Global Governance And Public Accountability

This volume brings together prominent scholars from the fields of politics and international relations in order to explore questions of crucial importance to the creation of an effective, accountable and legitimate system of global governance. An exploration of questions of crucial importance to the creation of a legitimate system of global governance. Written by a group of prominent international scholars and experts of global governance. Provides a comprehensive analysis of major arenas of global decision-making. Evaluates the democratic quality of current efforts to manage global issues.

The global community confronts a comprehensive and interconnected array of compelling economic, development and security challenges which require effective global governance. At the centre of world governance stand the new plurilateral summit institutions; the G8 and G20, and UN summits on subjects such as sustainable development and climate change. Many observers and participants regard the performance of these summits as inadequate and doubt their ability to cope with increasingly complex and numerous global challenges. This book critically examines how effectively central global institutions comply with their commitments and how their effectiveness can be improved through accountability measures designed to raise compliance and deliver better results. Expert contributors assess compliance and accountability at the key global institutions to provide an important resource for policymakers and scholars in political science, governance and accountability. For additional information and data relating to the book, please visit: http://www.g7g20.utoronto.ca/accountability/

Dilemmas from climate change to financial meltdowns make it clear that global interconnectedness is the norm in the twenty-first century. As a result, global governance organizations (GGOs)—from the World Trade Organization to the Forest Stewardship Council—have taken on prominent roles in the management of international affairs. These GGOs create and promulgate rules to address a host of pressing problems. But as World Rule reveals, they struggle to meet two challenges: building authority despite limited ability to impose sanctions and maintaining legitimacy while satisfying the demands of key constituencies whose support is essential to a global rulemaking regime. Through a novel empirical study of twenty-five GGOs, Jonathan GS Koppell provides a clearer picture of the compromises within and the competition among these influential institutions by focusing attention on their organizational design. Analyzing four aspects of GGO organization in depth—representation and administration, the rulemaking process, adherence and enforcement, and interest group participation—Koppell describes variation systemically, identifies patterns, and offers explanations that link GGO design to the fundamental challenge of accountability in global governance.

"The scale, effectiveness and legitimacy of global governance lag far behind the world's needs. This path-breaking book examines how far civil society involvement provides an answer to these problems. Does civil society make global governance more democratic? Have citizen action groups raised the accountability of global bodies that deal with challenges such as climate change, financial crises, conflict, disease and inequality? What circumstances have promoted (or blocked) civil society efforts to make global governance institutions more democratically accountable? What could improve these outcomes in the future? The authors base their argument on studies of thirteen global institutions, including the UN, G8, WTO, ICANN and IMF. Specialists from around the world critically assess what has and has not worked in efforts to make global bodies answer to publics as well as states. Combining intellectual depth and political relevance, Building Global Democracy? will appeal to students, researchers, activists and policymakers"--

Drawing on the best scholars in the field from around the world, this handbook showcases conceptual and normative as well as the empirical approaches in public accountability studies.

How can international organizations (IOs) like the United Nations (UN) and their implementing partners be held accountable if their actions and policies violate fundamental human rights? This book provides a new conceptual framework to study pluralist accountability, whereby third parties hold IOs and their implementing partners accountable for human rights violations. Based on a rich study of UN-mandated operations in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo, the EU Troika's austerity policy, and Global Public-Private Health Partnerships in India, this book analyzes how competition and human rights vulnerability shape the evolution of pluralist accountability in response to diverse human rights violations, such as human trafficking, the violation of the rights of detainees, economic rights, and the right to consent in clinical trials. While highlighting the importance of alternative accountability mechanisms for legitimacy of IOs, this book also argues that pluralist accountability should not be regarded as a panacea for IOs' legitimacy problems, as it is often less legalized and might cause multiple accountability disorder.

An examination of whether accountability mechanisms in global environmental governance that focus on monitoring and enforcement necessarily lead to better governance and better environmental outcomes. The rapid development of global environmental governance has been accompanied by questions of accountability. Efforts to address what has been called “a culture of unaccountability” include greater transparency, public justification for governance decisions, and the establishment of monitoring and enforcement procedures. And yet, as this volume shows, these can lead to an “accountability trap”—a focus on accountability measures rather than improved environmental outcomes. Through analyses and case studies, the contributors consider how accountability is being used within global environmental governance and if the proliferation of accountability tools enables governance to better address global environmental deterioration. Examining public, private, voluntary, and hybrid types of global environmental governance, the volume shows that the different governance goals of the various actors shape the accompanying accountability processes. These goals—from serving constituents to reaping economic benefits—determine to whom and for what the actors must account. After laying out a theoretical framework for its analyses, the book addresses governance in the key areas of climate change, biodiversity, fisheries, and trade and global value chains. The contributors find that normative biases shape accountability processes, and they explore the potential of feedback mechanisms between institutions and accountability rules for enabling better governance and better environmental outcomes. Contributors Graeme Auld, Harro van Asselt, Cristina Balboa, Lieke Brouwer, Lorraine Elliott, Lars H. Gulbrandsen, Aarti Gupta, Teresa Kramarz, Susan Park, Philipp Pattberg, William H. Schaedla, Hamish van der Ven, Oscar Widerberg

There has been rapid proliferation of public–private partnerships in areas of human rights, environmental protection and development in global governance. This book demonstrates how different forms of partnership legitimacy and accountability interact, and pinpoints trade-offs between democratic values in partnership operations.