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ipg 3/2003 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance 11

t first glance, the prospects for effective global governance in the realmof environmental sustainability would appear to be considerable. Re-

cent decades have witnessed a profound and discernible shift to a worldwide consciousness of the vast scope of environmental challenges. We

have collectively moved from a fragmented nimby (not in my backyard)syndrome to a keen awareness of an integrated future symbolized by thepicture of the earth from outer space.1

But appearances can be deceiving. Or at least the ensuing pages arguethat the prospects for effective governance leading to sustainability are,on balance, quite bleak. Our generation lacks the orientations necessary to sound assessments of how the authority of governance can be brought to bear on the challenges posed by the prevailing disarray. As will be seen,

we have not adjusted our conceptual equipment to facilitate the analysisof how authority gets exercised in a decentralized world. We are stilldeeply ensconced in a paradigm that locates authority exclusively in statesand environmental challenges exclusively in their shared problems – theso-called tragedy of the commons. In effect, we have elevated the nimby

syndrome to the national level. Our preoccupation with global problemsposed by recognizing the earth as a lonely spheroid in a vast universe hasled us to minimize the extent to which environmental challenges at locallevels are marked by variability. Today societies can have as much diffi-culty exercising authority within their own jurisdictions as they do withrespect to the commons. The world, in other words, is both fragmenting

1. Sheila Jasanoff, »Image and Imagination: The Formation of Global EnvironmentalConsciousness«, in: Paul Edwards and Clark A. Miller (eds.), Changing the Atmos-

phere: Science and the Politics of Global Warming (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2001,pp. 309–37.

Globalization and Governance:Bleak Prospects for Sustainability*

JAMES N. ROSENAU

* An extended version of this article will be published in: James N. Rosenau, Ernst-Ulrich von Weizsäcker and Ulrich Petschow (eds.), Governance and Sustainability.

Exploring the roadmap to sustainability after Johannesburg (Sheffield: Greenleaf Pub-lishing, 2004).



12 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance ipg 3/2003

and integrating. What is remote today is also in our backyards; what wasdistant is now also proximate, and the prevalence of these distant prox-imities underlies the messiness that sets our time apart from previousgenerations.2

It was neither an accident nor pervasive malevolence that prevented thecommitments made at the 1992 Rio meeting from being implemented.The pervasive inaction appears, rather, to be inherent in the structuralconstraints and conceptual blocks that currently prevail in the globalsystem.

Some of us are inclined to stress the Montreal Protocol and numerousother mechanisms through which the global community has successfully addressed environmental challenges. They discern a long-term trend toward state compliance with environmental treaties.3 Others contend that »steps in the 1990s toward a more just and ecologically resilient world were too small, too slow, or too poorly rooted …. Not surprisingly, then,global governmental problems, from climate change to species extinc-tions, deforestation, and water scarcity, have generally worsened since

delegates met in Rio«.4 Likewise, some regard the Global Compact framed by Kofi Annan and the un as a huge step forward,5 while stillothers insist the Compact is »deeply flawed« and should be »scrapped orre-designed completely«.6 I myself am optimistic by nature, but the em-piricist in me has a hard time ignoring the obstacles to progress toward effective governance that will promote environmental sustainability.

2. For an elaboration of this conception of present-day world affairs, see James N.Rosenau, Distant Proximities: Dynamics Beyond Globalization (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2003).

3. See, for example, Edith Brown Weiss and Harold K. Jacobson (eds.), Engaging Countries: Strengthening Compliance with International Environmental Accords (Cam-bridge: mit Press, 1998), Chap. 15.

4. Gary Gardner, »The Challenge of Johannesburg: Creating a More Secure World«,in: Linda Starke (ed.), State of the World 2002: A Worldwatch Institute Report on

Progress Toward a Sustainable Society (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002), p. 4.5. www.unglobalcompact.org.6. Kenny Bruno, The un’s Global Compact, Corporate Accountability and the Johan-

nesburg Earth Summit (http://www.corpwatch.org/campaigns/PCD.jsp?articleid =1348), January 24, 2002, p. 4.




Between Integration and Fragmentation

It is in the context of the complexities that have rendered our world mess-ier than ever that I want to examine the links between governance, sus-

tainability, and globalization. First, of course, some conceptual specifica-tions are in order.

