The US, the UN System, and Global Governance

gained a unilateral veto based on its 17% percent voting power by altering the decision-making rules in the IMF. Similarly, the United States dominated the Council during the 1950s because most of the Council members were its allies, whereas the USSR was basically alone at that time. During the 1970s, the United States could not dominate the issue agenda because of both the increase of developing states in the Council and the independent tendencies of it allies. However, it could still deter the passage of unfavorable resolution drafts. After the Cold War, the US has often used its power for purposes of persuasion relative to the other fourteen members of the Council. The Gulf War was an excellent example of America’s powers of persuasion. The United States, through various economic and diplomatic means, succeeded in winning the support of the other Council members. It cannot be denied that since the end of the Cold War, the US can rally the most support in the United Nations for its foreign policy.

Therefore, the openness of international organizations has great impact on the US influence in postwar organizations. Combining the two factors, relative power and organizational openness, we can develop feasible and effective hypotheses of the US influence on international organizations. The empirical studies have fully demonstrated the hypotheses, and have in turn proved the explanatory clout of power and openness. Hence, we can draw the conclusion that the status of power and the extent of openness combined decide the hegemon’s influence in postwar international organizations.

governance” was put forward for the first time in 1995, when the Oxford University press published a book titled Our Global Neighborhood, the Report of the Commission on Global Governance. Specifically speaking, global governance has been viewed as primarily involving only intergovernmental relationships, but it must now be understood as also involving non-governmental organizations (NGOs), citizens’

movements, multinational corporations, and the global capital market. Effective global decision-making needs to build upon and influence decisions made locally, nationally, and regionally, and to draw on the skills and resources of a diversity of people and institutions at many levels.²⁴³

According to Oran Young, “Global governance” refers to the combined efforts of international and transnational regimes.²⁴⁴ International regimes are institutional arrangements whose members are states and whose operations center on issues arising in international society. Transnational regimes, by contrast, are institutional arrangements whose members are non-state actors and whose operations are pertinent to issues that arise in global civil society. Real world regimes are often a mixture of international regimes in which non-state actors play significant roles and transnational regimes in which states have important roles to play.²⁴⁵ Regarding the gap between the demand for governance and the supply of governance at the international level, there are several different responses. First is the pessimistic group that focuses on humankind’s ability to cope with the world’s troubles. Second is the reform group that hopes to improve the global situation through reforming the UN (its preferred mechanism for change). Third is the carving-out-a-new-way group that seeks to create regimes or sets of roles, rules, and relationships that focus on specific problems and do not require administration by centralized political organizations. ²⁴⁶

Thus, existing theories on global governance are focused on the importance of international regimes that tend to limit the influence of states (especially the hegemon). This is very different from the discourse of Realist theories, such as the Hegemonic Stability Theory, which emphasize the importance of hegemonic power for global governance and public good. Indeed, it is one of the core issues in debates about contemporary international relations theory. Theorists of global governance and Liberal Institutionalism believe that international institutions themselves can well provide public goods for the global society, while Hegemonic Stability theorists suggest that the decline of hegemonic power will lead to the lack of global public goods such as international security and open markets. To further elaborate on this point, the theory of global public goods and its importance in international development is briefly reviewed.

Global public goods must meet two criteria. The first is that their benefits have strong qualities of

“publicness”—that is, they are marked by a lack of rivalry in consumption as well as a lack of excludability.

These features place them in the general category of public goods. The second criterion is that their benefits are quasi-universal in terms of countries (covering more than one group of countries), people (accruing to Oxford University Press, 1995, p 2.

243 Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighbourhood, pp. 2-3.

