Globalisation & Governance:

Regulating “Global Crises”

Mark Findlay – mark.findlay@sydney.edu.auProfessor of Criminal Justice, Deputy Director, Institute of Criminology, University of SydneyVisiting Professor, Law School, Edinburgh UniversityAuthor of ‘Challenges in Regulating Global Crisis’ – ‘The Globalisation of Crime’

AbstractContemporary Globalisation is the collapsing of

time and space with all the opportunities and challenges this presents for the social and economic development of the global community

The flip-side: world where financial melt-down, global warming, health pandemics and unchecked social media compromise the promise of a new global age – where is law in all of this?

Challenge for governance (domestic and global) to create a regulatory framework to assist the transition from a world focused on material profit to one valuing social sustainability. The North and South Worlds are grappling with this challenge

Three Purposes for the Presentation

Critically evaluate globalisation and its influence over social ordering if capitalist economic frames fail

Propose the connection between globalisation and governance in a time of radical political and social transition

Suggest ways in which sociability provides a progressive not reactive force in regulating global crises

Links in the AnalysisGlobalisation

Global crises

Law’s failure

Challenges for Governance

Communitarian regulation

Globalisation Here and NowNothing new about globalisationWhen Columbus set sail in the wrong

direction to discover India – globalisationMystical short-hand for the reach of mega-

capitalism Camouflaging the organisation of power that

impedes the struggle for equitable social justice

Through the digital age globalisation overcomes spatial/temporal differences to promote North World hegemony through technology and capital – DANGERS?

Paradoxes of GlobalisationDespite fragmentation, predisposition to

hegemony, and cultural contradictions, globalisation expands through some spaces while constricting others.

For instance, it strangles the bargaining power of labour on the move, while expanding the boundaries of trade.

Push/pull factors for globalisation advance liberal democratic political dominion and global free market economic dogmatism.

Economic and social development are largely practiced through global marketization

Globalisation and Post-colonialismGlobal governance project in the current age of risk/security is concerned with controlling terror, post-conflict peace-building and state reconstructionHuman rights principles (equality of treatment

under the law; the promotion and protection of human dignity) secondary to efficient systems indicators (independent judiciaries, legal predictability, regulated private law market facilitation) – rights sacrificed for security (eg torture)

For funded reconstruction and participation in the global economy, South World societies must demonstrate commitment and adherence to Western legality, and market economies

Dangers of Economic Growth Model

What is finite? What is sustainable?Growth for share-holder profit ahead of

general good? Inflated expectations!Widening wealth gapInadequate market/risk regulationClose relationships between

government, business and financial sector

Ineffective corporate governanceDeceptive crisis/risk evaluationSometimes outright/implicit corruption

What is Global Crisis?Till recently global socio-economic

agenda centred on individual wealth maximisation through continued economic growth

Crisis denialism – deregulating riskRegional/international financial collapses

challenge that model as does growth in wealth gap, and challenges to economic fundamentals (eg. youth unemployment)

Following economic collapse new measures of social/economic health in context of responsibility – what next?

Globalisation and Crisis of Law in Global Development

Class-favouring climate for law enables national political/economic elites in post-colonial states to control law

Corruption for mutual benefit advancing capitalist advantage and oppressing their own peoples – crisis of domestic governance

Discriminatory developmental frames (eg. Foreign Direct Investment) align Western further limiting capacity of the state and domestic law to advance social good, and deny fairer local social distribution claims

Global economic order works from unsustainable market structures straining social bonding – international law says little

Law’s Territoriality – Law’s LimitsState-centred concept of law – can there

be any other?Law as central control technology of state

regulationLaw creates as well as fails to meet crisesLaw should interact through control or

freedom, with politics and morality – How can law be aligned with other regulatory techniques to produce stronger pluralist regulatory frames?

Law fails to prioritise risk

Risk to Global GovernanceRegionalRisk to geo-political interestsRisk to liberal democratic normative orderRisk to free market economic modelRisk to modernisation and socio-economic

developmentGlobalRisk to existing alliances and the ‘global order’

they endorseRisk to sustainability – more than environment?Risk to capitalist forms of doing businessRisk to the nation state through terrorismRisk to selective citizenship – global community

What is the Governance Challenge?Governance in the context of sociabilityCreating regulatory communities -

shared risk/fate – Communities? Interests bound by shared risk, and sharing fate

Sociability is not a natural consequence of protecting the libertarian entitlements of a rights-based regulatory environment (individualist or communitarian)

It is collaborative relationships which, from a variety of motivations, can lead to positive, pluralist regulatory directions – Risk to Fate

Governance - Risk to FateThe risk to fate transition essential for

regulatory sociability enables regulation while accepting and working with a diversity of interests, rather than seeking artificial objectivity or strained consensus.

Like the selectivity of risk & the collective regulatory responses that move risk to fate, collaborative global governance can shift many interests on to sustainable mutuality – eg. New approach to global warming.

Communities of Shared RiskIdentifying and prioritising risk? What

are the triggers? Real rather than perceived

Demystifying risk – call it for what it isGetting interests around the tableGenerating a regulatory dialogueMinimising differenceDeveloping trustDefeating fatalismInducements to stay at the table

Communities of Shared FateIdentifying risk containment optionsCreate ‘doable’ timelinesLeverage trust relationshipsWork in a language of mutual interestMaximise the abilities of each participantAvoid territorialityThink the unthinkableDon’t wait for the state – election cycleAdopt a next generation perspective –

community sustainability

Example – Health Pandemics

New and unknown threatsBroad international health guidelinesClock tickingDissolve state boundaries while

empowering state regulationAlly state/commercial/civil interestsShare knowledge-promote transparencyAchieve immediate self interest through

working for mutual medium interestseg. why bird flu and not HIV in Africa?

New Global Governance Imperatives

Under growing global crisis pressure communities come together with less freedom to dominate and less time to equivocate over power and dominion.

Transition from self-to-mutual interests, premised on the belief that while harmony is not essential to mutuality, crisis will aid compatibility and make diversity bond in different ways to achieve fate.

Governance as crisis resolution

Trust and Comity – Governance beyond National Interest

Onset of crisis strips the pretence of trust and comity – atmosphere of collective risk to fate.

Otherwise appearance of trust and comity crumbles in crisis. Reliance on external stimulus (consolidated state, clear-sited civil society or forward-thinking commercial interests) necessary to push community out of fracture and distrust.

BUT external intervention can’t sustain regulatory sociability - - risk in blossoming crisis is paradoxically required for social conditions to engender workable communities of shared fate grown from reacting together to risk.

Model of communitarian global governance sustained by risk and fate, not law and sanction.