechanism is necessary to help prevent crisis situations on the international level in the future. A new world order is needed to establish a solid basis for expanding global governance in the next decades and beyond. International Order: Old and New From the days of Hugo Grotius, international agreements have been expected to perform two major tasks: to bring order to relationships among different States and resolve outstanding conflicts between them. Most nations have respected international laws and consider them as legitimate global canons of conduct (pacta servanda sunt); thus, international accords have formed the basis upon which global governance has grown and has been consolidated. Recently, however, there has been a new trend on the international scene. International agreements and negotiations to that effect have traditionally been the realm of sovereign States, as subjects of international law. Various countries worked to produce international rules to which they would be bound. Local governments, however, were omitted from these discussions and international negotiations, presumably on the assumption that central governments would prudently craft international treaties and rules which would benefit authorities on the subnational level. Implicit in this reasoning was the notion that governments make no mistakes and are equipped to know and to defend the interests of local governments. There is, however, evidence that demonstrates that some international agreements do not invariably help local authorities, in fact, can have effects that are harmful on the sub-national level. This is actually the case in Japan. There were many pitfalls and problems in the global accords concluded by the central government. These have quite often resulted in serious liabilities for several local authorities. Recently, in addition, several international regulatory agencies have begun to bypass national government and to directly affect the affairs of local governments, so that in lieu of the national government, local entities must deal with international organisations on global issues. This is a new unprecedented and unanticipated trend. One example of this situation involves an incident over indemnities resulting from oil spills and shipwreck accidents. In the negotiations which followed, the role and functions of national government emerged as somewhat diminished, while those of local authorities came to the forefront, despite the fact that the issues were of a global relevance. Nakhodka: Ran Aground and Spilled Oil On 2 January 1997, a 27-year-old, run-down Russian oil tanker, Nakhodka, carrying a crew of 31, ran aground off the coast of the Sea of Japan. With a load of 19,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, it was en route to a remote northern city, Petropavlovsk, in the Kamchatka Peninsula. When it went aground, the ship immediately began to spill oil into the ocean. This oil eventually reached the coast of the Fukui and Ishikawa Prefectures, both of which have been famous for their beautiful


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beaches and rich marine life, including precious crabs and yellowtails. As in many previous instances, the oil spill from the Russian vessel ravaged the ecology of the region, killing birds and other animals, while it also contaminated the magnificent coastline. The final tally showed that more than 1,300 birds had perished. Aside from the ecological damage, several industries suffered as a result of the accident. Both the fish and hotel industries were hit very hard by the contamination; farmers experienced difficulty selling their crops because of rumors spreading that they had been polluted by the oil spill (Tanigawa, 1997: 185–191). Local governments in the region mobilised all their equipment and manpower to try to stem the onslaught of leaking oil. After the disaster was aired on TV, a large number of volunteers rushed to the scene. In cooperation with the local authorities, they helped save marine life, while they also tried to clean the oil-stained beaches. In the final count, more than 250,000 volunteers were involved in the clean up campaign of the coastal area. Unfortunately, the fumes from gas and oil proved hazardous to volunteers, five of whom died during the clean up operation (for details, see the homepage of the Fukui Prefecture, http://www.erc.pref.fukui. jp/news/oil.html). The central government agencies found it structurally difficult to initiate a quick response to the incident, for two particular reasons. According to Japanese regulations, if the leaked oil had drifted and remained in the ocean, the matter would become a concern of the Japan Coast Guard. However, if it reached the shore, jurisdiction would then move to the Ministry of Health and Labour, as the incident would impact the health of residents in the affected area. In fact, several other agencies including Agriculture, Environmental Protection, Infrastructure, and Transportation, can also be involved, a fact which often leads to inter-agency rivalry and competition. Furthermore, the stranded craft, Nakhodka, was a Russian vessel. The incident, therefore, developed into a diplomatic wrangle, in which the Foreign Ministry would serve as a conduit for Japanese local authorities to seek damage compensation. This international dimension further complicated the rescue effort and intensified the strife among bureaucratic fiefdoms. For these reasons, national agencies did not respond to the disaster as quickly as might have been expected. (Kaijo Hoan Cho: [Coastal Guard], 1998). A Global Accord to Restore the Damage Whenever an oil-filled tanker runs aground, an oil spill may be the outcome. Once this happens, the primary responsibility to contain and clean up the damage rests with the owner of the vessel. However, the oil spill expands to vast areas; the cost to eradicate the contamination becomes enormous. Consequently, the proprietor may not be able to bear the massive cleaning expenses, although, as a polluter, he should bear unlimited liability. Because of this problem, a number of international arrangements have been worked out. In 1971, the International Maritime Organisation adopted a global accord, the “International Convention on the Establishment of an International Fund for Compensation of Oil Pollution Damage.” In accordance with this agreement, the International Maritime Organisation created an international funding association in 1976, named the International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund (IOPC Fund).

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The funding arrangement has been amended several times since its inception. Under the current plan, the basic principle remains intact: the owner of a vessel has unlimited responsibility for any damages caused by oil pollution. The owner is, therefore, encouraged to carry an independent insurance policy in order to meet the costs arising from unexpected contingencies. Ordinarily, the owner would buy insurance from the Ship Owners’ Mutual Protection and Indemnity Association. In addition, the proprietor of the vessel is also required to subscribe to the IOPC Fund insurance. When a calamity occurs, the Fund covers part of the damage compensation. The reparation that the Fund dispenses is limited to a residual amount after the ship owner has exhausted all financial means available to him/her. By these methods, the IOPC Fund tries to alleviate the financial burden on the ship owner. Aside from the owner, countries which transport more than 150,000 tons of oil per year are similarly obliged to donate funds to the organisation. As of 2000, 56 countries participated in this plan, pooling funds and thus contributing to the smooth operation of the IOPC Fund (Regarding the IOPC Fund, see details on its homepage, http://www.iopcfund.org/). Prior to the Nakhodka case, the IOPC Fund had been involved in several major maritime accidents. Mostly notably, it underwrote the expense of the damage caused by a Russian vessel, Antonio Gramsci, in 1979. It also helped defray the cost of clean up of the spill caused by a French cargo ship, Tanio, in 1980. Past experience indicates that the negotiations for damage compensation are usually painstaking, as well as time-consuming. The Nakhodka case was no exception. In 1999, several law suits were filed at the district court level, in different parts of Japan, against the firm which owned the vessel in question. The plaintiffs included the Fukui and Ishikawa Prefectures, as well as other local authorities that had suffered from the oil spill. Fishing firms, hotels, and Kansai Electricity and Power followed suit, and in addition, Japan’s central government agencies decided to bring the matter to civil trial. The total amount of compensation claims from both the private and public sectors reached ¥35 billion (approximately US $350 million) (For previous settlements and Japanese law suits, see the homepage of Kokudo Kotsu Sho [National Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry] in http://www.mlit.go.jp/kaji/yudaku). Another Shipwreck: A North Korean Vessel Similar to the Russian case, a North Korean cargo vessel, Chil Song (3,144 tons), shipwrecked off the coast of the Ibaraki Prefecture, on 5 December 2000. The result however was quite different from that in the Russian vessel case. The incident took place in an area approximately 100 kilometers away from Tokyo, facing the Pacific Ocean. The ship had loaded 1200 tons of fuel chips made of worn-out car tires in Nagoya and was on its way to North Korea. When at risk, the Chil Song sent out the international distress signal for maritime rescue, SOS. The Ibaraki Prefecture, which was the closest to the scene, immediately took action in accordance with the international convention. It alerted the police and the coast guard and asked them to help the stranded North Korean ship. In the meantime, the government also placed all staff members on red alert and prepared them for any contingencies.


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On 13 December, eight days after the wreck, twenty-one crew members disembarked at Hitachi City. The prefecture accommodated them in a Japanese inn, and provided them with food and other amenities. On 22 December, 10 days after the rescue, the Ibaraki government chartered a bus and drove the crew to Niigata Airport, where they boarded a Russian flight and left for Vladivostok en route to Pyongyang. All the related expenses were paid by the Ibaraki Prefecture. A major problem arose after the crews took off for North Korea. In March 2001, the wrecked ship fractured in two, and began to spill engine oil into the ocean. The oil spread to the coastal beach, causing damage to marine life in the entire region. The prefectural government, in cooperation with other municipalities, mobilised resources and tried to contain the oil spill from spreading further. Then another problem surfaced: it turned out that the ship had been provided with only a small amount of damage insurance. Since it did not subscribe to any international agreement, the maximum coverage it carried was one million yen (about US $12,000) for the damage. This was grossly insufficient to cover the cost of clean-up operations. The Ibaraki Prefecture subsequently contacted the ship owner and requested compensation. In response, the Ibaraki government received a facsimile message from North Korea stating that the owner of the ship was abandoning the vessel, leaving it to the Ibaraki Prefecture to dispose of it as it liked. The message also clearly indicated that the proprietor was incapable of covering the clean-up cost associated with the shipwreck. In fact, the message said to the government, “Do whatever you please with the cargo.” (All of the information relative to the Chil Song incident is supplied by Mr. Katsutoshi Izawa, who is a member of the Prefecture Assembly of Ibaraki. A brief description can be found in Yomiuri Shimbun, June 20, 2003). Diplomatic Wrangling and Different Approaches to Damage Restoration In the case of the Nakhodka accident, the Russian government was uncomfortable with the whole process of Japanese legal claims. From the Russian perspective, the mishap was a diplomatic issue, and as part of bilateral diplomacy, the Kremlin believed that the Japanese Foreign Ministry had first to notify and consult with the Russian government. The Russians also felt that not only had the Japanese bypassed the Kremlin, but they also made direct contact with the private shipping firm. They perceived this behaviour to be a gross violation of diplomatic courtesy and trust on the part of Japanese. Conversely, the Japanese government felt that Russia’s understanding of the incident was unfortunate. In the eyes of the Japanese, because a private firm had caused the oil spill, the shipping company should be held accountable. The Japanese took the whole matter to be a civil law issue that had little to do with diplomacy. This diplomatic wrangling generated an exchange of formal letters and official documents between the two governments that extended the negotiations and delayed the final solution by more than four years. In the Russian case, another issue of significance emerged when the Japanese requested an indemnity payment from the IOPC Fund. Like any other insurance company, the IOPC Fund tried to offer the minimum compensation possible. It held that some restoration of the environment and basic restitution of industrial

