Internationale Institutionen und nichtstaatliche Akteure

from any sort of ethics conditionality attached
to development assistance or other
benefits.
“The new heavyweights from the South
have to lay their cards on the table”
You mention the problem of non-compliance.
In the absence of a global government, how
can the global community ensure that global
rules and principles are respected? And
who would most probably be the major “rule
breakers”?
Fues: In the same way as there exists organised
crime at the national level, we can
expect that certain “rogue actors” of global
governance will not abide by ethical norms,
so we will have to find a way to constrain
them. Such malevolent actors could be authoritarian
governments or private entities,
for example from the business sector. Effective,
independent mechanisms of monitoring
and adjudication have to be established, with
coercive power to a certain extent. In a key
area of global governance – trade – we already
have well functioning sanctioning mechanisms
under the WTO. Conflicts are dealt
with by impartial dispute settlement bodies.
Numerous countries, weak and strong, successfully
make use of this arrangement. Of
course, this presupposes that these countries
forgo part of their sovereignty to a supranational
authority. The key challenge here is
how to transfer this enlightened understanding
of national sovereignty to other areas of
global governance.
Mallavarapu: Indeed, the key obstacle
is that of national sovereignty. Unfortunately,
I think that the global community has not
yet fully internalised a feeling of “ we-ness”.
Global institutions might play a crucial role
in creating some sort of global identity, but
in the meantime, traditional notions of sovereignty
prevail. This is regrettable in an increasingly
global world, and it certainly is
part of the problem, but that is where we
are. The global community has elements of a
deeper constitutionalism present, yet the tendency
for countries is also to lapse back to
various national logics.
Fues: I would not be that pessimistic. As
I said, some mechanisms are already there:
The WTO has an impartial process of dispute
settlement, all WTO members are subject
to it. Or take the human rights conventions,
where shadow reports from non-state
actors exert significant pressure on deviant
countries, although there is no formal
sanctioning mechanism in the human rights
area.
Mallavarapu: Sanctioning mechanisms
may work better in some domains than in
others. However, the overall legitimacy of
the institutions involved as well as the instrumentalities
chosen remain crucial to scrutinise
from the perspective of the disadvantaged.
As long as they are perceived as unjust
by virtue of being uninclusive they are not
likely to be very enduring bases on which
to erect a new architecture of global governance.
Apprehensions also relate to double
standards. For instance if we look at the International
Criminal Court. What is the likelihood
that any powerful head of State from
the advanced industrialised world would be
hauled up and questioned for his or her political
excesses? In my view, the notion of perception
is very important: We can have great
rules and institutions, but as long as they are
not universally viewed as fair, we are back to
square one.
Western scholars and policy-makers have
been increasingly aware of the emergence of
big developing countries – China, India, Brazil,
South Africa and others – on the global
stage. Do these countries play a particular role
in the establishment of a normative global
framework? And do they have the potential
to achieve more global justice?
Mallavarapu: This does offer an interesting
conjuncture in history. What will be
made of this opportunity is as yet an unsettled
question. Realists in international relations
are likely to remind us that the grammar
of power is similar in different parts of
the world. Once countries belong to the first
league, they will represent their own new interests.
I am more inclined to explore whether
the Brazilian or Indian or Chinese styles of
foreign policy will bring to bear a degree of
exceptionalism stemming from their unique
locations and backgrounds in world history.
To take the case of India, this country was far
more vocal on several issues (decolonisation,
disarmament, development issues) under the
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