1 Chapter 1 Who Governs the Globe? Deborah Avant, Martha Finnemore, and Susan K. Sell Academics and policy makers speak frequently about global governance but do so in the passive voice. We treat governance as structure or process. Global governance is “the management of global processes in the absence of global government” or “collective efforts to identify, understand, or address worldwide problems that go beyond the capacity of individual governments to solve.1 Global governance is something that happens; no one, apparently, actually does it. We rarely talk about global governors and have not made the agents in this process central to our analysis. To the extent that international relations (IR) scholars do think about whom global “governors” might be, they think about states. States, after all, are obvious recognized political authorities. Their job is to govern. And they do govern, or try to, in many areas of global activity. They sign inter-state treaties, create international law, and promulgate wide-ranging rules to initiate, regulate, and “govern” activity in desired ways. States are by no means alone in this endeavor, however. The global policy arena is filled with a wide variety of actors – international organizations, corporations, professional associations, advocacy groups, and the like – seeking to “govern” activity in issue areas they care about. They want new rules (or different rules) to solve problems, change outcomes, and transform international life. International relations scholars are poorly equipped to understand this kaleidoscope of activity by such a wide range of agents, though, because our theories are mostly theories about states. Without theories about the powers, interests, and behavioral proclivities of other actors, we do not have conceptual equipment with which to understand the kinds of effects they might create in the world. Consequently, in this project we explore the agents of global governance—what we call “global governors.” For purposes of this inquiry, global governors are actors who exercise power across borders with some degree of legitimacy and continuity for purposes of affecting policy in an issue area. Governors thus: create issues, set agendas, establish and implement rules or programs, and evaluate and/or adjudicate outcomes. Rather than assuming that these governors are states, we investigate. Who actually performs the tasks involved in governing? This leads us to ask additional questions. Where do global governors come from? Who put them in charge (and why)? How do they accomplish their goals? What effects do their actions produce? Our investigations suggest that twenty-first century governors are a varied lot. Some, like the flagship intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)—the World Bank, the IMF, the UN – come to their governing tasks intentionally and willingly (even eagerly); others, like corporations, back into governance roles and may even drag their feet. Who defers to governors – or puts them in charge – also varies and is based on a range of different sources of authority. Expertise propels professional associations to the fore, while advocacy organizations appeal to principles for their authority, and corporations sometimes gain authority because others perceive them as capable of 1 Adil Najam get citation and Ramesh Thakur and Thomas G. Weiss, The UN and Global Governance: an idea and its prospects. manuscript. See http://www.unhistory.org/publications/globalgov.html 1 2 achieving results. Some governors produce effects that approximate their intentions; others do not come close. The one thing they have in common is that none of them governs alone. Almost all governing in contemporary global politics seems to be the result of governor interactions of various kinds. Governors divide labor, delegate, compete and cooperate with one another in many ways to produce the outcomes we observe. Our focus on governors of diverse kinds puts us in a league with a growing number of scholars who question the state-centrism of our field. Certainly states are important in the governance of global life, but they are only one of a variety of types of actors exercising power and making or implementing the rules that govern global interactions. Corporations, NGOs, IGOs, professional societies, international jurists, transnational networks, and various hybrid types of actors all work hard to shape accepted and legitimate rules and promulgate new ones to their liking. We seek to theorize better the influence and agendas of these diverse governing agents. Rather than “seeing like states” our contributors “see like” professional associations, advocacy groups, and multinational corporations, so as to theorize about the political logics informing these different global governors, and the implications of this for global governance.2 We argue that the key to understanding the political logic of these different governors can be found in two relationships. The first is the relationship between the governor and the governed. Why the governed defer tells us a lot about how the governor will behave and when she will gain or lose authority. The second is the relationship among different governors. Governors rarely act alone; they cooperate, compete, and conflict in a variety of structured ways. Both relationships, with the governed and with other governors, are dynamic, as our case studies show clearly. To explore these relationships, our analysis below identifies typologies of the various sources of authority we find among global governors and the different relationships they have with one another. The interaction between these two variables, we contend, promises to shape a rich research agenda on global governors. The empirical chapters that follow illustrate different patterns in these relationships. We begin this chapter by discussing reasons to approach global governance from the perspective of agents. There are practical policy reasons why a focus on agents, particularly diverse types of agents, is essential for understanding contemporary politics. Changes in the world economy, in politics, and in the international social fabric in recent years have diffused governance tasks and involved more, and more types of, actors in governing. We simply cannot understand many contemporary political issues without this broader view. Focusing on agents also encourages us to avoid questionable assumptions common in research on global governance – particularly functionalism and instrumentalism – and suggests a different normative framework. The next section elaborates our conceptual tools for understanding the relationship of authority between governors and governed as well as the relations among various governors. We identify five bases from which governors draw authority and engender deference: institutional, delegated, expert, moral, and efficacious. We then break down “governance” into several different tasks so as to provide the basis through which to outline relationship between governors in accomplishing these tasks. Four general patterns are apparent in the relations among governors: delegation, contracting, networks, and hierarchy. Our final substantive section addresses the normative issues that the focus on relationships raises. The complex, often baroque and opaque, relations both among governing authorities and with 2 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 2 3 various amorphous sets of “governed” raise questions about accountability and legitimacy in world politics and suggest different approaches to answering these questions. We conclude the chapter with an overview of the rich empirical studies that illustrate our claims in the remainder of the volume. Bringing agents back into global governance: Real world change, faulty assumptions, and conceptual shifts Assumptions that the global political system was constituted by unitary, instrumental states and structured by the distribution of power among them made an analyst’s life easy. It focused attention by stripping away the many pesky and distracting sideshows on the world scene. It made the very messy world “legible” and comprehensible to both scholars and policymakers, facilitating grand theory for the former and statecraft for the latter.3 The risk, of course, for both analysts and policymakers is that simplification gets things wrong and is thus a poor guide to action. Our contention is that the simplifying assumptions of IR theory—unitary, asocial, instrumental states constrained only by the distribution of state power—strip away much of what is essential for understanding contemporary politics. Perhaps it told us more in the 1980s, when these theories were developed, but real-world changes over the last quarter century have empowered new actors in new ways, undermining the utility of these assumptions. Four such changes have been particularly influential: globalization; the privatization/deregulation revolution; new technologies; and the end of the Cold War. Real world changes. Globalization, or the shift in the spatial reach of social action and organization toward the interregional, intercontinental or global scale, has undermined the coincidence between social action and state borders. 4 Globalization is commonly associated with the global economy but its reach extends beyond economic issues. Environmental issues, particularly problems such as global warming, join the fates of people across the globe.5 Ideas about human rights became platforms for social connections with people across the globe as well as military intervention to protect them.6 Even security became identified with humanity as analysts, activists and states developed and implemented conceptions of “human security”.7 The globalization of financial markets and concurrent increase in capital mobility, however, has had some of the most dramatic impacts on state capacity by vastly undermining the ability of states to set their own macroeconomic policy. States gradually abandoned capital controls, and surrendered their ability to control the flow of capital in and out of their territories. That meant that they had sacrificed monetary autonomy in favor of capital mobility and market-driven (flexible) foreign exchange rates. Losing control of the money supply meant that they could no longer engage in the kind of Keynesian management in which you could expand (print more money) when the economy was in recession or contract the money supply when the economy threatened to overheat into inflation.8 Each of these facets of globalization has diminished state 3 See James Scott, Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed (New Haven: Yale University Press) 1998, esp. his “Introduction” pp.1-8. 4 David Held and Anthony McGrew, “The Great Globalization Debate,” in The Globalization Reader (Polity), p. 3. 5 Jessica Tuchman Mathews, “Redefining Security,” Foreign Affairs Vol. 68, No. 2 (spring 1989): 162-177. 6 Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003). 7 Roland Paris, “Human Security: A Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?” International Security 26,2 (fall 2001):87-102. 8 Barry Eichengreen, 1996. Globalizing Capital: a History of the International Monetary System (Princeton: Princeton University Press). 