David Held: "Reframing Global Governance"

The other night I attended a lecture given by David Held, who is apparently a rather large figure in something called the "new political economy" or "international political economy."  I'm not a political scientist and I'm a pretty bad sociologist - for a lack of time and interest, I pay little attention to the more "politicy" or "practically" oriented scholarship in either discipline.  This was, quite frankly, my introduction into what passes for liberal or left scholarship in the academy from an empirical perspective or approach.

I must say, I was rather dismayed.  Admittedly, I was not expecting much from the lecture.  A quick perusal of his publications indicated that his interests largely did not overlap with mine.  He's written on "cosmopolitan democracy," "cosmopolitan law," "governance," "globalization" and "social democracy."  These interests seem comparatively recent as his early work was on critical theory, having written books on "Horkheimer to Habermas" and an introductory text on critical theory in the early eighties.  He also seemed to participate in the late seventies/early eighties renewal of interest in state theory.  Thus, his earlier interests resemble more closely my own, even if, with him being a Habermasian of sorts, I expected significant theoretical differences.

At any rate, the following is a brief summary of his lecture, the text of which is available here.   He opens, "The paradox of our modern times can be stated simply:  the collective issues we must grapple with are of growing extensity and intensity and, yet, the means for addressing these are weak and incomplete."  The rest of the lecture is an attempt, as one might expect, to grapple with, if not resolve, this paradox.  Consequently, he first lays out the "collective issues" before moving on to "the means for addressing these."  Clearly, this is a man pushing a particular political programme.  (I'd point out at this point that my relunctance to accept his position does not require that I advance a better one - no blackmail of the status quo, as it were, will be accepted.)

Held points to three "pressing global issues:"  the present and future threat of the consequences of global warming, that little progress has been achieved towards attaining the millenium development goals, and that nuclear catastrophe remains an ever present threat. (Note: the lecture, originally written in 2005 and presented at Sheffield in December 2005, makes no mention of North Korea.)  Together, these changes are of three forms - "sharing our planet," "sustaining our humanity," and "our rulebook."  All of these, he notes, "call for collective and collaborative action."

Recognizing that some might not find the importance of these problems self-evident, Held provides four reasons worth stressing: solidarity, social justice, democracy and policy effectiveness.  It is worth referring to the definitions of each he provides; respectively, "the willingness to stand side by side with others in the creation of solutions to pressing collective problems," "the fulfilment of human rights in an institutional order to the extent that it is reasonably possible," and (he doesn't bother to define policy effectiveness) "democracy presupposes a non-coercive political process in and through which people can pursue and negotiate the terms of their interconnectedness, interdependence, and difference... 'consent' constitutes the basis of collective agreement."

Without a discussion of "policy effectiveness," Held returns to his discussion of the threats to the global order, this time glossed as "humanitarian, economic and environmental crises" (three versions of these threats and three different characterizations - at least on my reading).  To make these crises worse, Held points to "forces" pushing them "from bad to worse;" viz., "the emergent system of structural global vulnerability, the Washington policy packages and the constellation of contemporary geopolitics."  He describes the latter two as "political" and the former as "structural."  Presumably by this he means "we" can act on the latter two, but not on the former (vulnerability).

Sparing the reader further summary, Held goes on to discuss the threat to "governance" presented by contemporary geopolitics and "the Washington policy packages," sadly, with little reference to his original categories; namely, solidarity, social justice, democracy and policy effectiveness.  With a deal of unfairness, I want to pick out some of his statements he makes along the way to the end:

• "the inadequate development of non-market social factors, which alone can provide an effective balance between 'competition' and 'cooperation'"
• He quotes someone called Ikenberry, "today the machinery of the post-war era is in disrepair.  No leader, no international body or group of states speaks with authority or vision on global challenges."  Held comments, "This is my judgement as well."

With that, Held is gearing up for the advice portion of his lecture:

Restoring symmetry and congruence between decision makers and decision takers and entrenching the principle of equivalence requires strenghtening of global governance and a resolve to address the aforementioned institutional challenges and fault lines running through global governance provision.  In the first instane, this agenda can be thought of as comprising three interrelated dimensions: promoting coordinated state action to tackle common problems; reinforcing those international institutions that can function effectively; and developing multilateral rules and procedures that lock in all powers, small and major, into a multilateral framework.

In order to achieve this, Held points to the promise of "social democracy" at the level of nation-states and support for markets at the global level such that it "encourages and sustains the enormous enchancement of productivity and wealth that the global market and technology make possible."  Finally, "bridges have to be built between international economic law and human rights law, between commercial law and environmental law, and between state sovereignty and transnational law."

Without writing much more, a few questions:

• how can the committment (as narrow as it is) to "solidarity" be sustained when, ultimately, it comes down to a balance between "competition" and "cooperation"? That is, isn't there something about solidarity which transcends the distinction between competition and cooperation?
• how can the desire for 'strong leadership' be compatible with the desire for democracy?  A student at the lecture asked Held, "How can we make them get interested in them?" Held's answer was dangerously ambiguous: "with democracy."  That is, how can Held absolutely fail to consider the relation between force and rule?
• why the constant appeal to institutions that have not only failed (the state, the market, the law, etc) but have caused the problem in the first place?  What is the value of the market if it hasn't lead to greater equality, but rather to greater disparity? What is the value of the nation-state if it leads to the problems of geopolitics?  If markets and states have failed in the past, why should we expect them to work in the future?
• why the constant appeal to law?  In the first place, his conception of law is rather naive:  that is, if there are rules, he seems to think that people will automatically follow them.  He doesn't see a connection between law and force.  Between a juridical order and enforcement.  Further, if law has worked in the past, why law in the future?  If the minimal set of laws we presently have don't work, why do we want more laws?
• finally, why the committment to "representational" democracy if one wants to emphasize "multilevel, multilayered citizenship" - at the level of village, town, province, country, continent, trading bloc, world, etc?