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Global Governance
the management of international relations through international law, institutions, and organizations.
States have increasingly turned to this to mitigate negative externalities, facilitate joint solutions to complex challenges, and generate rules that help govern interactions.
International Institutions
“rules of the game”, include formal rules found in treaties (documents that create legal obligations for states, usually subject to state consent), as well as norms (unstated understood standards of behavior that shape state’s expectations about their interactions). General Agreement on Tariffs and trade (GATT).
can help to tell us what is morally acceptable in war for example
They facilitate interstate cooperation by mitigating the collective action problem, reducing transaction costs associated with reaching settlements, and helping to enforce agreements.
International Organizations
comprise formal intergovernmental bodies (actual actors that act) that possess agency capability to make decisions, and issue directives. They pursue specific political objectives.
UN with UN charter
Helps shape cooperation (mutual policy adjustment in order to achieve joint benefits) between states.
World Trade Organization
International criminal court
NATO
delegation of authority to these can limit domestic sovereignty so that there can be gains from cooperation.
They facilitate interstate cooperation by mitigating the collective action problem, reducing transaction costs associated with reaching settlements, and helping to enforce agreements.
Externalities
costs of benefits that accrue to parties that are not directly involved in the interaction.
Distributional stake
the degree to which an actor has a stake in a cooperative outcome.
Transaction costs
costs associated with negotiating and establishing an agreement. Rather than negotiating new forms of cooperation each time states interact, they may establish forms of multilateral governance to reduce transaction costs.
Public goods
goods that are nonexcludable (no one can be kept from enjoying their benefits) and nonrivalrous (one actor’s consumption of the good does not diminish the amount available to others)
Clean environment and energy
often involves collective action problem
Collective action problem
a cooperative effort among 2 or more actors to provide a public good. There are often free riders and people often act in selfish ways to keep goods to themselves, like the prisoner’s dilemma.
Creation of multilateral governance structures that provide incentives to contribute to public good can help solve this problem.
Free Riders
actors that benefit from other’s efforts to provide a public good without themselves contributing.
Noncompliance
the state of not following through on one’s obligations under an agreement or law.
Followed by enforcement which is the act of punishing this. It is difficult to provide in international agreements.
Hegemonic Stability Theory
the idea that global order is most stable when a powerful state is willing and able to provide certain public goods.
In absence of a single enforcer, a group of states can provide enforcement (diffuse enforcement: enforcement provided by members of system and not a central authority)
How WTO functions, it is up to states to file complaints about other states and it provides legal framework to do so.
If no states provide enforcement, aggressors may pursue their goals without fear of reprisal.
self enforcement: the idea that an agreement structures incentives so that no party has reason to cheat.
Enforcement can involve large scale costs that make states reluctant to trigger them for noncompliant states, like war or sanctions which hurt the issuer too.
Coordination Problems
strategic situation in which actors recognize the potential benefits from adopting coordinated policies, but disagree on the best policy.
Example: if 2 countries engage in trade in agricultural products but one country does not need labels for GMO products and the other does so they disagree on this and can not coordinate on this correctly.
Customs Union
a group of countries with no tariffs among them.
EU
common market
a group of countries that have no tariffs between one another and a common external tariff, also EU as it functions to lower transaction costs of cross border commerce and to create new trade agreements.
Monetary Union
a group of countries that adopt a common currency, EU
nondiscrimination
the like treatments of products regardless of national origin. Countries can not apply different trade policies to like products from 2 different countries.
Reciprocity
if a trading partner extends concessions by lowering its barriers on a country’s exports, the other country should extend concessions by lowering barriers to imports of the trading partner.
Principle agent relationships
relationships where principal (states) delegates to an agent (organizations) to accomplish some task. Tensions can arise in these types of international organizations.
Multiple principals can delegate responsibility to an IO and they can disagree about particular policies.
There can be agency slack, which is the optimal degree of principal control or agency autonomy.
too much control on principal’s part can lead to agents’ preferences and biases getting into the decision making of the organization.
too much agency slack however leads to drift or shirking where agent’s behavior begins to evolve from its original mandate into other areas, when agent fails to carry out assigned task.
United Nations
An important international organization that functions in peacekeeping, monitoring of nuclear weapons facilities and weapons programs, children’s health, delivery of humanitarian relief in war and natural disasters.
The general assembly is where all member states can sit in and it is a powerful place to secure legitimacy or ask for foreign policy action/help.
Security Council has 5 permanent members with veto power (US, UK, China, Russia, France) and 10 rotating members.
US is a key player and contributes a lot to this org, it is a source of legitimacy back home. While it is difficult to get support from this org, it makes global public opinion much easier and easier to gain allies if US is supported here.
NATO
institutional organization first formed to “keep russians out, americans in, and germans down”, providing Wester Europe and America protection against nuclear and communist attack. It also worked as a binding mechanism for the US, making America and its military a leader in this org
More countries recently accused of shirking by Donald Trump and not providing enough funds to defense.
Trump said that they want those countries to get invaded now and America won’t stand up for them, which goes against rules of NATO extensively.
US is being reluctant hegemon here as it thinks that it is not getting much benefit for being a leader.
Ukraine war appears to be strengthening the alliance as more countries are spending on defense, after Trump comments especially.
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