3 4 control. Equally important, each has empowered other actors—NGOs, IGOs, transnational groups of scientists, hedge funds and economists-- to govern in these issue areas. The Thatcher and Reagan-led privatization and deregulation revolution has only compounded this transfer of power to actors other than states. Starting in the 1980s, states, led by the most powerful, began to systematically cut economic actors free from state control in hopes of improving economic performance. State-owned enterprises were sold to private actors, state functions were contracted to private actors and private actors were increasingly encouraged to finance policies such as education, municipal services, and even security that had once been the exclusive responsibility of states. States have delegated many functions of government to the private sector. This faith in the wisdom of markets also led states to loosen regulation of economic activity and increasingly other social activity as well. While we can debate the wisdom of such policy and its impact on the economic growth of a variety of individual states, there is little doubt that it has increased the role of non-state actors across the board: in economic, social, and even security realms.9 Though global economic growth has exploded in the past 25 years, states’ ability to control or regulate it has diminished, while non-state actors’ efforts to shape or tame it have increased. Many elements of globalization were made possible by new technologies which eased communications, population flows, and the interchange of ideas. Information technologies such as the internet and cell phones, global media, and the ease of air travel have often had mixed effects, particularly on state capacity relative to that of other global actors. The same technology that eased communication allowing corporations in the US to outsource computer support to India (challenging the ability of the US government to affect its labor market) also allowed communication among al Qaeda operatives. Cell phones are both essential tools of global business and vehicles for popular dissent in places like the Philippines and Burma. New technologies have also enhanced the capacities of states. They allow the creation of ever more sophisticated communications, weapons systems, and infrastructure support, but each innovation also brings with it new vulnerabilities that can be exploited by those with technological expertise. Finally, the end of the Cold War further fueled these changes. The halt of major conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union loosened the restraints on international activity imposed by the superpower deadlock. In a wide variety of social, political, economic, and security realms, activists and organizations began to push for change. The way the Cold War ended, with the triumph of the US and the liberal model, bolstered the credence of the privatization and deregulation ideas prominent in the US and emboldened many (generally US-supported) international organizations to drop Cold War-style “impartiality” and push hard for liberal, capitalist change. The resulting expansion of global markets and democracy has been dramatic. At the same time this wave of change empowered a variety of non-state actors to press hard for increased human rights protection, to work to restrict the spread of conflict, and to promote attention to issues of global concern. It also inspired others to empower themselves to counter some of these activities. As Clifford Bob discusses, the international efforts to restrict the flow of small arms caused gun rights groups to mobilize transnationally to resist these restrictions. More deadly has been the rise of networks such as Al Qaeda to resist what they claim to be the imposition of western cultural and economic practices on the Islamic world. 9 But see Linda Weiss, The Myth of the Powerless State (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) and Daniel Drezner, All Politics is Global: Explaining International Regulatory Regimes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 4 5 The result of these four changes has been that the state-centric, structural and/or functional theoretical frameworks of the Cold War era capture rather little of the actual governance that goes on in the world today. Only a fraction of global governance activity involves state representatives negotiating only with each other about ways to make commitments credible or ways to escape prisoners’ dilemmas. Indeed, as these trends toward globalization, deregulation, privatization, and technological change accelerate, prevailing theories explain less and less. Large scale violence is unleashed not only by states but by terrorist and criminal networks. When the US goes to war almost half its force is made up of private security companies that recruit from all over the world – even from states who oppose the war. Not only is governance done by many more actors than states, but the kinds of activities they undertake are much more diverse than the stylized games IR scholars usually study. Rather than worrying about credible commitments— that others will not trust or believe that actors will follow through with promises—actors may worry about the converse—that their actions will be taken as precedents and promises when none are intended. Prisoners’ dilemmas (PDs) may get solved, not by creating a regime among states10 but by walking away from the game and choosing to work with different players. Climate change negotiations, arguably (but not obviously) a PD, have been stalled among states with the result that the “game” has simply broken up. Small groups of states (i.e. European ones) are acting to curb emissions, as are sub-state actors such as California (in adopting stricter-than-US national emissions standards), even when this is not “rational” since they cannot fix the problem alone. Faulty Assumptions. Attention to the agents who carry out global governance also casts new light on some common, often unconscious, assumptions that permeate thinking about global governance in the academic and the policy world; we contend that these assumptions impede rather than enhance understanding. One assumption is functionalist: governance will arise in response to collective needs and supply “public goods”.11 Analysts often write as though the existence of global problems will, by itself, through some unspecified mechanism, give rise to governance arrangements to solve them. Indeed, functionalism of this type is often built into definitions of governance. “Governance…embraces governmental institutions, but it also subsumes informal, non-governmental mechanisms whereby those persons and organizations within its purview move ahead, satisfy their needs, and fulfill their wants.”12 Similarly, much of the literature on global governance equates it, implicitly or explicitly, with the provision of global public goods. Practitioners complain, however, that governance is often not supplied on many global issues and that governance outcomes are frequently disconnected from both the public and the good. Complaints about global inaction on climate change and lack of access to HIV/AIDS medicines are but two prominent examples. As debates about how to best “solve” each of these problems demonstrate, inaction often has diverse causes; disagreement may be over which action provides the best solution, but it may also be over the nature of the “problem” or whether there is a problem at all. Rather than assuming that governance arrangements are the most efficient or effective, our contributors attend to paths not taken and choices not made by agents in their analyses. Often, too, analysts assume (or impute) an instrumental logic of action to those involved in governing. International relations scholars overwhelmingly have analyzed governance as a 10 Stephen D. Krasner, International Regimes Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983. Robert O. Keohane, “The demand for international regimes” in Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983, 141-171. James Rosenau and E. Czempiel, Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 12 James Rosenau, “Governance, order, and change in world politics.” In Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel, eds., Governance without Government: order and change in world politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, p.4. 11 5 6 product of strategic choices and instrumental means-ends calculations.13 If choices do not produce desired outcomes, in this perspective, it is either because of countervailing instrumental action by others or because of environmental constraints. While instrumental action looms large in much governance politics, it is not the only driver of behavior and there are dangers in ascribing too much explanatory power to it. Means-ends rationality is often heavily “bounded” such that outcomes bear limited resemblance to Pareto improvement.14 As much recent scholarship has demonstrated, action may be driven by powerful social norms of legitimate or appropriate behavior which interact with instrumental action in complex ways. 15 Rather than reifying a single logic of behavior, then, we explore the ways in which these logics can and do intertwine. Similarly, the context or “environment” for action may be more than constraining. Social context may be generative and constitutive, creating new actors or new preferences. By examining global governance as something that is not solely the result of instrumental action, environmental constraints, or functional demands, many of our chapters highlight unintended consequences, indeterminacy, and path dependence in governance processes. While agents may be strategic and environmental pressures may be significant, governance results from interactions between environmental demands and locally adaptive agents who may act according to a variety of behavioral logics. Rather than unproblematic movement toward a unique equilibrium, governance often unfolds in “inefficient histories.”16 Rules and institutions established at one time may be locally stable and resistant to change even when dysfunctional from a larger environmental perspective. Governors and their environments, both international and local, also may co-evolve as their interaction changes actors’ values, identities, and preferences. Change may or may not be consistent with the preferences of actors who undertake it. We do not assume that change is obvious, inevitable, or, once in place, stable. Unintended consequences loom large in much of history, including that of global governance.17 Perhaps the most powerful, or at least the most pervasive, assumptions surrounding global governance are normative. Global governance is widely assumed to be “a good thing.” When we speak of it, we link it to activities with decidedly positive aura-- cooperation, problem-solving, providing public goods. These are all things we like; indeed, they are all things it is hard to oppose. Linking global governance to these activities disposes us to think of any governance as good in and of itself. Often this bias, too, is built into the very definition of the term. Consider, for example, one of the most widely circulated and accepted definitions, that of the Commission on Global Governance. The Commission defines global governance as “the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs. It is a continuing process through which conflicting or diverse interests may be accommodated and cooperative action may be taken.”18 Governance here is equated with “cooperative action” but 13 David Lake and Robert Powell, Strategic Choice and International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1999. Barbara Koremenos et. al. “ The Rational Design of International Institutions International Organization 55,4 (Autumn 2001) 14 James March and Herbert Simon, Organizations, New York: Wiley, 1958, esp. ch6; Herbert A. Simon, “Rational Decisionmaking in Business Organizations,” American Economic Review Sept 1979, 493-513; James G. March, A Primer on Decision-making. New York: The Free Press, 1994; James G. March, The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence Boston: Basil Blackwell, 1999. 15 James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, “The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders” International Organization 52, 4(1998):943-969. 16 See March and Olsen 1998; Gutner, and Cooley this volume. 17 James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, “The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders” International Organization 52, 4 (Autumn 1998):943-69. 18 Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighborhood (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 2. 