Global Governance is essentially about developing rules and regulations for the management and allocation of public goods. Globalization while expanding the public aspects of economic and social life, does not increase the stock of “communal options” to regulate this increased ”publicness.”
As the public nature of global goods becomes increasingly consensual, the manner in which the global community manages and allocates resources for the governance of these goods remains a matter of dispute. This is in part due to the fact that the players in the global scenario: states, transnationals and civil society, operate in different political spaces, with contrasting economic interests and varying levels of institutionalization and representation, but also because the discrepancies in entitlements and opportunities for participation in the governance process make the search for rules a complex problem of regulating very unequal positions.
Taking stock of the ongoing international debate this session will review how the concept of public goods came to occupy a central policy space in the governance debate and discuss policies for global public goods in the areas of international economic management and development cooperation.
It will look into the need for policy which respects the special nature of these goods and take into account the diversity of positions amongst the players in the international scenario.