Power Sharing of Global Governance Wear Down the State

Preface

In a world of interdependence and turbulence, global governance encompasses the activities of governments, but it also includes actors who employ command and control mechanisms to take decisions and pursue policies. There is no single organizing principle around which these actors converge. It is a turbulent world in which we live today, not a world of principle. All we can say is that the processes in which these actors involve are along the line of domestic-foreign frontier and distant from local limitations. In a general reading of Rosenau^[1], one could realize that a new form of anarchy has evolved in the global affairs in the current period, one that involves not only the absence of authority, but also the disaggregation of authority generated by transnational factors and cross-border activities. The result is a major shift in the location of authority, and the control and command mechanism throughout the world in economic, political, and social spheres.

The application of global governance was a direct product of overwhelming evidences that the international environment was no longer the exclusive preserve of states, but rather, that of interconnected web of interactions involving states and other actors through which norms are set and goals are shared in a more cooperative but less satisfying manners. Compared to previous status, the authority of the state is eroding in key ways. Although, actors like regional and global terrorists, the Red Cross, the United Nations, multinational corporations are new to the Westphalian system, the proliferation and growing powers, influence and importance of non-state actors have become a distinctive features enjoying power in the contemporary world. This in itself has created problems for the authority exercise by states within the international system, and which Rosenau, promptly and profoundly captured, as ‘a pervasive tendency in which major shifts in the location of authority and the site of control mechanisms are under way on every continent, shifts that are as pronounced in economic and social systems as they are in political system’^[2].

To study the notion of power sharing among states and global governance is not a simple task that could be done by one researcher and that is why this article relies heavily on the observation and findings of other prominent scholars.
 

Global Governance as a Concept.

Governance is different from government. Governance is referred to process rather than institution that administer patterns and rules through which policy is administered. Governance in the traditional sense of the term could be described as the pattern and process for delivering public goods – economic, political, social and even cultural benefits. Rosenau, in trying to provide intellectual grasp of the term has described governance, whether at the grassroots or global levels, to encompass ‘the activities of governments, but it also includes the many other channels through which ‘’commands’’ flow in the form of goals framed, directives issued, and policy pursued’^[3].

In relating governance to government, Karns and Mingst, (2010:4) adapted Rosenau and argued that they are clearly related but not identical ‘both concerned purposeful behaviors, to goal-oriented activities, to system of rules, but government suggests activities that are backed by formal authority. Whereas governance refers to activities backed by shared goals that may or may not derive from legal and formally prescribed responsibilities and that do not necessarily rely on police powers to overcome defiance and attain compliance’^[4]. While governance and government have been used widely in discerning patterns and processes that takes place at the national level, transposing the terms, especially ‘global governance’ to the international plane can be traced to the growing dissatisfaction among students of international relations with the realist and liberalist-Institutionalist theories that dominated the study of international organization in the 1970s and 1980s^[5]. The failure of those theories to adequately capture the upsurge in both numbers and influence of non-state actors and the implications of technology in the face of globalization of market and commerce create a place for the concept in the academic discipline.

But just like the understanding of governance at the national level, and as Karns et. al (2010:4) observed, global governance is not global government; it is not a single world order; it is not a top-down, hierarchical structure of authority. It is the multilevel collection of governance-related activities, rules and mechanisms, formal and informal, public and private, existing in the world today. By this all-encompassing definition, global governance as Thomas Weiss argue, invokes shifting the location of authority in the context of integration and fragmentation.

However, in view of both the conceptual and operational challenges currently facing world system, Weiss argued that global government should perhaps be described as an experience-based techniques for problem solving to capture and describe the confusing and seemingly ever-accelerating transformation of the international system. States are central but they are no longer in control. Their influence is eroding in important ways. Several of their creations, such as international and inter-governmental organizations are even no more in control than they ever were. Local and international organizations are proliferating in a rapid sense and technological developments are transforming the capacity and resources of organization, including the terrorist groups. Within this context, collective action problems associated with the provision of public goods have become even more of a challenge, conceptual and practical, than is their provision in the national setting Weiss (2010:808). On the strength of this development, therefore, global governance reliance on the influence of state-centric authority has become somewhat limited if not an anachronistic.