6 7 any political observer knows that governance is not always cooperative nor are “diverse interests” always accommodated. Indeed, diverse interests may lead to competition, even conflict, within governing arrangements. Power, in its various forms, may make “cooperative action” hard to distinguish from exploitation or domination. Investigating the diverse actors who govern helps foreground some of these normative issues by alerting us to the varied normative agendas governors might bring to their work. Jettisoning functionalism and instrumentalism encourages us to explore some of the troubling, if sometimes unintended, consequences of governance.19 Moving beyond these assumptions to study varied actors requires new ways of thinking about global politics and global governance. Grand theory is not our goal. Indeed, some of our contributors would probably join James Scott in his suspicion of such theories. What we can offer, though, is some orienting concepts that both set the scholars in this volume apart from some of the older work on global governance and build bridges to work on non-state governors elsewhere in the field. Diverse work on transnational activists, corporations, private authority, and international organizations that inform our authors all shares our interest in agents other than states but these literatures rarely talk to each other and commonalities among them are infrequently explored. Conceptual shifts. The first conceptual task in thinking about global governors is to clarify what we mean by governance and governors. Not all actors who participate in global politics are governors. Indeed, some of our chapters describe failed attempts to govern. To repeat our definition, global governors are actors who exercise power across borders with some degree of legitimacy and continuity, for purposes of affecting policy in an issue area.20 Thus governance, in our view, is more than simple coercion. Scholars have been preoccupied for more than two decades with enforcement of global rules and governing arrangements. Seen through a lens of anarchy and real politick enforcement of rules is a continuing challenge, and states, the actors with legitimate coercive powers, must be central to any governance analysis.21 Rule enforcement is only one aspect of governing, though, and coercion is only one tool for enforcement. What is striking about the breadth and depth of current governance arrangements in the world is that many, probably most, of these are not obviously or explicitly backed by force. Governors may have coercive powers and may use them at times, but more often governors are accepted in some fashion by those whom they govern. Governance requires more than big sticks; it also requires leadership and creativity. Put in social science jargon, governance is not simply the result of structural constraints; it is also the result of Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall make a related critique of extant definitions in “Power in International Politics” International Organization 59(2005): 39-75 at 57. 20 There are a great many definitions of global governance. In addition to those already cited see Robert O. Keohane, “Global Governance and Democratic Accountability” in David Held and Mathias KoenigArchibugi, eds., Taming Globalization: Frontiers of Governance. London: Polity Press, 2003, 130-59. Also available at: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/LSEPublicLecturesAndEvents/pdf/20020701t1531t001.pdf. Definition is at page 3. 21 The very large literature on cooperation under anarchy and international regimes exemplify this orientation. See for example Lloyd Gruber, Ruling the World: Power Politics and the Rise of Supranational Institutions, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000; Kenneth Oye, Cooperation Under Anarchy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Lisa Martin, Coercive Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994);); Arthur Stein, Why Nations Cooperate: Circumstance and Choice in International Relations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). 19 7 8 generative agents. It is transformational and innovative rather than simply prohibitive.22 Governance involves the creation of new issues, new interests, and new modes of action by creative agents. Governors can gain acceptance from those they seek to lead by offering attractive new ideas, formulating new strategies, and persuading people of the importance of new social goals. While states may have advantages in coercion, they have no monopoly on these other aspects of governance. Leadership and creativity have many sources. Understanding governance as more than just rule-enforcement (or the provision of order)23 thus requires consideration of more kinds of governors and of how they do their work. Understanding governance in this transformational way also demands that we expand our understanding of power. Power, in this view, cannot be simply a constraint nor is it simply a structure. It is also a resource and a tool that governors use to lead, dispute, and shame, coerce, cajole and persuade. The view of power as structural constraint runs deep in governance analysis. In the older strand of “neo” theorizing (neorealist, neoliberal), the distribution of material power constituted the international structure which determined political outcomes through constraint. Power was constraint and structure only; creative deployment of power by agents, what might commonly be called statecraft, was not explained by these theories.24 Even more recent and far more nuanced views of power’s role in governance, such as Barnett and Duvall’s, have a strong structural cast and leave in shadow the generative or productive power of agents which we focus upon here.25 In Barnett and Duvall’s taxonomy, interaction among agents is “compulsory power;” its hallmark is constraint and coercion. “Productive power,” in their view, involves “diffuse social relations” rather than actions by specific agents. Certainly compulsion looms large in politics, as do institutional and structural forces. We do not deny the productive power of diffuse social relations. Our interest lies equally, though, in the ways specific agents use power to induce, persuade, and create. Clearly, one must conceptualize these governors. Our focus in this project is on governors’ agency, but many of our governors, like other collective actors in political life, have a multifaceted, even chameleon-like character. Transnational advocacy groups, like those that Bob and Carpenter study, are agents who push causes. Yet they are also forums in which smaller units--individuals or sub-groups--brainstorm, argue, bargain, strategize, and develop consensus. They are, in a sense, both agent and structure, sometimes simultaneously. This is not simply an issue of mutual constitution, although mutual constitution is certainly taking place within these groups. It is also a conceptual problem, but one social science deals with frequently. Nationstates are both agents and structures in a similar way. The US government is an actor (or agent) in some analyses but may become a structure within which bureaucratic agencies, interest groups, Congress, and courts all struggle in other analyses.26 Scholars might find it useful to impute coherence to governors for some purposes, and to investigate coherence as an outcome of contestation for others, depending on the questions they are asking. One may worry about this as a challenge to analytic clarity, but may also treat it as an opportunity. It permits one more fully to explore some of the ways in which agency interacts with structures., both inside our governors and outside. 22 See McNamara, this volume. See James N. Rosenau, “Governance, order, and change in world politics” in Rosenau and Czempiel, Governance without Government, p.4-5. 24 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979; Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. 25 Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, “Power in Global Governance” in Power in Global Governance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 1-32. 26 Martin Hollis and Stephen Smith, Explaining and Understanding IInternational Relations 1991. 23 8 9 Finally, one might wonder how this very broad vision of global governance and governors— diverse agents doing diverse things—differs from models of domestic politics, perhaps pluralism elevated to the global level. The usual reason to treat the global realm differently from the domestic one, in theoretical terms, is the absence of a world government to enforce rules and laws. With no one to enforce rules or laws, models of domestic politics should be hard to apply at the international level and, yet, coercive powers have enjoyed a privileged place in IR theory. By focusing on non-coercive governing powers, our perspective draws attention to political processes that may operate in both domestic and international realms. Professionals deploy expertise in similar ways in both contexts. Advocates use similar tools in both as well. So do firms. Recognizing such similarities is useful. It allows us to learn from colleagues researching similar political processes in more local contexts. Rather than assuming that global governance is radically different from domestic or local governance, we investigate the dimensions on which they differ or are similar, and reasons for this variation. Unchecked coercion and lack of rule enforcement are certainly two possible differences but there are others. Institutional fluidity and lack of one unifying hierarchy may matter as well. Domestically, a stable nation state provides a relatively hierarchical and clear organizational structure in which various actors might set agendas and make or implement rules. When conflicts arise, there are arbitration and enforcement mechanisms in the form of courts and administrative agencies. Global governors operate in much more horizontal and ambiguous institutional contexts. Often, it is not at all clear who has authority to govern on an issue or what set of institutions is authoritative or even relevant. This potentially has large effects which have not been systematically theorized.27 One possible effect might be to facilitate and encourage the kind of creative and generative governing activity that interests us. More institutional fluidity might create more opportunities for diverse actors to shop for forums, shop for governors, and create new governing structures than would be possible in a more hierarchical context where laws, rules, and governing procedures are more clearly specified. Institutional fluidity might also change the way that governors strategize, build relations with other governors, and focus scarce attention. In rethinking who governs and how, we build on recent research by scholars on such diverse nonstate actors such as private firms, NGOs, intergovernmental or supranational organizations, and hybrid public-private partnerships. Keck and Sikkink were the first to point out the impact that transnational advocacy groups could have on national and international policy. They hypothesized that these actors, because they were motivated by values, operated differently than strategic theories might suggest and thus required a different mode of theorizing. Their work has 27 Important contributions towards understanding this complexity include: Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1977): 254-55. Philip Cerny, “Globalization and the Changing Logic of Collective Action” International Organization 49:4 (1995: 595-625; Wolfgang Reinicke Global Public Policy: Governing without Government? (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1989); Stephen Kobrin, “The Architecture of Globalization: State Sovereignty in a Networked Economy” in John Dunning, ed. Governments, Globalization and International Business (Oxford Online Publishing, July 1999). Recent debates over the efficacy of forum-shifting in international negotiation and international law are moving this research agenda forward. For a positive view of the possibilities of forum-shifting, see Lawrence Helfer, “Regime-Shifting: the TRIPS Agreement and New Dynamics of International Intellectual Property Lawmaking” 29 Yale Journal of International Law 26-45 (2004). Helfer emphasizes opportunities provided by a multiplicity of forums. For a more skeptical view, see Ahmed Latif, “Developing Country Coordination in International Standard-Setting” Trade-Related Agenda, Development, and Equity Working Paper 24, South Centre (June 2005), available at www.southcentre.org. Latif suggests that a multiplicity of governors and forums raises transaction costs and thereby disadvantages those with fewer resources. 