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Environmental groups and the public worldwide are seriously concerned about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico after the explosion of the BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil-drilling rig. The disaster has turned into a catastrophe and is likely to affect the environmental, social and economic condition of the Gulf of Mexico’s shore in years and decades to come. Neither the BP nor the U.S. Government really knows what to do to stop the oil leak. The U.S. Government blames the oil multinational. The BP seems to be unable to deal with the situation. Moreover, other oil companies do not seem to possess any adequate means to deal with similar situations. The BP’s stock price has gown down dramatically. It postponed dividend payments to its shareholders. Thousands of people, e.g. fishermen, have lost the source of income. What are people going to learn from this story? What are the probable scenarios of further developments and what are the likely consequences for the oil industry? Read the rest of this entry »
Today is World Water Day; this year operating under the heading “Clean Water for a Healthy World”. Every year since 1995, March 22 has been dedicated to “focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources“.
The 2010 events campaign focuses specifically on raising awareness of the importance of water quality for health and human well-being, and the importance of sound water management for preventing pollution.
While that means that this year the World Water Day has no specific focus on the developing world, a global view onto water problems always naturally draws attention to the specific the problems of the developing world, where not only most of the people lacking access to safe drinking water live, where desertification and pollution are worst, and where water-borne diseases are most prevalent – just to give a few examples – but also the technical and financial means for dealing with the causes and consequences of the “water crisis” /1/ are slimmest.
In 2003, the United Nations Economic and Social Council codified a Human Right to Water in its General Comment No. 15, based on the interpretation of the pre-existing International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which stated:
The human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses. An adequate amount of safe water is necessary to prevent death from dehydration, to reduce the risk of water-related disease and to provide for consumption, cooking, personal and domestic hygienic requirements.
Yet, this right remains unclaimable in many poor countries, both as a result of the failure of the international community to support the necessary steps financially, and because of a competing paradigm of “full cost recovery”. This is reason enough to have a cursory look today at the transnational governance and provision systems of water and sanitation for the poor.
In his recent paper, Tim Bartley (unpublished working paper, see references) argues that implementation of transnational standards, particularly in developing countries, often remains a black box. He starts by showing that some scholars imply that local conditions do not matter, while some others suggest that the effects can be read off programs’ principles and design. Using a case study of certification of forests and labor conditions in Indonesia, Bartley convincingly shows that neither is the case. Motivated by his contribution, I would like to reflect on why it is important to open up the black box of implementation. I focus on four aspects here: mechanisms, politics, implementation gap, and local actors. In part, I use forest certification as an example to illustrate how the study of the implementation of certification standards can enrich our knowledge of transnational governance. Read the rest of this entry »
While conventional discourse on global governance in general and copyright regulation in particular mainly discusses complementary or conflicting ways of regulation, abolitionist positions are only rarely mentioned. This blog is no exception to this rule, at least it was not until now.
The following reflection on the role – the potential virtues and deficiencies – of abolitionist reasoning is inspired by a recent blog post by Stephan Kinsella. In his article the self-described “Austro-Anarchist Libertarian” and author of the book “Against Intellectual Property” (2008, Mises Institute, PDF) features works by the cartoonist Nina Paley (see her video “All Creative Work Is Derivative” below). In an email to Kinsella, Paley describes herself as follows:
“I’m now artist-in-residence at QuestionCopyright.org, and do what I can to promote alternatives to copyright. (Actually I’m a copyright abolitionist, but many find that identification unpalatable.)”
Why is being a copyright abolitionist so “unpalatable” that even outspokenly critical individuals such as Paley feel the need to hide it? Is it the threat they embody by proposing such a seemingly radical position? Or is it rather the lacking connectivity for further debate, which leads to awkward moments and the self-perception of being unpalatable in the eyes of others? Read the rest of this entry »
Many believe that global markets are a new phenomenon. But that is not the case. Not only had the late 19th century already reached a level of global trade and financial flows which approached that of today, but there have been long distance trading circuits across jurisdictions and continents which date back as far as medieval times. In the 12th and 13th century, the Italian city states of Venice and Genoa maintained long distance trading networks that reached as far as North Africa and Central Asia, providing the basis for ‘global’ markets for luxury goods, such as spices and silk. In the North, the Hanseatic League formed a federation of trading cities along the coastlines of the Northern and Baltic Sea generating cross-border markets for bulk goods such as fish, salt, grain and wood.
These markets were transnational in the sense of their interconnecting economic actors from multiple political jurisdictions (i.e. kingdoms and city states) across the world into a multilayered system of rules and regulations which governed their exchange relationships.
Economic historians have produced a rich literature on these markets which is also instructive for economic sociologist studying the governance of contemporary ‘global’ markets. In a recently published article I combine both approaches to analyse how key coordination problems were resolved in medieval long-distance trading systems.
