Sophie Harman and David Williams, eds, Governing the World? Cases in Global Governance. Routledge, 2013.
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RATING: 75
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Buy this book?
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Yes
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This is a good collection, well edited and packed with strong chapters from highly capable contributors. Its scope is deliberately limited, and this is one of its strengths. The tone throughout is balanced, mildly to moderately reformist, and more or less sympathetic to the UN system and its most representative institutions - while markedly less so to the IMF, World Bank and WTO. The editors refer briefly at the outset to debates and contrasting ideas about what global governance is (realist, Marxist and feminist), but decline to adjudicate between them, taking the view that 'while there may be limits to what we can with confidence say about the significance and meaning of global governance, we also think that engagement with the term ought to take place on the basis of a familiarity with at least some of the concrete instances of global management or regulation' (7). Well put indeed. The eleven case study chapters that follow focus on security, development, finance, corruption, trade, labour, communications, health, climate change, human rights and forced migration, and it is easy to imagine the book lending itself to a semester-long programme. It will make an excellent introductory teaching text, especially as each chapter is organised around the same set of questions: What is being governed and why? Who are the key actors involved? What kinds of problems and issues have emerged? And how successful or not has it been? These questions, the editors suggest, allow students to 'get a sense of the issues, make connections across the cases, and see similarities and differences between them' (8). They briefly offer their own thoughts on this in a final reflection, but the text calls for active and thoughtful reading, and different readers (myself included), will find different connections and reach different conclusions.
As will be clear, the book ranges beyond political economy, across a wide range of areas of global governance. Two excellent chapters, on human rights in relation to rendition (Ruth Blakeley and Sam Raphael) and forced migration arising from flight from persecution or organised violence (Phil Orchard), cover issues essential to any comprehensive account of global governance, but intersect relatively little with political economy themes. So my path through the book starts with the chapters on financialization and labour, which are exemplary. Anastasia Nesvetailova and Carlos Belli provide a remarkably lucid overview of global financial governance which sets past and current developments in the context of 'the relationship between the perennial financial instability of the economy and the regulatory responses to financial innovation' (47), pinpointing as a key issue 'the balance between the gains of privately regulated markets, and the social costs of financial and economic crises' (54). This proves a highly effective organising idea, and avoids the reliance on moral outrage that can characterise some less analytical responses to the fact that 'all the post-Bretton Woods systems of privatized financial regulation have failed' (58). Juanita Elias offers a 'somewhat cynical' but finally optimistic take on ILO and related reformist initiatives in the global governance of labor in the context of transnationalised production, and the increased flexibilisation, informalisation and feminisation of work, with particular attention to 'the interests and needs of some of the most marginalized, low-paid and disorganized groups of workers in the world - female factory workers, domestic workers and home-based workers' (97). Her focus on ILO initiatives around core labour standards or CLS (freedom of association, rights to collective bargaining, elimination of forced or compulsory labour, abolition of child labour, and elimination of discrimination) and decent work allows her to make a measured assessment of the potential and limits of reform, and to highlight the need for grassroots activism. As she points out, 'the CLS were introduced at the behest of a US administration who were keen to see a labour standards regime in place that did not require states to ratify conventions into domestic law' (101). Along with Decent Work, it provides 'an agenda that is broadly compatible with the interest of capital but is also one in which potential challenges to the hegemony can emerge' (102). The analysis navigates skilfully between structure, agency and institutions: the rise of voluntary corporate codes of conduct reflect 'the way in which global labour markets contain structures of global inequality and how firms have both perpetuated and drawn upon these gendered inequalities in order to secure a supply of low-cost female labour' (107); the ILO's tripartite structure (representation from business, unions, and the state) and predominant focus on full-time male formal employment limit its capacity (and willingness) to address such issues as workplace harassment and low informal sector and domestic and home-based workers' incomes; but hope derives from transnational forms of solidarity backed by social movement unionism, with the 2011 adoption of the ILO Domestic Worker Convention identified a success for such activism.
Mark Langan's chapter on trade complements Elias well, highlighting the contentious character of its governance in terms of contrasting liberal and critical perceptions of free trade as 'a vehicle for global development, or conversely, a vehicle for neo-colonial penetration' (80), and the related issues of conflicts between the global North and the global South, and drawing effectively on Ha-Joon Chang's argument that the former seeks to 'kick away the ladder of development' from the latter. He sets the WTO and its recent agenda of deeper 'behind-the-border' liberalisation in historical context, characterising it as aiming to 'enable corporations in the global North to more easily compete for lucrative contracts in the global South, particularly in the emerging services sectors such as banking and construction' (84) and highlighting foreign investment and government procurement as key areas of current concern. This is a prelude to critical reviews of both 'Aid-for-Trade' and ethical trading, the former because it legitimises and locks developing countries into asymmetric trading relations, the latter because 'it is questionable whether [it] can meaningfully challenge global capitalist relations and the ensuing demand to continually drive down production costs at the expense of workers' (92).
