Towards pluralist global governance

Several scholars have argued that we are currently witnessing a profound change towards more pluralist forms of policy-making at the global level in which opportunities for the participation of non-state actors have been significantly expanded. Thus, it has been argued that “a redefinition of the relationship between civil society and international organizations is under way and the concept of participation seems to be at the core of the process” (Rebasti 2008: 38). Tallberg and colleagues (2013: 5) speak about a “transnational turn in global governance”. Willetts (2000: 192) similarly argues that the United Nations are being converted “from a world of interstate diplomacy to one of pluralist global governance at the policymaking level.”

Taking a closer look at the history of policy-making at the global level, the decades after the end of World War II were characterized by a move from an independent pursuit of government goals by states towards intergovernmental cooperation. Two factors led to the increasing readiness of states to govern through international organizations and regimes (Brühl & Rittberger 2001: 6–7): First, the experiences of the economic depression of the 1930s, the Second World War as well as the Cold War and Decolonization enhanced their willingness and capability to incur cooperation agreements with other states. Second, as a result of extending exchanges and transactions across borders, interdependence intensified and decreased the capacity of individual states to tackle problems on their own. As a consequence, states began to create a growing number of intergovernmental organizations and regimes to facilitate cooperation between their executive branches. Through these new institutions, governance was exercised by multiple governments which acted together in the search for solutions to global challenges. Although in some instances organizations enabled non-state actors to obtain consultative status, the UN’s Economic and Social Council

(ECOSOC) being the most prominent example, at large non-state actors were kept away from collective problem solving (Rittberger et al. 2008: 16).⁶

Especially since the 1970s, however, non-state actors began to grow stronger. Global social movements gathered momentum in a broad range of issues such as women’s rights, the environment and disarmament. In the meantime, multinational corporations gained economic power and strived for a more political role. Four major structural changes empowered new types of actors: deepening globalization, including the spread of global challenges, an economic agenda focusing on privatization and deregulation, the availability of new technologies especially in the area of communications, and the end of the Cold War all contributed to the rise of non-state actors (Avant et al. 2010: 4–6). Still, the relationship between public and private actors was, at first, dominated by confrontation (Martens 2007: 11), and most NSA influence on decision-making could only be retraced to informal engagement with state representatives. This form of interaction between state and non-state actors began to change from around 1990 onwards (Tallberg et al. 2013; Zürn 2018). Since then, a trend towards an increasingly formalized participation of non-state actors can be observed which encompasses several dimensions: First, the number and diversity of actors engaging in global policy-making has increased. Second, new and highly varied institutional forms of governance through which NSAs participate have been created. Last but not least, by tendency access for NSAs is now linked to more far-reaching participation rights, although these rights remain highly variable.

With regard to the types of participating non-state actors, on the one hand more and more NGOs are active in global politics, and claim participation rights in increasingly diverse fields of activity (Rebasti 2008: 26). Thus, numbers of NGOs accredited under ECOSOC consultative status have more than quintupled from 928 in 1992 (Hemmati &

Dodds 2002: 28) to 5,083 in September 2016.⁷ At the same time, the background of the

6 Nonetheless, a number of cooperation projects between state and non-state institutions were created earlier. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature was founded in 1948, bringing together states and non-governmental organizations (see https://www.iucn.org/about/iucn-brief-history, accessed 24.01.2019). Other examples include the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Industry Cooperative Programme (1966-78) and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (founded in 1971) (Martens 2007: 12). However, these early initiatives mostly remained singular experiences and did not result in a comprehensive trend towards non-state actor involvement.

7 See list of NGOs with ECOSOC consultative status on http://undocs.org/E/2016/INF/5 (accessed 24.01.2019).

newly accredited NGOs generally is more diverse, counting with more nationally and regionally rooted organizations (Brühl 2010: 190). On the other hand, partnerships with a broader scope of non-state actors have been promoted. Agenda 21 explicitly advocated a strengthening of nine so-called ‘major groups’ – among them constituencies as diverse as Indigenous peoples, workers and trade unions, and the scientific community – to make development sustainable. Cutler et al. (1999b: 4) argue that our time is characterized by an increased significance of management of global affairs by economic actors. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan personally engaged in encouraging participation by business actors (Martens 2007: 14–15).

