21st Century Meets the United Nations:

Confronting the Challenges of

Governance
By: Thomas G. Weiss and Ramesh
Thakur
Reporters:
Estrada, Jonetson
Tudlong, Lind-say
• There is no global government.
• Puzzling Questions:
1.How is the world governed even in the absence of a world government
to produce norms, codes of conducts, regulatory, Surveillances and compliance
instruments?
2.How are values allocated quasi-authoritatively for the world and
accepted as such without a government to rule the world?
• The answer lies in GLOBAL GOVERNANCE that is the sum of the
laws, norms, policies, and institutions that define, constitute cross-border
relationships between states, cultures, citizens, intergovernmental and non-
governmental organizations and markets and mediates the exercise of
international public institutions.
• UN is both a global governance actor and site
• The UN record since 1945 demonstrates an under-appreciated capacity for
policy innovation, institutional adaptation and organizational learning.
 GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: THE IDEA
• Governance is as purposeful systems of rules or norms that ensure order beyond
what occurs naturally.
• Global governance is a rule-based order without government.
• In international politics, what little organizational structure exists is amorphous and
even morally suspect for those fearing a global leviathan.
• In domestic context, governance is a government plus additional mechanisms to
ensure order and predictability in problem-solving.
• For the planet, governance is the entire story because there is no central authority.
• Too the state, the starting point is that governance for the planet is weak.
 UNFINISHED JOURNEY

• Global governance remains an unfinished journey because we are struggling to find

our way and are nowhere near finding a satisfactory destination.
• Depending on the issue area, geographic location and timing, there are vast
disparities in power and influence among states, IGOs, multinational corporations
and international NGOs. Coordination and cooperation are not increasingly
complex but also problematic as a result of the number of actors and the existence
of decentralized and informal, largely self-regulatory groupings.
• We certainly are not complacent about what is at stake and are not satisfied that
global governance can accomplish what a world government could.
• Even without a world government, there is much room for more
initiatives from governments and groupings in power and better
incentives and initiatives from secretariats and civil society. In
short, better mobilization and use of the three United Nations in
better government for the planet.
 GLOBALIZATION

• Globalization is a process of increased interconnectivity throughout the world.

• The primary dimension of globalization concerns the expansion of economic
activities across borders, which has produced increasing interdependence through
the growing volume and variety of cross-border flows in finance, investment, and
goods and services, the rapid and widespread diffusion of technology.
• Other dimensions include the international movement of ideas, information, legal
systems, organizations and people as well as cultural exchanges.
 Some Clarifications on Globalization

• Even in this age of globalization, the movement of people is still restricted and
strictly regulated, even more so in the aftermath of 9/11.
• Growing economic interdependence through the growing is highly asymmetrical:
the benefits of linking and the costs of delinking are not equally distributed among
partners.
• Compared to the post war period, the average rate of world growth has steadily
slowed from 3.5% per capita per annum in 1960s to 2.1%, 1.3 and 1.0%percent in
the 1970s,1980s and 1990s.
• There has been a growing divergence in income levels between countries and
peoples and widening inequality among and within nations.
 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
• Global governance overlaps with the rise of formal international
organizations, which began in the mid-19th century.
• In 19th century, international institutions sprouted their roots as sovereign
states made new arrangements for the increased interactions brought by the
Industrial Revolution.
• 3 major developments during 19th century:
1.Concert system multilateral
2. The Hague System
3. Creation of Public International Unions
• The United Nations cannot displace the responsibility of local, state, and
national governments, but it can and should be the focus of multilateral
diplomacy and collective action to solve problems shared in common by
many countries.
• Good global governance implies not exclusive policy jurisdiction but an
optimal partnerships between the state, intergovernmental, non-
governmental actors operating at the national, regional and global levels.
• Many problems are global in reach but currently are defined as international
scope that is requiring cooperation from states and units that are
incorporated in the states.
 IDENTIFYING AND DIAGNOSING
PROBLEMS
• The United Nations plays four essential roles in its intellectual capacity of
identifying and diagnosing problems and thereby filling gaps:managing
knowledge, developing norms, promulgating recommendations and
institutionalizing ideas.
 1.MANAGING KNOWLEDGE

• There are often is little or no consensus about the nature, causes, gravity, and magnitude of
a particular problem neither about its metrics nor theory and until this item are properly
defined, contestation is bound in inhibit or even empede the formulation of normative,
policy, and institutional remedies.
• Filling the knowledge gap is an important first step along the path of addressing other gaps
in global governance. If we can recognize a problem and agree on its approximate
dimensions, we can begin taking steps to solve it.
• One underappreciated advantage of the United Nations is its capacity to convene groups
and to mobilize power to help funnel knowledge from outside and ensure that is discussed
and disseminated among governments. UN sponsored world conferences, summits of head
of government, blue-ribbon commissions and panels have been used to frame issues, outline
choices and making decisions.
 DEVELOPING NORMS
• Norms can be defined ethically to a pattern of behavior that should be followed in accordance
with a given value system that is the morale code of a society, a generally accepted standard of
proper behavior.
• Norms matter because ordinary citizens and politicians and officials care about what others think
of them.
• Once a threat or problem is being identified and diagnosed, United Nations helps to solidify a
new norm of behavior, often through the summit conferences and international panels and
commissions.
• The most effective form of behavior regulation is for complete convergence between rules and
norms, for example with regard to murder. Conversely, regulating behavior is most problematic
when there is near-total dissonance in cases where a practice has been outlawed without a change
in the underlying societal norms.
• The result is a total disconnect in which the law is continually flouted. This
weakens the rule of law.
• The reason for the dissonance lies primarily in different moral frame-works
of social behavior. At the international level, one of the most likely arenas
for normative dissonance is that of human rights, precisely because
alternative moral frameworks exist that define and locate the right and
responsibilities of individuals, communities, and state vis-à-vis one another.
 FORMULATING RECOMMENDATIONS

