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Summary International Administration - all lectures and articles
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Summary of the lectures and the articles of the course International Administration
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Lecture 1: Introduction to International AdministrationWhat is global governance?
Governance is collective efforts by states and an increasing variety of non-state actors to identify,
understand and address various issues in today’s turbulent world.
- Government suggests one single coherent world order!
Why is there a need for global governance?
● Transboundary problems: problems that reach across borders
● States cannot solve transboundary problems by themselves and need international cooperation
● Selection of most pressing transboundary problems are:
- Climate change
- Financial markets
- Terrorism
How has global governance evolved?
● Globalisation
- Historical process involving a fundamental shift in the spatial scale of human social
organisation that links distant communities and expands the reach of power
● Technological change
- Revolutions in ICT, logistics, transport
● End of Cold War
- Disintegration of the bipolar system and of allied blocks
● Expanding transnationalism
- Global spread of social movements, ideologies and regimes
Multiple types of actors in governance
State sovereignty
● Authority over own territory and people
● Monopoly on legitimate use of force within their borders
● Determination of domestic policies
● Free from interference of international authorities
● Equality between states within the international system
● International state system became formalises with the Peace of Westphalia (1648)
Limits to sovereignty
● States differ in power and capacities
● Increasing interdependencies of economics, internet etc.
● International organisations and networks for cooperation
,Intergovernmental organisations
● Organisations with states as members
● Organisations created through agreements between states
● Aim: address internal problems
● Organisations with their own infrastructure
Non-governmental organisations
● Private voluntary organisations
● Members are individuals or associations
● Active ar grassroots within states as well as INGOs
● Organised within networks, links with IGOs
● Aim:
- Advocacy
- Disaster relief
- Monitoring
Transnational networks
● Regularly interacting governmental and nongovernmental actors outside national boundaries
● Transnational networks can act as actors
● Network administration by one of the organisations in the network
,Kristalina Georgieva President of the world bank
She was accused of data manipulation
Georgieva has actively manipulated data in doing business reports during her term as CEO at the
World Bank. The IMF board expressed confidence in Georgieva’s leadership as the report did not
conclusively demonstrate that she acted improperly.
Some argue that the data manipulation charges against Mrs. Georgieva came from the US because
‘Conservative forces’ strongly disagreed with her because she went further than her predecessors to
financially support developing world countries and positioned the Fund to take a global leadership
role in responding to climate change.
→ Should international organisations be allowed to have preferences other than national states?
Doing business reports
It is an authoritative index that on a yearly basis produces a rank for each country based on an
aggregated weighted score of a multitude of indicators. For countries this is a very important ranking
because it shows how good countries have reformed their economies and have become attractive
markets for business. Drops in the rank are highly sensitive and are often strongly disputed by
countries who have lost position on the rank,
Doing business index is powerful at influencing the decisions of countries
- It is the leading benchmark in the world
- Countries attract foreign direct investments with good rankings (FDI)
Bone of contention: China’s rank in 2018
China first had a rank of 85 but when the report came to Georgieva’s deks, a staffer suggested a
methodological change: use high scores for the largest cities in China instead of weighted averages.
However, using the high scores would affect other countries’ ranks, since the rule only applied to
China, it had a better score of 78.
China’s perspective
- High positions or improvements in db make a country more attractive to foreign investors
- Economics growth gives a country more power in management WB and IMF
- Prestige for state leader: a drop as in china's case would come down very harsh, vice versa
World Bank perspective
- Sensitive negotiations over capital increase campaign 17-18
- Concerns about china's reduction of its commitments to the bank
- China was apprehensive about re-calculation of ownership shares in light of increased
financial commitments
- For CEO Georgieva, China's reduction would endanger multilateralism.
, What can we learn from this case?
- Importance of international organisations
- Power of information and data, data suggest neutrality and objective information, it is a lead
way to politics.
- Politics of global governance
- Administrative politics within international organisations
- Bureaucratic autonomy of international organisations
- Role of leadership at international organisations
- Staff and civil servant influence on decision-making
- Accountability at the global level
- Organisational culture within international bureaucracies
Traditional and mainstream perspectives - Realism and Liberalism
Realism
● States are the primary actors in the international system, rational and self-interested actors.
→ The world politics consists of the interplay between national states
● States act to protect their own interest
- Seek to maximise their own power and security
- States can act in any way they like, because there is no international government,
making states act like an anarchy
● Anarchy: absence of international authority
- International rules and norms do not restrain states because there is no world
government, court or police that can enforce them on states
→ Billiard balls model
● International organisations are the instruments of states
- IGOs have no authority of their own
- IGOs have no independent effect on world politics
● International law and organisations are weak and ineffective
- International agreements are not enforceable
● NGOs have no power at all on the international level
● Transnational networks do not count as they lack actorness
- Have no self-interests
- Nor organisational body or leadership for deciding on action
Liberalism
● States are important, but they are not the only actors in the international system
● Human are key actors, states are the most important collective actors (not unitary)
● States action is not only based on self-interest, but also on moral and ethical principles
- States care about peace, social progress and justice
● International cooperation is possible
● International cooperation will grow over time
- Interdependence leads to cooperation leads to international peace and justice.
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