The Governance of Global Issues: Effectiveness, Accountability, and Constitutionalization Proposal to run a workshop at the 2003 ECPR Joint Sessions in Edinburgh Dr Mathias Koenig-Archibugi Prof. Michael Zürn Department of Government Institut für Interkulturelle und Internationale Studien London School of Economics and Political Science Unversität Bremen Houghton Street London WC2A 2AE UK Postfach 330440 D-28334 Bremen Germany Tel. +44 (0)20 7955 7193 Fax +44 (0)20 7831 1707 Tel. +49 (0)421-218-2098 Fax: +49 (0)421-218-7248 Email [email protected] Email [email protected] Outline and relation to existing research The Workshop will explore the variety of institutional mechanisms currently in use for the management of global issues, and elaborate to what extent a coherent system of global governance is emerging from these initiatives. There is an increasing need for the systematic examination of these problems, as in recent years the study of world politics has moved from its traditional concentration on relations between sovereign states to a broader conceptualisation of governance above the level of individual states (Rosenau and Czempiel 1992, Held 1995, Zürn 1998). While most scholars would still regard governments as pivotal actors in world politics, there has been an increased awareness that governance functions can be exercised through a variety of institutional forms, and that in certain contexts governments are not necessarily the most important actors. Among the developments that have stimulated the interests in the diversity of governance mechanisms in world affairs are the following: According to many observers, the demand of governance is increasing because of processes of growing interdependence and globalization (Held et al. 1999; Beisheim et al. 1999). Comparative research on traditional intergovernmental arrangements – arguably still the most important form of cross-border governance mechanisms - shows that they cannot be considered a homogeneous phenomenon: they are considerably diverse with respect to the level of legalization they embody and other important dimensions (Goldstein et al. 2001, Young 1999). A number of researchers suggest that the staff of certain international organizations have a substantial degree of discretion in formulating and implementing policies, and 1 thus should be regarded as distinct actors in global governance (Abbott and Snidal 1998, Reinalda and Verbeek 1998). Public agencies other than national executives, e.g. central bankers and securities regulators, maintain links with similar agencies in other countries and thus form transgovernmental networks for the management of a number of global issues (Slaughter 2000). Business actors – i.e. firms, their associations, and entities such as international chambers of commerce – are increasingly setting up their own transnational governance mechanisms to regulate issues of common concern (Haufler 2001, Braithwaite and Drahos 2000, Ronit and Schneider 2000). Some researchers argue that transnational advocacy networks and nongovernmental organizations – i.e. what is frequently called “global civil society” - play a role in various areas of global governance and at various stages of the global public policy making process: they are said to contribute to problem identification and definition, to influence the formulation of the options and the making of binding decisions, to collaborate with public agencies in implementing those decisions and sometimes to provide directly services to populations when their own governments are unable to do it (Keck and Sikkink 1999, O’Brien et al. 2000, Della Porta et al. 1999; Anheier et al. 2001). In sum, recent research suggests that global governance is a complex phenomenon that involves a plurality of actors and a variety of modes of coordination and operation. This raises two important questions: Under which conditions are these governance arrangements effective in achieving their goals? How are the institutional characteristics of governance arrangements related to their performance? Do governance arrangements dealing with specific global issues operate in a segmented way, or do they interact and even generate a structured system of global governance? What are the deficits of global governance in its current form from a constitutional perspective? Regarding the first question, the term ‘governance arrangement’ is used here to describe how the interaction between various actors pursuing common goals is structured. Thus governance arrangements represent the link between the demand and the supply of global governance in a certain issue area. Governance arrangements differ on several dimensions (Koenig-Archibugi 2002). A non-exhaustive list is the following: Are the participants governments, public agencies or private actors such as firms and NGOs? To what extent do actors with different degrees of ‘publicness’ collaborate within the same arrangement and are trisectoral global public policy networks (Reinicke et al. 2000) indeed especially effective? 2 How much autonomy and discretion do supranational bureaucracies have vis-à-vis their principals? Is membership open or restricted? Are the arrangements dominated by one or a few participants or relatively egalitarian? What is the level of legalization? In which way are norms and rules verified? Is governance exercised mainly through regulation or does it involve the transfer of material resources? What enforcement mechanisms are available? To which extent do the decision-making systems of global governance arrangements resonate with broad national publics? On the other hand, the performance of governance arrangements has to be assessed on the basis of certain evaluative criteria. These include effectiveness – i.e. the capacity to solve the specific problem that led to their creation – but also democratic standards, such as their degree of transparency, their reliance on impartial procedures, the degree to which they are representative of broad social interests, the opportunities for access by groups of stakeholders, the degree of accountability of decision-makers, the fairness of their outcomes, and so on. One aim of the Workshop is to assess whether certain institutional characteristics tend to produce ‘better’ performances than others. The Workshop will differ from similar research projects in that (1) it will consider not only intergovernmental regimes and organizations, but also governance structures with significant or predominant private-actor participation; (2) it will consider examples from a variety of issue areas; and (3) it will look not only at policy effectiveness but also at issues of representativeness, accountability and fairness. A second aim of the Workshop is to study how distinct governance arrangements interact with each other and which form their relationship can take (e.g. symbiosis, complementarity, competition, obstruction, etc.). Do positive modes of interaction prevail over negative ones? Is the governance of different issues mutually reinforcing? Is the sum of governance initiatives forming a coherent system of global governance? Does this system of global governance still know broadly consented goals that directs political decision-making or is it most adequately described as a number of autopoietic and uncoordinated sub-systems? What are the sources of legitimacy in global governance? Is there a political project behind global governance or is it best described as a sea of technocratic arrangements? Another important question is whether the current architecture of global governance reflects the distribution of power in the international system (notably the preponderance of the only superpower remaining) or whether as a rule-based system it provides a counterweight to power concentrations. Type of papers We will ask the prospective participants to present a paper covering one of the following topics: 3 1) Conceptualization: The theoretical discussion of the problems and conditions of global governance. This includes the clarification of key concepts, for instance: What makes a policy issue “global”? What is “governance” and how is it related to other core concepts of political science such as government, state, and power? 2) Global Issues and Institutional Design: The examination of one particular global issue, such as financial market regulation, reproductive health care, child labour, torture, AIDS, terrorism, drug trafficking, global warming, refugee assistance, the Internet, etc. The papers should compare two or more governance arrangements that deal with that issue and differ in one or more crucial dimensions of institutional variation, and assess how different institutional characteristics affect their performance. 3) Global Governance in a Constitutional Perspective: The examination of how distinct governance arrangements – dealing with the same problem or with different problems - interact with each other and to what extent a coherent system of global governance emerges from the sum of these interactions. We will make sure that an appropriate balance between the three types of papers is reached in the Workshop. In selecting the participants we will also aim for balance in nationality and gender. Participants will include scholars at different stages of their career, and we will welcome proposal from research students. Tentative list of participants ad Conceptualization Kjell Goldmann, Stockholm University Georg Sorensen, Aarhus University Ngaire Woods, Oxford University ad Global Issues and Institutional