Craig N. Murphy

Global Governance: Poorly done and Poorly Understood

A set of ethical issues—tensions between democratization and globalization, about some ways in which the global inequalities have increased, and about gross failures of contemporary international cooperation—provide reason to consider our understanding of global governance and the political forces organized to support or transform it. Many scholars agree on the existence of a global polity characterized by the dominance of neo-liberalism, the growing network of both public and private regimes that extend across the worlds largest regions, the system of global intergovernmental organizations, and transnational organizations both carrying out some of the traditional service functions of global public agencies and working to create regimes and new systems of international integration. Scholars who emphasize the historically contingent social construction of human institutions and who focus on the transformative potential of transnational social movements have provided the greatest insight into what can be done to confront the ethical issues raised by contemporary global governance. Almost all analysts agree that the current great powers cannot be relied upon to facilitate progressive change, although that is only one reason why global governance is likely to remain inefficient and incapable of shifting resources from the worlds rich to the poor, even though it may continue to play a role in promoting liberal democracy and the empowering of women.

International political economy: a tale of two heterodoxies

International political economy (IPE) originated in the early 1970s. For almost 20 years it has been dominated by separate, largely non-communicating schools, one centred on scholarly institutions in Britain, the other associated with the US journal, International Organization (IO). In terms of the evolving norms of both economics and political science, both schools are surprisingly heterodox. Rather than developing strong systematic data collections and systematic theory, the IO school has been characterised by a shifting set of conceptual and metatheoretical debates. The British school, which has tended to take a deliberately critical position, has been characterised by an ever widening set of concerns topical concerns fuelled by a desire to include more and more voices in the study of IPE. These outcomes are explicable only by tracing the specific historical developments of the two schools.

Political Consequences of the New Inequality

This article proposes agendas for teaching and research about shifting global patterns of equality and inequality, a very different agenda than was appropriate when the last undergraduate professor was president of ISA, almost forty years ago. Today, unlike in that Cold War world, formal democracy is flourishing, state power is diminishing, gender inequality has diminished, and income inequality has risen. Consequences of these new patterns that demand our attention as teachers and scholars include: (1) more frequent protracted social conflicts, (2) a newly politicized sphere of international public health, (3) the new global gender politics, (4) the new global politics of the super-rich, and (5) the new politics and ethics of the worlds privileged, a group that includes most ISA members and most of our students. Our responsibilities as teachers have grown, in part, because popular media present a decreasingly coherent picture of each of these patterns; and that incoherence, itself, may help sustain global inequalities.

Do the Left-Out Matter?

Benjamin J. Cohens International Political Economy: An Intellectual History is a remarkably admirable book. Its organisation around the intellectual biographies of seven of the fields indisputabl...

Lessons of a ‘Good’ Crisis: Learning in, and From the Third World

The current crisis has implications for the structure of world power. Some parts of the developing world have enjoyed a very ‘good’ crisis, with sustained economic growth and even increasing equity. Similarly, during the Great Depression, Third World countries that adopted less-orthodox policies did better than core countries. These relative successes helped shape a generation of thinking about economic policy. Unfortunately, policies that made sense when the core was weak made less sense when the core again became strong, yet some states continued to follow them. A generation from now, some of todays successful states may find themselves confronting different changed circumstances with policies that have become equally problematic. Chinese policy makers may learn a lesson that will prove incorrect: that the centralization of authoritarian government in the hands of a small, pro-capitalist clique is good for economic growth and global power. In contrast, the lessons learned during the crisis by successful states that are more democratic may still be valid. La crisis actual tiene implicaciones para la estructura del poder mundial. Algunas partes del mundo en desarrollo han disfrutado de una muy ‘buena’ crisis, con crecimiento económico sostenido e incluso aumento de ecuanimidad. En forma similar, durante la gran depresión, los países del tercer mundo que adoptaron políticas menos ortodoxas les fue mejor que a los países principales. Estos éxitos relativos ayudaron a perfilar a una generación para pensar sobre la política económica. Desafortunadamente, las políticas que tuvieron sentido cuando el centro estaba débil, tuvo menos sentido cuando el centro volvió a ser fuerte, no obstante, algunos estados continuaron siguiéndolas. Después de una generación, algunos de los estados exitosos de hoy, pueden encontrarse a sí mismos enfrentando diferentes circunstancias cambiadas con políticas que se han hecho igualmente problemáticas. Los creadores de las políticas chinas pueden aprender una lección que comprobará ser incorrecta: que la centralización del gobierno autoritario en las manos de un círculo pequeño, pro capitalista es bueno para el crecimiento económico y el poder global. En contraste, las lecciones aprendidas durante la crisis por los estados exitosos que son más democráticos, pueden ser aún válidas.