9 10 inspired much scholarship building on and critiquing their conception.28 A. Claire Cutler, Virginia Haufler, and Tony Porter’s work was also path-breaking and pointed out that in some cases corporate actors developed private authority (more than simply power) over particular issues.29 Also, while many have examined international organizations as “agents” of states, Ernst Haas pioneered the study of IOs as actors in their own right.30 The recent study by Barnett and Finnemore also treats them as autonomous actors and begins to theorize about the sources of their authority. Others have adopted similar stances, examining agency in a variety of different international organizations.31 Finally, a set of scholars has begun to examine the ways in which states themselves have begun to change in the current global context. Edgar Grande and Louis Pauly, along with their colleagues, have investigated the way sovereignty, itself, is being transformed in its most basic dimensions—territoriality, functionality, legitimacy.32 The Nature of Authority: “Who put you in charge?”33 To incorporate the array of actors and activities involved in governing into the way we think about global governance, we propose a framework that hinges on a common understanding of the sources of authority these actors can possess. If international organizations, transnational advocacy groups, and corporations govern, who put them in charge? Why does anyone pay attention to them? Understanding why actors are authorities, able to govern, allows us to understand better their behaviors, their relationships, one to another, and their impacts. A global governor’s power flows from her authority rather than from simple coercion. Certainly coercion can create behavior change and be effective in establishing some kinds of rules in some situations. In most aspects of world politics, however, no single actor has the power to dictate rules and coerce compliance. The existence of rule-governed behavior in the absence of coercion 28 Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); Cooley, Alexander and James Ron, ‘The NGO Scramble: Organizational Insecurity and the Political Economy of Transnational Action,’ International Security, Vol. 27, No. 1 (summer 2002), 5-39; Deborah Avant, “Conserving Nature in the State of Nature: the Politics of INGO Implementation,” Review of International Studies, (July 2004); Susan Sell and Aseem Prakash, “Using Ideas Strategically: The Contest between Business and NGO Networks in Intellectual Property Rights” , International Studies Quarterly 48:1 (2004): 143-175. 29 A. Claire Cutler, Virginia Haufler and Tony Porter, eds., Private Authority in International Affairs (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999). 30 Ernst B. Haas, Beyond the Nation State: Functionalism and Internationalism (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1964); Haas, When Knowledge is Power: Three Models of Change in International Organizations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Wayne Sandholtz, High-Tech Europe: the Politics of International Cooperation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 31 Barnett and Finnemore 2004; Catherine Weaver, Hypocrisy Trap: The World Bank and Poverty Reform. Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming; Ngaire Woods, The Globalizers: The IMF, the World Bank, and their borrowers. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006; Ian Johnstone, “The Role of the UN Secretary-General: The Power of Persuasion Based on Law” Global Governance 9(2003)441-58; and “The Power of Interpretive Communities” in Barnett and Duvall, Power and Global Governance. New York: Cambridge University Press, 185-204. 32 Edgar Grande and Louis W. Pauly, eds., Complex Sovereignty: reconstituting political authority in the twenty-first century. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. 33 The following discussion draws on Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, Rules for the World chapter 2. 10 11 is a theoretical puzzle within most IR frameworks and is one reason that global governance interests us.34 We define authority as the ability to induce deference in others.35 Authority is thus a social relationship, not a commodity; it does not exist in a vacuum. Authority is created by the recognition, (even if only tacit or informal), of others. Deference to the judgments of an authority might take a variety of forms. Authority might cause actors to subordinate their own conscious preferences to the directives of the authority and thus, in Robert Dahl’s sense, get one actor to do what she would not otherwise do,36 but it might also have subtler effects. Authority might create new preferences in actors who were previously indifferent or at odds. It might change preferences in others who become persuaded to share the authority’s views based on the authority’s moral or expert standing. It might mobilize new or different constituencies for political action. Deference may occur for a variety of reasons. Some actors may be authoritative because of the office they hold. The President of the United States is authoritative because he (and potentially she) holds that office; when that person leaves office, deference will be accorded to the next individual who holds it. Some actors may be authoritative because of their inherent qualities. Nelson Mandela, for example, has a certain amount of authority on the international stage because of his moral character and reputation. Those did not disappear when he left the presidency of his country. Actors may also be authoritative because of what they represent. They may represent a respected institution, an under-represented other, or a lofty ideal. Many NGOs, for example, induce deference (or try to) by claiming to represent noble ideas or deserving others.37 In order to understand the political consequences of the exercise of authority for global politics, it makes sense to examine the various sources of authority that agents draw upon.38 Broadly, we see five bases of authority for global governors—institutional, delegated, expert, moral, and efficacious. 34 See for example, John Braithwaite and Peter Drahos (2000) who, in their comprehensive study of global business regulation, conclude that “webs of dialogue” more frequently resolve contested issues than do “webs of coercion” in international exchange. 35 For a sampling of the rich literature on authority see, Richard E. Flathman, The Practice of Political Authority (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Joseph Raz, ed., Authority (New York: New York University Press, 1990); David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Ltd., 1991.) 36 Robert A. Dahl, “The Concept of Power,” Behavioral Science, Vol. 11 (July 1957), pp. 201-215, and “Power,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences Vol. XII (New York: Free Press, 1968), pp. 405-415. 37 Richard Flathman distinguishes those who are “an authority” from those who are “in authority.” The former have inherent qualities that induce deference. In the realm of global governance, these might be expertise or moral/reputational qualities. Nobel Prize winners, academic experts, heroes all are authorities of this first type. The latter are actors who are “in authority” by virtue of the positions they hold. UN secretary generals, CEOs of multinational corporations, leaders of NGOs are examples of this type. See Flathman, The practice of political authority, esp. 16-19. 38 Our strategy is different from those who examine the realm of “political” authority. See David Lake, “Relational Authority in the Modern World: Toward a Positive Theory of Legitimacy,” paper prepared for the workshop on Legitimacy in the Modern World, University of California, San Diego, 8-9 December 2006; Lou Pauly. More historically see Carl Schmitt. We are interested in the exercise of authority with political effects that draws from various sources. 11 12 Institutional (or Institution-based) authority derives from holding office in some organizational structure. Managing Directors of the IMF or the heads of multinational corporations gain authority from their positions in these institutions. Their authority is limited, however, by the rules and purposes of the institution that authorizes them. If the head of the IMF suddenly started pronouncing policy on nuclear proliferation, for example, people would not defer. Indeed, they would probably view such action as illegitimate and wonder about the person’s competence. Similarly, when powerful states push the IMF to bend rules and make loans to geopolitically sensitive but otherwise not creditworthy states, people will question the authority and legitimacy of the governor. Delegated (or Delegation-based) authority is authority on loan from some other set of authoritative actors. Often, in the realm of global governance those who delegate are states or sub-state agencies and state delegation to IOs, firms, and NGOs has been widely studied. The nature of delegation arrangements can vary greatly as can the ways in which global governors interpret, improvise, or shirk in these delegation arrangements. Often, too, one sees “nests” or “chains” of delegation which may attenuate (or sever completely) the relationship between preferences (or intentions) of the delegators and governance outcomes on the ground. For example, Abraham Newman finds complex relationships emerging as states simultaneously delegate authority to agents “below” and “above” the nation-state in their efforts to govern. 39 The disaggregated state, administrative daisy chains, horizontal network brokerage and leapfrogged alliances that result from this complex delegation raise deep questions about bureaucratic control, autonomy, and accountability. They also muddy the relationship between state preferences and outcomes. This is not to say that the delegation is meaningless, however— far from it. Governors exercising or invoking this type of authority often justify their actions with references to the wishes of their delegators--the “principals”--but often they will be balancing these against other demands or even other sources of authority. The UN, for example, may find itself cross-pressured; member states (the UN’s principals) may not be willing to authorize military action in a humanitarian catastrophe as in Darfur, but the moral authority of the organization may depend on the UN looking like a credible opponent of genocide. The result is often hollow or symbolic action that gives the appearance of “doing something” while not contradicting limitations of those delegating authority. Expert (or Expertise-based) authority is authority based on specialized knowledge. Unlike delegated or institutional authority, it inheres in the actor. A Nobel Prize-winning physicist or economist remains so, no matter what her or his job. Frequently, though, expertise is coupled with other types of authority. Institutions or organizations often want experts on staff or delegate complex technical tasks to experts. As with other forms of authority, expert authority is limited in its use by the content of its expertise. Education professionals are unlikely to induce much deference if they start making rules or expressing opinions about technical requirements for the electronics industry and vice versa.40 Note, too, that there is a sense in which the application of much professional expertise has a moral dimension. Most professionals believe that exercise of their profession and application of their knowledge is a social good and furthers goals of the larger community.41 For example, an economist working for the IMF may well be convinced of the merits of structural adjustment policies for raising revenue and cutting spending. Her expert 39 Newman, this volume. Prakash and Potoski also identify networks of governance chains, this volume. See Mundy and Buthe essays, this volume. 41 Steven Brint uses the phrase “social trustee professionalism” to describe this moral aspect of professions that view themselves as repositories, even guardians, of socially-important knowledge necessary for human progress. See Steven Brint, In the Age of Experts: the changing role of professionals in politics and public life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. 