Governance

Elsewhere I have suggested that the core of governance involves rule sys-tems in which steering mechanisms are employed to frame and imple-ment goals that move communities in the directions they wish to go or

that enable them to maintain the institutions and policies they wish tomaintain.7 Governance is not the same as government in that the rulesystems of the latter are rooted in formal and legal procedures, whilethose of the former are also marked by informal rule systems.8 It followsthat the achievement of a modicum of governance that promotes envi-ronmental sustainability on a global scale requires the development of steering mechanisms that evoke compliant actions, not just words, on thepart of the innumerable actors whose work impacts upon the myriad

aspects of the natural environment that need to be sustained across gen-erations.

Two key challenges here are especially acute. One concerns the local variability that defies an overall global solution. The second involves thenature of compliance, of getting relevant actors to put aside habitualresponses and, instead, to yield to authorities who act on behalf of envi-ronmental standards. The sum of the world’s formal and informal rulesystems at all levels of community amount to what can properly be called global governance. It is a highly disaggregated and only a minimally co-ordinated system of governance.

7. James N. Rosenau, »Governance in the 21st Century«, Global Governance, Vol. 1(1995), pp. 13–43.

8. James N. Rosenau, »Governance, Order, and Change in World Politics«, in: J.N.Rosenau and E.O. Czempiel (eds.), Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Chap. 1.




Sustainability

Environmental sustainability has both empirical and moral dimensions.On the one hand, it refers to those empirical processes whereby human-

kind preserves or exploits the resources of nature in such a way that present and subsequent generations do or do not have available access tocomparable standards of living. But efforts to promote a desirable futurefor both the unborn and the born is loaded with values and it is here where sustainability is pervaded with moral dimensions, with questionsof right and wrong. Empirical data – the findings of science – on whethera particular practice promotes or deters sustainable development in thefuture can be interpreted in diverse ways, depending on the perspectives

from which they are approached. Whatever the solidity of the empiricalfindings that may be uncovered about species survival, pollution, re-source utilization, and all the other foci that comprise the environmentalissue-area, inevitably policies designed to achieve sustainability will bedeeply ensconced in unending controversies and conflicts that make widespread compliance with the policies improbable.

A major source of the controversies stems from governmental struc-tures at local, national, and international levels in which responsibility for

the ecological, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability is as-signed to competitive agencies that must be coordinated for meaningfulpolicies to be adopted. The chances of consensuses and new institutionalsteering mechanisms forming to overcome these bureaucratic obstaclesand the environmental threats they sustain are likely to be dim and thuscentral to a bleak view of the prospects for the future.

GlobalizationI have found it helpful to conceive of globalization as rooted in two basicand contrary processes. One involves all those forces that press for cen-tralization, integration, and globalization, and the other consists of thoseforces that press for decentralization, fragmentation and localization. Inturn, these polarities can be viewed as either philosophical premises or asempirical processes. As philosophical premises, they amount to forms of

either localism or globalism, both of which consist of mind sets, of orientations, of worldviews, with localism pertaining to those mental setsthat focus on and value the familiar and close-at hand arrangements lo-cated within conventional community and national boundaries, and with




globalism involving orientations toward the distant circumstances that liebeyond national boundaries. But localism and globalism can usefully bedistinguished from localization and globalization, which I conceive to beempirical processes rather than mind sets, processes that are boundary-

spanning in the case of globalization and that either contract within conventional boundaries or do not span them in the case of localization.

The coordination needed to implement the goals articulated inJohannesburg seems unlikely to surmount the disaggregated authoritystructures on which global governance rests.

I have coined the ungainly and contrived word »fragmegration« tocapture the inextricable links between the individual and societal tenden-cies to integrate across boundaries that are the hallmark of globalizationand the counter tendencies toward fragmentation that are fomented by localizing resistances to boundary-spanning activities. I dare to suggest that by viewing the world through fragmegrative lenses one can discernthe underlying dynamics of our epoch with a clarity that is not otherwiseavailable.9 It is not far-fetched to assert that virtually every increment of

globalization gives rise to an increment of localization, and vice versa, sothoroughly are the two contrary orientations and processes intercon-nected.

While fragmegrative dynamics tend to be conflictual, it is useful to re-iterate that many environmental issues originate in local communitiesand the resolution of more than a few of them involve a measure of de-centralization founded on the perspectives of localism. In the energy field, for example, sustainable enterprises are estimated to be most effi-cient when they are decentralized in the private and nonprofit sector,10 anestimate that runs counter to practices in many countries but that is quiteconsistent with the underlying tendency whereby authority is under-going a continual process of disaggregation as the fragmegrative epochunfolds.

9. The concept of fragmegration is spelled out most fully in James N. Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Chap. 6.

10. Wolfgang Sachs, et al., The Jo’burg Memo: Fairness in a Fragile World (Berlin:Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2002), p. 29.