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capacity were adequate. The organisation was reluctant to cover the cost of sophisticated equipment in the clean up operations and was also unwilling to compensate for the potential loss of business profits in the affected area (Fukui Shimbun, January 4, 1997). The Japanese prefecture and other local governments had a different perspective. They hoped to bring the spoiled and soiled environment back to its original state and, to meet this objective, were not hesitant to utilise the necessary funds and the latest expensive technology, as long as full rehabilitation seemed possible. On the business side, January – when the accident occurred – is one of the best and most profitable seasons for the region. The oil leak completely ruined business and, as a result, both fishing and the hotel industries demanded full compensation and the maximum payment for losses of both actual and potential earnings. Under the legal proceedings in this case, each litigant group first negotiated with the ship owner and its agent. Most of the claims reached an out-of-court settlement. However, the amount that the owner of the vessel could provide was too low, in contrast to the original claims put forth by different claimants. The process would then shift to the IOPC Fund for the indemnity payment; however, in accordance to an international understanding, the maximum amount that the IOPC Fund could offer was limited; approximately US$ 250 million. This contrasted with US$ 35 million, which was the total mount that the Japanese groups initially demanded (Mainichi Shimbun, April 19, 2000). After more than five years of negotiations, a final settlement was reached in 2002. Japan’s central government received a total of US $150 million, while local authorities secured US $59 million. In addition, private concerns were paid a total of US $56 million for their losses. Some of the compensation paid to the central government was transferred to the coffers of local authorities (For the final settlement, see Home Page of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, http://www.mlit.go.jp/kisdha/kisha02/10/100830). The Plight of Japan’s Local Governments In the case of the North Korean cargo ship, the damage totaled ¥638 million (US $620,000). The Ibaraki Prefecture asked the ship-owner, Wolbisan Company, to pay this amount, and to remove the wrecked vessel. The only response to these demands was the facsimile message, which as already stated, said in effect that the owner was no longer interested in the fate of the cargo. Consequently, the Ibaraki Prefecture had to deal with a serious international problem with grave financial implications. It became apparent that the North Koreans were unwilling or unable to pay the cost of the disaster and would not come to Japan to take the boat away from Ibaraki. Given this situation, the Ibaraki Prefecture took action, dismantling the cargo and selling the wreck as scrap metal. This fetched ¥17 million (US$163,000), only a fraction of the compensation required. At this point, the central government came to the rescue, promising to pay half the cost of removing the stranded ship and underwriting half of the expense of the cleanup. With these subsidies, the central government hoped to alleviate the financial burden of the prefectural government. Nonetheless, in the final tally, the prefectural government still ended up


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bearing approximately ¥100 million (US$800,000) of the total cost (This information is based on the interviews with public officials in Ibaraki Prefecture on December 13, 2004). The incident involving the North Korean vessel triggered several changes in procedures followed by the Ibaraki Prefecture. The Prefecture had acted on the SOS call and taken measures to rescue the troubled ship, a standard humanitarian custom. Had the Ibaraki Prefecture ignored the signal, it would have garnered world wide criticism. The incident was much more complicated than it appeared, however. The ship was underinsured – not an unusual practice; in fact, the Japanese learned later that a large number of vessels, especially from developing countries, are uninsured. The Ibaraki government realised that no global accord was in force that would prevent uninsured cargo ships from visiting foreign ports. In this respect, the international agreement was flawed. The Ibaraki Prefecture decided to call for an improvement in the international accord to address this issue, but recognising that any reform would not likely be put in to effect quickly, it also decided to implement an independent action. As soon as the Chil Song affair was closed, the prefectural government announced a new regulation prohibiting uninsured or underinsured vessels from utilising harbours in the Ibaraki Prefecture. The regulation held that any vessel intending to visit Ibaraki ports would have to bear the total cost of damages in the event of an accident (Doboku Bu [Civil Engineering Division], Ibaraki Prefecture, 2003). Japan’s central government was also looking to the problem, realising that no global regulation existed to control uninsured or underinsured vessels in foreign harbours, and that a similar accident with similar repercussions might take place anywhere on the globe. The central government recognised that the incident in the Ibaraki Prefecture might well be repeated elsewhere and that local governments would be the first victims of any mishap. For the Japanese, North Korean vessels were especially worrisome, as they were frequent visitors to the country’s ports, but mostly underinsured. The Japanese government feared that the Chil Song incident could be repeated in other harbours of the country, at some future date. On 1 March 2005, the Japanese government amended The Oil Pollution Liability Insurance Law. Under this amendment, any ship over one hundred tons is obliged to carry a minimum of ¥100 million (US$960,000) insurance. It also states that any vessel intending to visit a Japanese port must clear its entry beforehand with the port authority, and that the government reserves the right to make on board safety inspections of the vessel (Asahi Shimbun, March 7, 2005). Global Governance and Lessons from These Episodes While the two cases outlined above are country-specific, both the development and the resolution of the incidents may produce globally significant changes. To start with, the shipwrecks revealed defects in global accords. In the case of the North Korean vessel, the Ibaraki Prefecture took action according to the prescribed norms of international practice. The International Maritime Salvage Act spells out that when a shipwreck is likely, any vessel can send a distress signal and expect rescue from any country: such has been the standard global code of humanitarian conduct and behaviour. However, this international code has left the

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resolution of the exorbitant expenses incurred in the rescue unstated. Under the current arrangement, it is often local concerns and governments that end up bearing the brunt of the salvage operation expenses. Furthermore, the existing global agreements on marine salvage remain fuzzy as to who should be accountable for damage to the environment and business activity. The Russian case highlights another flaw in the current global conduct mode: even when a vessel carries insurance, this may not be enough to cover the expenses or to reimburse those who have been affected. An oil spill can result in exorbitant costs to local governments, residents and firms, which may end up having to absorb the expenses generated by the damage. While sovereign States are parties to the international agreements, local authorities – with little prior involvement in global accords – may end up being saddled with the burden of the costs of international mishaps. In this sense, it may be argued that the existing international codes are lopsided and lack balance. Global accords must be reviewed and reevaluated in light of the role and functions of local governments. Sub-national levels of government need to be given a voice in this age of globalisation. An official in the Ibaraki Prefecture once remarked half jokingly that if another underinsured vessel was wrecked in the area, he would pretend not to listen to the international distress signal from the ship. Instead, he would wave off the boat and tell it to sail to neighbouring prefectures. Faulty global accords can cause major repercussions for sub-national units of government. Not only in Japan, but also in other countries, local governments have increasingly been involved in international disputes, and often fared poorly. Worse still, local entities often are the ones to suffer because international agreements are inefficient and ineffective, as well as impractical. Because of such cases, related policy issues can no longer be the business of sovereign nations alone, nor should they remain exclusively in the hands of professional diplomats. Local chief executives and local elective members alike must recognise that the global exchange of goods and services calls for an active role of sub-national units of government in international relations. In the future, far worse than any shipwreck, an accident in a nuclear power plant could cause havoc for local authorities. Increasingly, countries in Asia have turned to nuclear energy. In addition to Japan, China, India, Taiwan, and the Republic of Korea (ROK) are currently utilising nuclear power generators. In the not-too-distant future, Bangladesh, Pakistan and North Korea will most probably join their ranks. Currently, China has nine nuclear generators and plans to build an additional two in the next few years. The ROK has 18 nuclear power generators in use. As of July 2003, Japan claimed 52 nuclear generators. It derived 20% of its energy from nuclear sources. Regarding nuclear power, a score of international agreements have been reached and are operational. Nuclear power plants are closely monitored by both the individual countries and by international organisations, including the International Atomic Energy Agency. Most of these global accords require central governments to be the major agents responsible for any occurrences in nuclear power plants. Theoretically at any rate, these international agreements presume that central governments would initiate and coordinate all efforts to deal with the effects of an accident if it should ever occur in a nuclear power generator. However, the


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Japanese experience shows that it might not be the national government, but rather a local authority which would be the first responder and the major agent to alleviate the crisis. In this respect, existing global agreements need additional finetuning. On 30 September 1999, a private firm, which specialised in handling nuclear materials, brought about the worst atomic mishap in the history of post-war of Japan. Two workers in the plant mistakenly created a dangerous self-sustaining chain reaction usually known as nuclear criticality, and perished as a result. In addition to the loss of these two workers, a large number of people in the plant were also exposed to nuclear radiation. Eventually, the accident began to affect the neighbouring communities, creating unrest and confusion. The situation was exacerbated by the firm’s failure to report the problem to the authorities until 50 minutes after the incident. A chief executive officer of the Tokai Village, where the catastrophe took place, decided to announce that residents should evacuate the potentially polluted area. He took this measure independently of his senior officers, including the central government. As it turned out, neither the prefectural nor the national government were quick enough to initiate action as necessary in order to help ease apprehension among the local inhabitants. This experience demonstrates that, in a crisis situation, the government closest to the scene is the most important in dealing with the emergency. This is a significant lesson to the global community. International accords on nuclear energy rest the power of control and management of crises in the hands of central governments. However, reality points to a different direction (Donnelly has a concise description of the nuclear accident in Tokai Village. See Donnelly, 2000). Concluding Remarks This chapter has dealt with the issue of global governance from two different perspectives. Firstly, it has pointed out that some international agreements may be defective and, consequently, not able to function well as tools of global governance. Secondly, it has also made clear that while local authorities are not usually involved in the establishment and conclusion of important global accords, they are frequently the ones most affected by these agreements. To substantiate these arguments, this chapter drew on two actual cases. The shipwrecks have demonstrated that local government in Japan stood true to the principle of international safety and rescue when it responded to the international emergency code SOS. However, the same government was the loser as the ship owners and the country of registration rejected or ignored the Japanese claim for damages. It is important for the global community to realise that, under present circumstances, no international order exists to penalise the polluting culprit. Not unlike shipwrecks, the possibility of a nuclear energy accident looms large in Asia and beyond. If this happens, dangerous fallout will cover many areas in the world. Contrary to what existing international agreements prescribe, local governments including those in Seoul, Beijing, Manila, Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo would have to take action against the problem. The central government would not be able to deal with the problem as effectively as that of local authorities.

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Considering these probabilities, this chapter has argued that new international accords should be established in different areas of contingency management and that they must include local governments from different countries as major partners. Otherwise, the present deficiencies in global codes might continue to cause problems for governments on the sub-national level. Similarly, the global community must make a concerted effort to deal with the countries which take insufficient cognizance of codes of international behaviour. They set a bad example. Notes and References 1

2

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In Japan, it has become a fad to include the term governance in the titles of books or articles relative to political science and public administration. However, some of these publications appear to have little or nothing to do with the governance concept – the term seems to have been adopted simply for its eye-catching appeal. One of the examples would be a book called Seisaku to Gabanansu (Public Policies and Governance). It pretends to deal with the governance issue; however, the book is about explanations of various public policies in the country. This author has the impression that in Europe, an idea of governance often implies a fresh set of institutional building. The invention of the new system to run society is what the expression governance seems to entail. In the European context, therefore, the role and function of NGOs tend to be regarded as critical. In Japan, by contrast the word connotes improvement of the performance of government. Increasing “Governability” is an essential component of the Japanese version of governance. One of the best introductory books on the subject is by Rhodes (1997).

