Reform of political institutions remains more challenging than reform of economic organizations and may have been complicated by the formation and use of “coalitions of the willing” on different issues. While changing coalitions might be able to address pressing challenges (like the humanitarian crisis in Darfur or responses to the Arab Spring), in the end, they are likely to under-mine existing institutions and create new crises of legitimacy of their own. It remains to be seen whether the threat of their formation might prompt, rather than delay, genuine Security Council reform. Hence the sustainability of existing global security institutions remains very much in doubt.
THE POTENTIAL ROLE OF POLICY-ORIENTED, UNIVERSITY-BASED, RESEARCH INSTITUTES
Research University institutes and centres participate in contemporary global governance and can sometimes even play a modest role in the reform and sus-tainability of existing international institutions. They play a role through the independent studies they conduct (both of contemporary global challenges and the performance of existing institutions and forms of governance), through the opportunities they provide for sabbaticals for current policy offi-cials (or retirement opportunities for reflection from former policy leaders), and through semi-independent reviews and analyses of contemporary policy options and alternatives. They participate in either reinforcing or challenging contemporary global governance through a number of different practices.
First, they can play an important convening function, bringing together dif-ferent groups who otherwise would not interact with one another. Research universities offer a neutral space to ask a different set of questions than those defined within the confines of the day-to-day policy arena. They can also pro-vide a basis for the formation of new networks or the extension of existing ones.
Second, university-based institutes and centres can also perform an impor-tant training function. Many are engaged in diplomatic training for graduate students or in the design of specialized courses for mid-career professionals.
They can conduct simulations of potential crises with the direct participation of policy practitioners, and they can also serve as a repository of historical information about a given issue domain (particularly in instances where there is a high turnover in specialized policy staff).
Third, they can play a legitimating function, assessing, for example, the qual-ity of existing governance arrangements, the need for reform, or the sustain-ability of existing institutions. University-based researchers can also partici-pate in transnational policy networks, an institutional form that is broadly analogous to Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of a specialized “field” of expertise (Bourdieu, 1990, 1980) and are constituted by a group of individuals who
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transnational threats from non-state actors — from terrorism, piracy and tran-snational criminal organisations to global climate change and the potential spread of pandemic disease — many of them emanating from the developing world.
With regard to global security governance, the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) continues to reflect the distribution of power in 1945, and, as a result, faces a growing crisis of legitimacy and sustainability. Fortunately for the organization, two of the four BRIC countries (Russia and China) are per-manent members, so the gap in legitimacy is not as great as it might have been.
Nonetheless, despite widespread calls for Security Council membership reform in recent years, changes in UNSC permanent membership remain unlikely. India and Brazil were joined by the dramatically transformed former Axis powers, Germany and Japan, in a campaign to join the Security Council as permanent members (with or without a veto). Despite widespread consen-sus about the undemocratic nature of the Council, however, opposition to their permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council remains some-what over-determined, largely due to the articulation of a variety of different regional power concerns against the candidacy of each of the leading contend-ers, along with the notable absence of any African permanent members.
Three of the four leading contenders served on the Security Council in 2011, but the role they played and the positions they took on a number of conten-tious issues (from Libya and Iran to Syria) led some observers (not only among the P-5 but in their own countries) to question whether they were actually ready for “prime time” in global security governance.
The international financial institutions have ironically shown an ability to adapt more flexibly to changing power configurations, in part, because the share of voting power in the organisations is linked to their members’ financial contributions. They accommodated the rapid financial accumulation of the oil-rich Middle East countries during the last quarter of the 20th century, and have the potential to accommodate China as well, as it continues to build up huge financial reserves in other countries. Whether this flexibility can be applied to the selection of the leadership of the IMF remains to be seen, since the opportunity was not taken up when the Directorship came open in 2011.
The G-8 was central to informal economic governance, at least until the global financial crisis of 2008, and previously illustrated some ability to adapt, by adding Russia to the former G-7. It conducted routine side meetings with China, India and Brazil, among others, and was largely superseded by the G-20 in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis. That body remains a location for high-level meetings and conversations, and for the broaching of new ideas, and there is currently a great deal of discussion about whether it should retain that role or create more of an institutional infrastruc-ture to reinforce the initiatives floated at the meetings.
share a common expertise, a common technical language to communicate that expertise, broadly shared normative concerns, but not necessarily agree-ment on specific policy alternatives. They include trans-governagree-mental net-works (Slaughter, 2005), but transcend them to include actors other than state officials — actors from the private sector, from international organiza-tions, from international legal practice, and sometimes from research univer-sities. Scholarly participants in transnational policy networks might be asked for legitimating support of initiatives taken by policy practitioners or for pubic (supportive) commentaries on proposals from groups of states.