40 12 13 notions of the “social good” may not be broadly shared, however. These same structural adjustment policies have led to food riots and mass protests in borrower countries, compromising the effectiveness of expertise-based authority and its effects on outcomes. Moral (or Morality-based) authority is legitimated by service to some widely-accepted set of principles or values. It can inhere in both actors and offices. Desmond Tutu probably enjoys moral authority of both kinds: he has moral authority as a bishop in the Anglican Church, but also because of his principled beliefs, personal history, and character. Appeals to moral values are a very common authorizing tool for a wide variety of actors seeking to govern globally. Moral claims might be used to galvanize partisan supporters, as with NGOs who are trying to create new issues or set agendas.42 Appeals to widely-held moral values like peace, security, prosperity, human dignity, and freedom pervade virtually all aspects of the governance process. Some such appeals are more credible than others, however, and some actors are more credible in making them. Corporations may do a great deal of good in the world, but because they are, by their nature, profit-driven, people suspect their motives making moral authority more difficult for them to tap. NGOs, by contrast, almost always provide moral claims and are able to do so in part because no one thinks they are in it for the money. NGOs often benefit from an aura of moral authority because of this perceived altruism, even if they happen to be incompetent and do little to further the causes that authorize them. Efficacious authority43 involves deference based on competence. This has close kinship with institutional, delegated, and, potentially, expert authority but is distinct. Many scholars, including Joseph Raz, have described authority which derives from and is justified by the task the authority is supposed to perform.44 If the community agrees that a task must be accomplished, then satisfying the community’s preferences authorizes the actor who does this and creates deference to her. Solving the problem or completing the task may not depend upon the holding of a particular office in an institution or possession of any rarified knowledge. Instead, effective action is what creates legitimate authority for the governor. People defer to the governor because she produces desired results. Empirically, it is hard to think of a “pure” case of this.45 Most global governors who are effective at solving problems get their opportunities to do so from some other source of authority. Pioneers of the microcredit movement might come close to exemplifying this category, though. Microcredit’s most famous pioneer, Mohamed Yunus had no important institutional position of power (Grameen began as a university research project) although he did have some expertise (Yunus has a doctorate in economics and experience as a banker), so even this is not a pure case. Yunus’ current status as an authority in this field comes largely from his success and the results his organization has produced. Note too that, conversely, lack of efficacy or competence can undermine authority drawn from other sources. The IMF and World Bank have had their authority questioned based on accusations of poor performance. Perceived failures in peacekeeping have strained the UN’s authority to undertake such missions. One common strategy governors use to expand their authority is to demonstrate competence in new areas, beyond the sources and mandates that originally authorized them. In Lebanon Hamas, while primarily a militant political organization, has gained political support by providing a range of social services. Similarly, the Colombian Cali and Medellin drug cartels gained popular support by building schools and funding local soccer teams. Conversely, some governors are reluctantly drawn into developing new competencies. Virginia Haufler’s examination of the new 42 See Clifford Bob, this volume Dear authors: does this category work for you? Does it stand up analytically? Is it useful to you?? 44 Raz, Authority, 5-6. 45 Paul “Red” Adair’s authority claims lay in successfully extinguishing oil rig fires. 43 13 14 “business and conflict” agenda that promotes private sector responsibility for conflict prevention efforts is a clear instance of the reluctant governor.46 In its Chad-Cameroon pipeline project Exxon-Mobil is charged with preventing conflict; it is doubtful that Exxon-Mobil’s CEO envisioned this role when initiating the project. Most global governors are authorized by some mix of authority types. Indeed, understanding the many ways in which governors creatively draw on varied sources of authority to induce deference is part of our research agenda. Sources of authority may be in tension. Institutional rules may require behavior at odds with expert knowledge. Experts often complain about bureaucratic red tape when they work inside organizations that govern globally. For instance, in an emergency the need for quick cash disbursement may be at odds with the layers of authorization needed to release the funds. Delegation demands from states may be at odds with the moral principles that authorize a governor. One example would be the UN’s inability to intervene in Rwanda because of lack of support from member states. Delegation demands for functional performance may be a serious threat to some governors who may have trouble delivering on promises. Continued poverty in many parts of the world despite extensive and expensive World Bank efforts has produced a long string of criticism of the Bank’s performance from member states and others. Governors spend a great deal of energy managing these types of conflicts. They strategize to create new interpretations of their missions that reconcile conflicting demands for action that might otherwise be dangerous or paralyzing. They present themselves strategically to different audiences, tailoring policies and justifications for policies to satisfy institutional, delegation, expert, moral, or competence requirements. Understanding how governors manage conflicts among authority sources is an important part of our project. What do Global Governors do? Global governors use their political authority to engage in at least four types of activities. Setting agendas and creating issues. Much of the IR literature simply assumes that issues needing governance are obvious and their appearance needs little explanation. As several of our empirical chapters show, this is far from true. Actors often struggle hard to persuade others that a problem or issue exists.47 In many cases the “problem” is not a problem for everyone. Some actors, often powerful ones, may like the status quo and either deny or refuse to acknowledge the existence of a problem at all. Even when no powerful or active resistance exists, actors struggle to get their particular problem noticed. Then, when everyone agrees there is a problem, so what? The world is full of problems. Time and attention are limited. How do some actors get their problem defined as issues and placed on consequential agendas when others fail to do so? Making rules. This might happen through strategic interaction at high level conferences, as traditional statist analyses describe, but rules have many sources. Some are unintended consequences of decisions taken for different reasons.48 Example? Other rules may become codified and widely accepted simply on the basis of past practice, not through formal decisions. The US prerogative to name the head of the World Bank and Europe’s right to name the head of 46 Haufler, this volume. See Charli Carpenter, this volume; also see David Rochefort and Roger Cobb, eds. 1994. The Politics of Problem Definition: Shaping the Policy Agenda (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press). 48 Authors: there must be examples of this but we’re having trouble coming up with good ones. Suggestions?? 47 14 15 the IMF, for example, was an informal agreement that became institutionalized over time. Similarly, the regional blocs at the UN are artifacts of past practice. Implementation. Once promulgated, implementing rules is hardly a straightforward or simple process. Devising policies that put rules into practice is almost always a contested process, and enforcement may be equally fraught with controversy. Many rules made by high-level government actors are vague, even platitudinous, requiring other actors to exercise a great deal of discretion and autonomy to translate them into action on the ground. Even when states or other governors try to write specific and detailed rules, they are always designed to be applied across diverse cases. That means that no specific case will fit the rules perfectly and there will always be exceptions, modification, and improvisation by implementing agents. Even if all actors agree on what the rules required, acting on those requirements requires resources, information, and coordination, all of which are notoriously absent in many transnational settings. Evaluating, monitoring, and adjudicating outcomes. Disputes over implementation and compliance often require evaluation, monitoring and/or adjudication. Actors such as international judges, who get to decide what constitutes compliance with rules, are powerful players in the governance process.49 So, too, are actors who evaluate and monitor the actions of IGOs, NGOs, MNCs, and other actors who implement programs designed to govern various pieces of transnational activity. This is a particularly contested process. Stakeholders have different views of what constitutes compliance. Controversies over World Trade Organization (WTO) intellectual property rules and access to HIV/AIDS medicines are vivid examples such contestation.50 These are stylized abstract categories of governor activities, designed to aid analysis. In practical governing, these activities may overlap and feed back on each other in many ways. Adjudication may set new agendas for actors. Implementation may create issues that raise new governance challenges. Similarly, who does what may vary. In some cases, one governor may carry out many of these activities. Other issues may involve many actors in different aspects of these governing activities. An agenda-setter in one instance may be an implementer or evaluator at another time. Rules may be made by one actor but implemented by many or vice versa. Understanding these variations and complexities of who does what is one research agenda generated by our approach. Relations among governors Studies of relations among states look only superficially at how governors relate to one another. The assumption that states exist in a world of anarchy led analysts to focus only on the conditions that led to conflict or cooperation among like units – states. The governors we see in the world today, however, are not like units at all and they do not all participate in the same activities. Some, such as transnational advocacy networks focus their attention on issue formation, agenda setting, and sometimes monitoring. Others, such as the EU, participate in nearly all the governance activities we identify. Governing is rarely something that a single governor can do alone, however, so relations among them must be central to our inquiry. Thinking about authority beyond the state thus requires attention to not only the relations between governors and governed and the array of authority they are based upon, but also much more 49 See Danner and Voeten, this volume. Sell and Prakash, 2004; John Odell and Susan Sell, “Reframing the Issue: the WTO coalition on intellectual property and public health” in Odell, Negotiating Trade: Developing Countries in the WTO and NAFTA (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006): 85-114. 