Summary of Comments on Senarclens - 1998 Governance and the crisis in the international mec

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Date: 24/01/2013, 10:26:09 Page: 5 Author: Diana Subject: Highlight Richard Rosecrance: the only international civilization worthy of the name is the governing economic culture of the world market. 9

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The utterances of the World Bank about good governance can be regarded as a favourable development by comparison with its earlier attitudes. The Bank has departed from the political neutrality that its statutes imposed upon it by showing its interest in the political conditions of development: legitimacy, public participation in change, the state of law, the administration of justice, human rights and a free press. It has also declared itself in favour of NGOs, trade unions, and the movements of civil society. = tantamount to a reversal of its traditionally held economic beliefs, since they take into account institutional and political aspects of development. However, the Bank eschews analysis of historical and political contexts, notably the power rankings, the contradictions and conicts between social groups, the structure of international trade, and nancial and technological dependence. It sees the market as an apolitical social reality, functioning according to its own procedures, ready to release the forces of civilian society and to permit economic and social progress the Bank proposes good governance the basic conditions of which are totally lacking. governance, as presently dened, reects the utilitarian approach that has dominated American social science. It harks back to a functionalist trend of thought, which implies that social relationships are conceived along pragmatic and technocratic lines. In international politics, the issue of governance

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expresses the dynamics of functional integration. When the stakes of international politics are of little importance, when political links are subsumed by the business of economic intercourse, and the co-operative networks are dense and substantial, the realist approach of international politics is of little help. The administration of routine affairs appears to take over the arena of public life OECD: These countries have constructed bonds of interdependence so strong that it often seems difficult to identify their specic sphere of state sovereignty in the conduct of innumerable matters under bilateral or multilateral negotiations and decision-making procedures. The technocratic management of public affairs gives the impression that it is absorbing most of political life. Young, governments are incapable of meeting the growing demands of governance, hence the need to

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encourage the contribution of other non-governmental agents = neo-liberal institutionalism. 1

Commission on Global Governance

This is the message put out by the Commission on Global Governance, made up of people who have evident interest in defending the status quo, through nebulous rhetoric about civil society, the benets of the market and the urgent need for a new vision insignicant proposals about the reform of the United Nations system. It tends to mix together all those involved on the international scene, without ranking their functions, the lines of authority and force that connect them, their political inuence, or the nature of their specic contribution to the regulatory structures. It tends to view international politics as a structure to which all the actors small and great can make their contribution, with a view to utilitarian and consensual nalities in the 1960s American political scientists to substitute analysis of the political system for that of the state. The issue of governance brings out this point of view once again the objective of transnational corporations is to make a prot. Their contribution to the common good is equivocal offer relatively few jobs.Their vocation is not the control of public affairs. Treating transnational corporations as structures of governance means placing a value on their contribution to the political order, or at the very least their economic and social role, a situation that reects an ideological choice.

NGOs/global civil society

NGOs also pursue precise sectoral goals, so the scope of their political action is also limited. It is misleading to view them as the expression of a civil society escaping the inuence and protection of governments, as unaffected by the phenomena of power and hegemony or by the conicts of economic interests that structure international politics. NGOs, are not unlike the charitable and benevolent works of the nineteenth century, before the trade union and political movements forced governments to develop public policies for improving the situation of the working classes. In many respects this is a step backwards, just as if the failures of the welfare state and of the modernizing state in the developing countries, or the public aid policies of the intergovernmental institutions demanded a return to the former practices dictated by the imperatives of morals and religion

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Intergovernmental organizations sometimes have a degree of autonomy with respect to governments. There is no doubt that they make a contribution to governance Their political independence is variable. In principle it is governments that dene their ideological orientations, their functions and programmes and, consequently, their political inuence. When organizations have important functions to carry out, their secretariat has only a narrow margin for manoeuvre: they are, just like certain national governments, merely instruments of the member states, particularly of the most powerful among them

Impact of end of the Cold War

The United Nations and its institutions certainly beneted from this calming of ideological tensions, And yet these institutions, despite the new situation, have obtained no additional resources or political support The result of the structural changes associated with globalization has been to undermine the interest of the rich countries in the United Nation OECD have constructed extremely strong bonds of interdependence,

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OECD: ministers of foreign affairs are no longer in sole charge of questions of international policy. Most other ministries, particularly those with responsibilities for foreign trade, nance, the environment, science and technology, the police, and so on, are daily involved in interactions with their foreign opposite numbers, to the extent that governments are not always able to achieve coherence in their overall foreign policy weakening the autonomy and centrality of the nation-state and causing governments to co-operate in a wider political framework. the internal structures of the state can be seen to be increasingly involved with those of international relations. institutions representing international society wherein every state has the same rights whatever its economic and political importance do not provide an adequate framework for tackling the challenges of the contemporary world, especially since they give no particular inuence to the cities and regions that are the main centres of production and trade, and also exclude large numbers of people who are alienated from the states that speak and act in their name. Notwithstanding this, declarations about governance are too often made by people who

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appear to confuse the sphere of the rich countries with that of international politics at least two shortcomings in international governance: fragile governments inadequacies of the regional or international mechanisms of regulation: in other words, the failures of the mechanisms of governance. NB links traditional understanding of sovereignty to democracy, so if do away with sovereignty, damage democracy without replacing it with anything new likely that no-one will now defend the traditional idea of national sovereignty. The model of a government having the monopoly of legitimate political allegiance within a well-dened geographical space, independently determining the form and content of its public policies, is already obsolescent. On the other hand, the democratic tradition which inspired this view of sovereignty is not.

Decline of the state

OECD have lost some of their scal, monetary and nancial independence, because budgetary decits and policies likely to encourage ination are heavily penalized by the

markets. As a result, governments political independence can be restricted. Essentially, however, they retain the monopoly of legitimate violence. expansion of markets and communications does not prevent governments from continuing to be the main centres of political power, purveyors of standards and regimes, and prime sources of political allegiances.

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globalization weakens the ability of states to defend a type of economic and social regulation that had been linked to the defence of the modern idea of citizenship. correlation between nancial deregulation and the increase in unemployment from the 1970s To protect the competitivity of their economy they are too often tempted to abolish welfare state