Doboku Bu, Ibaraki Ken (Civil Engineering Division, Ibaraki Prefecture) (2003), Kita Chosen Kamotsu Sen (Chil Song) Zasho Jiko ni kansuru Shiryou Ichiran (A List of Documents Relative to the Incident of the North Korean Cargo, Chil Song). Donnelly, Michael (2000), “Nuclear Blight in Japan: Criticality at Tokaimura.” This is found in its total form in http://www.iar.ubc.ca/centres/cjr/jsac2000/donnelly.pdf. Gyosei Kanri Kenkyu Senta (1999), Gyosei no Kiki Kanri ni Kansuru Chosa Kenkyu II (A Research on Crisis Management in Government: Volume 2), Tokyo: Gyosei Kanri Kenkyu Senta. Kaijo Hoan Cho (Coast Guard of Japan) (Eds.) (1998), Heisei 9 Nen Ban: Kaijo Han Hakusho (The White Paper of Coastal Guard of Japan: 1998 Edition), Tokyo: Okura Sho Insatsu Kyoku. Nakamura, Akira (1982), Cities Unplanned: The Failure of City Planning in Pre-war Japan, Bulletin of the Institute of Social Sciences (Meiji University), 4(2). Nakamura, Akira and Dairokuno, Kosaku (1999), The Age of Public Management Reform: The Rise of Non-Profit Organisations in Japan’s Local Public Administration, in National Institute for Research Advancement and National Academy of Public Administration (Eds.), The Challenge to New Governance in the Twenty-First Century: Achieving Effective Center-Local Relations, Tokyo: NIRA. Nakamura, Akira (2000), The Need and Development of Crisis Management in Japan’s Public Administration: Lessons from the Kobe Earthquake, Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 8(1). Nakamura, Akira (2001), Preparing for the Inevitable: Japan’s Ongoing Search for Best Crisis Management Practices, in Uriel Rosenthal, R. Arjen Boin and Louise K. Comfort (Eds.), Managing Crisis, Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas. Peter, Jon and Pierre, B. Peters (2002), Governance, Politics, and the State, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.


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Rhodes, R.A.W. (1997), Understanding Governance, UK: Open University Press. Tanigawa, Hisashi (1997), Nahotoka Go Ryushutu Yu Jiko to Hoteki Mondai The Nakhodka Incident and Legal Implications), Jurist 1117: 185–91. Asahi Shimbun Fukui Shimbun Mainichi Shimbun

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Chapter IX Modern Governance: A European Perspective Werner Jann As rightly already mentioned in the preceding chapter, governance is undoubtedly one of the most widely used catchwords of the last decade. By now, it is to be found in all kinds of combinations, e.g. as Global Governance, Public Governance, Corporate Governance, Third Sector Governance, Governance without Government, Multilevel Governance and so on. Moreover, is it used in varying contexts and all disciplines, notably economics, political science, public administration, sociology, management science etc. In the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), which monitors articles in important social science journals (including economics and management) world wide, the use of the term has risen by a factor of 30 since 1990. While in 1980, just 33 and in 1990 only 39 articles using the term were listed, there were more than 1100 in 2003. Of all articles, 0.03% used the term in 1990; by 2003 there were 0.75%. A recent search on the Internet yielded more than 15 Mio. hits. It would be truly a miracle if all this were translated into a clear understanding of the term. For some, use of the term is just a world-wide fashion; a global fad. Still, if a term can “catch” and spread around the world so swiftly, it must indeed fulfil a certain basic need. To gain a better grasp of the context and conditions of this world wide discourse and to further future learning and public action accordingly, we should take these developments seriously. It may be a kind of fashion, but it really tells us something about our understanding of how the world is changing and why; what is growing more important and where we should be looking for new solutions to old problems. Originally, the term was used by economists concerned with different institutional arrangements to coordinate social behaviour, like markets, hierarchies and clans. To all intents and purposes, it entered the debate and became politically popular through the Commission on Global Governance, which was established by the United Nations and delivered its report Our Global Neighbourhood, in 1994. However, as the present chapter shows, both terms “Governance” and “Global Governance” still carry diverse meanings. At the same time, it seems obvious that, in order to understand the issues pertaining to administering global governance, one has to realise how the term is variously interpreted in different parts of the world and cul-

W. Jann / Modern Governance: A European Perspective

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tures. Our purpose is to show how “governance” is used and has already acquired a distinctive connotation in the European context. In Europe, this chapter will argue, the term is used to indicate a new direction in the ongoing debate about the future role of public administration and public services and the overall role of the public sector and “the State” in a modern, knowledgebased and democratic society. The term denotes a shift away from the narrow conception of “Public Management”, which dominated the scene during the eighties and nineties, towards a more holistic, inter-disciplinary, participation-and-cooperation oriented view of public administration. The chapter is not concerned with the academic and analytical debate about the term, 1 but tries to understand and shed light on the ways in which the concept has been used in a broadly normative, prescriptive, even politically loaded fashion by practitioners, in both the public and private sectors. Basic Political-Administrative Concepts Since WWII: Germany as an Example The public discourse on governance is, at its core, about the appropriate structures, processes and roles of public administration and the public sector at large. Thus, it is also about the shifting boundaries between the public and the private spheres; between governments and markets; between civil society and individual citizens. As with other popular social concepts, like democracy, planning and management, issues are culture-bound. They are highly controversial, not merely between, but also within cultures, nations and communities. The argument regarding the bureaucratic, participative, flexible, or deregulated government; or the model of the minimal, lean, active and enabling State highlight some of these controversies. If we look at public sector reform during the last decades, different paths or trajectories have been identified, like marketisers, modernisers, maintainers etc., which indicate how nations have reacted in different ways to the world-wide movement or fashion of public management.2 At the same time, however, it seems that certain notions of public sector reform have been more influential than others at certain periods of time. If we take Germany after WWII as an example, we can distinguish broadly four different phases, each characterised by certain common themes, catchwords and shared concerns. Using generic labels, we can identify them respectively as the periods of the democratic, the active, the lean and the enabling State. There is evidence to show that analogous developments can be found in practically all other European countries. 3 The first phase, which begins in the early 1950s, comes after the worst problems of the war had been overcome. It was not so much concerned with the efficiency or effectiveness of public administration or of the public sector, but mostly with democracy and the rule of law. Considering the German experience before and during WWII, during the Nazi dictatorship and even the Weimar republic, this is not at all surprising. Public administration, before and during the war, had actually been competent, efficient and effective but in supporting dictatorship, in suppressing democracy and persecuting minorities; indeed in organising and running concentration camps. Accordingly, the main concern, during the initial period after the war, was not so much efficiency, but democratic governance, the rule of law and democratic

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control of public administration and guidance for public services. The main concern was the “democratic deficit and failure” of the old public administration, which surrendered to and, in many ways, actively collaborated with a barbarian dictatorship, with only few exceptions and very little resistance. Not surprisingly, the main reform concepts of this period were inspired by classical ideas on the democratic State, like parliamentarism and pluralism, together with the rediscovery of the Weberian model and corresponding notions on public sector reform, i.e. the model of a legally and hierarchically organised public administration. Only after these critical elements were regarded as secured, did new concerns emerge. They were labelled the “active state”. “Planning” became the catchword, starting in the mid 1960s. At least in Western Europe, this was the period of consolidation and enlargement of the modern Welfare State. Not democratic failure, but rather market failure was seen as the main problem. Government, the public sector and public administration gained in importance and size. They were given wider functions and more complicated tasks in all forms of public service. There was a swell of optimism about what a strong, well-organised government and public sector would be able to achieve. Accordingly, the main debate about the public sector centred around the problems of planning, implementation and the evaluation of public sector programmes. What can be done to enhance the problemsolving capacities of public sector agencies? That was a major concern. One popular approach, especially favoured by economists, consisted in technocratic planning systems (e.g. PPBS, in the US). Similar ideas emerged in Germany and other European countries. This period coincided with the first wave of ambitious and far-reaching public sector reforms and corresponding commissions in much of Western Europe. In reality, the active state and modern welfare state were never uncontested. In Germany, however, it is only towards the end of the 1970s, after many disappointments over large government programmes and a looming economic crisis (in the wake of the oil crisis), that a new vision of the public sector gained ground. It came to use the label lean state. Increasingly, the government and public sector were seen not as the solution, but rather as the source of many social ills. The private sector, by contrast, suddenly emerged as a model and served as inspiration for public sector reform. Management became the new catchword, and “bureaucracy” the villain. It was no longer market, but bureaucratic failure, which administrative policies were called upon to address. For many, indeed, the problem was viewed as government and state failure. Staatsversagen became a popular term and concept in Germany. New Public Management (NPM) emerged as the new, widely traded reform idea. It should, of course, be noted that NPM was not attractive only to conservatives and neo-liberals, who had been suspicious of the active state all along, but also some proponents of the Welfare State, because it promised “a government that works better and costs less”. NPM thus offered hope both to critics and supporters of strong government and public service. To be sure, the well-known concepts of public managerialism, like cost accounting, benchmarking, outsourcing, privatising are still very much with us and remain prominent. However, both in Germany and other countries in Europe, since the mid 1990s, a new concept of reform has rapidly gained ground: that of the enabling