Perhaps in understanding global governance, we need to redirect our understanding of international politics away from the product of the Westphalian Treaty and conclusion, and build a new framework that will take into account that international environment that has become arena for multi-various policies spearheaded by multiplicity of actors. While sovereignty is not dead, it is hardly untouchable like the time of Westphalian. The increasing diffusion of authority and corresponding loss of control now being witnessed and comprehended have proved that the current global governance is one where states and the international organizations they created are no longer always the main or even the most important players on the world stage. Although we could still argue that depending on the degree of importance of the issue, states, still retains some of the classical powers that made them the main determinants of the politics within the system, like when America and Russia cooperated to diffuse the tension created by the Syrian usage of chemical weapon on section of the Syrian citizens in May 2013. The concept of Global governance has created a wide and ever-growing range of actors in every domain. For example, while traditionally, global economic and social affairs have been viewed as embracing primarily intergovernmental relationships, today, such affairs must be framed in comprehensive ways to include local and international non-governmental organizations, grassroots and citizen movements, human rights activists, multinational corporations, environmental groups, jihadists and terrorist groups.

Global governance, specifically, refer to today’s formal and informal sets of arrangements in global affairs. The implication is that states alone cannot manage global affairs. The impact of these transnational networks can be seen in numerous achievements, such as the treaty banning landmines, the Kyoto Climate Convention, the International Criminal Court, the World Trade Organization, and the new generation of United Nations peacekeeping operations. In essence it described regimes or systems of rule, embracing both formal and informal regulatory mechanisms^[6].
 

Globalization and Global Governance

Globalization refers to transformation in the conception of boundary, territoriality and sovereignty as result of an increasing interconnectedness in the world in economic, political, social, and cultural issues and areas. For those who observe an inescapable phenomenon of globalization, the traditional conception of a state-centric international system is increasingly being replaced by a ‘global’ order. What kind of boundary-eroding and authority-diminishing processes does the state face today? Rosenau maps these challenges in relation to the problem of governance through a multifaceted perspective that allows us to capture the problem within a variety of aspects ranging from transnational to subnational. Rosenau conceives governance as “spheres of authority at all levels of human activity that amount to systems of rule in which goals are pursued through the exercise of control” (1997: 145). When the locus of effective political power can no longer be assumed to be the national governments as such, Held^[7] argues that “the idea of a political community of fate—of a self-determining collectivity—can no longer be meaningfully located within the boundaries of a single nation-state alone, as it could more reasonably be when nation-states were being forged” (Held, 2000: 399).

The dynamics of a turbulent world, the shift in the location of authority, and the disaggregation, altogether create a massive problem for states. Domestic governance is challenged as the material and moral foundation of its territorial and functional base, the nation-state, is contested by globalization. For instance, Cerny argues that despite the apparent development and spread of liberal democratic state forms in the world in the 1980s and 1990s, the possibilities for genuine and effective democratic governance are actually declining. The reason for the decline is not the idea or ideals of democracy per se. on the whole. Liberal democracy has become a major mode of governance in the modern world. But, paradoxically, its origins and dynamics sprang from the process of consolidating the nation-state, and thus it is exposed to the threats the nation-state faces today (Cerny 1999:1)^[8]. These challenges to the cardinal norm of the state-centric system, sovereignty, have serious normative ramifications. Political legitimacy in the sovereign nation-states has typically been linked to the state’s capacity to deal effectively with the demands and expectations of its citizens. This legitimacy is constrained because policy issues, owing to globalization and internationalization, increasingly require international agreement and collaboration and therefore are not any longer confined to the problem-solving capacity of individual nation-states. Held argues that in the face of global transformation “any conception of sovereignty which interprets it as an illimitable and indivisible form of public-power” is undermined. Vis-à-vis Rosenau’s turbulent world, sovereignty today is “already divided among a number of agencies—national, regional and international—and limited by the very nature of this plurality” (Held 1995: 135).

