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Grand Compromises in Global Governance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2013

Steven Bernstein
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Abstract

Two attempts at grand compromise have underpinned global order since the end of the Second World War. The first, a compromise between laissez-faire liberalism and domestic interventionism, famously described by John Ruggie as ‘embedded liberalism’, legitimated and stabilized a multilateral order for 50 years. A second attempt, this time between North and South at the end of the Cold War around a discourse of ‘sustainable development’, remains uneasy, conflict prone and much less institutionalized. They are compared and contrasted by asking whether they are truly compromises or reflect domination and hegemony, what conditions led to them, and what drivers of change have limited and challenged them. Ultimately, differences in their bases of legitimacy offer lessons for the prospects of building a new grand compromise in the wake of contemporary strains on global governance.

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Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 47 , Special Issue 3: Politics as Compromise , 2012 , pp. 368 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2012.

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References

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4 While climate change – and the related challenge of increasing energy demand – has received the most attention among planetary pressures, a variety of other environmental and resource concerns have also risen to what some argue are crisis proportions, including fresh water, fisheries and ocean health more generally, and food security.

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6 On this distinction, see Matthew J. Hoffmann and Alice D. Ba, ‘Introduction: Coherence and Contestation’, in Matthew J. Hoffmann and Alice D. Ba, Contending Perspectives on Global Governance: Coherence, Contestation and World Order, New York, Routledge, 2005, pp. 8–10.

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11 Ibid.

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40 Gareth Porter and Janet Welsh Brown, Global Environmental Politics, 2nd edition, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1996, p. 117.

41 The United States released ‘interpretive statements’, including on its long-standing opposition to a ‘right’ to development on the grounds that a ‘right’ might override other rights, such as human rights. According to the statement, the United States does not oppose Principle 3, understood as the promotion of development ‘in a way that the development and environmental needs of present and future generations are taken into account’.

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46 On the history of UN, WTO and Bretton Woods coordination in the follow-up to the Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development, see Louis W. Pauly, ‘The United Nations in a Changing Global Economy’, in Bernstein and Pauly, Global Liberalism and Political Order, pp. 91–108.

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