UN Ideas That Changed the World

14. Strengthening Global Governance

strengthening global governance 237 14. Strengthening Global Governance • Global Governance • Enhancing UN Decision Making • Bringing Social Justice into Global Governance • Strengthening the UN’s Intellectual Work • Narrowing the Gaps between Rhetoric and Reality: Mobilizing the Three UNs • Conclusion Atthebeginningofthelastchapter,wegaveexamplesofhowdramaticallythings can change in a mere ten-year period, for better and for worse. In today’s world, even the credit crunch of 2007 took only a few months to engulf almost the whole world in financial and economic crisis. The planet’s economic, social, and political situations have changed dramatically over the six and a half decades of the UN’s existence, in many ways beyond recognition. And while the formal decision-making structures of the United Nations have hardly changed during this period, other less formal procedures and rules are starkly different from those in place in 1945. The need to strengthen the formal and the informal ways that the world attempts to identify, understand, and solve global problems is the challenge of strengthening global governance. Global Governance The system of global governance has advanced and evolved considerably over the life of the UN, but in different ways, at different speeds, and with great contrasts between the four main areas of its concern and oversight: economic stability, international security, development, and human rights. The advances and setbacks, successes and failures, together with its present limitations and future challenges have been set out by Thomas G. Weiss and Ramesh Thakur in The UN and Global Governance: An Unfinished Journey.1 For those who are not specialists in international relations, it may be useful to indicate why the term “global governance” has come into use instead of 238 a future for the un and the planet “global government.” Global government would imply an international system with at least some of the capacities and powers of national governments—notably powers to control or repel threats, raise revenues, allocate expenditures, redistribute incomes, and enforce compliance as well as ensure the rights of citizens. While some distinguished commentators have declared the need for the UN system to have some of these powers—for instance, Nobel prizewinner Jan Tinbergen and former head of the World Bank Robert McNamara—clearly no such powers of government have been accorded to any international institution at present. Moreover, ideas for global government remain highly contested and are very far from being accepted politically, even as a distant objective. For these reasons, most students of international relations prefer the term “global governance,” which came into widespread use in the 1990s. Global governance implies systems with imperfections and major limitations—in a phrase, international cooperation without world government—with states pursuing their own national or regional interests and with only limited and often ineffective measures to require compliance with internationally agreed-upon rules, regulations, and decisions. Although some observers still believe that a vision of global government remains the long-run answer in an ever-more-globalizing world, realists of international relations argue that this pursuit is misleading . They see a struggle to create a world government as a vastly exaggerated and idealistic vision of what will be possible or desirable over the next few decades and, worse, a chimera that seriously distorts the elements of stronger global governance to which we can and should strive during the nearer future. In addition, some critics are philosophically opposed to a global leviathan. This said, structures of global governance do exist and have been anything but static. International rules, regulations, institutions, and expectations have advanced and evolved considerably over the decades of the UN’s existence, often increasing in strength, sometimes remaining stagnant, but rarely moving backward. Even critics would agree that in a number of technical areas—such as agreed-upon rules and regulations for shipping and international air flights, the standardization of weather systems, and the mapping of epidemiological trends—global governance has demonstrated its value. Indeed, in some areas like telecommunications and postal services, the arrangements date back to the nineteenth century, when necessities for technical coordination became obvious and institutions like the International Telegraph Union and the Universal Postal Union were established, respectively in 1865 and 1874.2 By 1914, over thirty such institutions had been created and by the end of the twentieth century hundreds more, some of which are listed in box 14.1. Nevertheless, as Weiss and Thakur identify and analyze in their book, today’s system of global governance, even with its intentional limitations, remains [3.137.192.3] Project MUSE (2024-04-23 23...