Global Governance

"""Transnationalization" is a challenging concept for several social science disciplines like sociology, political science, and anthropology. In many fields of the contemporary research, the concept intertwined with two others: "globalization" and "governance". It can be said that, at least, in political science the theorization of the latter concepts is more sufficient than that of the former. However, the theory of "transnationalization" is in the making. In this paper, we suggest that these three concepts together constitute a "framework" that can overcome the conceptual pluralism in the study of contemporary polity, policy and politics changes. A clear understanding of the relations between these three concepts therefore is essential. In this sense, a transnational historical materialism offers a useful perspective. In his recent book Global Rivalries, Kees van der Pijl presented an innovative approach that provides a historical and empirically rich ground for such an understanding within the context of capitalist restructuring. By combining van der Pijl’s arguments with Stephen Gill’s "new constitutionalism" thesis, we argue that it is possible to shed important lights on this "framework". Detailed empirical study focuses on the relationship between transnationalization and nascent governance structures in "Lockean heartland" and "Hobbesian contender" state/society forms is necessary to test and develop some features of this theorization. The paper aims at contributing, through a study of the transnationalization of Turkish secondary contender state/society and the role of transnational governance reforms in the process.

Keywords: Heartland/contender structure, transnational capitalist class, transnational historic bloc, globalization, transnationalization of the state, transnational governance.

JEL codes: B51, F23""

Os moradores das áreas periferizadas encontram seus meios de se apropriar dos múltiplos espaços de convivência social,  culturais e econômicos, posto que a felicidade busca os caminhos, independente das supostas imposições hegemônicas centro/periferia, ditando o que é feio, bonito, certo, errado, bom, mal - categorias suportadas por uma visão ocidentalizada, fruto da globalização. As localizações periferizadas interessam à expansão do capitalismo, com o seu célere trânsito de informações, conhecimento, mercadorias, transportes, gentes.

Liberalism is a term employed in a dizzying variety of ways across the humanities and social sciences. This essay seeks to reframe how the liberal tradition is understood. I start by delineating different types of response – prescriptive, comprehensive, explanatory – that are frequently conflated in answering the question “what is liberalism?” I then discuss assorted methodological strategies employed in the existing literature: after rejecting “stipulative” and “canonical” approaches, I outline a contextualist alternative. On this (comprehensive) account, liberalism is best characterised as the sum of the arguments that have been classified as liberal, and recognised as such by other self-proclaimed liberals, over time. In the remainder of the article I present an historical analysis of shifts in the meaning of liberalism in Anglo-American political thought between 1850 and 1950, focusing in particular on how John Locke came to be seen as a liberal. I also explore the emergence of the category of "liberal democracy". I argue that the scope of the liberal tradition was massively expanded during the middle decades of the twentieth century, such that it came to be seen by many as the constitutive ideology of the West. This capacious (and deeply confusing) understanding of liberalism was produced by a conjunction of the ideological wars fought against “totalitarianism” and assorted developments in the social sciences. Today we both inherit and inhabit it.

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.

""The Report presents insights which illuminates the intertwinements of European regulatory policies and global governance arrangements. By pinning down the exact nature of the interaction between these two levels, the EU’s dilemma becomes obvious: On the one hand, stronger global governance can be a chance, through which the EU can clarify its own raison d’être of increased integration to the wider world. On the other hand, the design of the European project is being challenged by more assertive global structures. This is especially the case in relation to the WTO regime, which is constraining the decisional autonomy of the EU, regarding the appropriateness of its content and its external effects. Thus, the regulation of services in the EU and the WTO are discussed in the first section of this report. Section two focuses on labour standards, which are analysed from different angles in order to clarify the functions of the WTO and the ILO, multinational companies as well as other private actors within this specific field. The final section deals with the legitimacy problematic of transnational governance.

Table of contents:

Introduction
Christian Joerges and Poul F. Kjaer

Section One: Freedom of Services

Chapter 1
The Multiple Understandings of Conflict between Trade in
Services and Labour Protection
Alexia Herwig
Chapter 2
Competing in Markets, not Rules:
The Conflict over the Single Services Market
Susanne K. Schmidt
Chapter 3
Competitiveness and Labour Protection: A Comment
Markus Krajewski
Section Two: Labour Standards
Chapter 4
WTO and ILO: Can Social Responsibility be maintained
in International Trade?
Josef Falke
Chapter 5
Reframing RECON: Perspectives on Transnationalisation and
Post-national Democracy from Labour Law
Claire Methven O’Brien
Chapter 6
Transnational Governance and Human Rights: The Obligations of
Private Actors in the Global Context
Regina Kreide
Section Three: The Legitimacy of Transnational Governance
Chapter 7
Legitimacy through Precaution in European Regulation of GMOs?
From the Standpoint of Governance as Analytical Perspective
Maria Weimer
Chapter 8
The Justice Deficit of the EU and other International Organisations
Jürgen Neyer
Chapter 9
Towards Normative Legitimacy of the World Trade Order
Alexia Herwig and Thorsten Hüller
Chapter 10
From Utopia to Apology – The Return to Inter-state Justice
in Normative IR Scholarship: Comments on Neyer and
Herwig & Hüller
Jens Steffek""