Looks at liberal discipline and its reach across the planet

1. global
governance
power
over
life

2. Who
the
world
rules

3. or
whatdoes ?

4. What is global governance?
1

5. Governmentality
and power over life
2

6. So let’s begin…

7. What is global governance?
1

8. Most agree it is an unfolding response to
g l o b a l i z a t i o n

9. Liberalism

10. world governance
Rosenau 1995
world government

11. Global governance
is

12. the management of global political and
Solomon 2006: 327
economic space in the absence of a
global state

13. Global governance

14. Creat[es] the conditions
for ordered rule and
collective action
Stoker 1998: 21

15. Global governance
involves

16. efforts to bring more orderly
and reliable responses to social
and political issues that go
beyond capacities of
states to address individually
Gordenker andWeiss 1996: 17
“

17. ‘is not normative
or prescriptive
and provides a
description of real
processes of
change in the
international
system’
‘not founded on
domination but
upon
accommodation’
‘in the world [not]
of the world. The
latter implies a
central authority
that is doing the
governing, an
implication that
clearly has no
basis in fact’
Rosenau, Smith &
Czempiel 1992
Commission on Global
Governance 1995: 2-3
Rosenau
2008

18. Neutral and
impartial
Technocratic and
functional
No power since no
central authority
Characteristics
From
international
Liberal
institutions,
private and
public
Composition
Benign, multi-
layered
management
system
Responds to
changes
accelerated
by
globalization
Concerned
with Liberal
peace
Rationale

19. Power in global governance
takes mainly material form

20. Hard and soft
diplomatic power

21. Military power

22. Economic power

23. Measureable and quantifiable

24. Feminism

25. Global governance
involves

26. The expression of masculine
power through hegemonic
beliefs and institutions

27. powerin
Patriarchal
hierarchies
and values in
international
system
Masculine
biases in state
and state
system
Condoning of
violence
powerthrough
International
institutions
powerover
Weaker
actors
powerto
discipline
and punish

28. Constructivism

29. Global governance
combines and projects
ideological and material
power

30. It is a set of ideas, a body of thought, a
system of norms, which has been arranged
by certain people at a particular time
and place
(Jackson and Sorenson 2007: 162)

31. Constructivists reject claims of neutrality and impartiality

32. claim it projects a dominant, privileged ideal

33. identifies liberal/neoliberal
hegemony globally

34. Planetary life organised
around Liberal beliefs

35. Democracy, capitalism,
individualism for the greater good

36. Liberal ways are the final
and best ways
Fukuyama, Huntington, Kaplan

37. Liberal proponents produce truths about
Liberalism and declare them as absolutes

38. No viable alternative to
Liberalism
Individualism is the only
freedom
Capitalism will create
equitable growth
Resource depletion is
sustainable through
technological adaptation

39. Liberal proponents project and
protect these claims

40. Liberal hegemony projected through
institutions (trade regimes, IGOs),
processes (governance), materials
(wealth, consumption) and
propaganda

41. productive
P o w e r a s

42. as an objective, absolute
and neutral truth
the ability to represent a subjective,
incomplete and partisan claim
(Roberts 2010)

43. invisible
power

44. ‘anonymous
AUTHORITY’
Erich Fromm, 1941: 190

45. Hard to grasp power as
invisible

46. If it’s not evident in a
person

47. or a state

48. p o w e r i n g l o b a l
g o v e r n a n c e i s

49. neutral and impartial, material only
Liberalism

50. masculine values and preferences, projected
through masculine-dominated institutions, to
create a violent, gendered world
Feminism

51. composed of Liberal values expressed through
institutions structured to reproduce Liberalism and
discipline non-conformity
Constructivism

52. Governmentality
and power over life
2

53. Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben,
Alain Badiou, Gilles Deleuze, Michael
Hardt, Achille Mbembe, Warren
Montag, Antonio Negri,

54. idea that government has a
rationality
governmentality
g o v e r n m e n t m e n t a l i t y

55. A reason and purpose

56. To manage life
disseminated through nationwide
outlets or capillary networks
national life managed through schools, hospitals,
job centres, prisons, councils, police etc.
with power from centre

57. Rationality of government is to
exert power over life
disciplines and punishes in order to generate
compliance with ideology

58. This is
biopolitics

59. power
over
LIFE

60. Global governmentality as

61. Liberal power over planetary life

62. Source of global power is neoliberal
hegemony

63. power disseminated through
local and global institutions,
or capillary networks
international life managed through
international institutions (UN, WB, EU,
WTO, Standard & Poor etc)

64. Power exists, so what does it do, beyond
Liberal/Realist impressions?
Not limited to simple dominance and direct violence
Not limited to material expression of wealth and
hierarchies
Not limited by geographies and boundaries
Ideological power influences all and everything

66. Conclusion

67. global governance is technical,
material and ideological

68. management
c a l c u l a t e d
o f l i f e

69. Important
because…

70. reveals structures, rules, actors behind international phenomena
demonstrates cause and effect
allows culpability to be identified

71. Holds actors, institutions and processes
to account
Allows us to see and understand why
good and bad things happen