»Ê¼Ò»ªÈË

Philip Cerny

Professor Emeritus of Politics and Global Affairs, University of Manchester and Rutgers University

Is there an idea, theory or event that shaped your understanding of global governance?

Essentially, much of my work has been motivated by the failure in attempts to develop global financial regulation, motivated by the increase in financial crises since the 1980s. I would strongly recommend Roman Goldbach's book "Global Governance Regulatory Failure". What we see is that the global economy is made up of lots of different actors with different kinds of political power who are competing to use economic structures to their own ends. We need a much more forensic approach to identifying circuits of power, in a manner which is more precise than the general observations made by Foucault and critical scholars. We need to identify specific circuits of power which cut across both the economy and the disaggregated state, a dynamic I describe as transnational neopluralism. It is about driving forward a more actor-oriented analysis of political economy, moving beyond macro-economic accounts.

What is the biggest issue in global governance that is not getting enough attention?

Part of the challenge is that every failing of global governance systems seems to be in the spotlight, but we are no closer to being able to do anything about it. Global governance is simply too fragmented. I would like to see more global financial regulation, more climate change regulation; I would like to see a move towards a reconceptualisation of security. Intellectually, I think the big issue is to try and make sense of ongoing fundamental structural changes, which are partly subsumed by this notion of methodological nationalism. However, I would caution against the notion that a world of regimes will eclipse the power of states and international organisations.

What was the last thing you read that changed your perspective on global governance?

Going back to the 1970s and 80s, in the process of studying French politics I became increasingly convinced that changes in French politics were driven not internally, but by emergent processes of globalisation. It was this discovery of globalisation in the 1980s and a desire to figure it out that has continued to drive my work.

Philipp Genschel

Joint Chair RSCAS Professor of Comparative and European Public Policy
European University Institute

Is there an idea, theory or event that shaped your understanding of global governance?

The important thing to keep in mind is that events shape it, events like the Eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis, the implosion of the Middle East; it is events rather than institutions and structures which really shape global governance.

What is the biggest issue in global governance that is not getting enough attention?

The readjustment of institutional architectures currently underway in light of changing power realities has not received as much attention as its importance merits. Perhaps this is because, up to now, there has been little open conflict or any outright institutional failures.

What was the last thing you read that changed your perspective on global governance?

A book called "Red Plenty: Living in the Soviet Dream" by Francis Spufford was fascinating. It is very insightful on hierarchy and bureaucracy, and a lot of what is happening in globalisation is bureaucratisation of some kind. There are lessons to be had there.

Virginia Haufler

Associate Professor in the Department of Government and Politics

University of Maryland

Is there an idea, theory or event that shaped your understanding of global governance?

My focus initially was on multi-national corporations, and the challenges posed in regulating these powerful global entities in a system designed around the nation state. To make some inroads into this problem, I've drawn on regime theory, regulatory approaches, theories about corporate social responsibility-all of these fields have influenced my view of global governance as including both regulation of corporations, and the phenomena of corporations regulating themselves.

We have an international system based on nation states, which is reflected in the public (state) rules of the game; but then you have all of these economic entities which are operating transnationally, outside of traditional public realms, in private domains such as within the global corporation and throughout global supply chains. This raises the important question of how these two systems-public/ state and private/ market-intersect and compete, and what happens in the gap between these systems. I would name Susan Strange as a big influence on my thinking about bringing private corporations into international relations.

What was the last thing you read that changed your perspective on global governance?

I've been reading a lot of the literature on social network analysis recently. There is a lot of mileage to be gained I think from looking at relationships among corporations through the lens of social network analysis. It is quite a departure from traditional IR, highlighting the relational position of different actors within networks, and exploring the implications of network position for governance outcomes. A much richer picture emerges of governance ecosystems. You find corporations associating with one another in economic or contractual networks like supply chains, but they are also engaged in more socio-political relations like business association lobbying or participation in environmental sustainability forums or membership in the World Economic Forum. Network analysis allows us to spotlight actor participation in non-traditional arenas which, at least in theory, may also inform what information they know, what practices they adopt, and what they view as appropriate governance.

What is the biggest issue in global governance that is not getting enough attention?

Global governance is almost always talked about in the abstract and at a global level when what is most important is how it plays out on the ground in local communities. This is an area of research that we need to push forward - the intersection between global standards, rules and mechanisms and how they get implemented in a specific time and place within a particular community of people.

David Held

Professor, and Master of University College in the School of Government and International Affairs

Durham University

Is there an idea, theory or event that shaped your understanding of global governance?

Yes, globalisation, and the way in which it challenges and transforms the notion of political community. Globalisation in its contemporary form has changed the boundaries between the governors and the governed. With increased permeability and transference of power across state silos, globalisation poses the question: how today can we understand the meaning of law, accountability, democracy and sovereignty in a world where many of the most important problems affecting us are transborder problems.

What is the biggest issue in global governance that is not getting enough attention?

My work with Tom Hale on gridlock raises a whole series of questions on the exhaustion of the intergovernmental system. We raise questions not only about gridlock, but about how, and to what extent, we can uncover pathways out of it. This means we also ask what we can learn about and from the successful innovations of policy at the global level. Human beings have rarely been good at changing their institutions faced with global challenges. Historically, they've only done it after catastrophes and war. The challenge is tackling these issues in advance of such terrible conflict; and to find new ways to resolve deeply contested issues in non-conflictual ways.

