Global Governance
This lesson explores the concept of Global Governance. What is it? How effective is it? With no prior knowledge, whatsoever, write a definition of Global Governance on a post-it and add it to the wall. There are no incorrect answers at this stage. We will explore a series of sources that will hopefully help us to develop our understanding of what exactly global governance is as well as some of the challenges facing the idea in the modern world.
Beginning to define Global Governance
Global governance or world governance is a movement towards political integration of transnational actors aimed at negotiating responses to problems that affect more than one state or region. It tends to involve institutionalization. These institutions of global governance—the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the World Bank, etc.—tend to have limited or demarcated power to enforce compliance. The modern question of world governance exists in the context of globalization and globalizing regimes of power: politically, economically and culturally. In response to the acceleration of interdependence on a worldwide scale, both between human societies and between humankind and the biosphere, the term "global governance" may also be used to name the process of designating laws, rules, or regulations intended for a global scale.
Global governance is not a singular system. There is no "world government" but the many different regimes of global governance do have commonalities:
‘While the contemporary system of global political relations is not integrated, the relation between the various regimes of global governance is not insignificant, and the system does have a common dominant organizational form. The dominant mode of organization today is bureaucratic rational – regularized, codified and rational. It is common to all modern regimes of political power and frames the transition from classical sovereignty to what David Held describes as the second regime of sovereignty – liberal international sovereignty’
Taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_governance (accessed on 4th November 2015)
In this TEDx talk Prof. David Held outlines some of the issues facing global governance. His starting point is that Global governance is failing when we need it most. The paradox of our times is that, as global problems become more complex and threatening, our global institutions lose their force as organizing frameworks for inter-state cooperation. Using Lorenzetti’s painting “The Allegory of the Good and the Bad Government” he explains what are the reasons for such gridlocks
IGOs are the chief agents for global governance in the contemporary world. Create a mind map for each of the main IGOs that we have looked at that considers how they contribute to and support global governance as well as what their limitations are.
Source 4 is Prof. David Held again, this time elaborating on some of the barriers to effective global Governance
The International Criminal Court