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1 Tracing the Origins of an Idea and the UN ’s Contribution
- Indiana University Press
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1 tracing the origins of an Idea and the Un’s contribution •GlobalGovernance:TheIdea •GovernancewithoutGovernment •Globalization •AnHistoricalPerspective •IdentifyingandDiagnosingProblems •TheUN’sIdeationalRole:ThisBookandtheUNIHPSeries This chapter explores three themes: the idea of global governance itself, the un’s ideational role in framing this idea, and the anomalies in the international system that have provided openings for the spread of this concept. The un’s “ideational role” is fancy new packaging for the world organization’s intellectual or creative capacities in global governance—its efforts to understand problems and address them by formulating norms or policy recommendations.1 We identify gaps or disconnects in order to examine the search for new solutions—including new combinations of actors—to address challenges that are beyond the capacities of states. The essential challenge in contemporary global problem-solving is the fact that no central authority exists to make global policy choices and mobilize the required resources to implement these decisions. consequently, only second- or even thirdbest solutions are feasible at present. The united nations has been more effective in filling gaps in knowledge and norms than in making decisions with teeth and acting upon them. GlobalGovernance:TheIdea While we spelled it out earlier, another way to think of governance is as purposeful systems of rules or norms that ensure order beyond what trAcing the origins oF An ideA And the Un’s contribUtion 29 occurs naturally. in the domestic context, governance is usually more than government and implies a shared purpose and goal orientation as well as formal authority or police powers. in international politics, what little organizational structure exists is amorphous, even morally suspect for some. it is important to make clear the differences between national and global governance. The Human Development Report 1999 argued that “governance does not mean mere government.”2 in a domestic context, this is correct because governance is government plus the additional mechanisms required to ensure order and predictability in problem-solving. For the planet, however , governance is the whole story because there is no central authority. in many instances, the un’s network of institutions and rules provides the appearance of effective governance but these mechanisms do not produce the actual desired effects. international organizations sometimes function in a quasi-governmental fashion and try to exercise social control by promulgating norms and laws. The united nations, not unlike national governments, represents a structure of authority that rests on institutionalized practices and generally accepted norms. The starting point for thinking about international public policy is that governance for the planet is weak. readers should keep in mind that global governance is not a supplement but rather what the French would call a faute de mieux, a surrogate for authority and enforcement for the contemporary world in the absence of something better. no matter how strong the contributions of informal and formal networks are, no matter how plentiful the resources from private organizations and corporations are, no matter how much goodwill from governments exists, the striking reality is that there is no central authority. While vast improvements are plausible and desirable in contemporary global governance, we must continually ask a sobering question: can we ever get good global governance without something that looks much more like effective world government ? can global governance without a world government actually address adequately the range of problems faced by humanity? as noted earlier, some would argue that all efforts to solve problems beyond state borders since the nineteenth century are part of the history of global governance, but the birth of the term “global governance” reflects an interesting marriage between academic and policy concerns in the 1990s. it replaced an earlier exploration of what was called world order studies, which some critiqued as overly top-down and static, failing [3.230.76.153] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:25 GMT) 30 globAl governAnce And the Un to capture the variety of actors, networks, and relationships that characterize contemporary international relations. at the end of the cold War, scholars believed that the collapse of the bipolar system created an opportunity for a substantially new world order—one achieved not by some sort of consensus among different cultural and political traditions but a u.s. or at least a classical liberal world order. When the multiple perspectives in the work done by world order scholars started to look a little old fashioned, james rosenau and Ernst czempiel published...