Sustainability as Fragmegrative Processes

Environmental issues and their potential for sustainability fall squarely between fragmentation and integration. They are profoundly and quint-

essentially fragmegrative dynamics. On the one hand, they are pervasively integrative in the sense that the value of preserving the environment and maintaining its viability is widely shared at every level of community.Rare are those who overtly argue on behalf of exploiting the resources of nature or who oppose the idea of trying to prevent their degradation. In-deed, it is precisely the integrative underpinnings of environmental issuesthat brought leaders of 160 national governments and representatives of thousands of nongovernmental organizations (ngos) to Rio in 1992 and

comparable numbers of both types of actors to Johannesburg in 2002. And it is precisely these issues that evoked verbal affirmations of and com-mitments to the agreements reached in Rio throughout the subsequent decade. On the other hand, the very same issues have led to pervasive and divisive fragmentation among and within groups, communities, coun-tries, and international systems when actions designed to implement theproposed commitments proved to be highly controversial and, withsome notable exceptions, largely ineffectual. It is no accident that the

series of anti-globalization protests that began with the Battle of Seattlein 1999 have in large measure focused on questions of sustainability.

Indeed, the protests have reinforced a long-term process whereby the very idea of sustainability has undergone a significant change of meaning.Now it connotes »sustainable development«, with the emphasis on sus-taining economies rather than nature, a semantic shift that has enabled a vast array of diverse actors to crowd under the umbrella of sustainability and to press their goals in the context of what they regard as unquestion-able sets of values.11

Sources of Fragmegration

What is it about the present epoch that has so markedly accelerated local-global tensions and strikingly raised their salience on the global agenda?

I find it useful to respond to this question by identifying eight majorsources of fragmegration that shape attitudes and behavior at four levels

11. Sachs, et al., The Jo’burg Memo: Fairness in a Fragile World , p. 14.




of aggregation – the micro level of individuals, the macro level of collec-tivities and states, the micro-macro level at which individuals and collec-tivities shape and interact with each other, and the macro-macro level wherein collectivities interact and influence each other. Both the eight

sources and the four levels are set forth in Table 1, with the entries in thecells being crude hypotheses that suggest some of – though surely not all– the possible consequences that may flow at each level in response toeach of the various sources.12 At the very least Table 1 highlights the ex-traordinary complexity that marks our time.

It should be stressed that fragmegrative circumstances are not neces-sarily marked by tensions and conflict. Global orientations and actionscan be supportive of local situations, and vice versa. For example, the

u.n.’s Commission on Sustainable Development created at Rio in 1992has assisted numerous cities around the world promote local arrange-ments designed to contain and reduce environmental degradation.13 Thisexample is encouraging. It accords credence to the possibility of achievingharmony between local circumstances and global needs. However, here I want to focus on how the eight dynamics listed in Table 1 may serve togenerate tension and conflict in the realm of environmental sustainability.

Microelectronic Technologies

Among the consequences that may flow from the Internet, mobilephones, and fax machines are an ever more effective capacity to mobilizelike-minded people on behalf of shared goals. It is a capacity that servesthose committed to localism as well as those inclined toward globalism.Equally important, such technologies level the playing field. Mobiliza-

tion in local communities is facilitated by word of mouth as well ascommunication technologies, but the latter make it possible to reach and mobilize the like-minded across national boundaries and great distances. The Internet has been a major factor in the surging growth of the envi-ronmental movement noted below.14

12. Both the contents of Table 1 and parts of the ensuing discussion of the eight sourcesof fragmegration are adapted from Rosenau, Distant Proximities, Chap. 3.

13. Hilary French, Vanishing Borders: Protecting the Planet in the Age of Globalization(New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), p. 161.

14. For a general analysis of the links between the Internet and social movements, seeRonald J. Deibert, »International Plug ’n Play? Citizen Activism, the Internet, and Global Public Policy«, International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 1 (2000), pp. 255–72.




