Lecture 1: Introduction
International Gov: Definitions, Origins, Themes → International organisation(s) v GG
“At its most basic, international organizatioN refers to an instance — or, in an historical sense, a
moment – of institutionalisation in relations among states.” (Weiss and Wilkinson)
“ ...international organizatioNS = formal intergovernmental bureaucracies. They have a legal standing,
physical headquarters, executive head, staff + substantive focus for operations.
“... ‘global governance’ is totality of the ways, formal and informal, the world is governed’.”
Early Days of international governance:
● Managing relations among colonial powers
● Production efficiency
● Different economic and social agendas added over time
● Ex: League of Nations → First true attempt atinternationalgovernancewith a strong peace
orientation
Major Shifts after WW2
● Birth of the UN system → Global governance expand beyond economic matters
○ Environmental agenda
○ Human rights agenda
○ NGOs key here
2nd half of 20th CE: Convergence around 4 “long term crises” → Production efficiency
● Peacemaking and humanitarian causes
● Environmental pollution
● Economic catchup of lower income countries
● Inequality
Where does this leave us today?
● We have major international crises at our hands → Climate change
● Some things have also (arguably) gotten better → poverty thresholds, global famine
● Other issues severity waxes and wanes → Deaths in state based conflicts
● Our task → Understand the role of international governance efforts in these failures and
successes // What are the key challenges we face in building more effective global institutions?
● International governance = puzzle
○ Big progress on some issues, stagnation or back tracking on others
● What do our international institutions have to do with this? What obstacles do we face in building
a more effective global governance regime?
hat IS “international governance”? How did our international governing institutions
W
originate?
● Turbulence → call for the need to see the world politics not as state-role models but in a new way
→ Shifting away from a century ago
● Common themes
○ Economic nationalism
○ Rise in price assets and depression
○ Pressure over the intergovernmental institutions, but unlikely to have new
institutions-building anytime soon
● Climate change, failing global humanitarianism, shortcomings of global finance/trade and
development → pressures the institutions’ ineffectiveness, emission + over-stretch
1
,● Pluralistic nature of global politics and changing actors:
○ G-7, G-20, regionalism + non governmental sector (micro-credit and micro-finance programs
for poverty alleviation)
○ private military and security companies (PMSCs) + terrorism and criminal gangs
○ credit-ranking agencies and MNCs: key to functioning of the world
○ transnational religious movements: peace initiative and influential in policy making
● Role of information → faster and widespread
● Actors, mechanisms, the power that underpins them and the ideas and ideologies driving their
assemblage ought to become essential in IR
○ International organisation + global governance = mainly associated with study of UN,
subsets of IR, low politics of technical econ, social and environmental issues
HOWEVER, Global governance focuses on…
● Order of things on a broader scale (formal and informal ways) of world governance
○ Transnational issues highlight the emergence of non-state actors, which mainly supply the
void of states’ capacity.
● Global governance:relationship between global policy-makingprocesses + implementation,
effects of local actions on the global, roles and effects of those involved, and interrelationships
between actors, institutions, and mechanisms.
○ Far more encompassing + other mechanisms (e.g. financial markets, lobbying activities and
social media) to explain today’s global issues.
■ Rating groups + investor services = prime regulatory initiatives of supply chains
● International governance:Interstate structures guaranteedby states to operate under the
auspices of an organisation (ICC, ICJ, WTO), but global governance also
IOs + GGs = core of IR + their issues are shared by the traditional IR perspectives
● Realism → how the world is organised. It varies between classical and neorealism
○ Morgenthau is concerned with the international order and balance of power
○ Waltz posits the international order as a set of interacting units
○ Realism knows how the world is governed + aims at dealing with the negative effects
● Liberal internationalism and neoliberal institutionalists, constructivists and neofunctionalism,
emphasise moments of common interest in cooperation. It focuses on thepossibility, how the
world is governed andoughtto be governed
● Marxist → transnational institutions is due to the capitalist expansive exigence.
● Feminist IR → global order as masculine and sexist, perpetuating unequal relations
● Post-structuralism → discourse and practices on which the world is governed
● Post- and de-colonial scholars → historical processes that have ensured the Western EU
supremacy, perpetuating Othering
2
, Lecture 2: Actors Overview and Climate Change
Climate change as an issue:
● Extremely politically fraught for which governance approaches have evolved
● Involving many actors and attempts to influence
Who governs the globe?
