From norms to programs: The United Nations Global Compact and global governance

Norms shape policy when they get translated into concrete programs. What if a widely shared norm gets translated into a weak program? How might this influence the program's legitimacy? We examine these issues in the context of the United Nations Global Compact, a voluntary program that embodies the widely shared norm of corporate responsibility. While both international intergovernmental organization (IGO) and international non‐governmental organization (INGO) networks support this norm, they differ on the adequacy of the Compact's program design. We explore how this tension affects the diffusion of the Compact across countries, which vary in their levels of embeddedness in IGO and INGO networks. Our findings suggest that embeddedness in IGO networks encourages adoption, while embeddedness in INGO networks discourages it. Our analysis provides important lessons for sponsors of voluntary governance mechanisms. Widespread support for a norm does not automatically ensure support for a program that claims to embody it.     

The British Empire in India,the Gulf pearl and the making of the Middle East

Abstract

Genealogies of the term ‘Middle East’ conventionally focus on a juncture around the 1890s, when it gained new geopolitical currency, promoted by various European and American officials with reference to a space centred around the Arabo-Persian Gulf. This article argues instead that the ‘Middle East’ label should be seen as the culmination of a longer process, led less from London than from India. Over the previous century, this consolidation of ‘British’ India as a distinct regional actor was accompanied by the conceptualisation of its borderlands, including that Gulf-centred space. This space become a theatre for economic and political monitoring strategised from India, seeking to transform what was represented as a pirate-infested margin into a pacified buffer zone. Control and exploitation of pearl fisheries, the main economic activity for Gulf populations, was central to these efforts. Imperial strategy around the Gulf pearl was a key tool in founding an informal Indian empire in the Gulf and its hinterlands, in that very space to which the name ‘Middle East’ would subsequently be given.     

全球经济治理新模式的法治化路径

传统全球经济治理模式不能反映当前国际经济关系的变化,既缺乏民主性,也不适应经济全球化带来的新挑战,必须加以改革。各国可以考虑制定《国际经济合作宪章》,确立平等及相互尊重、实现共同利益和促进合作与广泛共识的法律原则;扩大新兴经济体和广大发展中国家参与治理,在G20机制的基础上设立具有最高权威的"国际经济合作组织";以WTO争端解决机制为蓝本建立一整套国际经济争端解决机制,从而实现全球经济治理的法治化。     

推动建设和谐世界与完善国际能源秩序

推动建设和谐世界外交战略思想,是进入新世纪后中国倡导的国际秩序观,有助于推动国际秩序向公正合理的方向发展。全球能源安全充满了不和谐因素,公正合理的国际能源秩序迄今尚未建立,影响了世界的和平稳定与共同繁荣。中国应以和谐世界理念为指导,与其他国家共同努力建设和谐的国际能源秩序。     

Kyoto,Europe?—An Economic Evaluation of the European Emission Trading Directive

To meet its obligations accepted in the Kyoto Protocol cost effectively, the European Union introduces a scheme of Greenhouse Gas Allowance Trading for its member states. This paper evaluates the cost effectiveness, ecological accuracy and dynamic incentives of this approach.The EU-emissions trading constitutes an important shift in the paradigm of environmental policy, from command and control to a market based approach. Still, the EU-system does not fully realize the economic potential of the transferable discharge permit policy. Especially, the limited scope of trading regarding geography, pollutants, sectors and activities reduces the quality of the system. Moreover, the EU-Directive is unspecific in many respects and it leaves many decisions defining the rules of the game to the individual member state. Uncertainty and heterogeneity increase transaction cost and thereby hamper the effectiveness of the system.JEL Classification: Q54, Q58, K32     

What Role for Private Rule-Making in Global Environmental Governance? Analysing the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)

This article assesses the recent trend of rule-making by private multi-stakeholder initiatives – a hitherto largely unnoticed phenomenon in global environmental governance – by analysing the multiple functions and impacts of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), one of the best-known private institutions in global environmental politics. After clarifying the general context of private governance, I turn to the specific function of private rule-making institutions. I argue that rule-making can be understood as the act of agreeing on both constitutive and regulative rules that prescribe the behaviour of a specific group of actors, whether individuals or organisations. Further, I argue that the FSC, as one example of private rule-making in world politics, performs three additional functions that shape the contours of global governance: (1) facilitating a solution to complex multi-interest problems, (2) brokering knowledge and norms among a wide range of stakeholders, and (3) constituting a learning network in environmental governance.     

道家思想与全球伦理

本围绕着全球伦理的有关“不可杀人”、反对战争的核心规范展开论述,首先追述了“全球伦理”的设想,它作为一种普遍伦理行为规范与各民族的特殊化、各种不同的精神信仰的关系,然后阐述了道家对战争与暴力的态度,道家对国家、国内政治和国际关系的看法,最后回溯到道家对生命和自然无为之道的根本理念。     

Post–Conflict Global Governance: The Case of Microfinance Enterprise Networks in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The article examines the institutional infrastructure that supports the foreign aid flows in the mcrocredit sector in postconflict Bosnia and Herzegovina. It documents the mobilization of transnational networks between different international agencies in the course of the policy formulation and implementation, and elicits the effects that certain network attributes exert on the policy choices made by individual organizations. How and why do international governmental and nongovernmental organizations, with at times conflicting goals, join forces in such networks? More important, whose goals are eventually implemented, and under what conditions? Whose goals are diluted in the process of network mobilization? What are the policy implications of such "battles" for the postconflict reconstruction? The article seeks some answers to these questions, demonstrating how transnational networks intermediate between the organizational goals and the final policy outcomes that result from such a network–based mode of global governance in postconflict regions.     

Border Security and Drug Trafficking in Senegal: AIRCOP and global security assemblages

Transnational security governance initiatives in West Africa, operationalized through international statebuilding interventions, are altering the sub-region’s borders and border enforcement. The article employs a practice-oriented ‘global security assemblages’ approach to demonstrate how border security professionals compete over how, who, and where to secure the border from borderless threats like drug trafficking. The article demonstrates this theoretical position empirically through an analysis of struggles over a flagship drug control project implemented by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) at Senegal’s Leopold Sédar Senghor (LSS) airport—AIRCOP. Senegalese customs, police, and gendarmes simultaneously cooperate and compete with international actors, private actors based at the airport, and amongst themselves, over how to curb drug trafficking. Through these competitive struggles over who should be the border’s guardian and how it should be guarded, it can be seen how new security practices and understandings are devised, as well as how borders become (re)constituted within the connected spaces of global security assemblages.     

十七大报告的正义观：社会正义和全球正义

十七大报告描绘了两幅正义社会的图景。正义社会最鲜明的特征是和谐,这是一种新型的正当型和谐社会。在特定价值观基础上,法治国家的权力和法律的正当性建立在所有相关人员的利益均衡关系上,信奉在物质不平等的前提下推进和追求政治平等和权利平等,并在推进和追求政治平等和权利平等过程中改变物质不平等。全球正义观体现了当代马克思主义面临重大问题时的理论勇气和实践立场,是马克思主义政治哲学当代性的内在要求。