T a

b l e 1 :

S o m e

S o u r c e s o f F r a g m e g r a t i o n a t F o u r L e v e l s o f A g g r e g a t i o n

L e v e l s o f A g g r e g a t i o n

S o u r c e s o f F r a g m e g r a t i o n

M I C R O

M A C R O

M I C R O –

M A C R O

M A C R O – M A C R O

M i c r o e l e c t r o n i c

T e c h n o l o g i e s

e n a b l e l i k e - m i n d e d p e o -

p l e t o b e i n

t o u c h w i t h

e a c h o t h e r

a n y w h e r e i n

t h e w o r l d

r e n d e r c o l l e c t i v i t i e s m o r e

o p e n , c o n n e c t e d , a n d

v u l n e r a b l e

; e m p o w e r s

t h e m t o

m o b i l i z e s u p p o r t

c o n s t r a i n g o v e r n m e n t s

b y e n a b l i n

g o p p o s i t i o n

g r o u p s t o

m o b i l i z e m o r e

e f f e c t i v e l y

a c c e l e r a t e

d i p l o m a t i c

p r o c e s s e s ; f a c i l i t a t e e l e c -

t r o n i c s u r

v e i l l a n c e a n d

i n t e l l i g e n c e w o r k

S k i l l R e v o l u t i o n

e x p a n d s p e

o p l e s ’ h o r i -

z o n s o n a g l o b a l s c a l e ;

s e n s i t i z e s t h e m t o

t h e r e l -

e v a n c e o f d

i s t a n t e v e n t s ;

f a c i l i t a t e s a

r e v e r s i o n t o

l o c a l c o n c e

r n s

e n l a r g e s t h

e c a p a c i t y o f

g o v e r n m e n t a l a g e n c i e s

t o t h i n k » o

u t o f t h e b o x « ,

s e i z e o p p o

r t u n i t i e s , a n d

a n a l y z e c h a l l e n g e s

c o n s t r a i n s

p o l i c y m a k i n g

t h r o u g h i n c r e a s e d c a p a -

c i t y o f i n d

i v i d u a l s t o

k n o w w h e

n , w h e r e a n d

h o w t o e n

g a g e i n c o l l e c -

t i v e a c t i o n

m u l t i p l i e s q u a n t i t y a n d

e n h a n c e s q u a l i t y o f l i n k s

a m o n g s t a t e s ; s o l i d i f i e s

t h e i r a l l i a n c e s a n d e n m i -

t i e s

O r g a n i z a t i o n a l E x p l o s i o n f a c i l i t a t e s m

u l t i p l e i d e n -

t i t i e s , s u b g

r o u p i s m , a n d

a f f i l i a t i o n w i t h t r a n s -

n a t i o n a l n e t w o r k s

i n c r e a s e s c

a p a c i t y o f

o p p o s i t i o n

g r o u p s t o

f o r m a

n d p r e s s f o r

a l t e r e d p o l i c i e s ; d i v i d e s

p u b l i c s f r o

m t h

e i r e l i t e s

c o n t r i b u t e s t o t h e p l u r a -

l i s m a

n d d

i s p e r s i o n o f

a u t h o r i t y ;

h e i g h t e n s t h e

p r o b a b i l i t y o f a u t h o r i t y

c r i s e s

r e n d e r s t h

e g l o b a l s t a g e

e v e r m o r e

t r a n s n a t i o n a l

a n d d e n s e

w i t h n o n - g o v -

e r n m e n t a l a c t o r s

B i f u r c a t i o n o f

G l o b a l S t r u c t u r e s

a d d s t o r o l e c o n f l i c t s ,

d i v i d e s l o y

a l t i e s , a n d

f o m e n t s t e n s i o n s a m o n g

i n d i v i d u a l s ; o r i e n t s p e o -

p l e t o w a r d

l o c a l s p h e r e s

o f a u t h o r i t

y

f a c i l i t a t e s f o r m a t i o n o f

n e w s p h e r e s o f a u t h o r i t y

a n d c o n s o l i d a t i o n o f

e x i s t i n g s p

h e r e s i n t h e

m u l t i - c e n t

r i c w o r l d

e m p o w e r s t r a n s n a t i o n a l

a d v o c a c y g r o u p s a n d

s p e c i a l i n t

e r e s t s t o p u r -

s u e i n f l u e n c e t h r o u g h

d i v e r s e c h a n n e l s

g e n e r a t e s

i n s t i t u t i o n a l

a r r a n g e m e n t s f o r c o o p e -

r a t i o n o n

m a j o r g l o b a l

i s s u e s s u c h a s t r a d e ,

h u m a n r i g h t s ,

t h e e n v i -

r o n m e n t ,

e t c .