50 15 16 detailed and self-conscious attention to the relations among authorities in producing governance. Loosely, we can see four ideal-typical forms of relationships among governors – each of which may result in cooperative or conflicting dynamics. Many real-world governing situations will involve some combination of forms. Delegation. Delegation commits functions or powers to another actor as an agent or deputy.51 Governors can subdivide tasks in an issue area and delegate some or all of them to various other actors. Delegation often operates through a long term commitment whereby the principal, for instance NATO member states, creates an agent, NATO, to perform particular tasks related to security. The agent has some discretion over how she performs the task but agrees to accept instruction as part of the relationship. On the global stage these delegation relationships can involve almost any imaginable set of actors. States might delegate “upward” to IOs or other supranational actors – as states in Europe have to the EU on various regulatory efforts. States might also delegate downward to sub-state actors as the Untied States has with gun control. Much of the IR literature focuses on states as delegators but states are not the only actors who delegate. IOs delegate as the UN has long delegated responsibility for monitoring the Geneva Conventions to an NGO, the International Committee of the Red Cross. NGOs also delegate to umbrella groups – such as Inter Action – to create policies on areas of common concern or help them coordinate their efforts as well as to private firms. States can be agents as well as delegating principals. Depending on an analyst’s needs and perspective, states can be viewed as “agents” of their electorates, of global capital, or of powerful interest groups.52 In important ways, states can also become implementing agents of many of the transnational or supranational governors they created. States delegate to the WTO, empowering it to pass judgment on trade practices, but states then become the WTO’s agents when it comes to actually implementing and enforcing WTO rulings with national firms. Similarly, states delegate to the ILO the task of setting labor standards, but then become implementing agents of ILO standards. These delegation relationships can thus take on a circular character. Delegation can be complex in other ways. Delegation to one agent can breed more delegation to others. This can create delegation chains and new relationships that the original principal neither foresaw nor intended. As Abe Newman argues, in both Europe and North America, government delegation both up to IOs (the EU and NAFTA, respectively) and down to sub-national actors has created situations of dual (or multiple) agents who develop relationships and cooperate among themselves. These coalitions then affect the creation of rules, the implementation of policy, the monitoring of policy, or even the preferences of their government “principals”. These more complex agency situations pose challenges to principal control as well as implications for the functionality and legitimacy of policy outcomes. The classic statement on delegation is Ronald Coase, “The Nature of the Firm,” Economica, Vol 4 (1937), pp. 386-405. Gary Miller discusses the twin theorizing among analyses of delegation in organizational economics on the one hand and psychology and political science on the other. See Gary Miller, Managerial Dilemmas: the Political Economy of Hierarchy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Delegation has also been taken up by sociologists. See Harrison White, “Agency as Control,” in John Pratt and Richard Zeckhauser, eds., Principals and Agents: the Structure of Business (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985). 52 On global capital see William K. Tabb, Economic Governance in the Age of Globalization (N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 2004. For an argument about the power of interest groups in foreign policy, see John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby,” London Review of Books Vol. 28, No. 6 (23 March 2006). 51 16 17 Contracting. Contracting is related to delegation but rather than creating an organization or relationship to accomplish tasks over an extended period, governors can use the market to make specific agreements with existing entities to accomplish tasks in the short term.53 For instance, the UN often contracts with humanitarian relief groups to deliver food and medical care in the wake of a crisis. States contract with a variety of international agents – for-profit and notfor-profit - to deliver poverty relief, disaster assistance, governmental reform and more all over the world. Non-state actors, including both NGOs and corporations, contract with one another routinely in a whole range of transnational policy arenas. Contracts may be renewed many times, but they also may be terminated at the end of the contract period. Cooley and Ron have demonstrated how the competition over resources between contractors can lead governors who act as agents to sacrifice commitments to the very principles that lead to their authority in the first place.54 Contracting also poses challenges to the governor issuing the contract. While some kinds of framework contracts are built on a long term relationship of trust between the principal and agent, most are not. When trust is not present, governors must pay close attention to details in writing the contract and even then may not get the services they want. While principals have a great deal of latitude before a contract is issued, once issued, it is harder to get contractors to “take instructions” than agents in delegation relationships because the contract instrument enshrines the original agreement for both principal and agent.55 Contracting is a growing part of global governance. It is attractive because issuing a contract to a corporation or NGO allows short term responses to new challenges that are often harder to generate with existing relationships of delegation (due to enshrined standard operating procedures or organizational cultures). Contracting also allows principals to avoid committing to a new long-term relationship of delegation. This very flexibility, however, poses questions about the legitimacy, accountability, and effectiveness of contracted work. It also has to potential to transform governing actors themselves, as Cooley demonstrates in his chapter. Networks. Governors can also be organized in networks in which like-minded persons might share information and ideas in ways that shape agendas and/or devise solutions to potential problems. Network interaction tends not to be as formal as delegated or contractual relationships. Those writing about transnational advocacy have been explicit about networks as a mode of relationship.56 Anne-Marie Slaughter has also shown how similarly placed bureaucrats in different countries may form a network to cooperate at the sub-state level and do much global governance without involving their heads of state at all.57 Mark Granovetter has argued that networks can provide powerful social contexts in which actors become “embedded.” Embeddedness changes agent preferences and self-perceptions in consequential ways.58 Within networks, some nodes can be more important than others.59 As 53 Oliver Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Anti-trust Implications (New York: Free Press, 1975). 54 Cooley and Ron 2002. 55 John Donahue, The Privatization Decision: Public Ends, Private Means (Basic Books, 1989). 56 Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998; Ann Florini, The Third Force: the Rise of Transnational Civil Society (Washington, DC: Japan Center for International Exchange and Carnegie Endowment, 2000). 57 Anne Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 58 Mark Granovetter, “Economic Action and Social Structure: The problem of embeddedness” American Journal of Sociology 91,3(1985) 481-510. 17 18 Granovetter has also argued, the place of individuals in an overarching network can indicate important potential for diffusing new ideas. While individuals with strong ties to one another may be important for understanding small groups, the relationship between groups can be better understood by focusing on the weak ties individuals have with a much broader range of others. It is through weak ties that small scale social interactions become translated into large scale social change.60 Features of networks may also make the network more effective at some tasks than others. Networks are sometimes arranged around vague concepts. This can bring together many different actors with distinct goals in a way that is useful for advocacy but less so for creating effective policy. As Roland Paris has argued, the very features that made “human security” an effective mobilization tool – its seeming application to many features of human existence – has also made it a poor tool for generating any hierarchy of action that would be needed for effective policy direction.61 Though many have examined networks as tools for engendering cooperation, they can also serve to mobilize one side of a fight. As Bob’s chapter in this volume indicates, the National Rifle Association (NRA) was able to network effectively with guns rights organizations and the fire arms industry to call into question the global initiative to restrict the flow of small arms. Influential networks can also engender competition within, over what issues to take up and how best to pursue them, as indicated by Carpenter’s chapter in this volume. One of the key features of networks is their diffuse linkages. This diffusion facilitates participation. Word of mouth, internet lists and chat rooms, professional networks and the like can galvanize vast mobilization in ways that give voice to many who may not otherwise have input into global governance schemes. This very diffusion, though, may limit the accountability of network actors. Hierarchies.62 In contrast to networks, which are a relatively flat or “horizontal” set of relationships, governors may also be related in hierarchies, or “vertical” relations in which one governor has power or authority over other governors. Hierarchies may be formal and explicitly constituted in law or institutions, like those in bureaucratic organizations. Explicit hierarchies of law inside the European Union, for example, create hierarchical relations between various courts and judges. They also create some hierarchy between judicial governors and other EU bureaucrats. Hierarchies may also be informal, however, as in the example of “gatekeepers” within transnational advocacy networks described by Carpenter. Such hierarchies may be rooted in asymmetries of power in its varied forms or in asymmetries of authority. Actors with more resources or expertise may become “gatekeepers” or in some other fashion rise to the top of a hierarchical grouping of governors. Moral authority, too, may confer leadership status on particular actors within groups of governors active on an issue. While it is the absence of formal hierarchy that creates many of the interesting puzzles about global governance for IR scholars, hierarchy is not absent in international governing relations but its basis has not yet been well theorized. For example, see Peter Drahos, “Securing the Future of Intellectual Property: Intellectual Property Owners and their Nodally Coordinated Enforcement Pyramid” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 36 (2004): 53, 55-61. 60 Mark Granovetter, “The strength of weak ties” American Journal of Sociology 78, 6 (1973): 1360-80. 61 Roland Paris, “Human Security: Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?” International Security Vol. 26, No. 2 (fall 2001). 62 Authors: does this category stand up logically and is it useful empirically? 