Globalization poses a challenge to the idea of governance in general. The idea of global governance developed as a response to those challenges which are required to be addressed in global level. But for a model of governance to transcend the duality of statehood defined territorially and governance defined functionally, it is to be instituted on a normative structure that would surpass the normative foundation of traditional state-centric system. If the normative linkage between the territorial state and the societal space is being challenged and transformed by globalization, then the question is whether elements of global governance could provide viable mechanisms to sustain that linkage in global scale.
 

International Regimes and Global Governance

As Zacher argues^[9] (1992), perhaps the entire body of international regimes—economic, security, environmental—might be considered as a system of global governance. The corpus of regimes is likely to enter a period of proliferation as the world experiences the effects of declining effectiveness of major war, the increasing deterioration of the environment, the widening of economic interdependence, and the global spread of communications, democracy and consumer culture. In the study of international relations, regimes are generally defined as “rules, norms, and procedures” that affect or govern state behavior in certain issue-areas. Accordingly, regimes might be considered as norm-based cooperation in the international system. Global governance implies a sphere of conduct which is global in scale operated within a governance arrangement, not a government. As an array of rules and norms, regimes may play role as codes of conduct in global governance. As international regimes are different than domestic rules and laws, “international” or “global” governance is also different in nature than a domestic governance and government. Oran Young’s analysis is particularly helpful in assessing this character of regimes in the context of global governance. Young’s^[10] (1994) ongoing attempt “to present an integrated account of regime theory as a way of thinking about governance in world affairs” allowed him to develop a genuine view of regimes. He argues that one way to look into global governance is to refer to the UN system and call for a comprehensive, legally binding, and state-centered approach to international governance. He prefers the alternative approach that looks at “issue-specific arrangements that may or may not be legally binding, may or may not assign some role to the UN or its specialized agencies, and often accord important roles to nonstate actors”. For Young, international regimes form a horizontal rather than a vertical or hierarchical system of public order. The result is a complex pattern of decentralized authority. This horizontal structure of governance enhances the capacity of individual regimes to survive serious failures in international order.

The significance of Young’s view of international regimes is that he conceives regimes in international and transnational categories. International regimes are institutional arrangements whose members are states and whose operations center on issues arising in international society, such as arms control and nuclear nonproliferation regimes. In contrast, transnational regimes are institutional arrangements whose members are nonstate actors and whose operations are pertinent to issues that arise in global civil society, such as the use of the world wide web. Young argues that global civil society can exert influence on international regimes and international society on transnational regimes. Thus global governance appears as the combined efforts of international and transnational regimes. In respect to transnational regimes, the current theories of regimes might have difficulties in establishing the ‘regime’ on nonstate actors such as NGOs, professional groups etc.
 

International Organizations and Global Governance

Another constitutive element of global governance is international organizations. The idea of global or international governance is strongly related to formal organizations. International organizations such as the UN might sometimes be considered unsuccessful, but the presence of such an institution in global scale cannot be treated simply of symbolic nature. In the context of global governance, international organizations may operate not only as conduit of the contest of state interests, but also as purposive—and perhaps, supranational—actors. As Barnett and Finnemore argue(1999)^[11], contrary to rationalistic arguments in IR, “global organizations do more than just facilitate cooperation by helping states overcome market failures, collective action dilemmas, and problems associated with interdependent social choice. They also create actors, specify responsibilities and authority among them, and define the work these actors should do, giving it meaning and normative value” (1999: 700). Thus, international organizations are not only mechanisms through which others (usually states) act, they are also purposive actors. Ethnographic studies of international organizations describe a world in which organizational goals are strongly shaped by norms of the profession that dominate the bureaucracy and the world in which they are embedded. International organizations acquire their autonomy and power because they are perceived as entities of technical rationality and have access control over information that are hard to find. For instance, the UN’s peacekeepers derive part of their authority from the claim that they are independent, objective, neutral actors who simply implement Security Council resolutions.

