Ity in issue areas ranging from biodiversity to human rights; and illicit

authorities, such as the mafia or mercenary armies.31

A benefit of including these new forms of authority in the concep-

tual framework of global governance lies in the possibility of asking

hitherto neglected questions about the implications of global gover-

nance for fundamental political concepts such as democracy, sov-

ereignty, and legitimacy. In more general terms, the concept of global

governance seems more capable of accounting for the “crazy-quilt na-

ture” of temporary world politics.32

The Normative Use:

Global Governance as a Political Program

For some writers, global governance is not so much an empirical or ana-

lytical term as it is a political concept that captures a vision of how

societies should address the most pressing global problems. Most often,

the problems that global governance is expected to address are analyti-

cally linked to the process of economic globalization and a resulting

loss of national authority. Thus, it has been argued that “theoretically,

global governance offers an analytical concept to subsume various ef-

forts at the global level to come to terms with this loss of control and

to balance the uncontrolled processes of globalisation.”33

Klaus Dingwerth and Philipp Pattberg 193Such a concept of global governance appears to be firmly embedded

In practitioners’ perspectives. Thus, despite the fact that the Commission

on Global Governance—consisting almost exclusively of practitioners—

defines global governance in analytical terms, a political conceptualiza-

tion of global governance is usually attributed to its final report. In par-

ticular, its “call to action” in which the commission summarizes its

reform proposals can be cited as an example. Here, the commission

maintains that a “global civic ethic to guide action within the global

neighbourhood, and leadership infused with that ethic, is vital to the

quality of global governance.”34 This is then followed by more or less

concrete reform proposals in the areas of global security, economic inter-

dependence, the structure of the United Nations, and the rule of law.

In sum, it seems correct to argue that while the commission’s

account of global governance contains both empirical and normative

elements, the core of its conception of global governance is constituted

by the need for more cooperation among governments, more coopera-

tion among governmental and nonstate actors, more coordination within

the framework of the United Nations system, and a central position of

humans within politics.35

In a similar way, the Study Commission—“Globalization of the World

Economy: Challenges and Answers”—of the German Bundestag states:

As the world becomes increasingly globalized and economic activities

grow beyond national regulatory frameworks, it becomes more neces-

sary to politically shape economic, social and environmental processes

on a global scale. How the global challenges can be democratically

managed has recently begun to be discussed under the heading of

“global governance.”36

In accordance with this definition of global governance, the study com-

mission comes to the conclusion that we need “more global gover-

nance” and that “implementing global governance” is the real problem:

The world wide process of politically managing globalization—global

governance—is still in its early stages. Obstacles to global governance

still exist, including power imbalances and national and international

problems with democracy and legitimization; the almost lack of an

ethical-normative consensus (“global ethos”) is still interfering with

the creation of a strong system of global governance. . . . At this point

in time, global governance is still more of a vision than a description

of the actual state of the international system.37

In addition to practitioners, a number of academics have similarly

adopted political concepts of global governance and argued that the goal

194 Global Governance as a Perspective on World Politicsof global governance lies in regaining society’s control over market

forces which has been lost in the wake of globalization.” This is clearly

distinct from the analytical understanding of the term described in the

previous section. Other authors have even made the point that the pro-

grammatic aspect of global governance has a long history, reflecting

basic principles of human organization. In the words of Paul Wapner,

global governance is “one of the most perennial and daunting chal-

lenges in world history”:

Ever since the Stoics imagined a single world, organized by a set of

common principles, thinkers and practitioners have worked to con-

ceptualise and bring into reality mechanisms to coordinate the diverse

activities of a complex, multifarious world. For some, this project

meant establishing a world government to legislate common laws and

policies. For others, it meant simply building institutions of common

understanding and practices supported by sovereign entities below the

level of world government.38

However, the distinction between an analytical and a political use is not

always as clear-cut as in these examples. To the contrary, a number of

academics have used the term in a way that can be described as con-

taining elements of either the analytical and the political or the analyti-

cal and the “academic-institutionalist” account of global governance. For

example, in the German debate, Dirk Messner and Franz Nuscheler’s use

of the concept can be attributed to both a political program and a

research program. Guided by the ideas of global welfare (Weltgemein-

wohl), Messner and Nuscheler declare a global rule of law and a global

ethic as prerequisites for any functioning global governance system,

which they conceptualize as “the creation of networks, from the local to

the global level, based on a shared problem-solving orientation, a fair

balance of interests and a workable canon of shared norms and values

as a basis for institutional structures for the handling of problems and

conflicts.”39

Global governance is, in this perspective, frequently conceived as

a long-term project of global integration, for which the evolution of the

European Union can be considered a model. A further definition, situ-

ated at the intersection of different concepts of global governance, is

provided by Leon Gordenker and Thomas Weiss, who portray global

governance as “efforts to bring more orderly and reliable responses to

social and political issues that go beyond capacities of states to address

individually.”40

A second group of scholars also considers global governance to be

a political program but takes a more critical position toward the expected

Klaus Dingwerth and Philipp Pattberg 195benefits of steering beyond state control, arguing that global governance

is not a value-free term, but rather a highly politicized concept in the

midst of a discursive struggle about who decides what for whom. From

this critical theory perspective, global governance is not so much an

answer to state failures in the globalization process as it is a hegemonic

discourse to disguise the negative effects of neoliberal economic devel-

opment on a global scale. In the words of Ulrich Brand, “The discourse

of Global Governance . . . serves as a means to deal more effectively

with the crisis-prone consequences caused by [postfordist-neoliberal

social transformations].”41 The protagonists of this critical version of

global governance perceive the prevailing discourse on global steering

mechanisms beyond the state as deeply embedded in a general political

trend toward reregulation of the world economy that conceals the nega-

tive tendencies of late capitalism. Consequently, global governance as

an attempt to reclaim political influence in order to reshape the institu-

tional landscape of world politics is not understood as a counterforce to

globalization but as its ideological companion.

The Need for Conceptual Clarification