59 18 19 Conflict, competition, and cooperation within and among forms. Much of the existing theoretical work on global governance focuses on cooperation. Creating “cooperation under anarchy” was the original theoretical problem for scholars in this field and cooperation has been understood to be synonymous with, and necessary for, governance to occur. As we dig deeper into the actual mechanics of governing activity, however, it becomes clear that cooperation is far from the only dynamic that produces governance or governance outcomes. Some kinds of relations among governors entail substantial competition, for example the contracting relations investigated by Cooley.63 Similarly, there is competition, albeit of a different kind, in selection of international judges to sit on international tribunals.64 Competition may spill over into outright conflict among governors at times. Conflict may be central to agenda control, implementation, and the “unmaking” of policies by some governors.65 Conflict within (as opposed to among) governors may shape outcomes as well. Disagreement and conflict within the EU—its members but also its component parts-- has certainly shaped its current form, as McNamara describes.66 Such conflicts could have many sources, but one would be conflict among different sources of authority that legitimate a governor. One governor (or a group within a governor) may push one policy as best and right on the basis of one authority claim while another governor (or group within a governor) may advocate a very different policy rooted in a different authority base. At the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, for example, creditor and donor states advocated for structural adjustment policies for years on the basis both of economic expertise and on their institutional position as major shareholders and “principals” of those organizations. Debtor states and NGOs often fought these policies by calling on moral claims (obligations to the world’s poor) buttressed by a countervailing set of economic arguments that structural adjustment policies would fail to achieve the results claimed by proponents.67 Varied dynamics of cooperation, competition, and conflict illustrated by research in this volume suggest the need for more research to investigate conditions under which different dynamics will prevail and with what consequences. VI. Moving beyond Global Public Goods: Accountability, Legitimacy and Normative issues in Global Governance Global governance is widely assumed to be “a good thing.” We equate it with activities that are hard to dislike—cooperation, problem-solving, and the provision of public goods. A hard look at some of the actual governing that goes on in the world, however, suggests that this positive aura surrounding the term may not always be warranted. Ethical implications of much governing activity are often mixed and complex. Whether governance activities are “a good thing” depends a great deal on answers to the question, “good for whom?” and “good for what purpose?” One reason we neglect to ask these questions may be the language we use to talk about governance. The rhetoric commonly used to carry out our inquiries carries a normative bias about which scholars have not always been self-conscious or reflective. Two terms, in particular, are loaded: “cooperation” and “public goods.” In a world where conflict and violence are all too common, cooperation is often portrayed (sometimes implicitly) as the antithesis or cure for these ills. If only states could cooperate, we would have fewer wars, solve more problems, and live in a 63 Cooley, this volume; Cooley and Ron op. cit. Danner and Voeten, this volume. 65 Bob, this volume. 66 McNamara, this volume. 67 These conflicts continue in the MDGs debates analyzed by Gutner, this volume. 64 19 20 more harmonious world (or so the rhetoric suggests). As analysts, though, we know that cooperation, itself, is neither good nor bad; it is the ends to which we cooperate that can be normatively judged. Hitler and Stalin cooperated to invade Poland and a great deal of cooperation is required to undertake genocide, massive environmental destruction, and exploitation. The fact that cooperation is occurring to produce governance does not, by itself, say anything about the ethics of that activity. Another rhetorical source of analytic confusion lies in common use (or misuse) of the term “public good.” Governors may have a variety of motivations in carrying out their activities. Some may be self-interested, some principled, some may be acting for profit, others may be altruists but many (probably most) are some combination of these. Whatever their motive, a common tactic among global governors is appealing to the greater collective – or public – good to legitimate their action. Such appeals, after all, provide the basis for claiming that others should defer and grant them authority in the first place. One result of such appeals in the academic literature has been some conflation of global governance “for the public good” with provision “of public goods” in an economic sense. The definition of a public good in economics is a good that is both non-rival and non-excludable. Clean air, clean water, lighthouses, and national defense are classic examples. The term “public good” is thus a technical description of a product; it is not a statement of its normative value. Global governance analysis is not always clear about this distinction, however, and sometimes conflates products (“goods”) with what is desirable (“good.”) This tendency has deep roots in academic thinking. Much of the work on hegemonic stability as a form of global governance in the 1980s was driven by worries over US decline and the effects this might have on both global stability and the “public goods” US hegemony provided. Whether the loss of US hegemony was good or bad was not much debated in this work nor was the normative value of the US-sponsored order and array of public good (or goods) it created.68 In analyzing the work of governors for this volume we attend to some very obvious normative issues in ways that flow logically from our analytic approach and inform it. Qui Bono? Who benefits from the actions of global governors and, conversely, who is hurt?69 While most governors make broad claims about widespread public benefits of their action, not all do. Some governors work openly for the benefit of one specific group—an industrial sector or an oppressed population, for example. They may argue that benefiting this group somehow has diffuse benefits for all, but the particularism of their actions is openly proclaimed. Other governors may claim to be working in the public interest and for everyone’s benefit but find that their vision of who “the public” is and what the public wants is not shared by all. Economists working in both IOs and governments may find that pareto-improving free trade arrangements are not universally loved. Some people do get hurt but, equally important, people value other things besides ever-expanding capitalism. They value local cultures, traditions, and community that may be crushed by global markets. Even when governors work for some reasonably consensual goal, like controlling disease, governors may find that intended beneficiaries are not the actual ones if corrupt distribution systems siphon valuable medicines away from the needy and enrich local middlemen. Clashes among governors (and with the 68 For more contemporary work that does engage some of these issues see Inge Kahl, Isabelle Grunberg, and Marc Stern, Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21 st Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 69 This question informed much of Susan Strange’s scholarship. See S. Strange, The Retreat of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Strange, Casino Capitalism (Manchester University Press: N.Y., 1997); “Cave! Hic Dragones: a Critique of Regime Analysis” International Organization 36,2 (Spring 1982): 479-496. 20 21 governed) over who should benefit, who does benefit, and what benefits governors should pursue permeate most efforts by governors, and our authors attend to these fights. The “qui bono” question is not only a normative one for us; it also raises analytic concerns that bear directly on the structure of our analysis. One involves the relation between governors and the governed. Why should the governed defer if governing is bad for them? Possible answers to this question have very different moral valances. We might defer out of some version of “rational inadequacy.” Perhaps we are uncertain about or miscalculate the outcomes of governing due to scant information. Perhaps we are simply not paying attention. A great deal of governing goes on every day in the world that influences our lives in many ways. It would be impossible to keep track of them all. So we go along and “muddle through,” deferring to a great many authorities doing things that affect everything from the price of bread to nuclear destruction. The deeply structured nature of social life means that refusing to defer to authority often requires significant time, attention, and effort much of which must be organized collectively to have effects, and obstacles to collective action are well-known. We might also defer to bad governance because we lack power to do otherwise. As Barnett and Duvall have shown, power can have many faces in governing arrangements. It might take the form of overt coercion by governors but it can also be deeply embedded in social relations and diffused through institutional structures that seem far removed, ergo invisible, to those over whom it is exercised. Normative structures of justice, nationalism, civilization or progress can be extraordinarily powerful in inducing deference to governing arrangements that might not be in the narrow interest of actors. Savvy governors (or aspiring governors) can deploy rhetoric, not just to persuade but also to “coerce,” by drawing on these normative structures to undercut strategies for dissent and arguments that might undercut governor authority.70 Scholars of global governance have not much focused on rhetoric as a tool of governing beyond persuasion, but a broader view of rhetoric’s power may be useful as we explore governors beyond states. The “qui bono” question may also have implications for the legitimacy of governors. Studies of state legitimacy have shown that legitimacy is not tied neatly to material benefits. The poor are often among the most nationalistic in many countries. But continued exploitation and abuse clearly do have effects on legitimacy, for both states and, we suspect, for our governors. Understanding what creates deference in governance losers is thus an important analytic problem for us as well as a normative one since the analytic understanding has implications for efforts at change. (ii) Accountability. Power exercised without accountability is always morally suspect and global governors are no exception. Governors often exercise great power over the lives of people far removed from them and who may have few avenues of redress or protest when they are harmed by a governor’s actions. Increasingly in contemporary politics, however, accountability of governors is essential to their legitimacy and to their authority; deference is hard to generate without some means of holding governors to account. One interesting feature of the global governors we study is that many of them actively seek accountability as a means of increasing their authority and legitimacy. Thus, while some governors may try to escape scrutiny, many others seek it out as a means of gaining more influence. Demands for accountability in global governors raise a variety questions which we address in our research. a) Accountable to whom? Most governors are the object of accountability claims by more than one constituency. This may be necessary and good, particularly if the governor’s work affects multiple groups, but it can make life complicated for governors and produce complex, even contradictory, policies. The World Bank is accountable to its member states but has found Barnett and Duvall 2005, 2007; Patrick T. Jackson and Ronald Krebs, “Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms: The Power of Political Rhetoric” EJIR 13, 1(March 2007):35-66. Stephen Gill add cite. 70 21 22 itself increasingly under pressure to be accountable to both NGOs, who work with it and monitor its actions, as well as to the populations effected by its projects. These constituencies may not all want the same things from the Bank creating dilemmas that Bank staff must manage. b) Accountable for what? Many governors have multifaceted missions which may include very abstract or diffuse goals that are hard to measure. Worse, many demand contradictory actions. The UN is supposed to safeguard the sovereignty and independence of its members but it also has a “responsibility to protect” people who may be