Global Governance: Getting Us Where We All Want to Go and Getting Us There Together
| Date | 01 October 2010 |
| Author | Pascal Lamy |
| Published date | 01 October 2010 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2010.00047.x |
Global Governance: Getting Us
Where We All Want to Go and
Getting Us There Together
Pascal Lamy
Director-General, World Trade Organization
The world of today is virtually unrecognizable from the
world in which we lived at the turn of the millennium.
The last ten years have given rise to new actors playing
prominent roles on the global stage, new technological
breakthroughs that have changed the way we interact and
new challenges so serious in nature that they require all our
collective energies and talents to confront them.
The sea change that has washed over our planet during
the past decade means that we need to view the world in a
different way. Long-standing methods of addressing global
problems need to be scrutinized, updated or re-tooled if we
are to tackle adequately the problems of today and tomor-
row. This is not to suggest that existing institutions of glo-
bal governance need to be scrapped or that new ones need
to be created. It may be that the institutions of today can
better respond to our needs if we can conceive of a superior
method of interaction among institutions and governments.
What do I mean by global governance? For me global
governance describes the system we set up to assist human
society to achieve its common purpose in a sustainable
manner, that is, with equity and justice. Growing interde-
pendence requires that our laws, our social norms and val-
ues and our mechanisms for framing human behaviour be
examined, debated, understood and operated together as
coherently as possible. This is what would provide the basis
for effective sustainable development in its economic, social
and environmental dimensions.
Whether public or private, governance needs to provide
leadership, the incarnation of vision, of political energy, of
drive. It also needs to provide legitimacy, which is essential
to ensure ownership over decisions that lead to change;
ownership to prevent the inbuilt bias towards resistance
to modify the status quo. A legitimate governance system
must also ensure efficiency. It must bring about results for
the benefit of the people. Finally, a governance system
must be coherent. Compromises need to be found over
objectives that often may contradict one another. It cannot
be about the right hand not knowing what the left hand
is doing. Or, even worse, it cannot be about knowingly
moving them in different directions.
As we consider the most viable means of global gover-
nance in the 21st century we must start with the fact that
there are many more players on the scene today than there
were at the turn of the century. No longer do we live in a
bipolar world as we did in the cold war, when the two
superpowers exerted powerful influence on much of the
world. In trade terms, the days when the European Union,
the United States, Japan and Canada could decide the way
forward for the rest – as they did in the 1994 Uruguay
Round trade accord – are over. Even the often stated and
usually polemic rhetoric of a north–south divide describes a
paradigm that no longer holds true today. There are many
different ‘norths’ and also many different ‘souths’.
In its place we have a sort of galaxy of players, with
emerging countries asserting their new roles as traditional
powers seek means of influencing outcomes in the global
policy debate. Today countries like China, India, Brazil,
South Africa, Indonesia and Mexico are major players in
the global economy and increasingly as well in the arenas
of health care, climate change and diplomacy. But even as
these relatively new actors seek to establish their place in
the world, the mutual interdependence of all countries is
more evident today than ever before.
From production processes to finance to trade policy,
the world’s economy is integrated as never before. Global
challenges like climate change, pandemics, terrorism and
bringing greater equity and relevance to the multilateral
trading system require global responses. Since the end of
the Second World War, we have had in place an interna-
tional system with the United Nations at its epicentre,
supported by specialised agencies like the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World
Health Organization (WHO) and the International
Labour Organization. The World Trade Organization,
like its predecessor, the GATT, while not a UN agency,
has largely the same members and is dedicated to the
same principles of openness, transparency, stability and
sustainable development. We have also had the G8 group-
ing of countries.
By and large, this system has worked. But with the
world so very different today, many are asking whether
these institutions and systems are adequate for the chal-
lenges we face in the 21st century. Are they reflective of
the geopolitical reality of 2010? Do developing countries
Global Policy Volume 1 . Issue 3 . October 2010
Copyright Ó2010 London School of Economics and Political Science and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Global Policy (2010) 1:3 doi: 10.1111/j.1758-5899.2010.00047.x
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