WT44 – Global affairs and global governance

In partnership with :

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) : www.vub.ac.be (english version)
The Royal Institute for International Relations - EGMONT : www.egmontinstitute.be
United Nations University - Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS) : www.cris.unu.edu

Workshop Presentation

The present international order was conceived after the Second World War and by the winners of that war. It is a decisive progress and vital for the management of a unique, populated and fragile planet. But this international order is today characterised by relationships of force born of the defeat of Japan and Germany, Asia, and of the balance of defence established during the Cold War. It is also, and even more so, characterised by the conceptions of the time of an international order based in theory on negotiation between a multitude of sovereign countries and in practice on the capacity of the most powerful of them, the United States, to impose the rules of the game.

In the last 60 years, since the end of the Second World War, the world has changed completely. The weight of the United States in world wealth has been considerably reduced with the reconstruction of Europe, the development of Japan and the Asian dragons and, more recently, the development of China and India or even Brazil and South Africa. In spite of the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States no longer has the economic resources and the principles necessary to continue to ensure an imperial order for long. With the independences of the 1950s and 1960s, countries presumed sovereign have multiplied, making international management based on relations between states very hard to achieve.

The objectives assigned to the UN have grown in number, giving rise to a growing number of UN agencies without proper operational resources. The international financial institutions, the IMF and World Bank come under a different logic of management to the UN. Finally, due to economic globalisation, the World Trade Organisation acts as a third authority of international regulation.

Growing interdependencies between societies and between humanity and the biosphere are making necessary and urgent the emergence of a world governance that is democratic, legitimate and effective. Today, we are a long way short of the target. There is no unanimity as to the principles on which this governance should be founded, on the institutions that would implement it or on the place of states in this new system.

As a result of the relative decline of the United States, with the notable exception of its military supremacy, the European Union and China, which have developed until now under the shelter of the United States, should certainly play an increasing role in global regulations and a driving role in the conception of a new global governance. Everyone will come to this with their own conceptions of governance and their own vision of the inclusion of their domestic space in a wider world.

The purpose of this workshop will be to mark out the essential dimensions of the conception of world governance in China and Europe to see on which points common initiatives might be taken.