M o b i l i t y U p h e a v a l

s t i m u l a t e s

i m a g i n a t i o n s

a n d p r o v i d

e s m o r e e x -

t e n s i v e c o n

t a c t s w i t h f o r -

e i g n c u l t u r

e s ; h e i g h t e n s

s a l i e n c e o f

t h e o u t s i d e r

e n l a r g e s t h

e s i z e a n d r e l e -

v a n c e o f s u

b - c u l t u r e s ,

d i a s p o r a s ,

a n d e t h n i c

c o n f l i c t s a s p e o p l e s e e k

n e w o p p o r t u n i t i e s

a b r o a d

i n c r e a s e s m

o v e m e n t

a c r o s s b o r

d e r s t h a t l e s s -

e n s c a p a c i t y o f g o v e r n -

m e n t s t o c o n t r o l n a t i o n a l

b o u n d a r i e

s

h e i g h t e n s

n e e d f o r i n t e r -

n a t i o n a l c

o o p e r a t i o n t o

c o n t r o l t h

e f l o w o f

d r u g s , m o

n e y , i m m i -

g r a n t s , a n

d t e r r o r i s t s

W e a k e n i n g o f

T e r r i t o r i a l i t y , S t a t e s ,

a n d S o v e r e i g

n t y

u n d e r m i n e

s t r a d i t i o n s

a n d n a t i o n

a l l o y a l t i e s ;

i n c r e a s e s d

i s t r u s t o f

g o v e r n m e n t s a n d o t h e r

i n s t i t u t i o n s

a d d s t o t h e p o r o s i t y o f

n a t i o n a l b o u n d a r i e s a n d

t h e d i f f i c u l t y o f f r a m i n g

n a t i o n a l p o l i c i e s

l e s s e n s c o n f i d e n c e i n

g o v e r n m e

n t s ; r e n d e r s

n a t i o n w i d

e c o n s e n s u s e s

d i f f i c u l t t o

a c h i e v e a n d

m a i n t a i n

i n c r e a s e s n e e d f o r i n t e r -

s t a t e c o o p

e r a t i o n o n g l o -

b a l i s s u e s ;

l e s s e n s c o n t r o l

o v e r c a s c a

d i n g e v e n t s

A u t h o r i t y C r i s e s

r e d i r e c t l o y a l t i e s ; e n -

c o u r a g e i n d i v i d u a l s t o

r e p l a c e t r a d i t i o n a l c r i t e -

r i a o f l e g i t i m a c y w i t h

p e r f o r m a n

c e c r i t e r i a

w e a k e n a b

i l i t y o f b o t h

g o v e r n m e n t s a n d o t h e r

o r g a n i z a t i o n s t o f r a m e

a n d i m p l e m e n t p o l i c i e s

f a c i l i t a t e t h e c a p a c i t y o f

p u b l i c s t o

p r e s s a n d / o r

p a r a l y z e t h e i r g o v e r n -

m e n t s ,

t h e w t o , a n d

o t h e r o r g a n i z a t i o n s

e n l a r g e t h

e c o m p e t e n c e

o f s o m e i g o s a n d n g o s ;

e n c o u r a g e d i p l o m a t i c

w a r i n e s s i n n e g o t i a t i o n s

G l o b a l i z a t i o n o f

N a t i o n a l E c o n o m i e s

s w e l l s r a n k

s o f c o n s u m -

e r s ; p r o m o

t e s u n i f o r m

t a s t e s ; h e i g

h t e n s c o n -

c e r n s f o r j o

b s ; w i d e n s

g a p b e t w e e

n w i n n e r s a n d

l o s e r s

c o m p l i c a t e s t a s k s o f s t a t e

g o v e r n m e n t s v i s - à - v i s

m a r k e t s ; p

r o m o t e s b u s i -

n e s s a l l i a n c e s

i n c r e a s e s e

f f o r t s t o p r o -

t e c t l o c a l c u l t u r e s a n d i n -

d u s t r i e s ; f

a c i l i t a t e s v i g o r

o f p r o t e s t

m o v e m e n t s ;

p o l a r i z e s c o m m u n i t i e s

i n t e n s i f i e s t r a d e a n d i n -

v e s t m e n t

c o n f l i c t s ; g e n -

e r a t e s i n c e n t i v e s f o r

b u i l d i n g g l o b a l f i n a n c i a l

i n s t i t u t i o n s




Skill Revolution

Elsewhere I have argued at length that people everywhere have expanded their skills at dealing with the challenges and crises that mark our accel-

erated epoch.15

It is no longer plausible to take publics for granted, to as-sume they can be led by their officials to support any course of action.Rather, equipped with a deeper understanding and more clear-cut valuesthan, say, their great grandparents, today they are more ready to take ac-tion in response to circumstances they find wanting. This greater readi-ness is perhaps especially evident with respect to environmental issues,sensitivities to which have greatly increased in recent decades. Stated inthe words of one analyst, »The local efforts of citizens have always been

crucial to the environmental movement. Grassroots activism is the seed-bed of more organized and enduring efforts and institutions«.16 Further-more, the skill revolution along with the new technologies has height-ened peoples’ sense of identity and their capacity to shoulder multipleidentities.

