Global Governance Without Global Government
Discussion
Galina A. Drobot:
“The book Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics by Rosenau and Szempiel (1992) has given a renewed impetus to the development of the idea of global governance within the framework of global society. The book discusses the mechanism of this kind of governance. In Turbulence in World Politics, published two years earlier (1990), Rosenau writes about the governance as a system of rules, typical of all kinds of human activities. According to him, contemporary system embraces activities of various governments, but it also subsumes many other agencies and groups. The phrase ‘global governance without global government’ now came into use among scholars of international affairs, and refers to multiple networks, which include fora, conferences, congresses and meetings held by governmental and nongovernmental actors on various issues of world order as well as the activities of international organizations – both intergovernmental and nongovernmental ones. In our opinion, the contemporary international community is seeking to achieve this very form of global governance against the backdrop of the demise of global unipolarity. The new term ‘nonpolar society’ introduced into academic literature by Haas, as American expert, is consistent with the above-mentioned views. It is an interesting notion since it displays a key feature of contemporary global governance. ‘In contrast to multipolarity – writes Haas – which involves several distinct poles or concentrations of power – a nonpolar international system is characterized by numerous centers with meaningful power’. He lists these centers, namely, global and regional powers, various international organizations, major international companies, international network of media, illegitimate paramilitary formations, drug cartels, individuals and others. ‘Today power is diffuse, power is now found in many places and in many hands’. And what is the most important, ‘with so many more actors possessing meaningful power and trying to assert influence, it will be more difficult to build collective responses and make institutions work’ (Haas 2008). In other words, the modern international system is difficult to manage, it is rather chaotic despite the system of ‘global governance without global government’. The latter, rather, is more associated with chaos rather than with order. This approach to contemporary global governance is shared not only by foreign but also by Russian experts in international affairs. Here are a few quotes from World Politics by Lebedeva: when analyzing the structure of global governance, ‘its significant diversity’ is obvious, ‘the emerging global governance connections are not hierarchical, compared with the connections when they exist within a state’; ‘current policy is based on collective decision making through the variety of different levels of coordination’, in modern world politics ‘concerted action is often unachievable due to various reasons’ (Lebedeva 2006: 337–338). Again, we can see the same idea that the modern world is difficult to manage.”
(http://www.sociostudies.org/books/files/globalistics_and_globalization_studies/300-308.pdf)