Global Governance

Yudha Kurniawan, MA
FISIP UPDM (B)
2012
What is Global
Governance?
The term global governance lacks any accepted

definition. As one analyst puts it:

...The wordpresents dangers and opportunities
to anyone who would reopen the question of
global governance, though the term itself lacks
in precision what it offers in its novelty. It is
quite certain in most peoples minds that
governance is not government. But beyond
that negative stance, the concept of global
governance needs to be clarified, amplified and,
if thought desirable, made operational...
(Desai 1995, 7)
 Oran Young (1994, 15), in turn, defines
governance as:
...the establishment and operation of social
institutions (in the sense of rules of the game
that serve to define social practices, assign
roles, and guide interactions among the
occupants of these roles) capable of resolving
conflicts, facilitating cooperation, or, more
generally, alleviating collective action
problems in a world of interdependent actors..
 Youngs definitions properly direct our
attention to the interdependent nature of
decision making and the attempt by actors
to manage or produce more orderly
responses to common problems
But it resulting blur two analytically distinct

political processes: bargaining, which

divides the available costs and benefits
between actors, and contracting, which
enforces the bargains reached. It is the
enforcement of bargains that we intuitively
mean by the term governance
 Implications
Frequently noted in the existing literature,
governance is not equivalent to government
or formal institutions
Global governance is not limited to

contracts between states

Governance is a variable between the

relations of anarchy and hierarchy

 Governance and
Globalization
Globalization and global governance are
intimately connected
As globalization occurs, states lose control

over their destinies, problems become

bigger than the capacities of individual
governments, and states must delegate and
possibly abdicate political authority to
supranational entities with powers that
more nearly coincide with the scope of the
issues and actors to be managed
 Global Governance as an
International Organization
Global governance clearly is not world
government indeed, it is better viewed as
the sum of governance processes operating
in the absence of world government
Global governance, is any purposeful

activity intended to control or influence

someone else that either occurs in the
arena occupied by nations or, occurring at
other levels, projects influence into that
arena.
 It is a process of activity, and to
differentiate it from other terms, its
descriptive rather than normative nature
should be emphasized: global governance
is governing, without sovereign authority,
relationships that transcend national
frontiers
 The potencies of Global
Governances
Creating greater operational capacity and
effectiveness
Generating more flexibility and efficiency
Establishing a cooperative work culture in

participating organizations
Encouraging interorganizational learning
Creating greater opportunities for

participation and increasing the legitimacy

of governance
Thank You