Clubs, Clubs Clubs – How to Lead the Way to Better Global Governance?

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Much discussion of new international organizations has accompanied the recent examination of global governance reform in the light of the completed US Presidential election and now the global financial meltdown.  There is much contention over the nature of reorganization.

There appears to be three distinct models that advocates of global governance reform have raised.  The first is: the ‘Universalist model of the UN – everybody gets in, everybody has a voice.  This universalist consensus model is modified at least in the security realm (but not only)  by the Security Council that sits atop the universalist Continue reading →

‘Entangling Alliances,’ Global Governance and US Sovereignty

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It has become rather commonplace for US ‘opposition’ to raise the early perspectives of American political leaders in discussing American foreign policy.  Yet such references to these early alliance warnings and the threat to US sovereignty have become overused and are often offered in an unreflective way.  Those who rely on these early cautions, often call on these nostrums abstractly and without any acknowledgment of the context in which they were expressed and the state of the United States at the time such figures as Thomas Jefferson expressed them.

So it is that the new opposition – read this as those who had influence in the last US Administration but appear to have little cache now –  have begun the campaign to limit US global governance leadership.  Two rather well Continue reading →

‘A Plan for Action’ – Managing Global Insecurity (MGI)

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The MGI Project, begun in 2007, is the joint initiative of the Brookings Institution Foreign Policy section – led by Carlos Pascaul,  the Center on International Cooperation at New York University – led by Bruce Jones, and the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University – led by Stephen Stedman.  The Project has recently produced it’s major Report – A Plan for Action: A New Era of International Cooperation for a Changed World: 2009, 2010, and Beyond.  This Report will be followed by a book from the three directors, out sometime this year, entitled, Power and Responsibility: International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats.  The Report and the Project is directed to, as the Plan suggests, “[to] build international support for global institutions Continue reading →

Brazil’s new Vision: Imagining a Great Power?

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Brazil is thinking big.  I mean Big!  On December 19, 2008 President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva – Lula in other words, released a new national defense strategy. This document called for: upgrading Brazil’s military forces and for remaking the defense industry.  And – contentiously for the Brazilian public, it called for Brazil’s mandatory military service to be enforced on all Brazilian classes.

As noted by Alexei Barrionuevo’s New York Times piece: “The new strategic vision, more than a year in the making, calls for Brazil to invest more in military technology, including satellites, and to build nuclear-powered submarine fleet that would be used to protect territorial waters and Brazil’s deepwater oil platforms.  The proposal also calls Continue reading →

A Crowded World

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The first Leaders G20 is now history.  A communique of marked substance was released  This to the good.  Former Canadian Prime Minister Paul has taken some pride announcing that this was the first G20 Leaders meeting – what he’d called for for the short time when he was Canadian Prime Minister a few years back.  As Martin commented in an “Introduction: The Challenge for the First L20 Summit” to the electronic publication, edited by Professor John Kirton, head of the G8 Research Group’s the G20 Leaders Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy: “This is the beginning of a new era — one in which rising great powers are not invited for lunch and then dismissed. It is the beginning of an era where true dialogue between indispensable nations occurs as they seek to reconcile Continue reading →

Sideswiped

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Well now that the theory of ‘decoupling’ has been assigned to the history bin as a fanciful assessment of the global economy, we need to analyze the impact of the global financial crisis on the Rising BRICSAM.  It appears to be – not good.

Most analysts have commented on the efforts most BRIC countries have undertaken to defend themselves against financial instability.  The BRIC countries have all built large surpluses of foreign reserves.  Examine the figures on foreign exchange reserves below.

  • China      $USD 1.9 trillion (September 2008)         +33% change in year 2007
  • Russia     $USD 485 billion (November 6, 2008)
  • India        $USD 253 billion (October 2008)            +65%
  • Brazil       $USD 205 billion (August 31, 2008)       +106%

These figures, by the way, come from a presentation by Prashant Pathak the managing partner of ReichmannHauer Capital Partners here in Toronto.  This week Prashant gave a marvelous presentation to  our (Jim de Wilde, Jonathan Hausmann and myself) undergraduate commerce course from the Rotman School of Management entitled, ‘Globalization, Global capital markets and the Structure of the International Political Economy’ (more on that in the future).

The point here is that each of the BRIC countries had taken steps to defend their economies.  Bitter lessons of Continue reading →

Examining the Big Picture

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Recently at CIGI we have launched three initiatives, which examine the Rising BRICSAM and their impact collectively and individually on global governance.

The first is the Princeton Summer Workshop, which in collaboration with our partners at Princeton University (Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter and Professor John Ikenberry)  we held from August 25th through the midday of August 27th. This Conference was an opportunity for authors to present and discuss their first draft efforts. The title of the Conference and the future volume identifies the meeting focus  – ‘Rising States; Rising Institutions.’

There are chapters on the largest of the emerging powers – Brazil, China and India and how these three impact global governance.  There is a chapter examining the development of a number of emerging power organizations; a chapter on Continue reading →

A Call to Arms?

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Prime Minister Gordon Brown has seemingly risen from the ashes.  His actions to protect the financial institutions in the United Kingdom and his call for global cooperation and a kind of Bretton Woods II have revitalized his leadership image.

On October 17th, in the Washington Post Prime Minister Brown penned an op-ed, “Out of the Ashes” The Financial Crisis is also an Opportunity to Create New Rules for our Global Economy.” In the opinion piece Brown casts a view back Continue reading →

Testing the Thesis

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For some time now, as the financial storm clouds approached, various analysts have touted the view that the emerging markets and the rising powers – China, India, Brazil and Russia, and others – are increasing decoupled from the United States and the sub-prime threat. Now that the financial meltdown is upon us, I suspect those who argued such a line would be happy to take it back (Note Dani Rodrik’s disdain for decoupling as well in his blog post ‘The Other Shoe Drops‘.)

Now it is not to say that these Rising Powers are bound to find themselves in the situations they faced in say 1997 or 1998, but they are all being buffeted in different ways by the gales of this widening financial meltdown.  Contagion is upon us Continue reading →

The Challenge of Capitalism in China?

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One of the most insightful experts on China and it’s economic structure is Professor Yasheng Huang.  Professor Huang teaches international management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and he is a ferocious analyst of the Chinese economy.  His most recent book, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) is a must read for anyone interested in understanding how China became the emergent power of the BRICSAM.

Since I’m in the midst of it, I can not provide a final evaluation, but let me take a first cut at this study. There’s a hint early on by Yasheng Huang of the analysis to follow.  Yasheng writes: “…- the Chinese economy is so complicated that what appears to be straightforward and obvious on the surface is not at all so once we dig into the details.”

“Is there any reason to think that the general economic success of China has been a result of institutional forces dramatically different from those that have favored growth elsewhere?”

There are two explanations for China’s emergence.  The first – now traditional view suggests, according to Yasheng Continue reading →