Governança Globa

sInclusive Institutions for Governance
in the Global Political Economy
by

Volker Rittberger1

University of Tübingen
Institute of Political Science
Center for International Relations/Peace and Conflict Studies
Melanchthonstraße 36
72074 Tübingen
Germany
ifp.ircenter@uni-tuebingen.de

for presentation at the
ACUNS 2007 Annual Meeting on
“The Study of International Organizations:Past, Present, Future?”
The Ralph Bunch Institute for International Studies, The CUNY Graduate Center,
365 Fifth Avenue, New York
6-8 June 2007
Panel 15: Consensus, Coherence, Inclusiveness: Building Effective Global Governance

Conference Draft. Do not cite without author’s permission.

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This paper is drawing and enlarging on Volker Rittberger, Carmen Huckel, Lothar Rieth and MelanieZimmer
(2005): Inclusive Global Institutions for a Global Political Economy. Paper prepared for the “Offene Sektionstagung der Sektion Internationale Politik” held from 6th to 7th October 2005 in Mannheim. The author further
thanks Julia Ellinger for her assistance in preparing and revising this paper.

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Introduction: Global Governance in a Post-Westphalian Order

Our world is changingin many ways which are most commonly described as globalization.
Meaning more than just a trend towards economic liberalization and integration, today’s
“thick” globalization can be observed in terms of the intensification of economic as well as
social and political interactions across borders such as the sharing of knowledge and opinions
through new means of communication, the deepening impactthat localized events have on
global trends, the establishment of world-wide standards in science and technology and the
transnational production of goods and services (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton 1999:
21f; Zürn 1998).
Today’s globalization would not have been possible before the end of the Cold War. The transition from a bipolar state system to a unipolar world dominated by the USAopened up opportunities for profound changes in the general conditions of world politics. This shift of
power as a structuring factor in the state system can be seen as a „permissive factor“, that led
to the opening of societies and markets (Rittberger 2006).
Given these developments, the state-based Westphalian system finds itself amidst a process of
transition. On the domestic level, thecapacity and willingness of states to control what goes
on inside their borders and to shield themselves against potentially damaging events outside
of their borders have declined considerably. On the one hand, it can thus be argued that state
sovereignty as a normative concept, as well as a functional ordering principle, has found itself
weakened, and states are losing their autonomous capacityto effectively govern (Clark 1999:
75). On the other hand, the emergence of new transnational actors does not necessarily lead to
a weakening of the state’s basic ordering functions. There is still no alternative to the state as
the ultimate decision-making authority (Genschel and Zangl 2007: 14; Schirm 2007: 17).
Therefore, the Westphalian logic is, at best, one side of the coin incharacterizing contemporary international relations. Additionally, a rapid growth in both the extent of international
organizations and the range of issue areas they cover on a world-wide scale can be observed
for the past two decades. At the same time, the number and plurality of transnational nongovernmental organizations have steadily risen as well (Zürn 2006: 31). These developments
generate newspheres of overlapping authority structures beyond the nation-state. Gradually
transforming the Westphalian system, they indicate the emergence of a post-Westphalian order (Schneckener 2005: 192 f).

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In a state-centered Westphalian system, states are the ultimate and exclusive players setting
the ‘rules of the game’. In a post-Westphalian environment, non-state actors are increasingly...