The last several weeks have been extremely frustrating for many activists, international organizations and general public. Several international summits have shown that the global governance system was significantly damaged by the global financial crisis. The crisis created uncertainty about the future and made governments of the world’s leading economies careful about their commitments. After the meeting of parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change on 2-4 November 2009 in Barcelona it became clear that the conference of parties to be held in Copenhagen in December was not likely to result in any legally binding arrangement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. The World Summit on Food Security held on 16-18 November also did not result in any significant binding commitments. Meanwhile, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN reports that due to the global economic recession, the number of hungry people in the world will exceed one billion in 2009. In 2008, it was 850 million people. Only the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh in September 2009 can be seen as a success of international regulatory efforts, at least to some extent. G-8 was transformed into G-20. The general principles of the new global economic architecture were approved. One of such principles is tough regulation of financial markets. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) announced the topic of its 22nd Annual Meeting, which takes place June 24-26 2010 in Philadelphia. It reads as follows:
“Governance Across Borders: Coordination, Regulation and Contestation in the Global Economy”
In the Call for Papers and Sessions, the organizers describe the focus of the conference:
This year’s conference focuses on the development, dynamics, impact, and implications of emerging forms of transnational governance in the global economy – public, private, and hybrid.
So not only because this blog bears the same name as is this year’s conference theme, we greatly encourage submitting paper or session proposals at the conference website.
Besides, we are thankful for receiving the honor of being SASE’s “featured blog“.
In spite of its regular portrayal as “anarchic”, “anything goes” was never true for Wikipedia. Beginning with the list of principles issued by its founder, Jimbo Wales, a continuously growing number of rules guides contributors to and hence development of Wikipedia. One of the most prominent rules is the aim of delivering a “Neutral Point of View” (NPOV). Other important rules deal with notability. While the NPOV is debated with regard to every single article, Wikipedia’s several “notability guidelines” try to resolve the question which information ought (not) to be included in the free online encyclopedia in the first place. Over the years, long lists of conventions have emerged for all kinds subjects. Regarding people, for example, the English Wikipedia lists in detail the notability criteria for members of different professional groups – ranging from Academics over Criminals and Diplomats to Entertainers (including actors, comedians, models, etc.).
But notability guidelines or, as they are called in the German Wikipedia “relevance criteria” (“Relevanzkriterien”), share the problem of all taxonomies, namely a certain degree of arbitrariness; an arbitrariness that makes them particularly prone to being criticized and challenged. In the English Wikipedia debates about notability even led to the formation of two antagonistic camps: The “Association of Deletionist Wikipedians” (ADW) sails under the banner of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his famous quote:
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
The opposite camp assembles around the “Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians” (AIW), which goes even back to the old Romans for their motto:
“The motto of the AIW is Conservata veritate, which translates to, ‘with truth preserved.’ This motto reflects the inclusionist desire to change Wikipedia only when no knowledge would be lost as a result.”
While both “associations” exist since 2004 and their dispute seemed to be rather settled, recent controversies about “relevance” in the German Wikipedia demonstrate that and how such rules may still be re-negotiated: Read the rest of this entry »
According to the press release of the Nobel Foundation, Elinor Ostrom was awarded The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel aka Nobel Prize in Economics “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons”.
Both, economic governance and commons are recurrent themes in this blog. And while most of Ostrom’s works deal with traditional commons such as forests or fisheries, Creative Commons’ Vice President Mike Linksvayer was eager to point to an article on knowledge commons she co-authored with Charlotte Hess titled “Ideas, Artifacts, and Facilities: Information as a Common-Pool Resource”.
Nevertheless, I fear that applying Ostrom’s insights for transnational governance of transnational commons is far from trivial. This is emphasized in the very article mentioned above for the example of scholarly information:
“But analyzing the whole ecosystem of scholarly information is much more tenuous than in Governing the Commons, where (1) the boundaries were clear, (2) the resource systems studied were small and easy to observe, (3) solving problems was of high salience to appropriators, (4) institutions were long-enduring and had evolved over time, and (5) extensive field observation was available.
[…]
Information, on the other hand, often has complex tangible and intangible attributes: fuzzy boundaries, a diverse community of users on local, regional, national, and international levels, and multiple layers of rule-making institutions.” (p. 132)
And as Sean Safford at orgtheory states, Ostrom’s main conclusion for governing traditional commons is “that coordination happens through self-organization and local (very local) governance”.
Consequently, Ostrom herself makes a difference between local and global commons. Together with others, she lists the following “challenges to establish global institutions to manage biodiversity, climate change, and other ecosystem services” in a Science-article titled “Revisiting the Commons” (2007, p. 282 f.):
- Scaling-up problem. Large numbers of participants lead to greater “difficulty of organizing, agreeing on rules, and enforcing rules.”
- Cultural diversity challenge. While diversity can be an asset, Ostrom et al. fear that it also “can decrease the likelihood of finding shared interests and understandings.”
- Complications of interlinked common-pool-resources. Global issues have more interactions and, with increased specialization, become more interdependent, which also increases the difficulty of governance.
- Accelerating rates of change, which make, due to Ostrom et al., “’Learning by doing’ […] increasingly difficult, as past lessons are less and less applicable to current problems.”
- Requirement of unanimous agreement as a collective-choice rule for global resource management.
- We have only one globe with which to experiment, which leaves “less leeway less leeway for mistakes at the local level, while at the global level there is no place to move.”
To sum it up, as far as transnational governance of common pool resources are concerned, Elinor Ostrom’s work predominantly helps in identifying difficulties. For finding solutions, however, these works – according to herself and her colleagues – at best “provide starting points for addressing future challenges.” (p. 282)
(leonhard)
governancexborders.com 