Global Policy

The literature on international network governance commonly presumes an ‘effectiveness-legitimacy dilemma’: gains in effectiveness at problem solving come at cost to legitimacy, because the smaller the network the more those expected to comply with network decisions are excluded; and gains in legitimacy come at cost to effectiveness, because of greater diversity of interests. In the case of the G20, however, the dilemma breaks down, because the G20 scores low on both effectiveness and legitimacy. This article presents a design for a new global economic governance body, based on explicit membership criteria. The proposed new Global Economic Council would bring substantial gains in both effectiveness and legitimacy.

This paper claims that South Africa’s participation in the World Trade Organization was informed by its long struggle against apartheid and the transition to a new democracy. South Africa’s political leadership in the Doha negotiations was marked by a commitment to multilateralism and consensus building, fairness and justice, inclusiveness, and a concern to promote development. The paper argues that the experiences of South Africa in the multilateral trading system have been inspired by the vision and principles set out by Nelson Mandela, based on “idealist and aspirational” discourses in foreign policy rather than the “interest driven discourse of realism”.

This article makes both a theoretical and empirical contribution to understanding economic nationalism, defined as practices to create and protect national economies. Despite economic nationalism’s rise in the late nineteenth century and its institutionalisation after 1945, the post war growth of world markets increasingly undermined the reality of national economies. Although commentators warned of a resurgence of economic nationalism in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash, we have not seen generalised protectionism for interrelated reasons: the interdependency of economies; the complexity of the global economy, the greater extensity of world markets compared to the mid twentieth century; the redundancy of various theoretical models.

Policy documents on global health are often characterized by a lack of theorizing about why we have moral duties to promote equitable global health initiatives and in regards to what prioritized values should represent the satisfaction of these moral duties. Although there is agreement that inequalities in global health provision exist and that some form of response is necessary, there is little consensus about what should be done to rectify this situation. This article explores four normative arguments about why we have global health responsibilities and examines their relationship with distributive principles for the alleviation of global health inequalities.

Globalization has transformed both the proliferation and efforts to control small arms and light weapons (SALW). This article examines how the distribution of SALW has moved from state-centric ‘arms transfers’ to circulations of SALW through outsourced networks. It also shows how the post-Cold War international environment has allowed progressive norm entrepreneurs like middle powers and NGOs greater voice in determining SALW policy. However, it has also allowed Great Powers and defense companies to benefit from the legitimacy of associating with human rights groups.

This article aims at clarifying the rather generic notion of global governance, by keeping its meaning as a problem separate from its normative usage as a project. The current debate easily forgets about two threats, both poisoned remnants of modernity: only nuclear weapons and climate change deserve the name of global challenges, in as much as they can hit everybody on earth and can be addressed only by universal cooperation. Global governance thus takes over an additional role, that is to become politics for the future, for future generations’ survival.

A rising Asia brings to the global arena a new set of increasingly influential players with their own values, histories and strategic considerations. It remains to be seen if these shifts will lead to a clash or convergence in the management of global issues. Global health is fraught with a whole range of collective action problems, in part because current institutional arrangements are embedded in an anachronistic world order in which Asia is governed rather than governing. Bridging this disconnect will require multiple adjustments by existing actors involved in setting global health rules and by Asian actors who need to be engaged as co-shapers of the global order.

Development assistance is a significant mechanism by which major countries exercise influence in the global health arena. Of the major Asian powers, Japan has long provided significant funding, while China and India have primarily been recipients but are beginning to increase their funding roles. This article examines the amounts, channels, modes, disease allocations and the geographic focuses of their foreign health aid, and delineates the institutional structures that govern the formulation and implementation of foreign health aid policy in each of these countries, to explore what influence China, India, and Japan have and may develop in the global health arena.

The transnational nature of global health determinants and outcomes clearly requires more effective collective action. The Asian region has been among the most acutely affected by the health impacts of globalisation, while many health issues in the region have potentially far reaching consequences. This article analyses Asian contributions to three key instruments underpinning global health governance – the International Health Regulations, Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework, and Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. It concludes that there is a need for Asia to move from a rule-taker to a rule-maker but that this is limited by weak capacity, an adherence to traditional notions of sovereignty, and a lack of policy cohesion.

The absence of a global regime to prevent and mitigate financial crises and a reluctance to resort to the IMF for assistance has led developing countries to accumulate vast sums of foreign reserves as an act of ‘self-insurance’. This paper finds that reserve accumulation in developing countries has not only increased in the wake of the crisis, but has increased at a faster rate than previous to the crisis. Moreover, excess reserve accumulation has been costly at the national level because of high opportunity costs and at the global level because of the global imbalances created by surplus and deficit nations.

Contemporary empirical evidence shows that trade tariff cuts have a negative impact on customs revenue in low income countries. This paper documents the historical experience of the US and Canada over 1870-1996, which shows that customs revenue declined in these two countries with falling trade tariffs. Such a decline should therefore have been anticipated while advocating trade liberalization in low income countries, and trade reform hyphenated with fiscal reform, so as to identify compensating revenue ex ante. This is an issue affecting countries all across the size spectrum, and is of immediate importance in the context of the slow progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Global policy is increasingly multi-stakeholder in character. The global policy approach to world politics emphasizes that global governance is a process which subsumes a plurality of diverse actors, institutions, and modes occurring at multiple levels. This article provides a theoretical overview of the intersection of global policy and multi-stakeholder theory and an empirical survey, highlighting instances where various actor pillars (governments, inter-governmental organizations, civil society organizations, corporations, etc.) have begun to expand their membership and participation to include other stakeholders.

Many elements of the international rule making system are flawed. They are undemocratic, lack transparency, and have unequal power relationships between their members. Because the creation of a global demos is still a ‘distant dream’, this article makes the case for a more modest proposal for an international agreement on international administrative procedures which would start us on the path to constitutional order at the global level. This proposal would seek to standardize the process of decision making internationally, ensuring all international institutions follow evidence based procedures, and that all their recommendations would be subject to an external judicial review.

The literature on ‘fragile states’ has been growing, and these three books represent recent contributions to the subject. Taken together, all three texts provide a comprehensive and updated discussion on the discourse on fragile states, and attempt to provide policy recommendations based on their empirical analysis.