Can the World Be Governed?: Possibilities for Effective Multilateralism

Incentive Compatibility and Global Governance: Existential Multilateralism, a Weakly Confederal World, and Hegemony

The twentieth century was the century of international institutions. Although some international organizations can trace their origins back to the nineteenth century, and international institutions more broadly go back centuries, the number grew tremendously in the past hundred years. In 1909, a clearinghouse for information on international organizations listed 37;1 by the end of the century, there were more than 6,400. For some, the set of international organizations already in existence at the beginning of the twentieth century augured world government. In a work entitled International Government and published in 1916 in the midst of World War I, Leonard Woolf wrote, “in every department of life, the beginnings, and more than the beginnings, of International Government Arthur A. Stein * * * My thanks to Alan Alexandroff, Steve Bernstein, Paul Collier, Patti Goff, Eric Helleiner, John Ikenberry, Miles Kahler, Jeff Legro, Steve Miller, Richard Rosecrance, and Bob Wolfe for comments. 1. See the Web site: http://www.uia.org/statistics/organizations/ytb299.php. The clearinghouse began as the Central Office of International Associations and later became the Union of International Associations. It has regularly published data on international organizations since 1910. For a brief history of the organization, see http://www.uia.org/uia. Incentive Compatibility and Global Governance: Existential Multilateralism, a Weakly Confederal World, and Hegemony already exist.” In fact, Woolf noted, “the recognition of international interests , and that national interests are international interests, and vice versa, was the great social discovery of the last 100 years.” This view was seconded by political scientist Mary P. Follett shortly after the United States’ entry into World War I, who wrote that nations “have fought for national rights,” but these “are as obsolete as the individual rights of the last century.” Moreover, Follett argued, the United States held the key to the emergence of internationalism: “the contribution of America to the Great War will be told as America’s taking her stand squarely and responsibly on the position that national particularism was in 1917 dead” (quoted in Iriye 2002, 18, 20). Yet, almost a century later, the growth of international organizations has not brought world government—indeed, there is great disappointment about the state of global governance. The end of the Cold War, although as momentous and consequential as the end of any protracted war between great powers, differed from its predecessors, the two World Wars, in that it brought no great efforts at building international institutions.2 The past decade and a half has been an era of great disquiet and uncertainty , one characterized simultaneously by globalization and heightened tribalism, and marked by profound concern about the continued viability and the need for reform of international institutions. Global developments are seen as challenging both the nation-state and international organizations. 3 18 l Arthur A. Stein 2. Ikenberry (2003a, 2003b), however, disagrees. He sees the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the launching of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) as constituting the pursuit of an institutional agenda comparable to that which followed World Wars I and II. I argue that this more recent agenda is not on a par with the earlier eras and that it constitutes adaptation of existing institutions rather than a major effort of institutional construction. I discuss the effect of extant institutions on the post–Cold War era later in this paper. 3. The implications of globalization for the size of the state system are discussed in Rosecrance and Stein (2006). In this paper, I use the terms organization, institution, and regime largely interchangeably, though they are subtly different . The literature on organizations focuses on concrete entities with buildings , addresses, and employees. Regimes and institutions refer to a broader set of phenomena, although there is continued disagreement on their defining parameters. Here, my focus is primarily on concrete organizations, although It has also been an era of unparalleled—for some, unchecked—US power. US dominance has meant that some look to the United States to lead (Mandelbaum 2005), while others fear US unilateralism. No one would argue today, as Follett did in 1917, that the United States would press the argument that “national particularism [is] dead.” Ironically, the remarks by Woolf and Follett from nearly a century ago sound prescient today. Intervening events and current trends provide ammunition for those who would agree with their remarks, as well as for those...