Governance, Global

International Governmental Organizations

Not coincidentally, even as globalization in the 1990s became a popular way to describe a vast acceleration in the volume and pace of transnational activities, so did global governance gain prominence in diplomatic and academic circles as a concept that seemed to capture the increasing challenge of managing issues that were beyond the geographical reach of individual states to address on their own.

The term global governance was associated early on in the decade with the Commission on Global Governance. In 1991, a group of distinguished public figures met in Stockholm and pledged to form an international commission intended to help build a more effective system of world security and governance. The United Nations' (UN) then– Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali endorsed the initiative, and in 1992, the commission was established with 28 members from around the world, who served in their personal capacities. The commission issued its report Our Global Neighbourhood in 1994, making recommendations for the reform of the UN Economic and Social Council and certain other UN bodies. Few of the recommendations were implemented, so the report constituted more of a landmark than a watershed.

Be that as it may, the commission experience did seem to link global governance with the UN and, more broadly, with IGOs whose members are states. In the modern state system, growth in IGOs went hand in hand with the expansion of international law in the 19th and early 20th centuries. More than 20 times as many treaties from 1851 to 1950 took the multilateral form as in the period between 1751 and 1850 (Charlotte Ku, cited in Jan A. Scholte, 2005).

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