• Once norms begin to change and become widespread, next step is to formulate a
range of possibilities about how a government and their citizens and IGO’s can
change behavior.
• The UN’s ability to convene and consult widely plays an enormous part in its ability
to formulate recommendations for specific policies, institutional arrangements and
regimes that follow from identifying and diagnosing a problem and developing a
norm desirable changes in behavior and approach by states .
• This is a function that is quintessentially in the job descriptions not only of member
states but also the staff of international secretariats, who are often complemented
by trusted consultants, NGOs and expert groups. The discussion and dissemination
often occur in public forums and global conferences.
• In February 2003, Secretary-General Kofi Annan established the Panel of Eminent Persons
on United Nations Relations with Civil Society, chaired by Brazil’s former president,
Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
• The panel focused on the widening democracy deficit in global governance, the growing
capacity and influence of non-state actors and the rising power of global public opinion. Its
report offered 30 concrete proposals for the evolution of the UN's contemporary roles,
including fostering multi-constituency processes, investing more in partnerships with civil
society and including civil society in Security Council meetings.
• The reportisespeciallypertinentindetermininghowtheworldorganiationmeetsthechallenges
ofglobalgovernanceinthetwenty-firstcentury
• The report is especially pertinent in determining how the world organization meets the
challenges of global governance in the twenty-first century:
1. Multilateralism no longer concerns governments alone but is now multifaceted, involving
many constituencies. The UN must develop new skills to service this new way of working.
2.It must become an outward-looking or network organisation, catalyzing the relationships
needed to get strong results and not letting the traditions of its formal processes be barriers.
3. It must strengthen global governance by advocating universality, inclusion, participation and
accountability at all levels and
4. It must engage more systematically with world public opinion to become more responsive, to
help shape public attitudes and to bolster support formultilateralism.
• Many of the recommendations from the Cardoso report were implemented
almost immediately in the response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The
massive relief effort showed the UN's ability to convene and foster multi-
constituency processes, its ability to catalyse networks and its capacity to
exercise global leadership.
 INSTITUTIONALIZING IDEAS

• Institutions provide another example of the impact of ideas. Some seven decades
into the UN's history, virtually every problem has several global institutions
working on significant aspects of solutions. Actors in world politics can and do
cooperate, and they do so more often than they engage in conflict.
• Intergovernmental organisations can help to facilitate joint action by sharing
information, reducing transaction costs, providing incentives for concessions and
establishing mechanisms for dispute resolution and agreed decision-making
processes. Institutions can facilitate problem solving even though they do not
possess any coercive powers.
• State policy-making processes have been internationalized and often globalied. However,
collective-action problems have not been eliminated.
• Globalization has led to more practice in international cooperation but has introduce
additional layers of complexity and conflict potential.
• The creation of institutions requires that knowledge, normative and policy-making gaps
have been at least partially filled. If they are effective, however, institutions also have
recursive effects. Once in place, they can fill gaps but also uncover new ones. For example,
an institution can gather statistical data, which can help fill the knowledge gap.
• Based on new information, new norms can develop, leading to new policies and institutions,
but then a new gap or problem can appear(orbeuncoveredforexample,howtoputa
valueontheinformalsectorwheremanywomenindevelopingcountriesworkwhichthen
• Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane(1993)explain that there are three causal
pathways by which ideas ultimately can affect policy: by becoming road maps that
point actors in the right direction: by affecting their choices of strategies when there
is no single equilibrium and by becoming embedded in institutions. An overview of
UN history suggests that the source of ideas to fill international institutional gaps is
more likely to be governments and IGOs than civil society.
• Institutions give extended life to an idea because they can out last the individuals
who first had it. Institutions to attack global problems require substantial financing
and backing, which makes them the kind of concrete step that can be initiated by
governments as an indication that they are taking an issue seriously.
• A policy still needs to be implemented and additional complications and short
comings might appear during implementation. The zero tolerance policy towards
sexual exploitation by UN soldiers has been in existence for sometime, for instance,
yet the problem continues. Inevitably, even with full knowledge, adequate norms
and policy and operations to back them up, some individuals or groups always
cheat, challenge and defy the norms and laws. Hence, all societies have mechanisms
in place to detect violators and outlaws, subject them to trial and punish convicted
offenders and there by deter future violators. The modalities and procedures for
enforcing compliance with international norms and laws are absent for the United
Nations.
Thank you for
listening!!!