Post-Conference:
The Conference:
General Information:
Conference hosts:
Past Conference:

Sponsors:







"Global Governance and its Discontents"

organized by the Working Group on Governance


"Global Governance and its Discontents" covers various aspects of global governance. It emphasises the problem of policy incoherence for development, due to commonly agreed development policies and objectives being frustrated by the different policies promoted in some other sectors or by some international actors.

Firstly, our purpose is to look at various theoretical approaches in analysing policy incoherence in the context of global governance. For example, the notion of "global governance" as such downplays the issue of policy incoherence, whereas seeing anarchy i.e. lack of a higher authority or government as the main condition of the international system, tends to exaggerate the problem. Furthermore, while efficiency inevitably requires coherence, it should also be acknowledged that there are cases where incoherence cannot be avoided. What is important then, is that the objectives of different actors and/or different policy sectors are identified and that their short term and long term impacts are discussed and assessed so that they can be duly weighted and prioritised in the decision making process.

Secondly, we would welcome methodological discussion based on empirical studies on the discontents/incoherence of global governance. The policies of the European Union, of course, provide ample and well studied examples - the incoherence between the EU agricultural policy and development policy being one of the major one. We would also like to cover examples from the UN bodies like the contradictions between Millennium Development Agenda and WTO rulings, for instance.

Thirdly, our aim is to discuss the importance of multidisciplinary knowledge for the identification of mechanisms to reach compatible objectives between different policy sectors (environment, security, trade, aid) and between developed and developing countries; and/or mechanisms through which different policy objectives can be prioritised for the sake of "intended" or "dynamic" incoherence to use the terms of Paul Hoebink and others.

Please use the Online Submission Tool to submit your abstract. We welcome submissions in English and French.

Conveners:

Liisa Laakso
Masters' Programme in Development and International Co-operation
Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy
University of Jyväskylä
Finland
E-Mail: liisa.laakso@yfi.jyu.fi

Gordon Crawford
Centre for Development Studies
School of Politics and International Studies
University of Leeds
United Kingdom
E-Mail: g.crawford@leeds.ac.uk
back