● Susan sell challenges us to think far beyond public organisations
○ Meta has served for political activity and misinformation around the world
○ FSC → Consumer behaviour based on certified products
● Governing (with)out government?
○ NGOs ○ Judges
○ Civil society campaigns ○ Lobbyists
○ Experts ○ Business firms
○ Intergovernmental organisations ○ Hybrid networks (multiple types of
○ States actors)
○ Regulators
How do international governors govern?
● Agenda-setting ● Implementation
● Negotiation ● Monitoring
● Decision-making ● Enforcement
● “Global governorsare authorities who exercise poweracross borders for purposes of affecting
policy. Governors thus create issues, set agendas, establish and implement rules or programs,
and evaluate and/ or adjudicate outcomes.”
● Power involves partnerships, cooperation, and coalitions. Institutional change is targeted to the
reaction of others.
● Global governance raises challenges for accountability, representation, and legitimacy.
Issue 1: Designing accountability structures
● Accountability, the obligation to be called "to account,"isa method of keeping the public
informed and powerful in check.It implies a worldwhich is at once complex, where experts are
needed to perform specialised tasks, but still fundamentally democratic in aspiration, in that
members of the public assert their right to question the experts and exercise ultimate control over
them.
○ afuzzy concept: to whom should our global governorsbe accountable? How can we
establish it? How can we measure it? Through increasing participation in global
institutions… then who should be able to participate
● Tension between independence of action and accountability
○ Participation favours accountability
○ NGOs + civil society engaging more in int org processes → broader stakeholder
participation
Issue 2: Legitimacy
● “a social relationship; to be legitimate is to be' socially recognized as rightful' by those
over whom global governors claim authority." (Snell)
● Participation opportunities for all people + all political views
● Neutrality → Willingness to act on consensus
● The consequences matter: "Distributionalconsequenceslie at the heart of contestation over
global governance and cannot be ignored." (Sell)
● Input legitimacy refers to participation and representation in the process of defining policy goals,
and output legitimacy refers to the translation of these goals into policy.
● Involves negotiation → Not static
3
International Gov: Definitions, Origins, Themes → International organisation(s) v GG
“At its most basic, international organizatioN refers to an instance — or, in an historical sense, a
moment – of institutionalisation in relations among states.” (Weiss and Wilkinson)
“ ...international organizatioNS = formal intergovernmental bureaucracies. They have a legal standing,
physical headquarters, executive head, staff + substantive focus for operations.
“... ‘global governance’ is totality of the ways, formal and informal, the world is governed’.”
Early Days of international governance:
● Managing relations among colonial powers
● Production efficiency
● Different economic and social agendas added over time
● Ex: League of Nations → First true attempt atinternationalgovernancewith a strong peace
orientation
Major Shifts after WW2
● Birth of the UN system → Global governance expand beyond economic matters
○ Environmental agenda
○ Human rights agenda
○ NGOs key here
2nd half of 20th CE: Convergence around 4 “long term crises” → Production efficiency
● Peacemaking and humanitarian causes
● Environmental pollution
● Economic catchup of lower income countries
● Inequality
Where does this leave us today?
● We have major international crises at our hands → Climate change
● Some things have also (arguably) gotten better → poverty thresholds, global famine
● Other issues severity waxes and wanes → Deaths in state based conflicts
● Our task → Understand the role of international governance efforts in these failures and
successes // What are the key challenges we face in building more effective global institutions?
● International governance = puzzle
○ Big progress on some issues, stagnation or back tracking on others
● What do our international institutions have to do with this? What obstacles do we face in building
a more effective global governance regime?
hat IS “international governance”? How did our international governing institutions
W
originate?
