View from the Think-Tank - ways in which global governance can be achieved - Brief Article

UN Chronicle, Winter, 1999 by Simon Maxwell

IF THE NEED FOR ACTION IS SO EVIDENT,

At the beginning of May 1999, 27 Directors of think-tanks from around the world were invited to spend a day in New York, talking to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his senior colleagues. The ostensible purpose of the meeting was to discuss closer cooperation between the United Nations and the research community, but the discussion ranged more broadly. I cannot speak for the others, of course, but personally I was left with five conclusions, one conundrum and a challenge.

First, global governance is or ought to be the hottest topic in development, as big as any other topic, including the much-talked-about (and undoubtedly important) favourites like poverty or human security. I thought this before I arrived in New York, but the feeling was reinforced by our exchanges-- on Kosovo, capital flows, environmental problems and trade. Any lingering doubts have been banished since reading the latest Human Development Report and the excellent new book, also from the United Nations Development Programme, on global public goods.

Secondly, the United Nations needs to be at the heart of global governance arrangements, but is not. It's all very well the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), or the G-7, putting together packages which solve particular problems, but legitimacy and democratic accountability require wider participation. President Jacques Chirac of France has talked about "globalization with a human face", respecting principles like participation and social inclusion. He's right, and that means building a stronger role for the United Nations.

Thirdly, it's easy to see why the United Nations finds itself bypassed on so many current issues. The constitution, structure, procedures, financing arrangements and sheer practical politics are all at fault. There's no surprise here. Kofi Annan said as much when he first took office. That's what his reform agenda was all about.

Fourthly, and this is where things start to get serious, the pace of change has slackened. Mr. Annan has achieved what the management literature calls the "quick wins"--some tidying up, some budget savings, some good new appointments. However, the bigger changes are slower in coming: reform of the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council, reining in the specialized agencies, recapturing the Bretton Woods institutions, keying in the World Trade Organization. Has the change coalition run out of steam as the climb gets steeper?

Fifthly, there is a chance to regain momentum at next year's Millennium Assembly and Summit Meeting. Time is already short. The Secretary-General's proposals for the Millennium Assembly will be written in the autumn, and it is not likely that serious bargaining will take place much beyond next spring. If we miss the opportunity, there may well not be another for some time.

That brings me to the conundrum. If the need is so evident for action on global governance, if the United Nations has such a necessary role to play, and if playing a role is so obviously dependent on instituting change, why is change so difficult? That question, of course, answers itself, to paraphrase Oliver Cromwell: "It's interests that keep the status quo." The interests are national, institutional, probably personal. Will they be allowed to block the common good? More interestingly, how do global changes alter the balance of interests? Can we construct a new coalition for change?

The challenge I took away from New York was to think about how to make change happen. In the end, we might need a popular campaign to match the stunning success on debt of Jubilee 2000. If we do, that will not be led by think-tanks. Our role is rather to help build a community of policy thinkers who share assumptions and move things forward, map the interests in favour and against, and identify the content, and importantly the sequencing, of a reform programme. Our core competence as think-tanks is to understand how policy change happens. We develop and analyse the narratives; we build the policy communities; we work side by side with policy makers to implement change.

We took the first step in New York. Following our meeting with the Secretary-General, the 27 of us are building a policy community on United Nations reform. As I write this, we are sharing our ideas by e-mail and discussing our priorities. If all goes well, we will have a set of suggestions whose essential features are shared by institutions around the world, representing countries in all regions. Our suggestions will be pointed, precise and practical. This is not yet Jubilee 2000. But perhaps it can eventually become "People Power 2000".

It would breach the spirit of our collective endeavour for me to list my own priorities for UN reform. The principles I have followed, however, are not difficult to imagine. They are:

* Global governance arrangements should not be monolithic (global governance is not the same as global government), but in all their diversity should be participatory, inclusive, democratic and accountable;