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state. No longer was the public sector portrayed as the source of all, or at least most of our evils; increasingly attention was paid to shortcomings in societal problem solving. Thus, the focus shifted sharply from bureaucracy to “society failure”. Civil society, “social capital”, “partnerships” and “participation” became the trendy catchwords; and it is in this connection that the new, normative and prescriptive concept of Public or Modern Governance gained prominence and relevance. Obviously, these remarks only provide an outline of what is a complicated and always contested history; they are more like a caricature than the true picture of a development process. Discussion about the scope and structure of public administration and public sector reform inevitably turn into controversies on broader political issues. Furthermore, these various phases and ideologies overlap. They are not as clear cut as they were made to appear. History does not move in neat stages. However, the introduction of models like the above can help us understand what has shifted and where the important changes have occurred. Finally, one should bear in mind that these concepts are building on each other. Democracy and the rule of law did not wane in importance in the “active” Welfare State, and the same holds true for efficiency, benchmarking and managerialism in the modern governance concept. Historical and political processes can be interpreted as cyclical, as always oscillating, as swinging back and forth between extremes, or as learning curves, where new concepts try to address and eliminate the shortcomings of the old. It is this second notion which underpins, at least in my understanding, the new concept of governance. The Shift from Public Management to Public Governance In order to appreciate the fundamental shift which, in Europe, has transformed the notion and discourse on governance, it is helpful to contrast it with the New Public Management, which all but dominated the scene in the 1980s and 1990s. To be sure, New Public Management never emerged as a unified and coherent school of thought, but rather as a complex assortment of ideas and theories, sometimes in contradiction with one another, though always mostly inspired from private sector practice. Nor have its diverse instruments and concepts been uniformly applied in Europe. Quite to the contrary.4 However, there remains a common theme, which has exerted a unique and extraordinary influence on public sector reform in Europe. The principal problem which NPM sought to address was the presumed inefficiency of the public sector. It is the presumption of failure of the “State”, “big government” or, of classical bureaucracy; the failure to deliver value for money which lie at the core of this approach. Traditional bureaucratic organisations are criticised, denounced and sometimes caricatured as “rules-bound”, as red tape and as organised irresponsibility. Instead of the traditional Weberian values of process, reliability, equity and responsibility, new values, like quality, service-mindedness, timeliness, and customer-orientation were stressed. This does not necessarily imply that old values became obsolete; rather they were superseded by other, presumed to be more important and deserving of greater attention. The public sector, so the prevailing assumption went, should be looked upon as business, public administration as a firm, and local government as a service (Dienstleistungskommune, in German). Like “lean” management in the public sector

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the lean State became the new paradigm. It should be noted also that much of this critique did not come from outside the public sector only, but often from within, from disillusioned and frustrated middle managers, who felt inhibited by too many controls and too little room for manoeuvre. Gradually, however, during the 1990s, these conceptions lost their dominance and shine. Catch phrases like civil society, social capital and the enabling State gradually became more prominent. It was no longer the efficiency of the public sector which was seen as the main problem, but rather its effectiveness. It was not only bureaucracy which appeared as the main obstacle to effective problem solving, but rather the organisational features of society itself. As this new approach would have it, it is civil society which needed to be strengthened and enabled to participate; it had to learn to work with public and private actors closely in tackling collective problems. New paramount values emerged: social, political and cooperation, cohesion and interdependence, public participation and civil engagement. Service was no longer seen as the only and foremost purpose of (local) government, but rather the organisation of civic participation and problem solving (Bürgerkommune in German). At the core of this new agenda we find a new set of assumptions on reasons for governmental failures and the underlying problems. The steering dilemma of the modern State, so this hypothesis goes, is not simply caused by state and bureaucracy failure, even though inadequate internal structures and processes certainly play a role and have to be remedied. Rather, they are produced by the inherent complexity and the interdependencies of modern societies. Individualisation, exclusion and fragmentation are first and foremost the results of rapid modernisation and wide differentiation in the modern world. To cope with the ensuing dilemmas not only does the State need to be changed, but new forms of interactions between the State and society have to be designed in order to bring about new modes of societal self-regulation. It is no longer just ‘state failure’, which lies at the heart of the problems of modern governance, but rather ‘community failure’. In order to cope with these problems, better patterns of negotiated public-private cooperation and coordination, both with market and civil society actors, are needed. While the NPM discourse focused exceedingly on public organisations, on their internal controls and steering mechanisms, as well as lack of incentives, the new governance approach has shifted its attention towards the coordination and cooperation of public and private actors; towards network management and the combination of different modes of steering and control, beyond markets and hierarchies. It is the interdependence of different public and private actors and the coherence of collective action, which gradually became the main concern. While for NPM, preferred solutions were very normally derived from private sector practice – with stress on decentralisation, contract management and modern instruments of financial and human resources management – the new governance approach concentrates on a new division of labour between State, market and civil society. New solutions were discerned in creating and reinforcing autonomous, selfregulated networks which generate ‘public value’ without the State. Accordingly, emphasis has been placed on the third sector lying between State and market. This


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includes associations, non-profit organisations, cooperatives, charitable groups and religious fraternities. This sector has been rediscovered together with civil society and accorded new prominence. In Germany, in particular, there is a public law-based discussion about a new concept of the modern State, the Gewährleistungsstaat (the guaranteeing or ensuring state). Its main task is to guarantee the extent and the quality of public services, but not to engage in their production. Instead, it should supervise, create and encourage alternatives concerning the financing and the delivery of these services, using the whole spectrum between State, third sector, civil society and the market. To safeguard this objective, so the assumption goes, we need coherence and joined-up government, e-government being one of the instruments to achieve it. The overall gist of this new agenda is captured nicely in the German programme “Modern State – Modern Administration”, proposed by the new red-green government in 1999, as a follow up to the “lean state” rhetoric of its conservative predecessors. However, similarly contrasting programmatic statements can be found in nearly all other European countries and all political camps: “The State and the administrative system must redefine their tasks and competencies taking into account the changed conditions within society. The enabling State will promote the devolution of responsibility where it is feasible. This means that there will be a new distribution and grading of responsibilities between the State and society: (…) A reform of the State and its administrative system, which is based on such a model, must create a new balance between state duties, individual initiative and social commitment. This will shift the focus in such a way that the State becomes less of a decision taker and producer and more of a mediator and catalyst of social developments, which it cannot and must not control on its own. The enabling State means strengthening society's potential for self-regulation and guaranteeing the necessary freedom of action. Above all, this requires the concerted action of public, semi-public and private players to achieve common goals”.5

Underpinning this transformation of basic assumptions and guidelines is the role of different academic disciplines. Whereas New Public Management was very much inspired by new institutional economics (property rights, principal agent, transaction costs, etc.) and by the textbooks of modern management (although these several sources sometimes contradicted each other), the public governance discourse has rediscovered the importance of the social sciences and philosophy. Inspiration has been drawn from communitarianism and neo-institutional theory, which stress not only formal and informal rules, but also mental maps, cognitive and normative assumptions and values, all as important sources of novel institutional arrangements. To express the difference starkly, one could argue that NPM was basically concerned with the problem of “getting the incentives right”, especially within the public sector, but also between the public and private sectors. These incentives were mainly seen as monetary. If it did not prove impossible to establish real markets, market surrogates, like benchmarks, contracts and sanctions were looked for. In contrast to this approach, the new emerging discourse has been far more concerned with appropriate behaviour, both within the public sector and between the public and the private sectors. The main problem has been defined as how we can ensure that not only public organisations and services, but also private entities, especially from civil society, work together to resolve social problems. Obviously, public services and monetary incentives are important, but they are not sufficient.

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A neglected, vandalised public park or playground provides a simple example. The NPM solution would be to reorganise or “reinvent” the park department as a modern efficient organisation, or, if this proved impossible, to privatise its maintenance. However, as experience shows, this will not prove sufficient, if the surrounding neighbourhood remains unchanged, refuses to acknowledge its responsibilities and neglects public spaces. Schools are also a good example. They are of the utmost importance for the education of children, but so are parents and neighbourhoods. If one would like to improve the education of underprivileged children, one has to start with families and neighbourhoods. Unaided by community, better school management will not do the job. Corruption is yet another striking example. One way to prevent corruption is to make it economically unattractive, either by paying public servants so much that they are no longer tempted, or by ruthlessly increasing controls and sanctions. Manifestly however, these mechanisms cannot suffice. Both direct and control costs are high. How then can we ensure that civil servants fulfil their duties with efficiency, effectiveness, impartiality and fairness? The issue lying behind all these problems is “getting institutions right”. How can we create institutions and institutional arrangements, which do not only consist of workable formal and informal rules and incentives, but also take account of appropriate cognitive and normative values? Normative and Institutional Foundations of Modern Governance As has already been argued, the latest European governance perspective can be interpreted as first and foremost a reaction against the NPM-movement which, at least for some observers and practitioners, turned out to be too limited, focusing almost exclusively on the internal mechanisms, control instruments and incentives of discrete organisations, but neglecting all the complex interactions between organisational and institutional arrangements, as well as the normative bases of organisations within the public sector and beyond. However, in a wider, somewhat more theoretical perspective, modern governance is not only seen as an extension and perhaps counter-concept to the NPM discourse, but also as an alternative to all kinds of traditional government perceptions: governance instead of government. Modern governance is thus projected not only as going beyond and replacing public management, but also as an enhancement of the traditional democratic, representative and bureaucratic Weberian paradigm of public administration and the State. In accordance with this view, modern governance is not only about new institutional arrangements, but also related to new or at least modified public values. The traditional values of economic welfare, political freedom, social justice and solidarity, which underpin the active and even to an extent, the lean state, are still valid. But they have been re-interpreted in a somewhat different light. Economic welfare has been expressed as economic vitality, which needs to be achieved in order to guarantee welfare. Political freedom entails more participation and civic engagement. Social justice is seen as equality of prospects and opportunities rather than that of outcomes. Solidarity, finally, is defined as social inclusion and cohesion, or at least as the absence of social exclusion. Social policy may serve as an example. In the traditional models of the active Welfare State and the lean minimal State, social policy was basically perceived as a


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form of (monetary) compensation. Thus, depending on your political views, it was either criticised for being too stingy (“the social net has too many holes”), or too generous (“the social hammock is too comfortable”). In contrast to these approaches, concepts of modern or progressive governance have tried to define social policies as social investments, enabling people to help themselves. The appropriate analogy here is that of the trampoline. However, novel concepts of modern governance go beyond the re-definition or “re-invention” of traditional values. They also contain new images of the appropriate roles and functions of citizens, societies and States. In all concepts of traditional government, be they bureaucratic or managerial, citizens are looked upon and defined as voters, as consumers of public services, as clients or as customers. The controversy whether citizens are, or at least should be, treated as customers has been a standard favourite of proponents and opponents of NPM. Governance concepts acknowledge that citizens perform a wide range of roles. Their principal contention, however, is that they need to be looked upon and treated, first and foremost, as activists and co-producers of social services and values. The citizens, accordingly, are neither sovereign voters controlling the delivery of public services, nor the dependent customers of services, but rather the essential partners in social cooperation and negotiation. Empowerment thus becomes another new catchword. This perspective is extended to society as a whole. It is no longer viewed as just a – more or less active – beneficiary of state intervention and public programmes. Nor is the interaction of society and the State seen as characterised either by pluralist bargaining or by corporatist interest mediation. Instead society, its citizens and organisations are seen as indispensable partners in collective problem solving and creating public values. The ideal picture is that of an active civil society, and the preferred solution societal self-regulation – if at all possible without state interference. This, ultimately, leads to another perception of the State altogether. Conventional government concepts tend to develop a rather state-centred, centripetal view of the world. Traditionally, the State was recognised as sovereign, both internally and externally, and thus also as the sole or predominant source of legitimacy for all institutional structures and arrangements in the public sphere. Therefore, the State was typically viewed as hierarchically integrated, with long and complicated chains of command and production, both horizontal and vertical. Again, the modern concept of governance sketches a different image, both normatively and empirically. The modern State accordingly, is envisaged as more or less centrifugal. There has been an erosion of the traditional sovereignty, domestically or internationally. This is partly the result of the proliferation of multifarious new and powerful international institutions and regimes. Furthermore, the modern State is no longer the all-inclusive sovereign system, but rather one social system among several. Thus the appropriate image of modern statehood is not that of hierarchical integration, but rather the one of management of a diversity of networks. In this light, democratic governance can no longer be defined merely in terms of parties, interest groups, parliamentary institutions and a quasi-state monopoly in the ensuing conflict resolution and welfare state arrangements. Instead, the articulation and coordination of collective interests is characterised by direct participation and wide variety of negotiated patterns of public-private relations, coordination and co-