There is no doubt that there has been recently a swinging period of pessimism and optimism for the UN’s role in promoting world peace and security. The UN was empowered substantially by late 1980s, particularly by the emphasis it gained through Gorbachev’s “new thinking” and positive American response to it. In the short period from 1988 to 1993, there were substantially more UN military operations—over twenty new operations were launched—than during the entire first four decades of the world organization. But, this period did not last long and was followed by a downturn. The total number of UN blue helmets and the peacekeeping budget fell by two-thirds between 1994 and 1996 (Weiss et al. 1997)^[12]. The UN’s activist peacekeeping and peace enforcement profile had again changed under the pessimistic political air prevailed by subsequent failures or ineffectiveness of the peace operations in the last decade. So, what happened? According to Weiss et al. the end of the East-West struggle has placed the United States and its Western allies in an unusual leadership position; with their consent and political support the United Nations was theoretically able to play a growing role in maintaining international peace and security. Developing world—the former Third World—was no longer able to block effective international efforts simply because the Western industrialized countries are on the other side. But, on the other hand there were some structural problems that incapacitated the UN from the beginning. Only eight of the UN missions launched since 1988, have been in response to interstate conflict, the type against which the founders of the world organization had planned. The majority of UN operations have been primarily intrastate. The problem in the global conflict management and governance of security issues appears to be related to the fact that institutions and instruments created for these purposes have not been updated in accordance with the normative and strategic transformation in global politics. While the legal concept of sovereignty is increasingly challenged by the forces of globalization and changes in international normative structures (as observed in frequent humanitarian interventions in the last decade), necessary institutional arrangements in accordance with shifting normative priorities that would organize conflict management in global scale are yet to follow.

The normative significance of international organization shows in various ways. For instance, in their study of the evolution of women’s suffrage as a norm, Finnemore and Sikkink (1998)^[13] portray internalization of this norm as an interactive process among international organizations, such as the UN and ILO, and states. They argue that since 1948, emergent norms have increasingly institutionalized in international law, in the rules of multilateral organizations, and bilateral foreign policies. In the internalization stage, norms acquire a taken-for-granted quality and are no longer a matter of broad public debate. Women suffrage, slavery, and immunity of medical personnel during war are such institutionalized norms. For Finnemore and Sikkink the evolution of norms might be set as a three-stage process: norm emergence, norm cascade, and internalization. The characteristic mechanism of first stage is persuasion by norm entrepreneurs. Norm entrepreneurs, NGOs and international organizations such as the UN and ILO, attempt to convince a critical mass of states (norm leaders) to embrace new norms. The second stage is characterized more by a dynamic imitation as the norm leaders attempt to socialize other states to become norm followers. A combination of pressure for conformity, desire to enhance international legitimation, and the desire of state leaders to enhance their self-esteem facilitate norm cascades. In most cases for an emergent norm to reach a threshold and move toward the second stage, it must become institutionalized in specific sets of international rules and organizations. In similar vein Cortell and Davis (1996)^[14] illustrate the reverse process in which international norms and rules, which are embodied and promoted by international organizations, affect state behavior through the actions of domestic political actors. First, governmental officials and societal actors invoke international rules to further their own particularistic interests in domestic policy debates. Second, international institution’s rules become institutionalized into the domestic political process through their incorporation or embodiment in domestic laws.
 

Global Civil Society and Global Governance

Another important element of global governance is the emergence of global civil society. In their recent work, Activist Beyond Borders, Keck and Sikkink (1998)^[15] marked the significance of transnational advocacy networks on international and domestic structures. Global civil society is a phenomenon which is predominantly non-statist in orientation. This would automatically exclude international organizations—global or regional, whose exercise of authority remains largely dependent upon member states and whose authority replicates the bureaucratic state. Furthermore, global civil society should be distinguished from those separatist and terrorist organizations that merely seek to form new states or seize control of existing ones (Turner 1998)^[16]. The concept of civil society, however, is not limited to those groups seeking to bring about specific changes in the policies of states or practices of corporations. Indeed, one of the most distinguishing characteristics of the new social movements is the attention they raise to problems that are not amenable to direct policy responses. Civil society is getting increasingly global not only because groups are establishing strategic linkages across national borders, but also because of the nature of the issues around which NGOs and social movements converge. And the way of resolving the issues also provides the global character of the civil society. Turner (1998) argues that when these groups seek to influence direct policy and legislation within states, they are likely to do so within a global rather than parochial, national frame of reference, as suggested by the evolution of the global human rights and environmental movements. In this respect, civil society’s ‘shared-goals’ and non-violent measures whose effectiveness lies not only in their relationship to states and international organizations but also their influence on global public opinion, may have significant impact on global governance (for the potential role of religions in global governance see Falk, 2001)^[17].

