Norms for Global Governance

The Challenge

The Global Polity - Norms for Global Governance

The need to manage systemic global risks and to promote global social goods requires better global governance. The accountability of national leaders to their citizens is often in conflict with the need to act in the global public interest. This tension is apparent in problems as diverse as the global financial crisis and problems involving climate change, freshwater scarcity and ocean acidification.

In the aftermath of great crises of the past, conferences such as Vienna (1815), Bretton Woods and San Francisco (1944–45) and Paris (1951) established shared normative frameworks that reflected prevailing values and served to define aspects of the international environment for many decades. Some suggest that today’s challenges and the risk of a looming tragedy of the commons cry out for a similar effort.

To address the challenges of global governance, what norms of behavior would be appropriate and desirable? How could such norms be accepted despite the divergence of cultures and values in the world? Which specific global problems could be mitigated through the adoption of such norms? How would these norms transform individual, social, national and international behavior?

Find out more about Norms for Global Governance in the Virtual GES, the web-based knowledge center of the Global Economic Symposium.

Find selected literature on Norms for Global Governance at the Econis Select database of the ZBW.

Confirmed Speakers

• IO/NGO: Kunio Mikuriya, Secretary General, World Customs Organization
• Policy: Wolfgang Schüssel, Former Federal Chancellor, Austria
• Business: Sean Cleary, Chairman, Strategic Concepts, South Africa; Executive Vice Chair, Future World Foundation, Switzerland
• Business: Victor L. L. Chu, Chairman, First Eastern Investment Group
• Moderator, Media: Stephan Richter, President, The Globalist Research Center

GES Session Organizer(s)

• Malte Boecker, Researcher, Bertelsmann Stiftung
• Helmut Hauschild, Researcher, Bertelsmann Stiftung

Session Experts:

• Joachim Krause, Institute for Social Science, University Kiel
• Malte Boecker, Senior Expert, Bertelsmann Stiftung
• Dr. Peter Walkenhorst, Program Director for Community Foundations in the Philanthropy and Foundations Division, Bertelsmann Stiftung
• Dr. Stefan Empter, Senior Director, Bertelsmann Stiftung

Proposed Solutions

by Malte Boecker and Peter Walkenhorst

The following proposals are put up for discussion at the GES 2011 panel on “Norms for Global Governance”

a) Generally speaking strengthen public – private and multi-stakeholder initiatives to clarify the ends we seek to achieve, and the norms by which the global system as it emerges will be regulated

b) More specifically commission an independent research and seminar series employing interdisciplinary teams from clusters of leading European, U.S., Asian, Latin American, Middle Eastern and African think tanks, to address the Global Agenda

c) Develop a global charter for sustainable economic activity that can guide international co-operation on the Global Agenda

Background

Our need to manage systemic global risks, and to protect the global commons, calls for better global governance. The tension between the short-term pressures on national leaders from their citizens, and the trade-offs needed to balance costs and benefits in inter-national and inter-temporal transactions, frustrates its achievement. Current events, from the recent global financial crisis, to the risk of inflection points if we transgress planetary boundaries make it clear that we cannot continue on our present path. Western values and beliefs were employed to impose order in international affairs for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, and underpinned the international architecture crafted after World War II, despite the Soviet Union’s rejection of its economic pillars – the IMF, World Bank and GATT. But the normative grip of the West on the world has slipped in process of globalization and the characteristics of the successor regime are still unclear.

Efforts to restructure global institutions have either failed (reform of the UN Security Council), or had relatively little impact (changed representation and voting rights in the IMF and World Bank), while endeavours to conclude successor agreements to the GATT Uruguay Round and the Kyoto Protocol have proved frustratingly slow. A large part of the reason is that there has been no substantive effort to define a normative framework on which to base new global agreements, and to guide the relationship between states and global institutions. This precludes agreement on what to prioritise, and what behaviours to encourage, or to proscribe.

Distrust in Political Leadership

The broader public is very skeptical that international politics can help to prevent the tragedy of the global commons (cf. graph). The Principles of the Charter for Sustainable Economic Activity, drafted by the G20 sherpas and released, in modified form, as an annex to the G20 Leaders’ Statement after the Pittsburgh Summit in September 2009, is a good example of how difficult it is for national politicians to reach agreement on sound initiatives to improve global governance. While Chancellor Merkel among other leaders suggested on February 5, 2009, at the height of the economic crisis, that the International Labour Organisation, International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation should develop a Global Charter for sustainable economic activity it proved impossible at the G20 to reach agreement on such a Charter. Instead, the G20 Leaders recognised in the annex entitled Core Values for Sustainable Economic Activity, “that there are different approaches to economic development and prosperity, and that strategies to achieve these goals may vary according to countries’ circumstances”. This is but one example that normative coherence needs more engagement from civil society and multi stakeholder activities.

Proposals

To help resolve this, we propose to invest more in multi stakeholder initiatives to develop normative frameworks for international co-operation. More specifically we propose to commission, over the next three to five years, an independent research and seminar series employing interdisciplinary teams from clusters of leading European, U.S., Asian, Latin American, Middle Eastern and African think tanks, to address each of the five pillars of the Global Agenda which attempts to

Deliver environmentally and socially sustainable economic growth Effectively reduce poverty and improve equity Address the sources of global, national and human vulnerability and promote security Share the norms and values that enable global coexistence, while celebrating humanity’s cultural diversity Improve the quality of global governance and our global institutions Each cluster will be asked to develop core, actionable proposals, and to make explicit the values and norms that underpin its recommendations. This will allow us to identify the perspectives, values and norms which are held in common across each of these cultural clusters, and those that diverge. The common perspectives that emerge from the research will frame the scope of action on what all agree has to be resolved, while the common values and norms that are identified will serve as the normative parameters of the solutions to be developed. The hypothesis is that a triadic structure will emerge, that recognises the need:

a) To subordinate key global public goods, and certain areas that threaten a tragedy of the commons, to supranational systems; b) - to cooperate more closely and harmonise rules on human rights, trade, financial flows and security (e.g. weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, pandemic control); and c) to commit to common objectives in other areas, without necessarily creating institutions to control or enforce compliance.

This might enable the creation of a Global Charter of economic activity.

Please join the discussion and propose your solutions via the discussion tab at the top of this page.