Magdalena Bexell

Democracy and Public-Private Partnerships in Global Governance

There has been a rapid proliferation of public–private partnerships in the areas of human rights, environmental protection and global governance. Consequently, private actors such as non-government ...

Global Governance, Legitimacy and (De)Legitimation

1. Introduction: Global Governance, Legitimacy and (De)Legitimation Part I: Legitimation of global policy priorities 2. Legitimation Challenges in Global Health Governance: The Case of Non-Communicable Diseases 3. Legitimacy, Tribridity, and Decent Work Deficits Part II: Legitimation and public-private governance 4. Old Wine in New Bottles? The Legitimation and Delegitimation of UN Public-Private Partnerships for Sustainable Development from the Johannesburg Summit to the Rio p 20 Summit 5. Business-Humanitarian Partnerships: Processes of Normative Legitimation 6. Organizational Legitimation in the Age of Governing by Numbers: The Case of Regulatory Partnerships on ESG Issues and Financial Decisions Part III: Legitimacy and transnational private governance 7. Exploring the Output Legitimacy of Transnational Fisheries Governance 8. Legitimacy, Institutional Design, and Dispute Settlement: The Case of Eco-Certification Systems

Introduction: Partnerships, Democracy, and Governance

The fragmentation of political authority in the global arena brings about challenges for the legitimacy of global governance, but can also result in innovative institutional arrangements. In recent years, transnational actors, such as nongovernmental organizations and large companies, have gained increased authority in areas of public policy and regulation that traditionally belonged to the state and the public sector. The proliferation of transnational partnerships spanning the public-private divide in such areas as human rights, environmental protection, and development is one example of this. The most well known (and well researched) partnership is the United Nations Global Compact, containing principles on human rights, labor rights, the environment, and anticorruption, and involving a broad spectrum of participating actors (cf. Ruggie, 2002; Sahlin-Andersson, 2004). The partnerships for sustainable development, established as a result of the Johannesburg Summit in 2002, have also been an important subject of research (e.g., Ivanova, 2003; Backstrand, 2006).

Responsibility and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals

This article asks what key concerns emerge from the way responsibility is framed in United Nations summit documents on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015. Our conceptual framework serves to make the study of SDG responsibility more systematic by distinguishing three main senses of responsibility: cause, obligation, and accountability. The framework structures our analysis of two SDG summit documents, Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda. The article shows, first, that the causal sense of responsibility is hidden between the lines in paragraphs on poverty, debt and environmental issues. As a consequence, root causes of problems might not be appropriately addressed. Second, SDG summit documents deal predominantly with responsibility in the sense of obligation. We raise concerns with repeated consideration for national circumstances and with vague obligations for non-governmental actors. Third, with regard to accountability, we stress that quantitative indicators have unintended steering effects both before and beyond the review phase. The focus on indicators risks shadowing broader obligations, such as international human rights. In all its three senses, responsibility in key SDG documents remains state-centric with great room for state sovereignty, self-regulation and respect for national circumstances. Our framework is useful also in showing that the three senses of responsibility build on each other and that engagement with responsibility provides fruitful ground for further research.

Hand in hand? UN–business cooperation for health and development

This article explores legitimacy challenges arising from increased cooperation between the United Nations and large business companies in the realm of global public health through an examination of the Global Public–Private Partnership for Handwashing with Soap, seeking to prevent the spread of disease in poor communities. In contrast to many health partnerships, it does not employ a “vertical” disease-specific program, neither does it involve pharmaceutical companies. Instead the partnership stresses the marketing skills of soap companies in influencing individuals’ hygiene behavior as an important rationale for public–private partnering. The article argues that market-based governing strategies might increase the output legitimacy of global health governance, but that modes of representation and accountability have not evolved sufficiently to provide for broader input legitimacy. I propose that a human rights-based approach to health provides an alternative model that holds greater promise for legitimate governance, focusing on rights-bearing subjects instead of soap consumers.

Multi-level Governance and the Rule of International Human Rights Law: The Case of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights

Bexell’s chapter explores the interface between multi-level governance and global legal pluralism in the human rights realm through a study of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, involving companies, governments, and civil society organizations. She demonstrates that this form of regulation, rather than its substance, is contentious due to low transparency, weak enforcement, and long accountability chains. Bexell identifies a set of scope conditions that influences the degree to which multi-stakeholder governance arrangements can contribute to human rights protection. Those conditions show that the overarching regulatory problem remains to increase state capacity and will to comply with international human rights law, particularly in areas of limited statehood.

Conclusions and Directions

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) operate in a range of issue areas and consist to a varying degree of partners from the public sector, civil society, and the for-profit sector. In this volume we have seen how partnerships within the environmental issue area, human development, social rights, and public health are important at all stages of the policy process. The chapters have explored the relationship between democratic legitimacy and transnational governance. Arguably, we witness a change of legitimacy standards for governance beyond the state — from “Westphalian” to “post-Westphalian” norms (Dingwerth and Hanrieder, this volume). Another characterization of this process is that the reform of New Public Management (NPM) fundamentally changes the state and the public sector into becoming more dependent on corporate ideas and resources (Peters and Pierre, this volume). PPPs are the epitome of this change of transnational governance.