Classically, the role of states in international politics is absolute. They entered into treaties, formed alliances, determined the course of economic and market relations and reserved exclusive decisions on the issue of war and peace. This period of absolute authority of state, i.e. from the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, was referred to in literature as the era of nation-state when issue of national security took center stage in global politics. Those were the period of balance of power and bi-polarity when states, and states alone , were at the center stage and together they modulate the direction and outcomes of international system. Domestically, the role of state is equally apparent in dispensing public goods such as education, social, economic and public enterprises.

Carl Marx (1814-1883) had typically classified the role of states based on what he perceived as the system in operation – the Capitalist and Socialist systems. To Marx, the Capitalist world is characterized by the dominance exercise on the public life (Proletariats) by the bourgeoisies while the Socialist world is one where state control replaced the exploitation of the bourgeoisies. Transposing this to the international system, one can postulate that while both the capitalist and the socialists theorists differed significantly in their dialectic comprehension of the underlining role of state and exiting class structure within it, both were in agreement on the central role of state in the international system. That is, states are the main determinants of the system while other identified agents, if any, should succumb to the inviolable dictates of state. Even in the contemporary times, just as there are considerable debates on the central role of states among the realists, neo-realists, liberals, structural liberalists and constructivists, most of the liberals and social constructivists that expressed wide ranging difference on the obsession of the realists with state power and authority and posited on the importance of inter-dependence among states and normative structures and processes, still equally recognized that such exists to provide helpful effects on the central role of state within the system.

Theoretically, especially prior to the demise of the former Soviet Union in 1991, state-centric paradigm in which state was considered as the dominant and only meaningful actors in world affairs dictate the pace in the international system. Perhaps, the bi-polar nature of the global system, especially the contests between the United States and the Soviet Union and alliances nature of the system, gave credence to this paradigm which believed that global affairs then took place within the anarchic contest of East and West relations. This is particularly important considering the issue of national security that was the main determinant of relations. Though, other actors like the Multinational Corporations (MNCs) represented by big businesses like British Petroleum (BP), Royal Dutch Shell; Religious Group (Catholic Church); Professional groups, like ‘Medicine San Frontiers’; Specific Group, like Amnesty International and International Personalities, have long played one role or the other within the system, their influence were regarded as not significantly profound as to dictate pace in a way that could qualify them to change state policy and interests. Indeed, the profound influence of states was apparent during the Cold War.

States traditionally were the main determinants of the system. Interestingly, examination of both the past and contemporary politics within the United Nations points to the central role of state in the international system. States are the major recognized units. All other units owed their existence to the interest and acceptance of the participating states. This is fundamental in three respects. First, states were the only parties to the formation of the UN. For example, twenty-six nation-states were the first to affirm the principles of Atlantic Charter and agreed to create a new organization replacing the former League of Nations. When the United Nations Conference on International Organizations later convened in San Francisco on 25 April 1945, delegates from the fifty participating states modified and finalized what had already being agreed by the major powers^[18]. Therefore looking at the background, nation-states are the creator of global organizations where other actors later participated.

Two, the wording of the Charter of the UN and even the League that preceded it appealed only to nation-states and not extra-state actors. Looking at the key provisions of the Charter of the United Nations (UN) - i.e. Chapters I, VI, VII and except in chapter VIII which affirmed the creation of regional organizations, states were the only recognizable social units and actors by the Charter. For instance, Chapter I on the purposes and the principles of the body stressed in its Articles 2 (sections 3, 4, and 7) the importance of settlement of disputes by states parties through peaceful means, abstinence from the threat use of force in the conduct of international relations which are believed to be dominated by states and states only, and preclusion of the body to even interfere in matters considered to be essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of states. Also, articles VI on the pacific settlement of disputes which represented a hang-over from the pre-war experiences when alliances and counter-secret alliances resulted in the two major world wars and chapter viii on threat to peace, breaches of peace and acts of aggression also appealed profoundly to states and not extra-actors.