Fourth, university-based institutes and centres perform an important research function. They can undertake research that policy practitioners have an interest in, but lack the time, the resources, or the technical ability to engage in on their own. Scholars occasionally engage in forms of Track II/III diplomacy and can also be drawn upon for an historical exploration of major international crises (such as in the critical oral history conferences conducted by James Blight on the Cuban Missile crisis and the Vietnam war (McNamara et al., 1999)).
Fifth, scholars can occasionally serve as agents of policy principals, testing ideas those principals could not risk articulating themselves within their own institutions. Scholars are free to pose hypothetical propositions or “out of the box” ideas that a career civil servant would be loathe to propose (even though they might wish to). Members of the U.N. Secretariat have on occasion used simulations involving U.N. Security Council Member States sponsored by university-based research institutes to test out the use of different policy instruments for peace enforcement.
Sixth and finally, university-based scholars can articulate an alternative framework or way of thinking about an issue domain. This requires careful translation into a language recognizable and usable by policy practitioners.
Once they do so, university institutes can become known as a place for a par-ticular view, vantage point or school of thought (either to be shunned or to be placated by policy practitioners).
There are important, ethical and practical implications associated with the policy engagement of university-based research institutes and their faculty members. Not only is it important that they maintain a certain degree of polit-ical independence and distance from the world of policy, but they also have to be careful about potential donor interference (or getting too close to their subjects). In practical terms, they will also have to rethink their criteria for tenure and promotion, if they wish to become engaged in the social world in this manner. The Glion Colloquium is a unique forum for pursuing these kinds of issues — issues that have important implications not only to the future of global governance, but for the sustainability of existing international institutions of governance.
Chapter 3: Global Governance, the Sustainability of International Institutions… 33 ...
REFERENCES
Biersteker, Thomas (2009). “Global Governance” in Cavelty, Myriam Dunn &
Mauer, Victor (eds.) Routledge Companion to Security, New York and London:
Routledge. (The definitional section of the current chapter has been partly adapted by the author from this article).
Bourdieu, Pierre (1990, 1980). The Logic of Practice (Le sens practique), Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Busch, Marc L. (2007). “Overlapping Institutions, Forum Shopping, and Dispute Settlement in International Trade”, International Organization, Vol. 61, pp. 735-61.
Hall, Rodney Bruce & Biersteker, Thomas J. (2002). The Emergence of Private Author-ity in Global Governance, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversAuthor-ity Press.
McNamara, Robert S., Blight, James G. & Brigham, Robert K., with Schandler, Herbert Y. & Biersteker, Thomas J. (1999). Argument without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy, New York: PublicAffairs Press.
Oxford English Dictionary, Complete Text, Volume I (A-O) (1971) Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rosenau, James (1992). “Governance, order and change in world politics”, in Rosenau, James & Czempiel, Ernst-Otto, (eds) Governance without Government:
Order and Change in World Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Slaughter, Anne-Marie (2005). A New World Order, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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share a common expertise, a common technical language to communicate that expertise, broadly shared normative concerns, but not necessarily agree-ment on specific policy alternatives. They include trans-governagree-mental net-works (Slaughter, 2005), but transcend them to include actors other than state officials — actors from the private sector, from international organiza-tions, from international legal practice, and sometimes from research univer-sities. Scholarly participants in transnational policy networks might be asked for legitimating support of initiatives taken by policy practitioners or for pubic (supportive) commentaries on proposals from groups of states.
Fourth, university-based institutes and centres perform an important research function. They can undertake research that policy practitioners have an interest in, but lack the time, the resources, or the technical ability to engage in on their own. Scholars occasionally engage in forms of Track II/III diplomacy and can also be drawn upon for an historical exploration of major international crises (such as in the critical oral history conferences conducted by James Blight on the Cuban Missile crisis and the Vietnam war (McNamara et al., 1999)).
Fifth, scholars can occasionally serve as agents of policy principals, testing ideas those principals could not risk articulating themselves within their own institutions. Scholars are free to pose hypothetical propositions or “out of the box” ideas that a career civil servant would be loathe to propose (even though they might wish to). Members of the U.N. Secretariat have on occasion used simulations involving U.N. Security Council Member States sponsored by university-based research institutes to test out the use of different policy instruments for peace enforcement.
Sixth and finally, university-based scholars can articulate an alternative framework or way of thinking about an issue domain. This requires careful translation into a language recognizable and usable by policy practitioners.
Once they do so, university institutes can become known as a place for a par-ticular view, vantage point or school of thought (either to be shunned or to be placated by policy practitioners).
There are important, ethical and practical implications associated with the policy engagement of university-based research institutes and their faculty members. Not only is it important that they maintain a certain degree of polit-ical independence and distance from the world of policy, but they also have to be careful about potential donor interference (or getting too close to their subjects). In practical terms, they will also have to rethink their criteria for tenure and promotion, if they wish to become engaged in the social world in this manner. The Glion Colloquium is a unique forum for pursuing these kinds of issues — issues that have important implications not only to the future of global governance, but for the sustainability of existing international institutions of governance.
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