Organizational Explosion

A central pattern of this accelerated epoch is the proliferation of organi-zations at every level of community, local, national, and transnational.Equally important, due largely to the Internet and the fax machine, many of them are horizontally as well as vertically structured. Networks havesupplemented hierarchies as an organizational form, and many of thenew organizations are conspicuously lacking in hierarchy. Combined with the processes of localization, the organizational explosion is thus en-abling people to find common cause with others in their community and to come together when the need to do so arises.

But it is important to note that the environmental movement is farfrom unified. Rather, it can be viewed as numerous environmental move-ments that are »very diverse and complex, their organizational formsranging from the highly organized and formally institutionalized to the

15. For an initial discussion of the skill revolution as a micro dynamic, see James N.

Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity (Prince-ton: Princeton University Press, 1990), Chaps. 9 and 13. For an updated elaborationof the concept, see my Distant Proximities, Chap. 10.

16. Leslie Paul Thiele, Environmentalism for a New Millennium: The Challenge of Coevo-lution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 28.




radically informed, the spatial scope of their activities ranging from thelocal to the almost global, the nature of their concerns ranging fromsingle issues to the full panoply of global environmental concerns«.17

Taken as a whole, the movement is thus »defined by many different

voices« which are often in conflict. »Each cause has its own chorus of supporters and detractors«, so much so that »when advancing their ownparticular interests for their own political ends, environmentalists may seem less in the business of galvanizing public commitment than dispers-ing it«.18 Since some of these tensions unfold across transnational, na-tional, and local groups, it can readily be observed that the environmentalmovement is itself subject to fragmegrative dynamics.

Bifurcation of Global Structures

Beginning sometime after World War II the overall structure of world politics began to undergo change, to bifurcate, with the flourishing of in-numerable actors other than states clambering up on to the world stageand undertaking actions with consequence for the course of events. As aresult, what I call a »multi-centric« world evolved that consists of a great variety of collectivities and that has come to rival the long-standing, anar-

chical state-centric system. One can reasonably assert that overall globalstructures are today marked by two worlds of world politics, two worldsthat sometimes cooperate, oft-times conflict, and endlessly interact. Thebifurcated evolution of the global system serves to intensify fragmegrativedynamics in the sense that it contributes to a long-term process whereby authority is undergoing disaggregation. Consequently, the multi-centric world now provides avenues for local groups to articulate their needs and

goals as they join with each other in persuading governments in the state-centric world to heed – or at least to hear – their claims. 19

The environmental movement has been and continues to be both acontributor to and a beneficiary of the bifurcation of global structures. It has contributed through the explosion of environmental organizations at

17. Christopher A. Rootes, »Environmental Movements from the Local to the Glo-bal«, in: Christopher A. Rootes (ed.), Environmental Movements: Local, National,

and Global (London: Frank Cass, 1999), p. 2.18. Thiele, Environmentalism for a New Millennium, pp. 30–31.19. A conceptualization of the bifurcated two worlds of world politics is elaborated at

some length in Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics, Chap. 10.




all levels of community throughout the world. In so doing the movement has helped to institutionalize and legitimate the processes of bifurcation. At the same time it has benefited from the institutionalization of the bi-furcated structures in the sense that the movement’s diverse voices now

have a permanent platform from which they can express and move toward their goals. It is hard to imagine any future gathering of leaders of the state-centric world that is not accompanied by a simultaneous and ad- jacent gathering of organizations and individuals from the multi-centric world, a reality that is profoundly and thoroughly expressive of the dy-namics of fragmegration.20

Mobility Upheaval

The accelerated epoch has witnessed a vast movement of people – every-one from the tourist to the terrorist, from the business executive to theimmigrant, from illegal aliens seeking work to those fleeing persecution,from students studying abroad to artists and other professionals advanc-ing their careers, from environmentalists attending conferences in Rioand Johannesburg to protesters converging on Seattle and Washington. To cite one quantitative example, there were 635 million international

tourist arrivals in 1998, whereas the figure for 1950 was 25 million.21 Inmany ways this mobility upheaval, as I call it, has contributed to the inte-grative dimension of fragmegration, but in one important way it hasserved to intensify fragmentation. In many countries the migrant, legal as well as illegal, has fostered strong negative reactions in the host society. Australia’s handling of this problem, its refusal to let boatload of migrantsdisembark on its shores, is a classic instance of this fragmegrative dynamic.