endangered by the actions of a member government. How, then, does one hold such a governor to account? What, exactly, would constitute “good performance” for this governor? Different constituencies may have very different views on this, vastly complicating the life of the governor and managing these conflicting demands can be a challenge. c) Accountable by what mechanism? As constituencies have demanded more accountability from governors, an impressive array of mechanisms has appeared to accomplish this end. Transparency is one particularly common tool for monitoring what governors do. The explosion in information governors of all kinds release about themselves and their activities is largely driven by these accountability demands.71 Participation by concerned constituencies in governor decision making is another. The IFIs now pride themselves on including representatives of borrower states and affected populations in decision making about their work, albeit with controversial results. Offering or withholding funding based on performance is another obvious way to hold governors to account. Donors to NGOs often use this tool and the US withheld dues to the UN to induce performance changes.72 Careful analysis of accountability demands and governor responses can be revealing. It helps us understand more about who has power and who is likely to benefit from governance arrangements, but it also says something about how governors, themselves, understand their responsibilities and their missions.73 VII. Overview of the book. We have organized the chapters to come into four sections, based largely upon the sources of governing authority. Although often governors have several bases of authority, we have grouped governors according to their most prominent authority source. Within roughly similar bases of authority, we see different politics result from different relations among governors and the dynamic introduced by competition among sources of authority. The first section consists of three chapters that examine the politics of authority based on delegation. Tamar Gutner examines the IMF as a governor whose authority has generally been delegated to it by member states, Alex Cooley focuses on contractors who are exercising authority in war zones delegated to them by states and international organizations and Abe Newman looks at the interaction between sub-state and supra-state “agents” – again of states. These stories, though, are not the traditional ones we have heard about where states with clear and exogenous preferences delegate to IOs who then pursue their wishes. 71 Ann Florini ed., The Right to Know: Transparency for an Open World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 72 Grant and Keohane describe seven different accountability mechanisms. Ruth Grant and Robert O. Keohane, “Accountability and Abuses of Power in World Politics” American Political Science Review 99(2005): 29-43. On accountability in NGOs see Hugo Slim, “By What Authority? The Legitimacy and Authority of Non-governmental Organizations” Journal of Humanitarian Assistance (2002) available at: http://www.jha.ac/articles/a082.htm. 73 Authors: this section is purposefully short. What overarching issues are crucial and missing? What normative issues are emerging in your cases that you think could be fruitfully discussed in the framing chapter? 22 23 Gutner uses a rationalist framework to argue that delegation can be problematic when principals – in this case member states and the UN – do it poorly. Asking the IMF, as they have, to participate in developing and implementing policy to meet the Millennium Development Goals is an example of what Gutner calls “mission seep” – where a broad array of international actors are asked to pursue the same goals. It has pushed the IMF out of its core strengths and bears all the signs of delegation pathology – where principals delegate tasks that are unclear, unrealistic or highly complex. Her analysis thus hinges on competing dynamics among sources of authority – the institutional and expertise based authority the IMF has developed versus the authority it has been delegated in a new realm. The IMF has every incentive to jump on the MDG bandwagon because that is what states have asked and that is where the money is. But in so doing, the IMF is working toward the same goals as many other organizations with no coordination and there is little consensus on the relationship between the MDGs and the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility. It is being responsive to its principals (and thus a good agent) but in a way that leads away from the principal’s ultimate goals. In a sense, Gutner suggests that the IMF would do a better job (for both its principals and the populations who are most impacted by its actions) were it to rely more on its expertise and developed institutional authority to bound the missions it agreed to take on. As it is, though states and IOs have a common set of goals – complete with targets and timetables, no one is accountable for the outcome. Having global governors like the IMF to delegate to, ironically, makes it easier for states to nod to global outcomes but not meet them. Cooley also adopts a rationalist framework to argue that delegation works through a particular set of dynamics when governors contract with one another to implement policy. Contracting – particularly with incomplete, short term, renewable contracts – leads to competition among contractors that undermines both the principal’s goals and the agent’s continued authority. He illustrates how the dynamic is similar whether the principals are states (like the US) or IOs (like the UN) and also whether the agents are corporations (like Halliburton) or NGOs (like CARE). The ultimate result Cooley outlines is quite similar to what Gutner finds – agents that are deliver services through incomplete, renewable, short run contracting relationships undercut both principal policies and their own authority. Abe Newman offers a view of governors with delegated authority that generate new, and sometimes quite competent, governing arrangements that make regulatory rules. In his chapter, sub-state and supra-state agents, when they cooperate (both with each other and with transnational experts) develop their own governing authority that allows them to circumvent pressures by short run pressures by states and attend to longer term goals that cater to a broader transnational constituency. The irony here is that dual delegation undermines state control but in a way that may lead to policy that benefit a broader range of states in the long term and simultaneously enhances the authority of these new regulatory networks. He illustrates these claims looking at market regulation and social policy in the EU and beyond. Next, several perspectives on expert based authority are offered by Allison Danner and Erik Voeten, Aseem Prakash and Matthew Potoski, and Tim Buthe. They suggest various paths by which expertise joins with other bases of authority to create rules (international environmental and electrical standards) and adjudicate them (international criminal tribunals). Danner and Voeten’s chapter provides a transition between delegated and expertise as bases for authority as they describe how international tribunals were set up by states as delegated authority but became, by virtue of judges’ expertise greater authorities in their own right and have begun to shape the preferences of their member states. 23 24 Prakash and Potoski examine the creation of ISO 14001 a voluntary club launched by the International Organization for Standardization. Expertise based (and agreed upon) environmental standards lay the foundation for this club. In keeping with the expectations of club theory, the fact that environmental standards were non rival but excludable opened the possibility for launching a voluntary club. Convincing would be participating companies that abiding by these standards would be profitable and that non-abiders would not reap the gains was crucial to their development. Prakash and Potoski describe the way in which the ISO used its expertise to triangulate between different constituencies (companies, NGOs and consumers) in creating the 14001 standards and how those constituencies determined limits to ISO 14001’s activities: rule making and monitoring but not enforcement. Tim Buthe focuses on how the International Electrotechnical Commission emerged as a standards organization that makes rules in the first place. He shows how the confluence of expertise and self interest drew individuals who were at once scientists and investors together as networks to launch an organization that could enhance harmonization in ways that led to greater profitability. Though the basis of its authority was expertise, individuals who served to gain material benefits from standardization were crucial to the creation of the commission. He describes how this particular confluence both generate a new governor and limited what kinds of standards would emerge. In the section on morality based authority, both Charli Carpenter and Clifford Bob suggest new twists on morality based authority and Karen Mundy demonstrates that agreement on principles does not necessarily translate into effective policy. Though others have focused on transnational advocacy networks as principled actors, Carpenter demonstrates that there are hierarchies among the issue networks that are important for determining which issues are formulated as agenda issues and which are left by the wayside. By looking at an issue that has not been taken up by networks concerned with children and war – the issue of children born of rape – she demonstrates the importance of these hierarchies and posits an innovative method through which other might study them. Clifford Bob takes issue with the implicit assumption underlying much work on global governance that there is only one moral vision. By focusing on the fight between NGOs over the regulation of small arms, he uncovers the process through with agenda setting efforts by one group claiming the moral high ground can be fought and even undermined by another claiming a different moral vision. Karen Mundy’s analysis of global governance on education begins with the paradox that despite agreement on a principle – education for all – UNICEF was unable to implement policy while the as the principle became contested under the Millennium Development goals, it also generated more consistent policy. She makes it clear that much more research should focus on the links between agenda setting, rule making, and implementation. Our final section pairs a chapter by Virginia Haufler about a governor that only reluctantly assumed efficacious authority with one by Kate McNamara where another governor intentionally constructed institutional authority. Haufler’s analysis of the process by which issue framing by advocacy networks generated governing authority not for themselves but for the transnational corporations they meant to implicate. In their efforts to get transnational corporations to take responsibility over the 24 25 possibility that their behavior fed into conflict, advocacy networks opened the potential for global corporations to have greater political impacts. Far from endorsing this role, global corporations have thus far been “reluctant governors” pointing out their lack of institutional authority over conflict issues. The fact that they have such a large impact on the ground, however, continues to draw them in to conflict preventions activities (if only to avoid being blamed). In contrast, McNamara argues that the EU is actively constructing institutional authority for itself through the mobilization of symbols. Ironically, agents within the EU are using a quintessentially modern form – bureaucracy – to construct the symbolic underpinnings of a “postmodern state”. It is the mobilization of symbols, she claims, (by networks of governors?) as much as any actual impact that has created a sense of “Europe” and “Europeans” that is having significant political impacts even regardless of national backlashes. Her analysis might also have ramification for other symbolic and postmodern entities such as the “international community”. 25