Third, building of consensus within the UN is only by the consent of states and not extra-actors. The legalistic provisions of the Charter which prescribed equality of all members and “one state one vote” policy are all affirmations of the importance placed on the central role of states in the international system. As Kenneth Waltz asserts “international politics consists of like units duplicating one another’s activities”^[19].

By and large, states continue to be key actors in global governance. They alone possess sovereignty which historically given them authority not only over the territory they administer and the people they ruled upon but also over power delegated to international institutions created by them. States create IGOs and set their mandates; they create international law and norms and determine their effectiveness through their compliance and failure to comply^[20]. Although there exists both small and large states within the system and the role they played is consequent upon their influence within the system. During the Cold War, both the United States and Soviet Union used their dominant presence to shape the course of the system at that period. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States has been playing major role in shaping world affairs. Although, its influencing role predates the end of the cold war because her dominant position after the WW II was deployed to shape much of the structures and rules of post-war international system. The Bretton woods institutions (World Bank, International Monetary Fund), multilateral institutions were all shaped by American ideas and value which are transferred to other states within the system.

On the other hand one could notice that smaller and medium states also exhibit some roles and have been influencing events in some ways. Just as the US was put under tremendous pressures from other less powerful states in the UN following its unilateral intervention in Iraq in 2003, which later forced it to seek the endorsement of the UN Security Council for its continued presence in the country. Also, the international economic relations are being determined in consultations with the other G-8 members of France, Britain, Russia, and Japan.

However and despite all of the above, almost all states are lacking in capability to control the sweeping changes in all sectors of local and global societies and thus global governance is fundamental, extra actors are becoming more powerful within the contemporary international system. The increasing diffusion of state power and the corresponding spread of the locus of authority have produced disorder in the international system beyond what was experienced during the period when the very locus of international authority and legitimacy to act rested purely on states. While it is suitable for scholars of international politics to point at the increasing positive influence of extra-state actors in world affairs, the operations of those classified on the dark side, especially in re-defining the concept of disorder has brought a question as to what extent is the current international system characterized by tactful or disorder?

Prior to 11 September, 2001 terrorist attack in the US, the system was defined by consideration for economic integration and trade liberalization issues with the calls for a new world economic order by developing states gaining resonance. All that changed when nineteen young men with an unwavering ideological fervor changed the course of human history. Al Qaeda and its affiliates tragically transformed what is hitherto regarded as operation reserved for states “Terrorism” to global reckoning. Terrorism was previously a state-sponsored project or at-least maintained state-centric aspirations (such as the Irish and Palestinian question). Nowadays, al-Qaeda operates outside the state system, and its “success” is due largely to its ability to manipulate the mechanisms of global governance such as cross border travel, advanced communication technology, and the international media to its advantages^[21].

Terrorism apart, international system currently characterized by disorder has rear its head in another way. Prior to the end of the Cold War, the system was dominated by inter-state conflicts with no sympathizers beyond the confines of the territorial spaces where such were being fought. Today, intra-state ethnic or jihadist conflicts of severe magnitude that shared network across borders has replaced inter-state one. This type of wars is what Oliver Ramsbotham et. al. (2010:76) typically classified into three (3) - factional, revolutionary- ideology and identity-secession conflicts^[22]. In factional conflict, while it does not mean that states are not involved, either overtly or covertly, or that such does not spill over across state borders or draw other states into it, it does involve coupes d’état, intra elite power struggle, brigandage, criminality and warlordism where ultimate aim is to usurp, seize or retain state power merely for economic or other interests. Example here is the current conflicts in both South Sudan and Central African Republic (CAR).

The second type of conflicts, which is revolutionary ideology, involves the more ambitious aim of changing the government in a state, such as the on-going Syrian war. This has three features in terms of changing form of government from capitalist to socialist (pre-end of Cold War situation in Africa and Latin America), changing the form of government from dictatorship to democracy or changing the religious orientation of the state. The last two are now the features of the international system. The third conflicts in Ramsbotham’s typology, i.e. identity/secession conflicts are defined in terms of relative status of communities or communal groups in relations to the state. Depending on the contextual situation, this includes struggle for access, autonomy, secession and control, which invariably means a threat to integrity of state.