Weakening of Territoriality, States, and Sovereignty

As technologies shrink the world, as people become increasingly skillful,as organizations proliferate, as the multi-centric world expands, and asthe mobility upheaval sustains vast movements of people, the meaning of

20.To be sure, the G-8 have convened in remote locales that are inaccessible to protest-ers or groups who wish to submit policy recommendations, but such a practice can-not long withstand the bifurcated structures that facilitate demands for transpar-ency.

21. French, Vanishing Borders, p.29.




territory becomes less compelling and states and their sovereignty become weaker. This is not to forecast the end of the state as a central po-litical structure. Rather it is to stress that states have increasing difficulty controlling the flow of ideas, money, goods, drugs, crime, pollution, and

people across their borders, thus contributing substantially to the pro-cesses whereby authority is undergoing disaggregation on a worldwidescale. The fragmegrative consequences of these processes are considera-ble. Most notably perhaps, local communities and groups are acquiringgreater autonomy and a heightened readiness to contest the integrativeforces of globalization. The recent history of the environmental move-ment offers numerous examples of clashes that pit local and global forcesagainst each other.22

Authority Crises

The dynamics whereby authority structures are undergoing disaggrega-tion have contributed to a proliferation of authority crises on the part of governments, local as well as national. Such crises are most conspicuous when protesters crowd the streets and make strident demands, but aneven more common form of authority crisis involves the inability of gov-

ernments to frame goals and move toward them. Stalemate and paralysis,in other words, amount to authority crises, and they are pervasive. Japan’sinability to confront and surmount the long-term decline of its economy and the persistence of widespread corruption and unemployment inChina are illustrative of authority crises that derive their strength fromstalemated political systems. ngos, churches, unions, and a variety of other institutions are also going one or another form of paralysis and up-

heaval. Even the Mafia has experienced an authority crisis deriving fromits young members defying the dictates of its seniors. Needless to say,pervasive authority crises have important consequences for the world’scapacity to maximize the governance of sustainability.

Globalization of National Economies

The turn toward free enterprise economic systems and a lessening of

trade barriers has had a number of fragmegrative consequences. On the

22. This is a recurring theme in Karen T. Litfin (ed.), The Greening of Sovereignty inWorld Politics (Cambridge: mit Press, 1998).




integrative side the emergence of a global economy has led to a greater variety of goods and services being available to more and more people,processes that have also contributed to an ever-greater interdependenceamong groups and societies. On the fragmenting side, the globalization

of national economies has also served to widen the gap between rich and poor both within and between countries. More relevant to present con-cerns, the prevalence of neoliberal economic perspectives underlies theaforementioned semantic shift of the concept of sustainability from anemphasis on sustaining economies rather than nature. These perspectiveshave also served to move the role of transnational corporations toward the top of the global agenda, thereby generating conditions for a wide variety of fragmegrative situations, from protests against the world’s

economic institutions to boycotts of the goods of corporations that areconsidered to undermine environmental sustainability.

The Governance of Environmental Fragmegration

The discourse that probes the problem of achieving sustainability through global governance largely bemoans the lack of progress since the

1992 convergence of the two worlds of world politics in Rio. However, when it turns to investigating how more effective global governancemight be accomplished, the discourse encounters conceptual difficultiesthat tend to block a full appreciation of the task. Three problems are es-pecially noteworthy. One involves the confusion noted above in whichthe priorities attached to sustainable and economic development get con-founded. The second consists of a tendency to ignore the high degree to

which authority has undergone disaggregation in recent decades and in-stead to focus on top-down solutions to the governance challenge. And the third amounts to a disinclination to account for local variations and,consequently, an underplaying of fragmegrative tensions and an unduestress upon the universality of scientific findings.

Conceptual Blocks: What Should be Developed?

Intense debate surrounds the question of whether the environment oreconomies should be developed. It pits environmentalists against devel-opers, which readily becomes a debate between developed and develop-ing countries. While some appreciate that the debate can be misleading,




that the goals of each group can be compatible and need not be mutually exclusive,23 that the environment can be sustained even as economiesflourish, the central tendency is for the economy and the developers toprevail over the environment and environmentalists. George W. Bush’s

repeated contention that the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change would be bad for the American economy is a quintessential instance of this out-come as well as a succinct expression of how this conceptual block canprevent both/and formulations from replacing either/or approaches.