As the numbers of non-state actors involved in participation arrangements at the global level have multiplied, the diversity of cooperation schemes has skyrocketed. Since the 1990s, most IOs have opted for introducing some form of cooperation with non-state actors. The results of systematic studies of cooperation arrangements (Steffek & Nanz 2008; Tallberg et al. 2013) suggest that nowadays almost all international organizations provide for some form of cooperation mechanism for NSAs. Apart from the participation of non-state actors within IOs, state and non-state actors have joined forces and created new institutions and partnerships. Thus, a great variance in institutional design can be observed (Koenig-Archibugi & Zürn 2006; Rebasti 2008: 46–62).

Governance arrangements between state and non-state actors vary greatly from rather loose cooperation to membership and participation in decision-making (Rittberger et al.

2008). At the same time, the growing number of these cooperation arrangements goes along with an increased importance of mechanisms for private self-regulation (Cutler et al. 1999a; Bull et al. 2004). These mechanisms beyond interstate cooperation have been labeled as “new modes of governance” (Koenig-Archibugi & Zürn 2006; Héritier &

Rhodes 2010). The broad spectrum of possible constellations of cooperation arrangements also shows that the transition from public to public-private to private governance is gradual. In other words, with regard to the participating actors, modes of governance may be located on a continuum from purely public to public-private to purely private cooperation. This implies that these new governance mechanisms do not substitute more traditional forms of interstate cooperation, but rather supplement them.

This has also resulted in the development of complex and partially overlapping institutions within one issue area which are not necessarily coherent (Hale & Held 2011:

11–12).

Others have pointed to the enduring limits of extended NSA participation in global governance. First, within the universe of NSAs, not all get to participate equally. In most cases there is a clear bias towards cooperating with bigger, well-funded NGOs or industry and business associations, resulting in a tendency to exclude organizations representing marginalized populations from developing countries (Kissling & Steffek 2008: 213). Similarly, research on NSA participation at Conferences of the Parties of the UNFCCC and the CBD has found that allowing for broad NSA actor participation results in dominance of few resource-rich NSAs, whereas the voices of organizations representing local communities or even women remain marginalized in the process (Uhre 2013: 162–163).

Additionally, rights provided to NSAs differ remarkably depending on the subject matter an international organization deals with. For instance, with regard to human rights, civil society participation is significantly more extensive in the detection of human rights violations than in the connected processes of policy-making. Similarly, whereas participation rights remain restricted in classic military alliances, security issues seem to be more open to non-state actor involvement when it comes to peace-building (Steffek & Nanz 2008: 21–24). Generally, NSA participation is strongest with regard to policy monitoring and enforcement, more limited with regard to the agenda setting, policy formulation or implementation stages of the policy-making process, and least favorable in decision-making (Tallberg et al. 2013: 255). Access opportunities for NSAs also can vary considerably across different bodies even within one and the same IO (ibid.: 56).

Moreover, the trend towards increased civil society participation has also known setbacks. For example, the UN General Assembly decided in 1994 not to recognize any further NGO as observer (Willetts 2000: 197). The recommendations of the Cardoso Report, an expert panel report issued in 2004 which dealt with strengthening the relationships between the UN, civil society and the private sector both politically and financially “played no role at all” in the negotiations on UN reform in 2005 (Martens 2007: 17–18).

Despite these enduring limitations to NSA participation, nowadays non-state actors contribute to the identification of problems, to the development of solutions, as well as to the implementation of decisions. A broad variety of institutional forms exists through

which non-state actors assume governing functions. Global policy-making thus increasing resembles “a complex web of relationships among different authorities, accomplishing different tasks and dependent on one another for outcomes” (Avant et al.

2010: 4, see also Grande & Pauly 2005: 287).