244 Oran Young, Governance in World Affairs, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999, p. 11.

245 Ibid.

246 Ibid., p. 2.

several, preferably all, population groups), and generations (extending to both current and future generations, or at least meeting the needs of the current generation without hindering development options for future generations.)²⁴⁷ The publicum should be the beneficiaries of public goods. This issue is important because we live in a highly divided and inequitable world where some actors are more influential than others in setting public policy agendas and where some goods (even supposedly public goods) are more easily accessible to some people than to others.²⁴⁸ Hence, even though a public good has worldwide benefits in the sense of reaching all, its benefits may be accessible only to better-off people or states, further marginalizing the poor (states). Actually, there are only a few countries close enough to the great powers to actually enjoy “public goods,” such as Mexico in the 1994 economic crisis. However, other countries, like many East Asian countries in the 1997 financial crisis, are very far away from rapid and effective global assistance. A number of African countries have undergone severe poverty and civil wars, but they have not received many “global public goods.”

There is a useful way to categorize global public goods: final and immediate. Final global public goods are outcomes rather than “goods” in the standard sense. They are similar to what we usually deem public goods. Intermediate global public goods, such as international regimes, contribute towards the provisioning of final global public goods. Note that global public goods such as economic growth arise from a mixture of public and private inputs. Perhaps the most important intermediate public goods are international regimes. Organizations are bodies or mechanisms, usually resulting from international agreements, which are intended to facilitate consultations and negotiations among member parties. They also monitor treaty compliance, provide other types of information, or undertake operational activities.²⁴⁹ Thus, since international organizations can provide global public goods, they are also deemed to be intermediate global public goods. Indeed, the actions of multilateral institutions should not be constrained by the hegemonic interests in global governance.

2.2 Hegemonic Power and the UN in Global Governance

A number of scholars have talked about the relationship between hegemonic power and global governance. Tanja Bruhl and Volker Rittberger refer to three models of global governance. “The first model associates global governance with various conceptions of a world state. Following this line of reasoning, the mutual fear of being attacked or exploited by others can be effectively reduced only by installing a

‘Leviathan’, by creating a central authority with the capacity to make and enforce norms and rules.”²⁵⁰ This model is not very likely to emerge in the near future. However, another similar model, hegemonic global

247 UNDP, Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21^st Century, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 2.

248 Ibid., p. 9.

249 Ibid., p 13.

250 Tanja Bruhl and Volker Rittberger, “From International to Global Governance: Actors, collective decision-making, and the United Nations in the world of the twenty-first century, ” Volker Rittberger (ed.), Global Governance and the United Nations System, United Nations University Press, 2002, pp. 24-25.

governance, is realistic. As they point out, “the second model of global governance also assumes that compliance can be achieved only through a hierarchical sanctioning power. The subordination of other states to the hegemonic order, and their compliance with the rules that constitute this order, is guaranteed by the superior power of the hegemon. The hegemonic system is still composed of sovereign states.”²⁵¹

However, in the view of these two scholars, global governance under a hegemonic power is not comprehensive and benign to all states. “The hegemonic order most likely could, and would, cover only a much smaller range of international activities, leaving those (global or regional) cooperation problems unattended that are not vital from the point of view of the hegemon. Another difference between the hegemonic order and the world state model is that a hegemonic order can, but need not, be global.”²⁵² Thus, their view is very different from that of Hegemonic Stability theorists. “As the debate on US power sharpened so we saw an increasing number of commentators and politicians succumbing to the temptations and illusions of liberal empire – viewing the United States as the only possible provider of global security and other international public goods; as the only state with the capacity to undertake the interventionist and state-building tasks that the changing character of security have rendered to vital; and as the essential power-political pivot for the expansion of global liberalism.”²⁵³

Of course, as noted above, it is a very rare occasion when the hegemon uses military or economic power to directly interfere with international affairs. Previously, Britain established a series of international institutions to govern the global economy. As the United States became the hegemon, it has tried to realize global governance through various hegemonic international institutions. These organizations include the G-8, NATO, and the United Nations System. Andrew Hurrell is one scholar who has explored the relationship among US power, the G-8 organization, and the hegemonic global governance. According to his viewpoint, since the mid-1990s, annual summits have incorporated more social issues and developing country concerns into their agendas, but they have failed to demonstrate much progress on these issues.