Mathias Koenig-Archibugi

Associate Professor in Global Politics

London School of Economics

What is the biggest issue in global governance that is not getting enough attention?

I think that the most pressing issue in global governance is gauging "what works"? The key issue seems to me to be whether we can aspire to a general theory of "effective" global governance, or whether we should just accept that for the foreseeable future we can only have more scattered insights into activities, initiatives, structures and processes that seem to be delivering the goods, but we cannot be sure to what extent their effectiveness is contingent on contexts and complex configurations that are difficult to generalize.

Mareike Kleine

Associate Professor of EU and International Politics

London School of Economics

Is there an idea, theory or event that shaped your understanding of global governance?

My own way of thinking is strongly influenced by liberal theories of international relations in the sense that I see the most important drivers of global governance are in fact at the domestic level.

What is the biggest issue in global governance that is not getting enough attention?

One of the biggest issues is inequality and the resulting forlornness of young men, which in the West fuels populist resentment and in other regions constitutes a fertile ground for terrorism. A close second would be bio-warfare or pandemics.

What was the last thing you read that changed your perspective on global governance?

Probably Dani Rodrik's book "The Globalization Paradox" on the varieties of responses to globalization, and especially the example he gives about the persistent importance of borders and domestic regulations.

Axel Marx

Deputy Director of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies

Leuven University

Is there an idea, theory or event that shaped your understanding of global governance?

As a phenomenon, this whole new form of governing supply chains and trying to achieve certain social and environmental objectives is fascinating.

What is the biggest issue in global governance that is not getting enough attention?

We need to develop a much better grasp of the consequences of fragmentation in global governance for what is now correctly understood as an ecosystem of organisations. Clearly, fragmentation has important implications for understanding when IOs can achieve certain ends and where they are obviously deficient. And this kind of insight applies across a lot of domains.

What was the last thing you read that changed your perspective on global governance?

The literature on network governance in the international business literature has been very helpful. The idea that we must directly engage with the intersection of hierarchies and markets, this is important. Also, how networks shape certain outcomes and how we can best understand these processes - I think that such perspectives need to be incorporated further into global governance research.

Rorden Wilkinson

Professor and Chair of the Department of International Relations

University of Sussex

Is there an idea, theory or event that shaped your understanding of global governance?

Seeing destitution all over the world and not thinking it was fair, fused with reading the work of George Orwell made me want to make a difference as much as an academic is able - so I come at global governance with a normative commitment. It is frustrating that we don't yet actually have a decent way of thinking about global governance. But I think there is a general commitment from folks interested in global governance to make the world a better place and that's a good point of departure.

What is the biggest issue in global governance that is not getting enough attention?

For me it is inequality and climate change. The reason they matter so much is because they combine to put much of the world's population in very precarious circumstances. It is a precarity that we don't even really understand - that we don't even begin to think about as we continue our ever greater consumption in the West. The UK minimum wage would put you in the top 10% of global wage earners - that means approximately 6.6 billion people live on less than we think is the bare minimum, and many live in places where climate change is already having a powerful impact.

Cracking the inter-generational problem is key to the solution. I would like to leave my children a planet, rather than relying on some kind of crazy exit strategy and putting 7.4 billion people on a spacecraft.

What was the last thing you read that changed your perspective on global governance?

Reading Branko Milanovic's work on global inequality was shocking. The extent to which wealth is concentrated within such a small strata of the world's population is horrifying. His work and other books like "The Spirit Level" are iconoclastic. That and realising we're not just heading towards climate chaos, but in all likelihood towards climate catastrophe.

Michael Zürn

Director of the Global Governance Research Unit

WZB, Berlin

Is there an idea, theory or event that shaped your understanding of global governance?

The initial puzzle for me was why states needed to give up their welfare entitlement to remain competitive on the world market. What drove me towards studying global governance was this experience of national debates where people, partially for self-interested reasons, partially because there is some truth in it, made these sorts of arguments for radical reform of labour markets and welfare systems in response to "the reality" of global structures.

What is the biggest issue in global governance that is not getting enough attention?

We need much more research on how all of these different institutions, regimes and actors engaged in global governance interplay with one another. We need to understand the system of global governance, instead of only analysing single global governance efforts

Brigid Laffan

Director and Professor of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, and Director of the Global Governance Programme

European University Institute

Is there an idea, theory or event that shaped your understanding of global governance?

Global governance is a response to realworld developments-pressuresof transboundary problems, of an increased density of non-state actors, the globalisation of finance,the economy, human rights, mobilities. In terms of what frames global governance, or what is the problematique, the key question, for me, is how does power and order intersect in the international system as we see it today? And of course it is not just the international system "out there" - but how governance processes range from the global to the local; how and where do levels of aggregation interact and intersect?

The other big issue is the relationship between public and private power, public power in states or IOs or both. How does public capacity interact with private power, either MNCs or NGOs? Has public power lost its capacity to regulate financial flows for example? How are public and private actors engaged in producing governance on their own or in combination?

What was the last thing you read that changed your perspective on global governance?

I would rather highlight an important gap in research. I am particularly interested to see scholars analyse the challenges associated with global mobility, for example in global health. How do health care workers operate in these new global realities where sometimes they are lacking medical records, patients' files or even, sometimes, hospitals? And how is a public good, such as health care, produced in an environment which lacks many of the supporting elements we would normally expect?