Conclusions: Explaining a Thriving Heterodoxy

Today’s field of International Political Economy (IPE) can be traced back to 1971 when Susan Strange, then at the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, founded the International Political Economy Group (IPEG). In its early days, this company of scholars, journalists and policy-makers focused on issues like how to resuscitate the fixed exchange rate system and on the thesis of another early IPEG convener, Fred Hirsch, that comfortable middle-class people in the industrialised world would come to doubt the utility of further economic growth (Hirsch, 1976).

A critical science of global relations

This article extends the current debate over “realism” and proposes an alternative to the rising neorealist paradigm. It argues for a problem‐solving orientation, identifying human needs, encouraging analysis across traditional “levels,” and an expanded view of rationality. Scholars should that people suffering from deprivation have the capacity to understand their deprivation and respond to it. Studies of global relations can play a role in facilitating that self‐understanding. The article is part of ongoing cooprative research by both authors but Professor Coates contribution to this particular piece was the greater. We are grateful to John Burton and Chadwick Alger for comments on an earlier draft.

Global Governance: From Organizations to Networks or Not?

During the second half of the nineteenth century, activists concerned with the expansionist tendencies of industrial capitalism planted the first seeds of what we now call “global governance” by convincing national governments to hold conferences that led to an ever-expanding universe of international organizations. Around the same time, scientists and engineers invented the processes of “voluntary consensus standard setting” (VCSS) that have long been used to set industrial standards and, more recently, to establish standards for social and environmental integrity that are monitored by another constellation of new organizations. Both parts of this system were built on Western models. Today, when many of the most vital centers of industrial growth are in Asia, some observers believe that this “Western” focus on rules and formal organizations should be supplemented or replaced by an “Asian” system of less-formal networks that will produce and monitor pragmatic, ad hoc agreements (see the summary of scholarly, policy-maker, and activist views in Mahbubani and Chesterman 2010).

Privatizing Environmental Governance

Many of today’s systems that regulate the environmental impact of households and arms grew out the work of national legislatures in the early 1970s. Tragically, perhaps, a global cultural shift began within a decade after this wave of legislatively sanctioned regulation; in the age of Thatcher, Reagan, and global neoliberalism, public regulation became anathema to powerful social forces and to many sitting governments. In lieu of national laws or international treaties, a variety of political entrepreneurs and associated interest groups began pushing for private, voluntary systems of environmental governance, as well as for public-private partnerships that might accomplish the kind of things that advocates of legal regulation had once demanded. The three volumes under review all provide empirical evaluations of different examples of such private environmental governance. Taken together, they paint a picture that is not hopeless; some well-designed private systems have been able to shift the basic way in which organizations think about and make decisions concerning their environmental impact. Nonetheless, these studies provide little evidence to suggest that private governance can ever substitute for public regulation. Two of these books are collected volumes. In Privatization and the Remaking of Nature-Society Relations, Mansaeld and her colleagues apply the tools of critical geography to the analysis of a set of biosphere issues—agriculture, asheries, genetically modiaed crops, and water—in Canada, the United States, and the developing world. In Reality Check, Morgenstern and Pizer’s authors are primarily concerned with programs to reduce energy consumption or the release of

ISA Presidential Selection: A Discussion of Alternatives

During fall 2000, all ISA members will be asked to vote on a set of changes to the associations constitution. Most of the proposed changes are required to bring ISAs constitution up to date with current practices and association circumstances (for example, instead of having only the Editor of ISQ as a member of the Governing Council, one of the proposed changes adds the Editors of ISR and ISP to the council). In the course of examining and reflecting on possible changes to the constitution, the ISA Governing Council discovered that there was controversy among its membership regarding how officers are elected. As a result of this discussion, the Governing Council voted to put a referendum before the membership concerning the election issue and the other requested constitutional changes (though only the officer election issue is discussed in the following pages). To ensure that all members of the association are aware of what the election issues are, we have asked members representing the various positions to discuss their views in the pages of ISP . In addition, Craig Murphy, 2000–2001 ISA President, has written an introduction to the election debate that is printed below. ISA members will be asked to choose between these options in a mail ballot this fall.