Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pjpqr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-02T04:14:23.535Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Governance and democratization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2009

James N. Rosenau
Affiliation:
George Washington University, Washington DC
Ernst-Otto Czempiel
Affiliation:
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Get access

Summary

I understand “governance” to mean the capacity to get things done without the legal competence to command that they be done. Where governments, in the Eastonian sense, can distribute values authoritatively, governance can distribute them in a way which is not authoritative but equally effective. Governments exercise rule, governance uses power. From this point of view the international system is a system of governance. Conflicts are systems of governance with each party trying to induce, or to force, the other party to do certain things it otherwise would not have done. Mutual deterrence, then, was a system of governance par excellence, as was the East–West conflict as a whole. With that conflict having ended, it is instructive to ask how it was sustained. A twofold question is involved. First, how do theories of international relations treat such conflicts and how did the strategy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) fit these theoretical considerations? Second, viewed from the end of the Cold War, did NATO's strategy amount to successful governance? Did the West behave in such a way that its actions together with reactions of the Warsaw Pact produce an interaction favorable to the West's goals in the conflict?

These are very complex questions which cannot be answered exhaustively in this brief chapter. But in times of profound historical change it is important to look for the right questions.

Type
Chapter
Information
Governance without Government
Order and Change in World Politics
, pp. 250 - 271
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×