These chapters provide good context for a look at the governance of development through the prism of the Millennium Development Goals (David Hulme and James Scott). They usefully set these in the context not only of IMF-World Bank poverty reduction strategies and UN summitry (notably We the Peoples, 2000) but also the crucially important OECD initiatives of the 1990s, epitomised by Shaping the 21st Century (1996), and the tussle between the two organisations over the formulation of the goals. Their compromise nature and asymmetrical impact are well brought out, and the authors appropriately chide the developed countries with resisting any quantified and time-bound targets for themselves in relation to 'their expected contributions in such areas as aid, trade and tackling climate change' (43).
Continuing on the theme of the MDGs, solid chapters by Adam Kamradt-Scott and Carl Death deal with health and environmental governance respectively. Although Kamradt-Scott is not primarily concerned with the political economy of health, his account of competing interests in its global governance (the venerable WHO, pharmaceutical manufacturers, private-sector philanthropists, public-private partnerships, emerging economies, and so on) and the tension between profit-making and ensuring the health of the global population (and workforce) provides multiple connections to the chapters discussed above. He is good too on the implications of the 'framing of public health issues in the language of national or international security' (139-40). Death explores climate change along with food and water security, sustainable development, industrial pollution and biodiversity conservation. His judicious and beautifully clear exposition of the trajectory of governance and its key issues and actors makes for another exemplary contribution. His argument that environmental education programmes and good citizenship initiatives seek 'to produce responsible individuals who [have] internalised environmental self-governance, and who [will] recycle, take public transport to work, and count their carbon consumption,' and his identification of 'new techniques of producing self-governing individuals' such as personal carbon allowances, cash transfers and 'nudges' of various kinds (151) has resonance well beyond this issue area. 'Forms of eco-governmentality may be used,' he concludes, 'to foster docile and responsible individuals, or neoliberal economic rationalities, but they could also be used to ferment more socially just and ecologically sustainable forms of behaviour' (158).
Overall, then, this is a very valuable collection. One can easily think of other areas that might have been covered (population growth, foreign investment, or the changing role of 'rising powers', for example), but the uniformly high standard of historical context and identification of key institutions and actors throughout give it enduring value as an introduction and a starting point for the analysis of new cases and issues as they arise. In their conclusion, the editors highlight the growing role of international law, codes and standards, and 'the lack of influence and presence UN agencies have in comparison to international financial institutions such as the World Bank and private agencies,' increasingly over the last thirty years (200). They also comment briefly that 'money and structures of capital overwhelmingly frame the space and options that processes of governance operate it' (205).
From the perspective of critical political economy, there is more to be said about the promotion of the world market. Langan points out that one of the objectives of 'Aid for Trade' is to enhance the competitiveness of developing countries (86), but does not link it to a strategy aimed directly at developing capitalist relations of production on a global scale; Cater's informative essay on the governance of corruption notes World Bank initiatives in the 1990s, but equally does not tie them to a broader project of world market development; Elias, focused as she is on the exploitation of informal sector workers, does not address the strenuous efforts of the OECD, ILO and World Bank to promote the formalisation of labour - a necessary part of any strategy to drive up global productivity and the real subsumption of labour to capital; and Death's account of techniques for producing self-governing individuals is nowhere applied, as it might have been, to parallel World Bank initiatives to shape the attitudes and behaviour of citizens to the logic of the world market and global competitiveness. This does not diminish the overall achievement of the collection, which makes an excellent starting point and platform for further investigation of global governance.
As will be clear, the book ranges beyond political economy, across a wide range of areas of global governance. Two excellent chapters, on human rights in relation to rendition (Ruth Blakeley and Sam Raphael) and forced migration arising from flight from persecution or organised violence (Phil Orchard), cover issues essential to any comprehensive account of global governance, but intersect relatively little with political economy themes. So my path through the book starts with the chapters on financialization and labour, which are exemplary. Anastasia Nesvetailova and Carlos Belli provide a remarkably lucid overview of global financial governance which sets past and current developments in the context of 'the relationship between the perennial financial instability of the economy and the regulatory responses to financial innovation' (47), pinpointing as a key issue 'the balance between the gains of privately regulated markets, and the social costs of financial and economic crises' (54). This proves a highly effective organising idea, and avoids the reliance on moral outrage that can characterise some less analytical responses to the fact that 'all the post-Bretton Woods systems of privatized financial regulation have failed' (58). Juanita Elias offers a 'somewhat cynical' but finally optimistic take on ILO and related reformist initiatives in the global governance of labor in the context of transnationalised production, and the increased flexibilisation, informalisation and feminisation of work, with particular attention to 'the interests and needs of some of the most marginalized, low-paid and disorganized groups of workers in the world - female factory workers, domestic workers and home-based workers' (97). Her focus on ILO initiatives around core labour standards or CLS (freedom of association, rights to collective bargaining, elimination of forced or compulsory labour, abolition of child labour, and elimination of discrimination) and decent work allows her to make a measured assessment of the potential and limits of reform, and to highlight the need for grassroots activism. As she points out, 'the CLS were introduced at the behest of a US administration who were keen to see a labour standards regime in place that did not require states to ratify conventions into domestic law' (101). Along with Decent Work, it provides 'an agenda that is broadly compatible with the interest of capital but is also one in which potential challenges to the hegemony can emerge' (102). The analysis navigates skilfully between structure, agency and institutions: the rise of voluntary corporate codes of conduct reflect 'the way in which global labour markets contain structures of global inequality and how firms have both perpetuated and drawn upon these gendered inequalities in order to secure a supply of low-cost female labour' (107); the ILO's tripartite structure (representation from business, unions, and the state) and predominant focus on full-time male formal employment limit its capacity (and willingness) to address such issues as workplace harassment and low informal sector and domestic and home-based workers' incomes; but hope derives from transnational forms of solidarity backed by social movement unionism, with the 2011 adoption of the ILO Domestic Worker Convention identified a success for such activism.