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operation. Several, diverse welfare arrangements are possible and desirable. Some of them can operate with very little state interference. Again, to express the contrast starkly, one could characterise the concepts of traditional government as being mainly concerned with clear distinctions between the public and the private spheres and even between the input and output functions of the State, the former being the area of politics and public policies; the latter the domain of public administration and public services. In this scheme, informal arrangements between the public and private sectors, or between public and private actors are seen as unimportant or even as problematic. Concepts of modern governance, by contrast, assume, indeed prefer, shifting boundaries between public and private sectors and a mix of functions between politics and administration. Multiple, informal arrangements are not only accepted, but looked upon as useful and beneficial. Of course, this may appear as a rather naively idealised picture of modern governance. One is entitled to ask whether this kind of concept is practical and realistic, but also whether it is appropriate for all kinds of circumstances and contexts. Clearly, what may be quite acceptable in a highly developed, stable western democracy, might prove quite problematic and dysfunctional in a struggling, unstable and erratic political system. Administering Modern Governance What does all this mean for conventional public administration? Current concepts of modern governance do not assume that traditional public organisations or public services will or should disappear, or that all kinds of public activities will soon be taken over by the market or the private sector. Given our changing surroundings and circumstances, however, institutional arrangements, organisations and individuals will have to adjust; they will need to learn to adjust to new patterns, to engage in new responsibilities. Public organisations and public employees will continue to play an important role in policy formation and implementation. In policy evaluation their role may be even greater. But these roles do not imply any kind of monopoly. There is no longer – if there ever was – a one and only, uniform view of the nature of public goods and public welfare. Public administration does not have a monopoly over either the values or the contents, structures and processes of public policies. Negotiation skills, conflict management and resolution and consensus-building, therefore, are at least as important as information and analysis. In the implementation of public policies and the production of public goods the focus will no longer be the defence of erstwhile boundaries of the public sector or, on the other hand, advocacy of dismantling and privatisation of the public sector at all costs. The enabling State depends on the steering capacities of its public organisations. But, of course, the management and steering of public services does not imply that they have to be produced within the public sector. “Outsourcing” and “contracting-out” are common in modern governance arrangements, but the task of public administration is not limited by rigid separation and the negotiation of formerly unified tasks and costs. Instead the initiation and organisation of new arrangements


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for co-production of services are open; involvement of the public, private and thirdsectors, civil society and individual actors may become the dominant pattern. Traditional processes of public service delivery should not only be re-organised along the lines of business, with process re-engineering and similar instrumentalities, but should address the need for new forms of interaction between State, the markets, and network arrangements. Neither the protection nor the simple transfer of responsibilities and performance are called for, but shared responsibilities and the activation of performance and self help. Modern governance should be about shared obligations, not reduced or abandoned ones. In practical terms, this implies that public organisations must streamline their rules and procedures and modernise their tasks. Cooperation is not meant to necessitate many short-term contracts or sanctions, but rather long-term cooperation together with the development of shared assumptions, values and objectives. Rules and regulations will continue to play an important role, since they represent the basis of the rule of law in a democratic society. The same holds true for money and competition as important incentives for performance and innovation. The real challenge, however, for public organisations and public servants in modern governance arrangements will be the development and application of different modes of steering and control, combining market mechanisms, hierarchies and rules with solidarity and reciprocity. Public administration, in this light, is no longer mostly rules, nor indeed is it concerned with exchanges, services and subsidies; far more it is concerned with democratic and societal dialogue, empowerment and participation. In this light, it may be argued that the previously dominant minimalist and market-oriented New Public Management doctrine was merely a passing phase (1980– 2000). It was limited in space to the Anglo Saxon world, primarily. Nevertheless, this paradigm has influenced and changed the classical Weberian model of public administration in almost all of Europe. Indeed, observers argue that, in Europe today, we are moving towards a Neo-Weberian model, with the following characteristics:6 • the State remains a “State of Law” (Etat de droit, Rechtsstaat). Its public employees however, are not just “bureaucrats” and experts in law and procedure; they also belong to the managerial profession with a focus on performance and service to citizen/customers; • citizens have rights and duties, but their customer role becomes part of the paramount citizen role; • public law, which includes administrative law, remains an important instrument for the functioning of the Rechtsstaat and citizen-state relations, but private law becomes increasingly important as a complementary instrument in public affairs; • there remains a distinct public service with its own ethos and characteristic features (status, conditions and culture), but its traditional neutrality and concern with legality must now be coupled with commitment to policy objectives and concerns with results, which create a professional culture of quality performance and service; • the ex ante concern with process and procedure to guarantee the legality and legitimacy of decisions must now be complemented with an ex post concern

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with results. This becomes a part of procedures which guarantees economy, efficiency and effectiveness; • legitimacy, is therefore, not just based on legality but also on the economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the functions of the State and the implementation of its policies. The main features of this Neo-Weberian State fit nicely with the assumptions and propositions of modern governance. Public law is important; markets are important; citizens are also customers and civil servants also managers. Still the most important feature will be the cooperation and co-production of services, the sharing of obligations and responsibilities between the State, the market and civil society actors. The overall aim is societal self-regulation, wherever possible, through active and empowered citizens. Modern governance implies that there are multiple, diverse, often competing institutional arrangements to create public welfare and public value; furthermore, that we have to rely on different, competing negotiated patterns of public-private partnership, cooperation and coordination. Finally, it should be obvious, that there will be no, once and for all, one size fits all solution for public governance. There has to be a balance between State, the market and civil society institutions on all levels of governance, national, regional and global. Again, to put it simply, one has to acknowledge the fact that, as with everything else in life, one can either have too much or too little of a good thing. Too little and too weak state action carries with it the danger of external effects, social disorder and ultimately the breakdown of civility, as the example of “failed states”, in different parts of the world so clearly demonstrates. However, too much state, too strong state institutions, which try to dominate all social sectors and systems, from the economy to religion, from the arts and science to sports, end in disaster, as we all know too well. The same holds true of the market. Too little, too weak markets generate welfare and innovation deficits. Too much “unlimited markets”, by contrast, lead to unwanted externalities and disparities. However, this is true of civil society also. During the past few years, it has often been treated as the miracle cure; the deus ex machina for all governance problems worldwide. Too little and too weak civil society is undoubtedly the root-cause of anomie, of vandalism, neglect and disappearance of solidarity and reciprocity. Conversely, too much, too strong a civil society is equally unwanted, because it forms the basis for exclusion and for uncontrolled, unaccountable and totally self-reliant networks. Networks may sound modern and appealing, but they can also have strong negative connotations, corruption and organised crime being one of them. To conclude, my closing caveat, after this brief survey of successive phases and models of government and governance is very simply put: “there is no end of history”. The chain of concepts like the “democratic”, “active”, “lean”, and “enabling” State can be interpreted as a learning curve. Obviously, in due course, refined and better concepts, which address the pitfalls and shortcomings of old models, will appear on the horizon. Discourses about governance are never ending, because they come too close to the basic questions we ask regarding the “good life” and the needed cooperation of citizens and States. The moment when somebody declares the


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“end of history” or indeed the “end of discussion”, on the ground that all has been said and that all problems of governance have been resolved, we shall all be in deep trouble. Notes and References 1 2 3 4 5 6

See for example Jon Pierre and B. Guy Peters (ed.), Governance, Politics and the State, 2001. Pollitt/Bouckhaerd 2004. See also the special issue of Public Administration 2002 about “Narratives of Governance”. For a comprehensive overview with further references see Pollitt/Bouckaert, op. cit. Bundesministerium des Innern, 1999. Bouckaert, 2004.

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Chapter X The Morality of Governance – A Postscript – Anthony Makrydemetres∗ Good Governance In the Palazzo Pubblico, of Siena, a fresco by the famous Ambrogio Lorenzetti, the 14th century painter, will catch the visitor’s eye. Entitled Allegory of Good Governance, it shows two ladies side by side on a couch. The one on the left, dressed in a white gown, is called ‘Peace’. She holds in her hand a branch of olive. The other, dressed in a dark gown, holds a sceptre and is called ‘Force’. The symbolism, perhaps, tries to convey the idea that good governance entails both: force to maintain the peace, but also peace to harness force to the benefit and well being of humanity as a whole. However, human experience shows us that peace has all too often been disassociated from force. We know that this has led not only to degradation of good and effective governance, but also to the subjection of humanity to the ‘law of the jungle’, accompanied, of course, by denial of ethical values and ideals of good governance. It is because of this reason that the standards of sound governance become paramount and pertinent to prospects of sustainable development and the well being of the human race. Is Government Immoral? It is all too commonly thought that ‘politics is a dirty business’ and that often ‘politicians tell lies’. Does this apply to governance, or is it something different and more demanding? If that is not the case and, therefore, immorality prevails in both politics and governance, how can we explain this phenomenon? A first hand explanation would be the common belief that a degree of immorality might be deemed as acceptable under certain circumstances or even needed in government and politics as a sine qua non condition of effectiveness. Above all, so the argument runs, a ruler’s first commandment is to succeed regardless of morality. But if that is the case, why then do people talk so much about morality? If the question were put to the public whether governance may be immoral, the likely response would be negative. The reason is that people, in general, prefer that ∗

Anthony Makrydemetres, Professor of Administrative Science, University of Athens.