“Similarly, the G8 has failed to produce the kind of global leadership necessary to jettison the failed Neoliberal model for managing the global economy. For many NGOs and developing countries, the G8 summit remains a symbol of elite global governance, but concerns about the legitimacy of this self-constituted forum are increasingly overshadowed by criticisms of the forum’s ineffectiveness.”²⁵⁴

Hurrell thinks that with the revival of American hegemonic power, the G-8 should be able to realize better global governance than before. “Due to its powerful economy, its lead in information technology, and its lack of military competitors, the U.S. once again exercises hegemonic power in the capitalist world—which now encompasses virtually the entire planet. Washington and the other G8/G7 leaders could

251 Ibid., p. 26.

252 Ibid., p. 27.

253 Andrew Hurrell, “Power and Legitimacy in Global Governance,” at the Official Website of Princeton University:

http://www.princeton.edu/~pcglobal/conferences/normative/papers/Session4_Hurrell.pdf, p. 2.

254 Tom Barry, “G-8: Failing Model of Global Governance,” Foreign Policy in Focus, June 27, 2002, at the Official Website of AlterNet: http://www.alternet.org/globalaffairs/13471/.

begin by taking the representation and legitimacy critiques more seriously. Within successful global governance, there can be a constructive role for self-constituted groupings of like-minded countries such as the G8/G7.”²⁵⁵

Another scholar, Richard Bissell, talks about the relationship between the US hegemonic power and the UN role in global governance. In his view, the US uses many instruments, especially financial means, to enhance its influence on the UN. For instance, he notes that, “in September 1978, Congress placed a restriction on funds appropriated for US assessed contribution to UN agencies, prohibiting their use for technical assistance activities (the Helms Amendment).” The reason for the congress’ disaffection with the UN could be generalized as follows: the loss of US and Western European controlling influence in the Organization; Congress’ disagreement with various political actions of the General Assembly; the use of the United Nations by the developing countries to bring about a redistribution of wealth and power through the creation of a New International Economic Order; the nature of financing for technical assistance programs;

Congress’ dissatisfaction with recent decisions of the Committee on Contribution of the General Assembly;

and finally, the size and growth rate of the budgets of the UN and the specialized agencies.²⁵⁶ Thus, US support for the UN’s role in global governance is based on the prerequisite that it can play a dominant role in the United Nations. This requirement leads to the conclusion that global governance through the United Nations is dependent on US influence on the organization. If the United States has a critical influence on the United Nations, it will be more likely to act multilaterally. If it cannot control the agenda and outcomes of the United Nations, it will tend toward unilateral hegemonic global governance. As mentioned above, a number of scholars think both of these two approaches are problematic.

2.3 Multilateral Openness and the UN in Global Governance

The other issue addressed in this dissertation, the openness of international organizations, is also closely related to the relationship between the US, the United Nations System, and global governance. The multilateral openness of the United Nations definitely influences the process of global governance.

Multilateralism is an institutional form that coordinates relations among three or more states on the basis of generalized principles of conduct. These principles specify appropriate conduct for a class of actions without regard to the particularistic interests of the parties or the strategic exigencies that may exist in any specific occurrence.²⁵⁷ The institution of multilateralism consists of the three principles of indivisibility, generalized organizing principles (nondiscrimination), and diffuse reciprocity. According to Lisa Martin’s case studies, the state officials believed multilateralism was a valuable means of reaching goals such as liberalization of the international trading system, the security of Western Europe, and economic growth. By

255 Tom Barry, “G-8: Failing Model of Global Governance,” Foreign Policy in Focus, June 27, 2002.

256 Richard E. Bissell, “The United States in he UN: Past and Present”, The US, the UN and the Management of Global Change, p. 103.

257 John Gerard Ruggie, “Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an Institution”, edited by John Gerard Ruggie, Multilatralism Matters: The Theory and Praxis of an Institutional Form, Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 11.

treating multilateralism as a means rather than a goal, we open the possibility that alternative devices will be equal or superior in their utility for reaching higher-level ends such as liberalization.²⁵⁸ As I have noted in the introduction to the dissertation, there are two aspects or features of the postwar international organization: hegemonic and multilateral. Here, the studies of multilateral openness and the UN in global governance are briefly reviewed.

