Why Global Cooperation is Failing
* Book: Gridlock: Why Global Cooperation is Failing When We Need it Most by Thomas Hale, David Held, and Kevin Young. Oxford, UK, Polity Press, 2013. 368 pp.
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Peter Haas:
"Globalization is now one of the defining characteristics of world politics, and one of its most contentious. In Gridlock, Thomas Hale, David Held, and Kevin Young offer an ambitious and sweeping treatment of contemporary global issues that combines sociology, political economy, and international relations.
They argue that although post-World War II international institutions encouraged globalization, they have failed to keep up with the challenges of globalization. Post-World War II institutions contributed to improved prosperity, free trade, a managed peace, and spreading democratization. The institutions were backed up by a stable bipolar balance of power, common global norms of embedded liberalism, and a willingness to delegate to experts.
Yet, the institutions spawned a whole set of seemingly ungovernable social externalities that elude sovereign institutions: terrorism, failed states, piracy, cyber security, pandemics, the control of multinational corporations, and financial governance.
A series of major cleavages that occurred in the 1970s brought into doubt the current utility of the existing landscape of global governance. Complex interdependence, new actors, and the blurring of foreign and domestic policy (and thus international relations and comparative politics) changed the political landscape of global governance. Similarly, other changes in the background conditions of the international system occurred: growing multipolarity and disagreements among the major powers, the rise of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), the emergence of more-difficult policy challenges, and a democratic challenge of overly technocratic expertise led to a condition of “gridlock” in the international system and its inability to respond effectively to the new global challenges. Gridlock—institutional failure to contribute to effective coordinated problems on the contemporary agenda—takes two salient forms: first, there is no responsible body for a particular issue; and second, there are no effective means for coordinating all the bodies that can contribute to deal with interconnected issues."
(https://academic.oup.com/psq/article-abstract/129/2/378/6846069?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false)
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Review at https://academic.oup.com/psq/article-abstract/129/2/378/6846069?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false