A. Makrydemetres / The Morality of Governance – A Postscript –

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politics and government be moral. What then do we mean by ‘morality’ and how do we apply it in very concrete circumstances? Furthermore, even if we managed to define it with some degree of clarity and precision, how can we sustain it in a world so full of immorality? How far is one prepared to go in upholding criteria and standards of “good governance”, if one were to realise that, in a ‘Machiavellian’ world, the “immoral” are, in general, more successful and effective than the “moral”? At least in the short run. The whole issue may become more complex if we try to specify a set of international or ‘ecumenical’ standards applicable to all in a similar manner. Or to reverse the question: could morality be different in one place from another? Could it be anything else than universal or catholic? It is not necessary to be an expert on Kant and his conceptualisation of the categorical imperative to realise that the essence of ethical conduct lies in its universality. Morality enjoins us always to act in such a way that in and through our conduct we are enacting laws of global application. In that context, morally acceptable would only be that which may be universally considered as valid. Humanity would thus have entered the era of globalisation not merely in the fields of economics, transport, communication technology, popular culture, as well as crime and terrorism, but also those of politics, of governance and ethics. If one were to accept that humans may, at least implicitly, share certain basic or minimal standards and values on how to run public affairs, then the way to articulate them would not be very difficult. Arguably, the starting point might be the identification of national best practices in the field of public morality. However, they would have to be abstracted and ‘purified’ from the raw material of day to day politics in order to become less culturally confined and more acceptable to diverse human communities. In any event, international or global standards of morality do not replace but rather complement and assist our national core values. They may also provide a set of ‘benchmarking’ criteria, as well as a measuring rod. They may be understood as a vantage point from which to evaluate regional or national levels of performance. In that respect, a kind of universal or ecumenical charter on values of good governance would probably reflect the collective wisdom and experience of humankind. A Point of Departure To this end, a number of criteria and standards of sound governance may be used as starting point. These would include the following, as reflected in the United Nations Charter and Millennium Declaration:1 • Respect for human rights, civil liberties and the rule of law; • Freedom of the press and autonomy of the mass media; • Open and democratic political processes; • Independence of civil society from undue state interference; • Transparency and trust in all societal transactions. Needless to say that, with regard to the above common standards and criteria, what has been often remarked is their scarcity rather than prevalence in political and administrative practice and the performance of governance 2 in the world as a whole. For that reason, to reverse Lorenzetti’s imagery, there is a need to emphasise the

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perils involved in the ‘allegory of bad governance’. Surely, the violation of fundamental principles and standards of human conduct in political action may seriously worsen conditions for the survival of our civilisation. In this light, the requirements for administering global governance in a humane and rational manner acquire particular prominence and urgency. Economy, technology and communication systems, as well as the attendant perils (including widespread incidence of violence and terrorism), have turned global, but democratic politics and effective administration have clearly not. They remain essentially a local or at most a regional phenomenon. As a result, societies are confronted with a critical dilemma of how to organise in order to meet risks and challenges that by far exceed resources available to nation states for action and response. At the heart of the matter lies the contradiction inherent in running politics and administration on a local or at best regional levels, while the problems and the risks are of a global, or at least supranational scale. In brief, the international community is still lacking the political and administrative means, institutions and competencies to match the risks and challenges, which exceed the capacity and scope of existing methods and practices. For this reason, global sharing of the experience and ideals on democratic governance and sound administration represents a major task for humanity as a whole at the threshhold of our era. The Contours of Sound Governance A common understanding of both ordinary people and enlightened leaders world wide is that emerging challenges need to be buttressed by novel and commensurately adequate institutional armour. Indicatively, it may be pointed out that the aggravation of social and economic inequalities, along with the ecological and environmental perils, are intrinsically linked. In that sense, the overall aim of democratic governance must be pursued in such a way that the benefits of globalisation will be shared by all and should not be the exclusive privilege of the few, or those already affluent. Accordingly, major policy priorities for effective and sound governance must include the following: • Securing the life, dignity and freedom of citizens and their protection from dangers, such for instance as organised crime, long-term unemployment, violent conflicts and terrorism, as well as the deterioration of the physical environment and social capital; • Improving the quality of life through life-long learning, education and development, providing better systems of hygiene, sanitation and social security. These are considered essential for effective participation in the political process and in decision making affecting their rights and interests; • Better advance preparation for risk management and social protection against unforeseen perils. The Pillars of Governance In the context of the above, a number of concrete and specific issues emerge. The most significant of them include the following:


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• Designing better strategies for capacity-building in the productive sphere. This is essential to the task of ameliorating conditions in order to defeat poverty, marginalisation and the exclusion of human communities or individuals from the benefits of the globalised economy. In this light, opening up the markets to competitive deals has to be matched with raising educational levels and skills, as well as the provision of adequate social security systems; • Securing justice and equal protection under the rule of law for all, not only for the few and privileged. This, inter alia, requires adequate institutional provisions on the national, the regional and international levels. What is even more imperative is a new political culture based on a kind of ‘communicative ethic’ (pace Habermas3) in tackling social problems in the public sphere; • The aim of public services is to meet the needs of the people in the best possible way. Modernisation of the administrative infrastructure of the State is a relentless process. It is not only prompted by changes in technology, but also by the rising expectations of citizens. Professionalising service delivery is, therefore, a vital precondition for better results, as well as for promoting a new ethic of responsibility and a new culture of excellence in the public service. • Social security and youth care require increased levels of expenditure to meet the needs of citizens for education and skills, as well as those of the elderly. Investing in the youth is a moral obligation of society and humanity, but also a precondition of socio-economic development and social cohesion. Acute demographic pressures and other changes in many parts of the world put this issue in high priority. Providing opportunities for those capable to work is an objective need of the utmost significance. It vests a social content in political participation and gives people a stake in the business of governance. That refers to men and women, residents or immigrants and all members of the work force. • A democratic polity and effective governance are closely interdependent. Effectiveness in governance without democratic accountability and political participation tend to degenerate into autocratic regimes, which sooner or later turn against the people they govern. On the other hand, democracy without effectiveness may lose all credibility. We have come to realise that democracy cannot be severed from effectiveness in running the business of the State and serving the public interest. Precisely on this account, taking concrete measures to defeat corruption and to secure transparency and accountability in public affairs represent a high priority in the reformist agenda. In essence, it links politics with ethics in the public sphere. This is vital not only for the economy, but also of the spiritual and social well-being of all nations in the world today. Administering Governance As almost everybody has come to realise, globalisation creates new opportunities and challenges, as well as dangers and risks. These include the widening gap between the rich and the poor within and between societies. It is more important than ever to address this issue and to secure that the benefits accruing from globalisation,

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and progress in technology are spread in a more even and equitable manner among people and communities. Resulting social cohesion will prove instrumental to sustainable development in the long run. In this sense, a new facet of sound governance is the enhancement of the role of regional and international organisations, as well as rules and standards concerning their conduct. Good performance of such types of institutions may help increase the level of trust and cooperation among nations. It will also improve relations and expand the networks among sovereign States and administrative agencies in various parts of the world. Needless to say that nowhere in this paper is it proposed to establish a sort of modern Leviathan in order to implement and monitor performance in administrative governance. On the contrary, what is advanced is the concept of a dialogue on the merits of democracy and sound governance as practiced in the several national, subnational, regional and supranational organisations. Specifically, what is envisaged is a framework of rules, standards and principles of good governance practices on various levels, around a core of basic and essential ethical values. Taking measures to secure the peaceful coexistence, free movement of people and goods and fruitful cooperation among individuals and nations is a paramount objective of good governance today. Trust and stability in social relations is a precondition for sustaining political development. That, in turn, is essential for the task of improving the quality of governance and the effectiveness of public administration with a view to the well being of all peoples in the world. Towards a raison d’humanité The quality of citizenship in a modern polity rests on the close association of civil liberties with social justice. Freedom and civil rights can and should be reconciled with the needs for social trust and cohesion. In this sense, the experience of the yet unfinished project “civitas humana” suggests that, for society to advance, it is essential that the following criteria of sound governance are met, in one way or another: • Respect and further development of an open society, ensuring that civil society and the State collaborate in a peaceful and creative way. That is to say autocracy and repression of any kind must be avoided and rejected; • Advancement of social cohesion and building social trust are both clearly instrumental to expanding and deepening social capital in a nation and its people; • Guaranteeing sustainability, not only in the environmental and economic sphere, but also of activities in the social, humanitarian and cultural fields. • Securing the conditions of peaceful coexistence based on respect for the rule of law, international treaty obligations and institutionalised ways of conflict resolution. This includes responsibility to aid countries in need, as well as to introduce a fair system of international trade; • Furthering the potential for democracy based on the participation of citizens in decision making processes in the context and the spirit of ethics and responsibility. Mechanisms for guaranteeing transparency and international jus-


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tice have their place here as a means of fighting corruption, international organised crime, and other illegal practices; • Deepening the notion of democracy in all political associations and upholding it as a standard and benchmark for all human interaction on the local, national and international levels. • Advancing the capacity to think the above anew, and to adjust standards and norms in the light of changing conditions and circumstances. A Minimal Core of Public Ethics In conclusion, what may briefly be described as raison d’ humanité is a shared new ethic of responsibility in governance. If public morality is to be placed once more on the agenda of the political discourse, 4 then renewed emphasis must be placed on what may be defined as the cornerstone of an ethic of sound governance. These include the following primarily: • Democratic accountability; • Respect for the rule of law; • Professional integrity and efficiency in public services; and • Responsiveness to civil society. Raison d’humanité concerning matters of governance comprises necessarily a fourfold expression of virtue: accountability, legality, professionalism and civic responsibility.5 These are basic to democracy, to civilisation and peaceful coexistence. They may be held as true on the local, national, regional, as well as global levels. Notes and References 1

2

3 4

5

See also indicatively, Economic and Social Council, Committee of Experts on Public Administration, 3rd session, “Strengthening Public Administration for the Millennium Development Goals: a partnership building approach”, NY 2004. By the term ‘governance’ I understand the collective capacity and effort to tackle the social problems of a human community in a meaningful and acceptable manner. Although governance may no longer be exclusively associated with the realm of politics and administrative institutions in a nation or a society, yet it still remains the main function and responsibility of the latter. Namely, governance has to do essentially with government and political institutions and processes. For that reason, issues of prime concern in the discussion of governance almost certainly refer to the following: how do governments act, to what ends, by what kind of means, on what bases of support, with what level of cooperation with other governments, with markets, enterprises and civil society organisations, nationally and internationally. Overall, ‘governance’ is increasingly conceptualised as the shifting interface between state and non state actors; as a process of value formation and distribution in the national or international spheres. J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, 2, Heinemann, London, 1984. It is increasingly realised that, along with the dominant ‘three Es’ of economy, efficiency and effectiveness in governance and administration, ethics, accountability, transparency and professionalism must be added, fully taken into account and accorded their due weight. See further Anth. Makrydemetres, “Dealing with Ethical Dilemmas in Public Administration: The ‘ALIR’ Imperatives of Ethical Reasoning”, International Review of Administrative Sciences, vol. 68, 2002: 251–266. For a more general and theoretically informed discussion of the contents and significance of a minimal global ethic, see M.Walzer, Thick and Thin. Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana, 1994.

