Thirteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

While theorists of a political bent have—healthy—reservations about any extension of authority or novel uses of power, a sober, pragmatic account of our global reality should mitigate our dubiousness with respect to greater global governance. For all the eloquence pushing back against greater political centralization in the context of globalization—the careful work of Petit and his concerns with domination come to mind—the need for enhanced, more robust global governance now remains controversial mostly given a general tendency to resist regulation of new domains. That waste was dumped in the gutters of Shakespeare’s London—to the unawares chagrin of the third of the population that died from the plague—is emblematic: a near-future generation will look back upon our unwillingness or inability to “close the commons” of atmospheric pollution and all it entails, for example, with the same incredulity we have with respect to dumping our chamber-pot in the street each morning. Hardin saw this clearly enough as a biologist and a pragmatist, but had nothing like the globalization of the following 50 years from which to contextualize these ideas. Whether the necessary set of changes represents a familiar pattern, or they would constitute an altogether different paradigm depends upon the level of description. Regulating previously unregulated domains adheres to a very long trajectory of greater organization and unification, understood in one sense. On the other hand, the global political structure called for represents a radical break from an “anarchic” international system as traditionally understood.