Generally speaking, international organizations are the product of freely negotiated and voluntarily ratified treaties and institutions. This would appear to indicate that other states have found those values congenial. Indeed, multilateralism can enhance the openness of an international system, thus decreasing the importance of secret diplomacy and hegemonic states in global governance. As Inis Claude points out, American dissatisfaction with international organizations and uncertainties about the role that the United States can or should play in them are profound, but these are largely reflections of dissatisfaction and uncertainty about the contemporary world and the place of the United States in it.²⁵⁹ Of course, for the hegemon, if multilateral agencies can be induced to serve the liberal and market principles, they may be far more effective than unilateral American action. They can encourage general adoption and facilitate realization of the values that Americans believe essential to good societies at the national and international levels.²⁶⁰ Claude concludes by stating that the United States has been emphasizing the importance of multilateralism in international relations. “The creation, development, utilization, and support of multilateral agencies constitute an essential part of the practice of American values in international relations, just as attendance at church services and tithing are sometimes treated as essential parts of religious observance.”²⁶¹

American support of multilateralism and international organizations has been criticized from time to time. However, there are also criticisms (by the US and other countries) about the effectiveness of multilateral cooperation and openness. One opinion suggests that the United Nations should not be endowed with too much power or independence because it is just a forum. The large degree of openness in the UNGA and other specialized agencies has given these groups a lack of organization and an inability to act decisively. The other opinion is much more optimistic. Donald Puchula thinks that, “rhetoric is important, but so is performance. Looking at the record, when actual UN decisions and programs of action are examined, what emerges in fact is a marked congruence between UN policies and US preferences.”²⁶² Thus, from this perspective, it is still difficult to find a link between multilateral openness, cooperation, and effective global governance.

However, multilateral openness is still a very important factor in today’s global governance because it

258 Lisa L. Martin, “The Rational State Choice of Multilateralism”, edited by John Gerard Ruggie, Multilateralism Matters:

The Theory and Praxis of an Institutional Form, p. 91.

259 Inis L. Claude, Jr, States and the Global System: Politics, Law and Organization, p. 101.

260 Ibid., p. 107.

261 Ibid.

262 Donald J. Puchala, “US National Interests and the United Nations”, p. 344.

can balance the hegemon’s huge influence and unilateral urges. This has disclosed the other aspect of international organization and global governance. Thus, the conclusion of this dissertation can be applied to the issue of global governance. Also, when the hegemon will tend towards unilateralism and hegemonic global governance, as well as when it will be more enthusiastic about the idea of institutional governance can be more accurately predicted. Additionally, the process of global governance can be better understood and predicted. When the United States plays a critical role in international organizations, global governance might be effective, but not comprehensive. When the hegemon cannot dominate postwar international institutions, truly democratic institutional governance with a large degree of openness can be realized though its effectiveness is still in doubt. In conclusion, the findings of this dissertation can tell us much more in other issue areas.

In concluding this dissertation, two points should be emphasized. First, although the three organizations are the most important ones in their respective issue areas and each represent different levels of openness, the conclusion of this dissertation still cannot be considered to be universally applicable. The case studies are very typical and representative, but they are mainly focused on US influence on critical international organizations. If a different study were to deal with organizations that are not critical and a state that is not a hegemon, would the evolution of that state’s influence be accurately predicted by this model? More work must be done before this question can be answered. The objective here is limited to a study of the most important state and the most important organizations. The second point that needs emphasizing is that this dissertation does not deny the importance of other factors, such as the domestic politics of the United States, though they are usually intermediating variables. However, as an analytical framework, I have tried to focus on the most important factors that can decide the basic evolution of US influence. This dissertation is not aimed at explaining a question as comprehensively as possible. In fact, it is trying to demonstrate a basic framework that contains the most significant determining factors.