Transnational Actors in Global Governance: Patterns, Explanations and Implications

274 Pages·2010·3.137 MB·English

by  Christer Jönsson, Jonas Tallberg (eds.)

Transnational Actors in Global Governance
Democracy Beyond the Nation State? Transnational Actors and
Global Governance
Series Editors: Jonas Tallberg and Christer Jönsson
Advisory Board:Yale Ferguson, Jean Grugel, Richard Higgott, Margaret Keck,
Robert Keohane, Morten Ougaard, Nicola Piper, Thomas Risse, and Jan Aart
Scholte
Other titles in this series are:
DEMOCRACY AND PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS IN GLOBAL
GOVERNANCE (edited by Magdalena Bexell and Ulrika Mörth)
LEGITIMACY BEYOND THE STATE?: Re-examining the Democratic
Credentials of Transnational Actors (edited by Eva Erman and Anders Uhlin)
Transnational Actors in
Global Governance
Patterns, Explanations, and Implications
Edited by
Christer Jönsson
Lund University, Sweden
Jonas Tallberg
Stockholm University, Sweden
Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Christer Jönsson and
Jonas Tallberg 2010
Foreword © Christer Jönsson and Jonas Tallberg 2010
Individual chapters © contributors 2010
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-23905-0
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Contents
List of Tables and Figures vii
Foreword viii
Notes on the Contributors x
List of Abbreviations xiii
1 Transnational Actor Participation in International Institutions:
Where, Why, and with What Consequences? 1
Jonas Tallberg and Christer Jönsson
2 Capturing the Transnational: A Conceptual History 22
Christer Jönsson
3 Transnational Access to International Institutions: Three
Approaches 45
Jonas Tallberg
4 Explaining Patterns of Transnational Participation: The
Role of Policy Fields 67
Jens Steffek
5 Explaining Varying Degrees of Openness in the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) 88
Andrea Liese
6 WTO and the Environmental Movement: On the Path to
Participatory Governance? 110
Åsa Casula Vifell
7 Limits to Transnational Participation: The Global
Governance of Migration 134
Sara Kalm
8 Private Authority on the Rise: A Century of Delegation in
Multilateral Environmental Agreements 155
Jessica F. Green
9 Does Global Democracy Matter? Hypotheses on Famine
and War 177
Hans Agné
v
vi Contents
10 Democracy Counts: Problems of Equality in
Transnational Democracy 197
Sofia Näsström
11 Beyond Democratic Legitimacy: Global Governance
and the Promotion of Liberty 218
Jens Bartelson
12 Transnational Access: Findings and Future Research 237
Christer Jönsson and Jonas Tallberg
Index 253
Tables and Figures
Tables
3.1 Transnational access to international institutions:
theories and hypotheses 61
4.1 Policy fields and presumed resource needs of IOs 73
5.1 Determinants of organizational openness 96
6.1 NGO participation at WTO ministerial meetings 118
8.1 Distribution of policy functions, treaty level 164
8.2 Total number of policy functions delegated to other actor 165
8.3 Transnational actors as sole agents, treaty level 167
8.4 Distribution of policy functions, sub-treaty level 169
8.5 T otal number of policy functions delegated to each actor,
sub-treaty level 170
8.6 Specific activities delegated to transnational actors,
percentage of all TNA functions 171
Figures
8.1 Treaty-level delegation to private agents, 1902–2002
(no. of policy functions) 163
8.2 Rates of delegation by policy function, treaty level 164
8.3 Policy functions delegated to private agents,
sub-treaty level 168
vii
Foreword
This is one in a series of three edited volumes, published simultan-
eously. The other two are Democracy and Public-Private Partnerships in
Global Governance, edited by Magdalena Bexell and Ulrika Mörth; and
Legitimacy Beyond the State? Re-examining the Democratic Credentials of
Transnational Actors, edited by Eva Erman and Anders Uhlin. All three
owe their origin to two partly overlapping research undertakings that
go under the labels of Transdemos and Transaccess. The full title of the
Transdemos program, which engages political scientists from Lund
and Stockholm University, is “Democracy Beyond the Nation State?
Transnational Actors and Global Governance” (see www.transdemos.se).
The program receives generous long-term funding from the Riksbankens
Jubileumsfond (RJ). Transaccess stands for “The Institutional Design of
International Institutions: Legitimacy, Effectiveness, and Distribution
in Global Governance” (see www.statsvet.su.se/English/Research/
transaccess.html). Located at Stockholm University, this project benefits
from a substantial grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The
financial contributions by RJ and ERC are gratefully acknowledged.
Both research initiatives commenced in 2008. Early on, the participants
agreed to draw on their extensive international contacts in a joint effort to
summarize extant research on transnational actors and their role in dem-
ocratizing global governance. We asked potential contributors to charac-
terize, and identify gaps in, our present knowledge, theoretically as well
as empirically. Thus, we aimed at volumes that would not only outline
the state of the art but also suggest new research problems and directions.
The fact that, in a relatively short time, we were able to collect these three
volumes testifies to the enthusiastic and obliging response to our proposal
among those who were asked to participate. In April 2009, we arranged a
workshop in Lund around the themes of the three volumes. In addition
to most of the contributing authors, several members of the international
advisory board of Transdemos participated. We are all grateful for con-
structive comments on draft chapters by Yale Ferguson, Robert Keohane,
Morten Ougaard, Nicola Piper, and Jan Aart Scholte.
The themes of the three volumes reflect the broad research questions
of the Transdemos program. The first set of questions, which is also
central to the Transaccess project, concerns the increasing participation
by transnational actors in intergovernmental organizations and global
viii
Foreword ix
forums. Why, in what ways, and with what consequences are trans-
national actors allowed into traditional global governance institutions?
These questions are addressed, and expanded on, in the present volume.
A second set of questions concerns the mushrooming in recent decades
of so-called public–private partnerships as alternatives or complements
to traditional international organizations in tackling global problem
areas. Why have these hybrid organizational entities emerged at this
time? What different forms can “partnerships” assume? Are they really
the win–win solutions they are often depicted as? The volume edited
by Bexell and Mörth speaks to these and other questions concerning
public–private partnerships. A final set of questions concerns the char-
acter of transnational actors themselves. How is their expanding role
in global governance legitimized? As transnational actors frequently
claim to contribute to the democratization of global governance, it is
natural to raise questions concerning their own democratic credentials.
Their claims to speak on behalf of deprived and voiceless groups in the
world give rise to questions concerning whom they represent and to
whom they are accountable. This problematique is treated in the vol-
ume edited by Erman and Uhlin.
“Democracy” is a key concept in all three volumes, as in the Transdemos
program. The common notion that transnational actors may provide
a remedy for the alleged “democratic deficit” of global governance, in
general, and international organizations, in particular, is an important
focus of our inquiries. To critically examine this notion, we have solicited
contributions, not only from International Relations (IR) specialists, but
also from political theorists. In addition to illuminating our three themes
from different angles, this raises crucial questions concerning research
design. How can insights from empirical IR studies be combined with
normative political theory, and how can future collaborative research
involving both subdisciplines be organized? These questions constitute
challenges that are tentatively addressed in this series of volumes.
It is our hope that the three volumes, either individually or in com-
bination, will contribute to our knowledge of an increasingly important
aspect of international relations and inspire new research efforts. The
multifaceted role of transnational actors in global governance remains
an insufficiently charted territory.
Christer Jönsson,Lundd Jonas Tallberg, Stockholm
Director Transdemos Director Transaccess