Global governance: old and new challenges

The current world economic crisis has highlighted a profound challenge to conventional thinking on and approaches to human rights, especially the right to development. Human rights, primarily economic and social rights, are based on a theory of constant expansion of the economic pie for all, and the right to development is explicitly predicated on the idea of the nation State leading the ever-increasing process of economic and social well-being of its citizens through international cooperation and solidarity. These assumptions have never been more under challenge than now: perpetual world economic expansion is under threat; the real wealth of the world—not just the economic wealth—may be shrinking rather than expanding; economic and social well-being are more and more undermined for the most vulnerable populations of the world; the role of the nation State is more and more contested as a vehicle for development; and the international community is more divided than ever. The challenge of who is accountable for these worsening outcomes and who will be responsible for ensuring a different and more sustainable future are central questions of governance and, for the purposes of this chapter, of global governance. The right to development could provide a framework for tackling these questions if it is reoriented to include dimensions of limits imposed by social, environmental and political factors.1 Indeed, it was realized from the beginning of the articulation of the right to development in the 1980s that its achievement hinged on deeprooted transformations in the authorities, institutions and processes of decision-making at multiple levels within which nation States pursued their development goals. These levels were not only national and international but also sub-State and within social systems in constant interaction—in other words, a transformation of global governance rather than simply international governance. It is in this sense that I use the term “global governance” instead of seeing “global” as the arena beyond/outside the State and “governance” as a one-dimensional exercise of authority rather than an interactive one among layers of decision-making. In this chapter, I analyse the older, inherited challenges of global governance to the realization of right to development and emerging new challenges, which have become apparent.