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Conclusions and Recommendations Members of the Working Group We have come to the end of a journey. In reality, however, we are only at the beginning. We have explored the contours of a new world of governance, attempted definitions, touched on emerging trends, surveyed a set of challenges and corresponding responses, which are still taking shape. If, in this closing chapter, we still are unable to offer any definitive answers, this is simply due to the fact that the field of global governance is still relatively new; an unchartered territory, a reality so fluid that it brings back to mind the often-quoted fragments of Heraklitus. “Everything flows … nothing remains the same” “You may not step into the same river twice”.1 Precisely on this account, as well as the complexity and the prismatic character of this emerging phenomenon which we call global governance, a diversity of perspectives and an interdisciplinary approach are not merely recommended, but truly mandatory. This study stands between what is and what ought to be. Yet even what we call “contemporary reality” is often little more in fact than limited perceptions of what we like to see in light of our own needs, experience, interests or expectations. These also colour our vision of possible future states. A popular French proverb reminds us of the fact that “il faut de tout pour faire un monde”. The world of global governance may look distinctly different seen from Washington, D.C., Paris, Baghdad, Beijing, Pretoria or Brazilia. But should we be surprised? Given these circumstances, the quest for a consensus, central to global governance, must nearly always follow the path of painstaking exploration, collation and conciliation of possibly clashing viewpoints. This is the path we have chosen. And we have just begun. It is not that global governance is exactly a new idea. As our report has shown, in some form or another, the subject has been broached for as long as human nature has been recognized as something unique and universal of which we all partake; and furthermore as long organised societies have been willing to develop collaborative relationships with one another. The move to formalise such inter-state relationships gathered strength in the 17th century, significantly in the wake of a disastrous war, when systematic efforts were started to lay down certain basic rules of conduct among the rulers of sovereign States. The world of global governance has since become more crowded with the arrival of new players: not only the proliferation of sovereign nation states but, since the 19 th century, a host of multifarious public intergovernmental and more recently non-governmental organisations. If, as the first two chapters of this Report reminds us, to these we must now add the large transnational companies and other corporate entities which wield substantial influence in world affairs, we may begin to appreciate how crowded and how

Conclusions and Recommendations

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perilous the space of global governance has waxed and, accordingly, how pressing the tasks of administering this space have gradually become. More actors and more players have come with a widening range of global public goods and growing opportunities for instant, distant contacts, communication, interaction and exchanges. If, as evidenced in this report, increasing scale and complexity represent critical factors in the course of such activities, as well as grounds for reform, we may be fast approaching a watershed; the turning point at which we ought to ask ourselves what different or new arrangements may be needed at once to evade calamities – for instance, global warming – and to make the administration of the global public space more efficient, effective and equitable. This widely shared concern has been one of the prompters of this Report. Two catastrophic wars during the twentieth century provided the momentum and motivation for the victorious powers to give renewed attention to the organisational framework and detailed administration of inter-state relations. These implied selflimitations in the interest of peace and the greater public good. An embryonic structure has thus been put into place and despite its well-known weaknesses has, over six decades, made sizeable advances in many public spheres: from international justice and finance to socio-economic development, public health and education, the protection of women and children, minorities and human rights. Indeed, we may be victims of our success. As Mr. Kofi Annan, the SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations, reminded the Millennium Assembly in September 2000, the world in the 21st century will bear little resemblance to that of 1945. Rapid decolonisation, which has quadrupled the number of independent States, Members of the UN, swift technological progress and population explosion have, as has already been argued, created new facts on the ground. Last but not least, the lowering of trade barriers has, since the 1990s, altered the configuration of inter-state relations and modified substantially the remit and the functions of public administration. As this report has shown, these changes may give rise to many new opportunities, but also areas of friction. Much will depend on the way we manage these contingencies, in fact how we go about administering global governance. Pace Mr. Kofi Annan, our world is moving rapidly towards a globalised community. Are the administrative arrangements, which took shape in the past century under different conditions, still adequate today in very new circumstances. This is one of the questions which this Report tries to answer. Our cumulative progress of the past six decades has spawned a number of trends which have been given prominence in the Report. Perhaps the most important is regional integration, which started in the fifties as a political movement (e.g. PanAfricanism) but more and more represents a strategy for coping with globalisation, as well as organising inter-state cooperation in more effective ways. In Europe, integration has slowly but steadily encompassed practically every facet of socioeconomic activity, indeed of cultural life. However, also in Africa and elsewhere, the integration progress has rapidly gathered momentum. What is more, as several contributors to this Report have argued, hardly any level of government or segment of society is left untouched by the pressures of globalisation and integration. Their impact has been felt by every department of government and even local authorities, making the old distinction between “domestic” and “foreign” truly a thing

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of the past. Now, every public servant indeed all responsible citizens are called upon to react to movements or events, whose origins may lie thousands of miles away. Using the latest technologies or more traditional methods, dozens of organisations have sprung from civil society, in every part of the world. Reaching out across the boundaries of language, nation state, even organised religion, such groups have made their mark sometimes in opposition to globalisation, but arguably more often by espousing major causes of truly global concern (e.g. environmental protection and human rights). The progress of globalisation, as seen by many governments, but also by broad segments of organised civil society leaves plenty of room for optimism, but really none for complacency. The recent Declaration of the Millennium Assembly 2 was also an invitation to Member States to take charge of events, which a well-known commentator of the contemporary scene has described as a “runaway world”. 3 In the meaning of the Declaration, the dangers that beset our planet may be summed up as follows: • Persisting high levels of poverty, inequality and human insecurity; • Exacerbation of lawlessness, corruption and organised crime; • Emerging threats from pandemics of the type of HIV/AIDS; • Global warming and a deteriorating global physical environment. Effective response to the challenge which these threats represent calls for concerted action by governments, civil society and organisations on every level – national, regional, global, governmental and non-governmental. Taking charge means taking action. This really represents the message of this Report. There is a World out there that we can win. Nevertheless, to win it, it’s not enough to wish it. Good governance is needed to bring it about, but this will never happen without institutional frameworks, without appropriate structures, processes and people – quality men and women who try to make them work. Facing up to this challenge is what “administering” is all about. As this Report has shown, an embryonic framework may well be in place already. However, the advance of globalisation, which brought about the lowering of trade and other barriers, has also accelerated a major transformation in public administration – national and international. It has been characterised as a transition from “closed” to “open” systems. What it entails, however, is also a move away from the traditional top-down “command and control” approach to a less authoritarian, non-bureaucratic mode of management through networks, participative methods, suasion and team-building. Although still taking shape, it is the type of management that doubtlessly is required in administering global governance. What the Report has shown is that the tasks and processes encompassed in this sphere are not, as wrong extrapolations might lead someone to imagine, homogenous and trusted to a single group of people to conduct, in uniform ways, under some central guidance and direction. Rather, those tasks and processes lie at the interface of national, sub-national, global and regional levels, a sphere of activity which is still ill-defined. Interaction on multiple levels call for exceptional skills, both cognitive and interpersonal, while the attendant risks of failure will be greater than those normally incurred in the governance of nation states.


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This is the challenge we face. Experience demonstrates that the spectacular progress of science and technology has, in the past few years, helped us to overcome some of the daunting problems of scale and complexity which globalisation has brought in its trail. It has also greatly contributed to helping us manage diversity with a degree of efficiency that would not have been possible in previous times. Though the potential for progress so manifestly exists, to make it really happen in ways that carry benefits to all of humankind, calls for an act of leadership. It calls for vision, wisdom and levels of integrity that certainly are uncommon, but definitely exist. It is human intervention which, in the last analysis, will move to close the gaps which have increased so alarmingly in recent years especially. It is the human factor in administering global governance that could apply the tools of science and technology towards reducing disparities in living conditions and prospects, improving access to justice and also helping narrow the digital divide, which several contributors to this Report highlight. To move in this direction, to build a better world for all the Earth’s inhabitants, global governance is of the essence. “Administering” means servicing. It means making things happen. There is no one best way, and this report has offered no panaceas. Rather it calls for dialogue and further exploration of this emerging field. This really is the substance of the recommendations which follow: Recommendation 1 A Charter for Global Governance Preparation of a charter encompassing the principles at once of global governance and global public service. The charter should endeavour to outline the ethical parameters within which those entrusted with the tasks of administering global governance should labour. It should define the principles which need to guide their action, the methods they may use, working as true professionals, and ways they should not follow in the tasks of global governance. Preparation of this Charter may prove time-consuming. In a sense, it represents an example of “administering global governance” at work. Process is all important if the purpose is to include, and to develop a Charter which represents a consensus of various points of view and regional perspectives. Such a meeting of the minds on fundamentals is needed not only because of the novelty of the task which is attempted, but also on account of the very wide diversity of occupational fields and multiplicity of levels (global, regional and national) that come within the scope of administering global governance. Recommendation 2 A Corps of “Global Governors”, or “Global Public Servants” Creation of a group under IIAS auspices to explore and map out, in detail, alternative career paths for global public servants. Ideally, those patterns should encompass stints of service on more than one levels of governance. Career development policies need to be predicated on merit, on mobility and motivation, by exposing men and women to challenging assignments in a diversity of fields and cultural environments with a view to reinforcing loyalty to humanity as a whole.