Mark Langan's chapter on trade complements Elias well, highlighting the contentious character of its governance in terms of contrasting liberal and critical perceptions of free trade as 'a vehicle for global development, or conversely, a vehicle for neo-colonial penetration' (80), and the related issues of conflicts between the global North and the global South, and drawing effectively on Ha-Joon Chang's argument that the former seeks to 'kick away the ladder of development' from the latter. He sets the WTO and its recent agenda of deeper 'behind-the-border' liberalisation in historical context, characterising it as aiming to 'enable corporations in the global North to more easily compete for lucrative contracts in the global South, particularly in the emerging services sectors such as banking and construction' (84) and highlighting foreign investment and government procurement as key areas of current concern. This is a prelude to critical reviews of both 'Aid-for-Trade' and ethical trading, the former because it legitimises and locks developing countries into asymmetric trading relations, the latter because 'it is questionable whether [it] can meaningfully challenge global capitalist relations and the ensuing demand to continually drive down production costs at the expense of workers' (92).
These chapters provide good context for a look at the governance of development through the prism of the Millennium Development Goals (David Hulme and James Scott). They usefully set these in the context not only of IMF-World Bank poverty reduction strategies and UN summitry (notably We the Peoples, 2000) but also the crucially important OECD initiatives of the 1990s, epitomised by Shaping the 21st Century (1996), and the tussle between the two organisations over the formulation of the goals. Their compromise nature and asymmetrical impact are well brought out, and the authors appropriately chide the developed countries with resisting any quantified and time-bound targets for themselves in relation to 'their expected contributions in such areas as aid, trade and tackling climate change' (43).
Continuing on the theme of the MDGs, solid chapters by Adam Kamradt-Scott and Carl Death deal with health and environmental governance respectively. Although Kamradt-Scott is not primarily concerned with the political economy of health, his account of competing interests in its global governance (the venerable WHO, pharmaceutical manufacturers, private-sector philanthropists, public-private partnerships, emerging economies, and so on) and the tension between profit-making and ensuring the health of the global population (and workforce) provides multiple connections to the chapters discussed above. He is good too on the implications of the 'framing of public health issues in the language of national or international security' (139-40). Death explores climate change along with food and water security, sustainable development, industrial pollution and biodiversity conservation. His judicious and beautifully clear exposition of the trajectory of governance and its key issues and actors makes for another exemplary contribution. His argument that environmental education programmes and good citizenship initiatives seek 'to produce responsible individuals who [have] internalised environmental self-governance, and who [will] recycle, take public transport to work, and count their carbon consumption,' and his identification of 'new techniques of producing self-governing individuals' such as personal carbon allowances, cash transfers and 'nudges' of various kinds (151) has resonance well beyond this issue area. 'Forms of eco-governmentality may be used,' he concludes, 'to foster docile and responsible individuals, or neoliberal economic rationalities, but they could also be used to ferment more socially just and ecologically sustainable forms of behaviour' (158).
Overall, then, this is a very valuable collection. One can easily think of other areas that might have been covered (population growth, foreign investment, or the changing role of 'rising powers', for example), but the uniformly high standard of historical context and identification of key institutions and actors throughout give it enduring value as an introduction and a starting point for the analysis of new cases and issues as they arise. In their conclusion, the editors highlight the growing role of international law, codes and standards, and 'the lack of influence and presence UN agencies have in comparison to international financial institutions such as the World Bank and private agencies,' increasingly over the last thirty years (200). They also comment briefly that 'money and structures of capital overwhelmingly frame the space and options that processes of governance operate it' (205).
From the perspective of critical political economy, there is more to be said about the promotion of the world market. Langan points out that one of the objectives of 'Aid for Trade' is to enhance the competitiveness of developing countries (86), but does not link it to a strategy aimed directly at developing capitalist relations of production on a global scale; Cater's informative essay on the governance of corruption notes World Bank initiatives in the 1990s, but equally does not tie them to a broader project of world market development; Elias, focused as she is on the exploitation of informal sector workers, does not address the strenuous efforts of the OECD, ILO and World Bank to promote the formalisation of labour - a necessary part of any strategy to drive up global productivity and the real subsumption of labour to capital; and Death's account of techniques for producing self-governing individuals is nowhere applied, as it might have been, to parallel World Bank initiatives to shape the attitudes and behaviour of citizens to the logic of the world market and global competitiveness. This does not diminish the overall achievement of the collection, which makes an excellent starting point and platform for further investigation of global governance.