Global Governance and the UN: An Unfinished Journey

Introduction The Probl

IntroductIon the Problématique of Global Governance •฀Global฀Governance:฀A฀Sketch •฀Five฀Gaps฀in฀Global฀Governance •฀The฀Tsunami฀and฀Global฀Governance •฀The฀Book There is no government for the world. yet on any given day, mail is delivered across borders; people travel from one country to another via a variety of transport modes; goods and services are freighted across land, air, sea, and cyberspace; and a whole range of other cross-border activities takes place in reasonable expectation of safety and security for the people, groups, firms, and governments involved. disruptions and threats are rare—indeed, in many instances less frequent in the international domain than in many sovereign countries that should have effective and functioning governments. That is to say, international transactions are typically characterized by order, stability, and predictability. This immediately raises a puzzle: how is the world governed even in the absence of a world government to produce norms, codes of conduct, and regulatory , surveillance, and compliance instruments? how are values allocated quasi-authoritatively for the world, and accepted as such, without a government to rule the world? The answer, we argue in this book, lies in global governance. That said, it is also the case that “normal” periods of calm, stability, order, and predictability are interspersed with periodic bouts of market volatility, disorder, and crisis. at the time we write this, the world is suffering the worst financial crisis since the Great depression that began in 1929 and continued into the 1930s. in recent times, Latin america suffered a debt crisis in 1982 and parts of Latin america, in particular argentina, suffered financial turmoil again in the early years of the twenty-first century . The united states experienced a savings and loan crisis in 1980 and 2 globAl governAnce And the Un again in the early 1990s as well as a crisis in long-term capital management in 1998. asia underwent a major financial crisis in 1997–1998. now the spectacular subprime housing loans and banking and financial crisis that began in the united states in september–october 2008 is likely to continue for several years. Where the asian financial crisis proved the perils of crony capitalism, the 2008 crisis on Wall street shows the pitfalls of unbridled capitalism. Governments may be fallible, but markets too are imperfect. both the asian crisis of a decade ago and the u.s. market collapse in 2008 demonstrate the need for efficient, effective, and transparent regulatory and surveillance instruments and institutions. The state has an essential role to play. Those countries where the state has not abandoned the market to its own supposedly self-regulating devices are seemingly better placed to weather the current crisis of confidence in capitalism. in other words, these are crises of governance in terms of the proper role of governments and market institutions as well as the appropriate balance in the relationship between them. These are also crises of domestic governance. The causes of the crises lie in imperfect domestic governance, and the solutions entail responses from both domestic governments and the market. The role of global governance institutions is restricted to containing the contagion. This insight will be a recurring refrain in our story: global governance can play a facilitative and constraining role, but it rarely plays a determinant and predominant role. The authority and capacity for the latter is vested almost exclusively in domestic public authorities. The expectations are greater for global governance on the peace and security side of the ledger, yet here too they may be false or exaggerated . as financial crises periodically occur, armed conflict occasionally breaks out even in the midst of general peace and order. just in the last decade, we have witnessed large-scale violence and conflict in the balkans, rwanda, the democratic republic of the congo (drc), the horn of africa, iraq, afghanistan, and Georgia. not all emergencies and crises are human-made. The worldwide response to the 2004 indian ocean tsunami—which killed 280,000 people —provides us with global governance in microcosm, an illustration of how an enormous transborder problem is addressed in a decentralized world. While it is trite to remark that there is no world government to take charge of international responses, it is less commonly understood why such remarkable assistance was effectively provided to tsunami victims without any central authority. introdUction 3 on 26 december 2004, an earthquake that registered a magnitude of 9.0 on the richter...