ABOUT THE PROJECT

The shortfall in global governance reflects both the complexity of the issues and the inadequacy of existing institutions.  The global agenda and rules of globalisation have so far been set primarily by Europe and the United States, reflecting the distribution of power and capacity that existed at the end of World War Two. The formal organisations these countries have developed – the UN, WTO, the IMF and the World Bank – do not fully address the concerns of the 21^st century and do not possess the global legitimacy needed to serve as the fora within which the world can tackle its most pressing problems. Other existing institutions – the G8 and other G-groups, networks of regulators, private-public partnerships, and transnational civil society coalitions – remain underdeveloped and/or generally unrepresentative.

It is clear that in order to make the significant strides needed to improve effective decision making for the global agenda, we need new approaches to global governance. In response to this compelling need, in January 2008 the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) and its Centre on Asia and Globalisation (CAG) launched the three-year S.T. Lee Project on Global Governance. The project brings together top thinkers and practitioners from East and West to develop insights and recommendations on how to govern a world that includes a rising Asia.  It is co-chaired by LKYSPP Dean Kishore Mahbubani and CAG Director and Brookings Senior Fellow Ann Florini.

The project addresses two key sets of questions:

1. How can states, the private sector and civil society better organise to address the deficiencies in global governance? In a world of emerging multipolarity and deepening globalisation, how can the international community take effective collective action?

2. What is Asia’s role in dealing with these issues? How can, and should, Asia translate its emerging economic clout into positive political influence that will strengthen global governance?

The project will include several study groups.  The Concepts Group will aim to develop a common intellectual framework or at least a common language, examining such fundamental concepts as the role and meaning of sovereignty and democracy in global governance and the variety of experiments in managing global issues that involve a host of state and non-state actors. 

The Project's other study groups will explore the application of these concepts to the governance of some of the most compelling issues on the global agenda, namely energy, health and the global economy.  Because these issues and their solutions necessarily overlap, so too will the membership of the study groups.  

The Project's inaugural conference was held in Singapore on 4-6 December, 2008 and over the course of the next two years, the project will commission a number of papers, produce policy briefs and academic articles, hold a series of  study group workshops and international conferences, and culminate with the production of an edited volume and one or more single-authored books by project participants.

INTELLECTUAL FRAMEWORK

The intellectual content of the project is framed by two central themes:

First is the need to address the breakdown of the liberal order established under US leadership after World War Two. That order, which depended on US dominance and intellectual leadership, can no longer depend so heavily on either, and must become politically and intellectually inclusive of the dramatic rise of the “emerging market” countries, particularly in Asia.

Second is the need to manage the governance gaps created by a rapidly globalising world. This involves developing effective means of handling issues never adequately addressed by the current order, from global-scale environmental despoliation and unchecked financial turmoil to the potential for global pandemics.

Underlying both these themes is a crucial unresolved debate over the nature of authority and the role of state sovereignty in the new world order. The order that emerged from the second world war reflected the global distribution of power then prevailing, but we are now witnessing tectonic shifts in that global hierarchy. At the same time, we have not yet found a way to reconcile the principle of sovereign equality with the reality of a harshly unequal world. These tensions are further complicated by the expansion in the range of actors effectively exercising authority on the global stage. States remain dominant, but the role of non-state entities, from private companies to civil society organisations, and partnerships and networks between and within them, can no longer be ignored.

There is no shortage of ideas on how to meet this complex bundle of needs. Institutionally, the world is experimenting with a range of transnational mechanisms, from networks and partnerships to regulations and law. Yet this institutional diversity is as reflective of the multiple disagreements and confusion attached to the management of global issues, as of actual progress on global governance.

Major differences in the way in which East and West think about global issues have yet to be bridged. Fundamental questions of accountability and legitimacy that surround some of the new mechanisms remain unanswered. There is a desperate shortage of thinking on how to make sense of the existing institutional diversity in global governance. Without a more rigorous and inclusive intellectual effort, we are unlikely to reach any political consensus on how to deal with the global agenda, let alone witness the formation of truly effective global collective action.