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Recommendation 3 An International Professional Competitive Examination A model already exists. It functions as a national professional competitive examination for the recruitment of people at the basic entry level (P2) of the United Nations Secretariat. The present examination is given once a year in a variety of fields (e.g. administration and finance, politics and international affairs, economics). However, it is limited to one organisation; career implications still remain unclear. The aim, in this recommendation, is to broaden the scope considerably so as to encompass as many organisations and occupational fields as possible, but also and more importantly, to reinforce the institutional and international character of this examination. The start of a career in administering global governance should be truly international in nature. Recommendation 4 A Global MPS (Master of Public Service) What is proposed is developing targeted training programmes for “global public servants” (or “global governors”) in order to equip them with the specific skills which they will need to address the challenges which have been identified in four principal areas: • high-level policy analysis; • high-level programme management; • high-level resource management, including human resources; and • performance management, monitoring and evaluation. There are several Masters Programmes around the world, which provide a solid core platform, which could be readily adapted. These include a mix of methodological and policy courses; training in so-called “hard” as well as “soft” skills. Recommendation 5 A targeted programme of professional development for global public servants (or global governors). The programme should be built on the modern concept of training as life-long learning, and feature a variety of complementary approaches. Through regular exchanges, knowledge sharing, networks and mentoring, the objective of the programme is keeping “global governors” on the frontiers of knowledge, enhancing their awareness of new and emerging issues, broadening their horizons and making them appreciative of both the world’s diversity and its potential for good. Recommendation 6 A Global Capacity-Building Fund The Fund will be required to promote and underpin the professional development, in-service training, career mobility, transfer and other related requirements of global public service. It may also be applied to capacity-building activities intended to reinforce the practice of sound governance at the national level, especially at points of intersection and interface with the administration of global public goods


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and promotion of regional integration or cooperation. The Global Capacity-building Fund could be placed under the joint auspices of the United Nations and the IIAS so as to underscore the role, as well as vital interest of global civil society in the entire project. For too long the opening words of the Preamble to the Charter have been overlooked. Administering global governance is not merely a concern of the government, but also of the Peoples of the world. Recommendation 7 An Annual Recommendation to the United Nations on the Key Critical Governance Issue for (2005 et seq.) We recommend to the International Institute of Administrative Sciences that each year the Institute should submit for the consideration of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, by letter under the name of the President, its agreed Recommendation upon the Critical Governance Issue that the UN and its associated bodies should seek to deal with in the course of the year in the Institute’s field of activity and expertise. Given that the IIAS holds an Advisory Status with the Economic and Social Council of the UN, this should be taken seriously. This CGI should also of course be the subject of the Institute’s own focus during that and future years and form the basis for further cooperation between the IIAS, the primary global nongovernmental body – able to speak truth to power since it has a sense of intellectual but, assuredly, no political, responsibility – in the field of the Administrative Sciences, and the United Nations. Recommendation 8 Exploring the Interface and Possible Tensions Arising Between Various Levels of Governance As this Report has shown, the processes, structures and functions tasked with administering global governance are not gathered in one space or uniformly working under some central direction. They lie at the interface of national, sub-national, global and regional levels, where tensions and conflicts arise. “Administering” means addressing such emerging tensions, coping with ambiguities and seeking to resolve latent conflicts before they explode into crises. How best to accomplish these tasks should be a major facet of the remit of IIAS/IASIA. Recommendation 9 A Recommendation on the Follow-Up to Our Work It is our final recommendation to the Institute which sponsored and nurtured us that, having laid the foundations, we hope soundly, in our work, it seeks to identify in a more concrete fashion the human skills that are a prerequisite of any system of administering Global Governance. We therefore propose that a new Project group be set up, with a similarly tight deadline and similarly precise terms of reference to operate as follows: • To work towards a Charter of Global Governance; • To prepare a training needs analysis and set of core competencies for the people that we have designated “global governors”;

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• To examine the general usefulness for us all of the methodology embedded in the United Nations model examination system for other levels of the Global Governance system; • To consider the practicability of our recommendations 4 and 5; and, of course • Any other issues that the Executive Committee may consider arise out of our work. The new Project Group should be led by an acknowledged human development expert of high and deep practical experience and conceptual power; it should take on board the expertise of the Institute’s International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration, as well as continuing and enhancing the representation from supranational and private-sector organisations that are an emerging force in global governance and made such a vital contribution to our report. What we want to do is, having ourselves worked in marble, to allow our successor group, should there be one, to work in brick. Notes and References 1

2 3

Heraclitus (540–480 BCE). A/RES/55/2 dated 18 September 2000. Anthony Giddens (2001) Runaway World, How Globalisation is Reshaping Our Lives, London, Profile Books.


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ANNEX 1

Terms of Reference Administering Global Governance Why Do We Need To Look at Global Governance? Who Governs? Is always a good question at election time in a country. But at global level, does anyone have the right to do so? Weber argued that a State is defined because it has a monopoly of legitimate violence in a society. Who has the monopoly of legitimate violence in the world society? Do those who operate on behalf of us all – the de facto global governors (like the WHO in the recent SARS outbreak, or the rather more contested WTO) – act at the level of the best national authorities? Are they as accountable? As efficient? Are they democratic? What is their moral authority? The current world situation is a time of accelerating global change and global threat. There has never before been such a need to look objectively at the world’s present methods of “Global Governance” – the rules, processes and practices that affect how public administration is exercised at the global level. This must include influences on that process from independent States, as well as intergovernmental bodies with regional or cultural legitimacy and the many nongovernmental organisations and interest groups that seek to have a voice in global forums. These last might be official like the United Nations and its summits or unofficial like Davos and Porto Allegre. Private sector organisations and big-business also have a legitimate and important role to play here, as it is through these that governments increasingly seek to deliver the services required by their citizens. Issues like sustainability are a good example. Its effective delivery forces our attention away from local rhetoric to the global level. What is IIAS and Why Should It Do This? The International Institute of Administrative Sciences was conceived in Bruxelles in 1910 and began formal life in 1930. Its specialism is administration. Its focus is global. The Institute is neutral, specialised and exercises no executive power, so it is able to be candid friend and a critical observer. Its network of experts includes academics and practitioners from 90 countries. The IIAS has consultative status with the United Nations. More recently at its Conference in Delhi in 2002 the IIAS Rapporteur-General Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi called for the debate on precisely this issue to be on-going and build on what had been and would be achieved, at IIAS events in Athens, in Delhi, Yaoundé and Seoul. The Problematic With the rapid acceleration of globalisation, the scope for cooperation has been greatly expanded. The need to develop constructive fora and techniques for this co-

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Terms of Reference

operation has intensified. The quest for shared approaches to emerging global concerns, the expectation of moves towards more global governance in the fields of public policy hitherto mostly reserved to national authorities; the challenge posed to governments by the proliferation of inter-governmental regimes and international actors call for more adequate strategies, not least in national capitals. Key questions here are: 1. How should, in terms of public administration, the global exercise of authority be designed, exercised, monitored and made accountable? 2. Is globalisation a consequence of this process or a threat to it? 3. What are the appropriate decision-making structures and administrative methods for a body or bodies of such complexity? Should global administrative systems be an ideal-type or must we expect a common denominator? 4. How can such authority be made accountable and what role should the different “stakeholder” bodies play? 5. What knowledge, skills and attitudes can make it really effective, and how can these be enhanced? 6. How can we learn from each other and develop best practice in these fields? Can we develop an international community which shares common values and concerns and therefore needs adequate structures of (global) governance? It has to be asked whether the current traditional forms of cooperation between States and their coordination by international organisations will be enough to cope with the challenges of globalisation or if there are additional and more flexible methods and ways to find common solutions. Modus Operandi It is proposed that a new IIAS Working Group – as agreed by its Research Advisory Council and approved by its Executive Committee on 28 March 2003 – be established to discuss and report without prejudice but with objectivity on this issue. This Group should report quickly, within two years of its first meeting. It should have a limited expert and representative membership of around 10. The Group should meet a maximum of five or six times. For Logistics see the attached annex.

Michael Duggett Director General IIAS 14 November 2003


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ANNEX 2

Working Group Members 2003–2005 Chairperson: Ms. Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi Minister of the Public Service and Administration South Africa Rapporteur: Prof. Dimitri Agyriades Consultant USA Members: Dr. Craig Baker A.T. Kearney Limited United Kingdom Prof. Richard Higgott University of Warwick United Kingdom Prof. Werner Jann Potsdam University Germany Mr. John-Mary Kauzya1 United Nations United States Prof. Dr. Pan. S.Kim Yonsei University Korea Prof. Anthony Makrydemetres University of Athens Greece Prof. Andrew Massey University of Portsmouth United Kingdom

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Working Group Members 2003–2005

Prof. Akira Nakamura Meiji University Japan Prof. Jacques Ziller European University Institute / Institut Universitaire Européen Italy Ex-officio Dr. Michael Duggett Director General of IIAS Belgium IIAS Secretary Dr. Fabienne Maron (2003) Mr. Juan Cabrera-Clerget (2004–5) IISA-IIAS Belgium

1

Mr. Kauzya writes in a personal capacity.

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Author Index Argyriades, D. Baker, C. Christensén, E. Duggett, M. Fraser-Moleketi, G. Higgott, R. Jann, W.

xix, 86 71 71 xi vii, 105 18 146

Jho, W. Kauzya, J.-M. Kim, P.S. Makrydemetres, A. Massey, A. Nakamura, A. Ziller, J.

53 105 53 158 3 134 38




The World We Could Win (International Institute of Administrative Sciences Monographs)

Turning World: Globalization and Governance at the Start of the 21st Century (International Institute of Administrative Science Monographs, 20)

We Could Do Worse

We Could Do Worse

East-West Cooperation in Public Sector Reform (International Institute of Administrative Science Monographs, 18)

Governing Networks: Egpa Yearbook (International Institute of Administrative Science Monographs, 22)

IIAS IISA Administration & Service 1930-2005- (International Institute of Administrative Sciences Monograph)

New Technologies in Public Administration (International Institute of Administrative Sciences Monograph)

He Could Stop the World

He Could Stop the World

Competency Management in the Public Sector: European Variations on a Theme (International Institute of Administrative Science Monographs, 19)

He Could Stop The World

He Could Stop The World

Universal Banking in the United States: What Could We Gain? What Could We Lose?

The World We Found

The World We Found

The World We Found

The World We Knew

He Could Stop The World (2)

Principles Of Administrative Law

Naturalised Birds of the World (Poyser Monographs)

The Province of Administrative Law

International encyclopedia of the social sciences volume2

International Encyclopedia Of The Social Behavioral Sciences

international encyclopedia of the social sciences volume1

Frontiers of Sociology (Annals of the International Institute of Sociology)

Handbook of administrative communication

A Win-Win Proposition

A Win-Win Proposition

The Best I Could

International Bibliography of Anthropology Volume 48: International Bibliography of the Social Sciences 2002 (Ibss: Anthropology (International Bibliography of Social Sciences))

The World We Could Win (International Institute of Administrative Sciences Monographs)

Turning World: Globalization and Governance at the Start of the 21st Century (International Institute of Administrative Science Monographs, 20)

We Could Do Worse

We Could Do Worse

East-West Cooperation in Public Sector Reform (International Institute of Administrative Science Monographs, 18)

Governing Networks: Egpa Yearbook (International Institute of Administrative Science Monographs, 22)

IIAS IISA Administration & Service 1930-2005- (International Institute of Administrative Sciences Monograph)

New Technologies in Public Administration (International Institute of Administrative Sciences Monograph)

He Could Stop the World

He Could Stop the World

Competency Management in the Public Sector: European Variations on a Theme (International Institute of Administrative Science Monographs, 19)

He Could Stop The World

He Could Stop The World

Universal Banking in the United States: What Could We Gain? What Could We Lose?

The World We Found

The World We Found

The World We Found

The World We Knew

He Could Stop The World (2)

Principles Of Administrative Law

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