Although, fundamentally, it has become difficult to argue that issues of war and peace still dominate system relations giving the diminishing returns of inter-state conflicts. The number of death from the intra-state conflict falling either in above typology has increased exponentially. For instance, the estimated over 2 million deaths recorded in the Rwanda Civil war surpassed the combined estimates of the Somalian-Ethiopian border war (1977), Mali-Burkina-Faso (1985) or British-Argentine over Falklands in 1982, despite the sophisticated ammunitions available to these wars compared with cutlasses, axes and knives used in Rwanda. So also is the increase in internal discontents, aided by technological innovation – social media Twitters, Facebook, Whatsup etc., - that produced destabilizing effects on regimes abroad. Arab Spring of 2011 is a classic example here.

Another level of analysis is the drain and strains imposed by this multiplicity of disorder on especially UN scope of peace keeping operations and budgets. Unlike during the Cold War, where, for instance, a UN missions like that of UN Congo Peace Keeping or the Transitional Authority in Cambodia operations were simply enough operational mechanisms for conflict areas, in the contemporary international disorder, several of the above listed operations could combined, often indeterminately, in a single conflict area such as the situation in Iraq.

Al- Qaeda and intra-state ethnic conflicts notwithstanding, the profits from the global drug trafficking now dwarf the economies of many countries. According to one estimate, the value of all the cocaine produced in Latin America in 2001 was approximately US$93 billion – an amount greater than the national income of three-quarters of the nations in the world. In the US, a total of $60 billion is estimated to be the worth of the industry. The fact here is that with such vast and limitless funds, sophisticated criminal gangs of networks that control this trade are having profound effects on the ability of some states to govern themselves. Today, armed bandits, composed mainly of sea pirates and armed dealers, control the collapsed state of Somalia. The impact that elements on the dark side is having on states is so profound that any foreign policy decision that fails to take into account of all these realities in the global world will simply be that of foreign policy in disarray. Apart from simply shaping policies, their impact is forcing many states to increase national budget on defense and security to such an extent that dwarf other social considerations like education, poverty and health.

Adding to the above is the increasing use of “mercenaries” in the name of private military contractors to prosecute war on terror. While use of war mercenaries have long being part of the system, the way they are now being directly engaged by states has brought disorder into the system. Foreign military campaigns have long been undertaken by national armies or security but the trend has shifted in favor of the use of private military contractors provided by private security companies. This trend has grown steadily since the Gulf war of 1991, with their ratio to national soldiers moving from 50:1 in 1991 to the current 7:1. The experience in Iraq, beginning from 2004, have seen the US engaging employees of a private company, Blackwater USA, to provide sundry security services in the country. It has been estimated that at least 20,000 employees from 60 different private military companies were under contract to the US to provide security in Iraq. Special Forces handle an estimated 30% of non-essential security services, guarding reconstruction sites, escorting convoys through hostile areas and defending locations and individuals^[23].

Even some head of governments in Africa and elsewhere are presently guarded by private contractors ostensibly as a result of lack of confidence in their intelligence apparatus or fact of hostile environment that overwhelm national security. President Ahmed Karzai of Afghanistan is protected by personnel from the US’s firm of DynCorp. In Nigeria, some of the former militants in the oil rich but restive Niger-Delta are now being engaged and given multi-billion dollars’ contract to police some waterways against oil smuggling, pirating and other espionage activities. The recent use of the so-called “white Army” composed of ethnic militias from a tribe in South Sudan to prosecute the on-going conflicts in that country by one of the combatants is also one notable example of the growing disorderliness. The use of private “militias” is becoming a fastest growing sector in the defense industry.
 

