Understanding global security - Peter Hough

TOWARDS GLOBAL SECURITY
states, ravaged by internal conflict, ‘went backwards’ in the 1980s and only one state
registered a lower HDI by the end of the 1990s than in the mid-1970s (UNDP 2003).
The trend is still upwards but a significant enough number of exceptions to the ‘rule’
have emerged to put down to chance or purely internal factors.
Keohane, a less radical Liberal than Falk or Mitrany, suggests that there
is now compelling evidence for five tasks to be assumed control of by a global level
of governance.
1. Limiting the resort by states to large scale violence.
2. Limiting the resort by states to exporting ‘negative externalities’ which arise
from interdependence, such as pollution and protectionist ‘beggar thy
neighbour’ economic policies.
3. The establishment of coordinated standards and language in global commerce.
This would doubtless be controversial and initially costly but once agreed on
would become efficient and in the interests of all.
4. A global facility for dealing with global ‘system disruptions’, such as economic
depression.
5. A means of guaranteeing the protection of people against the worst forms
of abuse by their states (Keohane 2002: 248–249).
Keohane’s prescription represents a more limited model of global governance than
that generally advocated by world federalists or functionalists. It has some parallels
with the consociationalist approach to European integration, in that the suggested
abrogations of state powers can largely be construed as being in the states’ own
interests, since they are a means to the end of solving problems beyond their control.
From such a state-utilitarian base more ambitious schemes proposed to aid global
governance, such as a redistributive ‘Tobin tax’ – a global fund levied from cross
border currency speculation – could eventually develop as state interests come to be
redefined and non-state opinions become more influential.
Appropriate divisions of political responsibility vary over time as societies
change and this needs to be acknowledged by responsible politicians if their aim is
to serve their constituents’ interests. The principle of subsidiarity underpins federal
systems of government and has come to be a measure of the appropriate division of
responsibilities in the EU’s part-federal political system. Subsidiarity is the guideline
that decisions should be taken at the most appropriate level of governance for the
satisfaction of the political goals at stake. Under this principle decisions should be
taken as closely to the local level as possible, with higher levels of authority only
utilized when this is necessary and preferable. The logic of this premise can be seen
outside of constitutional legal frameworks in a general political trend. The observable
simultaneous decentralization and regional convergence of many democratic states
in recent years serves to show that contemporary states are both too big and too
small to satisfy the demands of their people in a number of policy areas. Governments
are becoming aware of this but they are also, of course, informed by the logic of selfpreservation
to resist the transfer of authority beyond that which serves their own
interest.
In line with this trend towards regionalization there is a political logic that
certain aspects of governance should be undertaken at the global level, since they
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