● Turbulence → call for the need to see the world politics not as state-role models but in a new way
→ Shifting away from a century ago
● Common themes
○ Economic nationalism
○ Rise in price assets and depression
○ Pressure over the intergovernmental institutions, but unlikely to have new
institutions-building anytime soon
● Climate change, failing global humanitarianism, shortcomings of global finance/trade and
development → pressures the institutions’ ineffectiveness, emission + over-stretch
1
,● Pluralistic nature of global politics and changing actors:
○ G-7, G-20, regionalism + non governmental sector (micro-credit and micro-finance programs
for poverty alleviation)
○ private military and security companies (PMSCs) + terrorism and criminal gangs
○ credit-ranking agencies and MNCs: key to functioning of the world
○ transnational religious movements: peace initiative and influential in policy making
● Role of information → faster and widespread
● Actors, mechanisms, the power that underpins them and the ideas and ideologies driving their
assemblage ought to become essential in IR
○ International organisation + global governance = mainly associated with study of UN,
subsets of IR, low politics of technical econ, social and environmental issues
HOWEVER, Global governance focuses on…
● Order of things on a broader scale (formal and informal ways) of world governance
○ Transnational issues highlight the emergence of non-state actors, which mainly supply the
void of states’ capacity.
● Global governance:relationship between global policy-makingprocesses + implementation,
effects of local actions on the global, roles and effects of those involved, and interrelationships
between actors, institutions, and mechanisms.
○ Far more encompassing + other mechanisms (e.g. financial markets, lobbying activities and
social media) to explain today’s global issues.
■ Rating groups + investor services = prime regulatory initiatives of supply chains
● International governance:Interstate structures guaranteedby states to operate under the
auspices of an organisation (ICC, ICJ, WTO), but global governance also
IOs + GGs = core of IR + their issues are shared by the traditional IR perspectives
● Realism → how the world is organised. It varies between classical and neorealism
○ Morgenthau is concerned with the international order and balance of power
○ Waltz posits the international order as a set of interacting units
○ Realism knows how the world is governed + aims at dealing with the negative effects
● Liberal internationalism and neoliberal institutionalists, constructivists and neofunctionalism,
emphasise moments of common interest in cooperation. It focuses on thepossibility, how the
world is governed andoughtto be governed
● Marxist → transnational institutions is due to the capitalist expansive exigence.
● Feminist IR → global order as masculine and sexist, perpetuating unequal relations
● Post-structuralism → discourse and practices on which the world is governed
● Post- and de-colonial scholars → historical processes that have ensured the Western EU
supremacy, perpetuating Othering
2
, Lecture 2: Actors Overview and Climate Change
Climate change as an issue:
● Extremely politically fraught for which governance approaches have evolved
● Involving many actors and attempts to influence
Who governs the globe?
● Susan sell challenges us to think far beyond public organisations
○ Meta has served for political activity and misinformation around the world
○ FSC → Consumer behaviour based on certified products
● Governing (with)out government?
○ NGOs ○ Judges
○ Civil society campaigns ○ Lobbyists
○ Experts ○ Business firms
○ Intergovernmental organisations ○ Hybrid networks (multiple types of
○ States actors)
○ Regulators
How do international governors govern?
● Agenda-setting ● Implementation
● Negotiation ● Monitoring
● Decision-making ● Enforcement
● “Global governorsare authorities who exercise poweracross borders for purposes of affecting
policy. Governors thus create issues, set agendas, establish and implement rules or programs,
and evaluate and/ or adjudicate outcomes.”
● Power involves partnerships, cooperation, and coalitions. Institutional change is targeted to the
reaction of others.
● Global governance raises challenges for accountability, representation, and legitimacy.
Issue 1: Designing accountability structures
● Accountability, the obligation to be called "to account,"isa method of keeping the public
informed and powerful in check.It implies a worldwhich is at once complex, where experts are
needed to perform specialised tasks, but still fundamentally democratic in aspiration, in that
members of the public assert their right to question the experts and exercise ultimate control over
them.
○ afuzzy concept: to whom should our global governorsbe accountable? How can we
establish it? How can we measure it? Through increasing participation in global
institutions… then who should be able to participate
● Tension between independence of action and accountability
○ Participation favours accountability
○ NGOs + civil society engaging more in int org processes → broader stakeholder
participation
Issue 2: Legitimacy
● “a social relationship; to be legitimate is to be' socially recognized as rightful' by those
over whom global governors claim authority." (Snell)
● Participation opportunities for all people + all political views
● Neutrality → Willingness to act on consensus
● The consequences matter: "Distributionalconsequenceslie at the heart of contestation over
global governance and cannot be ignored." (Sell)
● Input legitimacy refers to participation and representation in the process of defining policy goals,
and output legitimacy refers to the translation of these goals into policy.
● Involves negotiation → Not static
3