Conclusion

The idea of global governance emerged as a normative response to challenges that significantly diminish state’s governing capacity and normative precedence in the face economic, political, and cultural transformations in world politics. A notion of global governance and subsequent governance models must address that transformation in the normative structures. If the normative linkage between the territorial state and the societal space is being challenged and transformed by globalization, then the question is whether elements of global governance could provide viable mechanisms to sustain that linkage in global scale. In the area of global governance, however, the constitutive elements, such as international regimes and international organizations are created by states; and the maneuvers of global civil society can be controlled by states to a certain extent. But the influence in reverse direction, namely the impact of regimes, international organization, and civil society on state preferences and policies is also an undeniable phenomenon in world politics today. The extent of this impact will depend on the effectiveness of emerging normative structures over the traditional structures. In the absence of globalization and subsequent transformation, states would seek alternative actions if they were not significantly vulnerable to an issue observed by a certain structure of global governance. But global and also transmittable character of environmental issues and the challenge of globalization in economic issues oblige states to involve in the global governance structures that are designed to address those issues. Accordingly, in the absence of normative transformation (particularly after the end of the Cold War), states’ level of vulnerability in human rights issues would be considered low, because the violation of such rights in one state does not create an intrinsic challenge to another—except in the cases of ethnic relations. However, recent developments in the area of global governance, that is the increasing significance of the UN via humanitarian interventions and growing voice of the global civil society considerably raised the consideration of human rights in world politics, which had traditionally been accorded a lower priority.

This development has now elicited a reaction as to whether state-system is actually receding and shirking in one of its primary responsibilities? The plausible answer here is that rather than receding, states are still active new elements such as terrorists, drug dealers, pirates, jihadists have emerged that gives the world system a new direction. The hitherto monopoly of state in the use of force is now been shared in a way that states cannot afford to ignore. Global governance is now characterized by the “tyranny of extra-state actors”. A phenomenon that produced new international system broadly defined in five discreet categories by Cohen et al. al. as that of direct engagement between states and non-states actors; selective engagement or episodic burden sharing; circumvention of states by extra-actors; conflicting relations and agenda setting^[24].

The real actors in the contemporary global governance are now those elements on the dark side such as terrorists, drug dealers, transnational jihadist, war mercenaries which actions are been fuelled by rising tide of poverty, neglect, unemployment, dislocation in the society and some not well articulated and discredited western policies. Their influences could be felt in two ways. First, is the way the ideology they exhibit has become like a franchise which everyone in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe and America are trying to buy-in? Some of these elements are now having “diplomatic representations” in form of network of terrorist groups that scattered across aforementioned centers. Second, the change they are bringing to the foreign policy of states making such to become increasingly privatized in order to curtail the activities of these transnational elements. Many national securities across major airports are now contracted to private companies to stem the influx of terrorist groups. Their transnational networks are challenging concept of state – territory, people and authority in a more different way.
 

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تشارك النفوذ في الحكم الشامل يرهق الدولة

في عالم من الاتكال المتبادل والاضطرابات، يشمل الحكم الشامل نشاطات الحكومات ولكنه يشمل أيضًا العناصر في مراكز القيادة وآليات التحكم لاتخاذ القرارات ومتابعة السياسات. لا وجود لمبدأ واحد منظِم يحوم حوله هؤلاء العناصر. إننا نعيش في عالم مضطرب وليس في عالم من المبادىء. كل ما يمكننا قوله هو أن العمليات التي يشارك فيها هؤلاء العناصر هي على طول الحدود المحلية – الخارجية وبعيدًا عن القيود المحلية.
إن تطبيق مبدأ الحكم الشامل جاء كنتيجة مباشرة لأدلة قوية بأن البيئة الدولية لم تعد حكرًا حصرًا على الدول بل على شبكة مترابطة من التفاعلات التي تتضمن الدول وعناصر أخرى حيث يتم وضع الأعراف وتشارك الأهداف بوسائل فيها المزيد من التعاون على الرغم من أنهاا وسائل أقل إرضاءً.
مقارنة مع الوضع السابق نرى بأن سلطة الدولة تتآكل بطرق أساسية. دراسة فكرة تشارك النفوذ بين الدول  وفكرة الحكم الشامل ليست بالمهمة السهلة التي يمكن أن ينفذها باحث واحد ولهذا السبب يعتمد هذا المقال إلى حد كبير على ملاحظات واكتشافات  باحثين بارزين آخرين.