CGP Global Governance

• Global governance

  All the new laws and organisations aimed at making sure everybody works in a fair way
• The world is governed by norms, laws and institutions
• Many of the issues the world faces today are global and go beyond the scope of national laws, e.g. national governments cannot tackle climate change alone or coordinate the response to a global disease epidemic
• A number of global laws and institutions have been formed to deal with issues like these
• International laws


  Rules that are established by countries through international agreements, and are legally binding
• Norms


  Accepted standards of behaviour, with usually negative consequences for countries, companies or individuals who don't follow them
• Institutions


  Political and legal organisations that exist to pass and enforce laws, decide whether a law has been broken, or act as a forum for different groups to discuss issues and sort out their differences
• Global governance regulates the global economic and political system by setting up rules countries and companies should follow, monitoring whether they follow the rules, and enforcing the rules if they aren't followed
• Global governance makes everyone taking part in the global system act in a certain way, ensuring that newcomers also act in that way
• Global governance aims

  • Promote growth (improving the economy or society)
  • Provide stability (making sure there are no sudden changes in the economy or society)
• The laws and norms that international institutions enforce mean that countries must abide by common rules, giving greater stability because countries know how other countries are likely to react to a situation, making conflict less likely
• International institutions

  • World Trade Organisation (WTO)
  • World Bank
  • World Health Organisation (WHO)
  • United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)
• Countries sign up to international laws and institutions voluntarily - if a country doesn't sign or formally approve a particular treaty, then they are not bound by the laws that the treaty sets out
• It can also be difficult to make countries and Transnational Corporations (TNCs) comply with the rules, e.g. in 2016, China ignored a court ruling that its claims over the South China Sea went against international law
• Some people think that global institutions act for political reasons, e.g. it is alleged that some countries have used the International Criminal Court to remove people they don't want in power in African nations
• Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs)

  Conditional loans from the IMF or World Bank, where less developed countries have to implement free trade policies and cut government spending (often on education and health care) in order to receive the loans
• Some people have argued that Structural Adjustment Programmes have made poverty and inequality in less developed countries worse
• Economic groups like the G7 strengthen the power of developed countries, rather than encouraging equality between them and less developed countries
• Members of security institutions, e.g. the United Nations Security Council, can veto resolutions
• United Nations (UN)


  Global institution set up in 1945 to establish a peaceful and fair world, with 193 member countries
• Aims of the United Nations

  • Maintain global peace and security
  • Develop friendly relations between nations
  • Use cooperation to solve international problems
  • Bring countries together to settle disputes
• The UN works to promote growth and stability, but some people believe it has made some issues worse
• Growth and stability promoted by the UN

  • Growth - UN Millennium Development Goals have helped reduce poverty, increase primary school enrolment, and reduce child and maternal mortality
  • Stability - UN peacekeeping missions can help end wars, e.g. peaceful elections were held in Côte d'Ivoire in 2015 after years of civil war
• Developed countries hold the main power over decisions taken at the UN, and many of the global issues tackled by the UN affect African countries the most, e.g. refugee crises, but no African country has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council
• The UN has been ineffective at times, e.g. in 1995, UN peacekeepers failed to protect 8000 people in Srebrenica in south-east Europe when they were massacred by Bosnian Serbs
• Institutions operate at a range of scales and need to interact to ensure that governance is effective
• Decisions made by global institutions affect institutions at the international, national, regional and local scale, e.g. the 2015 Paris climate change agreement required changes in policies at all levels
• Decisions at the local or regional level can affect institutions at the global level, e.g. in 2016 a regional government in Wallonia, Belgium temporarily blocked a trade deal between the EU and Canada
• Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operate on a range of scales to monitor and support institutions