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Review: Tests of Global Governance

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Date01 December 2005
AuthorGreg Donaghy
Published date01 December 2005
DOI10.1177/002070200506000418
Subject MatterReview
AUTUMN 2005.qxd | Reviews |
T E S T S O F G L O B A L G O V E R N A N C E
Canadian Diplomacy and United Nations World Conferences
Andrew F. Cooper
Tokyo and New York: United Nations University Press, 2004. xii, 298pp,
$53.95 paper (ISBN 92-808-1096-0)
At the heart of Andrew Cooper’s complex and sprawling study of UN world
conferences and global governance in the 1990s lies a straightforward ques-
tion: what does the recent burst of activity by states and nonstate actors at UN
conferences on such relatively new foreign policy issues as the environment
or population control or women’s rights mean for the traditional
Westphalian order? Perhaps quite a bit more than many think, if Cooper is
right, but certainly not as much as some might hope.
Cooper’s even-handed response to this question challenges realist and
neoliberal interpretations that dismiss the UN world conferences and the
fevered diplomacy that accompanied them as just so much froth on a rigid
state-centric system that remains driven by established notions of national
interest. He also disputes radical claims that these large international gath-
erings simply reinforce the market-driven imperatives of globalization, and
dashes the naïve hopes of idealists, who see them as harbingers of signifi-
cant and enduring change in the international order.
A leading Canadian political scientist, who is also associate director of
the Waterloo-based Centre for International Governance Innovation, Cooper
has devised seven tests to assess the nature and extent of the changes intro-
duced by the cycle of UN conferences during the last 15 or so years. These
tests are applied somewhat unevenly in a series of case studies based largely,
but not exclusively, on Canada’s experience at some of the most important
world conferences, starting with the UN conference on environment and
development in 1992 and extending to the 2001 Durban world conference
on racism.
In his early tests, which are the most interesting and convincing in
the book, Cooper explores the stilted...

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