Political Science / 7. Globalistics

Ph.D., Aliya M. Kussainova,

Master student of International Relations specialty Zipatolla Shyngys

L.N.Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Kazakhstan

Mechanisms of Global Governance: Challenges and Opportunities

The new way of the supranational actors’ interaction is forming on the international level in order to consciously manage the globalization processes. This kind of regulation can be considered as the global governance, due to the absence of global government and global state. Global governance is the complex set of formal and informal institutions, mechanisms and ties between states, international intergovernmental organizations, markets, transnational corporations (TNCs) and global civil society, directed to the regulation of the processes, having the global character.

Global governance is characterized by the following peculiarities:

• large number of subjects, taking part in the governance process – for the long period of time the state was the only one significant participant of the international relations. Within the framework of the globalization processes the new mechanisms, ensuring the co-participation of the intergovernmental units, TNCs, international non-governmental organizations and transnational social movements and cosmopolitans in the process of governing, were established;

• bears the multilevel character – the decision-making process is implemented on several levels – global (UN, Greenpeace), regional (EU), local (state) and the consequences of these decisions is also reflected on the different levels (one city, whole state, several states of the whole world);

• absence of the clear defined schemes of interaction between the participants of the governing process – the way, how the actors coordinate their activities on the international arena can be characterized as “unsystematic cooperation”. Practically, in every concrete situation the ways of the issue elimination are developed during the process, because there are no rules, established for the cooperation beforehand.

Today, it is possible to highlight the existence of three types of global governance mechanisms, depending on which actors are involved in the development and implementation of solutions processes. Official global governance mechanisms are linked to the activities of national governments, the conclusion of international agreements and decision-making at the level of international intergovernmental organizations. Within these mechanisms, non-state actors representing the commercial sector and civil society can participate in decision-making only indirectly - through lobbying, expertise and formation of the public opinion.

In the framework of mixed mechanisms, the partnership of state actors with non-state actors, representing the private sector and civil society takes place. The first steps towards this direction were made in the 1990s, when the World Bank started the realization of the cooperation programs with the non-governmental organizations, covering the issues of global development and evaluation of the economic transformation consequences, and the UN development program together with other organization and agencies of the UN framework initiated the dialogue with the transnational companies on the issue of building a “global market with a human face”.

Private mechanisms of global governance that do not involve the participation of national states and international intergovernmental organizations are traditionally face on the criticism from the side of the experts, primarily because of their fear that a plenty of globally significant issues will become an object of TNCs or non-transparent club-type structures exclusive competence, which will be pursuing their own goals. Until today, the achievements in the field of creation of such mechanisms are rather modest, but their potential in the development of proposals subjecting the approval, using official decision-making procedures cannot be underestimated.

It is precisely with the change of the comparative weight of the above-mentioned global governance mechanisms and the circle of actors involved in them are connected to the most important tendencies, continuation, development or stopping of which will have the key significance for the future evolution of the global governance mechanisms.

The first trend is a radical strengthening of mixed mechanisms of global governance. This trend has three ways of demonstration. First, since the mid-1990s, the involvement of non-state actors in the formal mechanisms of global governance has been growing at a rapid pace, which led to the growing number of cases, in which the latter de-facto have acquired the nature of mixed mechanisms. Secondly, the role of international “negotiating platforms”, where the principles of regulating the global processes are discussed, has significantly increased.

The second trend is the convergence in the positions of TNCs and NGOs. Contrary to popular opinion about the immanent opposition of TNCs interests and the subjects of global civil society, tactical alliances between them became increasingly common on some issues of the global governance.

The third trend is the search for a “new legitimacy” for formal mechanisms of global governance. The radical strengthening of the international positions of leading countries with emerging markets by the middle of the 2000s led to the talks about the inadequacy of the global governance mechanisms in the economic sphere, where the dominant positions still were occupied by the representatives of economically developed states. The global economic crisis that began in 2008 gave an impulse for the reformation of international financial institutions (IMF and WB) aimed at expanding the representation of countries with emerging markets. In addition, the crisis caused the movement of the discussion center on global economic regulation from the format of G8 to G20. Discussion of relevant problems among countries producing about 90% of the world GDP and including, in addition to G-8 members, representative groups of developed countries (South Korea, Australia, the EU), large emerging economies (Russia, Argentina, China, India, Brazil), developing countries of the “second echelon” (Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey, South Africa) and leading oil exporters (Saudi Arabia), provides an opportunity to take into account a wider range of interests. This step was supposed to contribute to both an increase in the conformity of the developed solutions and the nature of problems facing the world economy and to enhancing the legitimacy of these decisions in the views of international system participants.

Despite the diversity of the global governance mechanisms, the main intrigue for the future is connected to the one main question: can trends, reflecting the strengthening of the non-state actors’ positions in world politics and economy keep the dynamics of their development, which was typical for them in 2000s? If the answer to this question is positive, the world will be waiting for further blurring of leading role of the nation states and organizations, which they create, in the management of global processes. If the answer is negative, the state actors of world economy will be able to restore their positions, relying on broader coalitional formats that provide for the expansion of the circle of countries that have privileged access to the adoption of globally significant decisions.

Although today neither of two scenarios has apparent advantage from the point of view of implementation probability, the first one looks more preferable according to the opinions of experts. On the one hand, global crisis had suspended processes of engaging the non-governmental units into the work of official global governance mechanisms and development of global negotiating platforms. However, in other directions of development the mixed and private mechanisms of global governance (extension of regulatory influence of TNC’s code conduct and alliances formation between TNC and NGO, especially in ecological area) there has been an obvious process. On the other hand, increasing the legitimacy of global governance’s official mechanisms is accompanied by any increase in heterogeneity of the interests of member countries, which undermines the prospects for adopting concerted decisions. The conflict of legitimacy and legal capacity is most evident at comparing of the G8 and the G20: if there is a drawback of legitimacy in the first case, in the second case there is a lack of legal capacity, which extremely narrows possibilities for developing of mutually acceptable solutions. Moreover, none of serious plans for further improvement of global governance official mechanisms are able to ignore the role of NGO in providing of global social boons. In that context an addition of the interstate format of the G20 in parallel formats of the “Business 20”, the “Civil 20”, and the “Think Tank 20” initiative can be seen as a step towards giving this mechanism of global governance a “mixed” status.

Increasing role of NGO in global policy and economy in existing and emerging global governance mechanisms with a high probability will lead to the fact that in the coming decades all leading intergovernmental organizations will actually acquire a mixed character. It will be achieving on account of implementation the increasing number of initiatives, which supposing the active participation in international business structures and global civil society not only in developing and discussing but also in acceptance and implementation of key internationally significant decisions. In further prospective it possible to wait that in the line of spheres (in particular, connected with environment preservation, employees and customer rights) collaboration of TNCs and NGOs allow to implement an effective private regulation regimes, which will provide for minimal intervention of governmental units (it will continue, first of all in case of acceptance and execution of court decisions). An important consequence of this development will be the emergence of new channels of influence of ordinary citizens to develop rules for the regulation of global processes. This means that at the beginning of the next century experts will have more reason to talk about the legitimacy of global governance mechanisms.

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