Global Governance: The Democratic Mirage?

A recent Global Development Briefing announced that the World Bank had delayed release of US$ 200 million earmarked for Zambia because of the country’s poor economic performance, and offered to raise the amount to US$ 400 million if the government improved fiscal policy. The Bank was also pressing the Zambians to cede government control over the power utility Zesco, an ownership change that had been made a condition for a US$ 3.8 billion debt write-off. In the same month, the Briefing reported that the authorities in Zanzibar were rebuffing pressure from the World Bank and the IMF to retrench civil servants. It also reported that the US Government was postponing US$ 4 billion of reconstruction work in Iraq, with the aim of exercising leverage over the next Iraqi government. Such stories have become familiar in the globalization era. Critics of foreign aid and technical assistance dislike the donor’s use of conditionality, the arrogance of power, the pressure of commercial interests, the intrusiveness of financial agencies, the lack of accountability, the lack of transparency and the obviousness of what interests are being served. Yet all these are part of the micro-politics of globalization. It is the failure to address the micro-politics that is most worrying about Keith Griffin’s characteristically elegant article on global governance, a crucial challenge of the twenty-first century (Griffin, 2003). What he is surely most eager to address is the social justice failure of the orthodox set of policies underlying globalization. But ultimately one feels he has put forward a liberal’s wish list instead of a realistic analysis. The following comment concentrates on three concerns, although there are others. First, it considers Griffin’s appeal for global democracy; second, it considers his appeal for greater liberalization; third, it looks briefly at the evolution of regulation.