Conceptual Blocks: Authority

Notwithstanding the many ways in which the eight dynamics listed in

Table 1 – and especially the organizational explosion, the skill revolution,the weakening of states, and pervasive authority crises – have cumulatively fostered a global stage that is crowded with diverse actors at every level of community who take positions and pursue policies relevant to sustaina-bility, most assessments of what has to be done start at the level of reform-ing international institutions and then note how the reforms have to beimplemented by national and local governments. Whether the solutionsare top-down or bottom-up, they posit vertical flows of authority.

In effect, therefore, the solutions are cast in the context of the afore-mentioned weakness wherein analysts still cling to traditional approachesto the nature of authority. They ignore the ways in which collectivities inboth the public and private sectors sustain authority flows horizontally through networks as well as vertically through hierarchical structures. They continue to posit the state as the prime, if not the only, wielder of effective authority. Thus, still rooted in the notion that compliance in-

volves those at the top persuading, instructing, or ordering those downthe chain of command to conduct themselves in specified ways, no allow-ance is made for requests and suggestions that evoke compliance throughnonhierarchical structures. In the words of one observer, »So dominant in contemporary consciousness is the assumption that authority must becentralized that scholars are just beginning to grapple with how decen-tralized authority might be understood …. [T]he question of how tothink about a world that is becoming ›domesticated‹ but not centralized,

23. See, for example, John Gerard Ruggie, Taking Embedded Liberalism Global: theCorporate Connection (Toronto: Canadian Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, May 29, 2002).




about a world after ›anarchy‹, is one of the most important questionstoday facing not only students of international relations but of politicaltheory as well«.24

For the agreements reached in Johannesburg to be translated intoeffective authority that inches the world toward sustainability, a widevariety of numerous actors, both individuals and collectivities, haveto be coordinated and their differences at least minimally subordinatedto the interests of their great grandchildren.

Authority flows emanate from a vast array of actors whose rule systems

I call »spheres of authority« (soa s) and who evoke compliance througha variety of means.25 Global governance thus involves crazy-quilt arrange-ments wherein the exercise of authority is exercised partly by hierarchicalstructures, partly by horizontal networks, and partly by oblique linksamong overlapping vertical and horizontal soa s. Taken in its entirety, thesystem of global governance is comparable to a mobius strip or web. It isa system marked by patterns that unfold when the impetus to steer acourse of events derives from networked and hierarchical interactions

across levels of aggregation among transnational corporations, inter-national nongovernmental organizations, ngos, intergovernmental or-ganizations, states, elites, and mass publics, interactions that are elaborateand diverse enough to constitute a hybrid structure in which the dy-namics of governance are so overlapping among the several levels as toform a singular, web-like process that, like a mobius strip, neither beginsnor culminates at any level or at any point in time.26 A mobius web is top-down, bottom-up and side-by-side governance all at once. It is thus farmore complex than the governance that flows from the principal of sub-sidiarity developed in the European Union.

24.Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1999), p. 308.

25. For a discussion of the social contracts on which soa s are founded, see Rosenau, Distant Proximities, Chap. 13.

26. A formulation that elaborates on »mobius-web« governance is set forth in James N.Rosenau, »Governance in a New Global Order«, in: David Held and Anthony McGrew (eds.), Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), pp. 81–83.




Conceptual Blocks: Universal Science and Indigenous Knowledge

Despite widespread appreciation that many environmental problemsoriginate in local communities, each of which has special circumstances

that require responses tailored to their needs, all too many officials and their expert advisers tend to assess the local variations under the rubric of science. The impulse to posit scientific findings as having universal rele- vance and application has thus become so ingrained in the expertise of many environmental specialists and economists that they tend to givelittle credence to the idea that there are occasions when indigenousknowledge is more accurate and relevant than the knowledge generated through scientific methods. After all, experts tend to assert, the local in-

sights are idiosyncratic and may even prove false when subjected to therigors of scientific testing. More than that, they invite their superiors and local counterparts to consider global warming, a widening ozone layer,species diminution, polluted air carried by high winds, and other worldwide environmental problems as indicative of the limits of indigenousknowledge, stressing that it overlooks the big picture and is therefore lesscompelling than universal verities uncovered through science.

This is, of course, an oversimplified characterization. There are local

experts whose knowledge is respected precisely because it stems from afamiliarity with circumstances on the ground. What they offer, however,may not be scientific findings, but rather the insights of experience withlocal conditions. Still, for many experts the habit of positing scientificfindings as more reliable than any other form of knowledge is a habitualperspective not easily abandoned. For many experts forsaking the habit is viewed as a capitulation to local pressures. Expertise, in short, can be a

basis for perpetuating rather than ameliorating fragmegrative tensions.

Conclusions

It is the crazy-quilt nature of global governance, along with the failure toconceptually allow for it, that underlies my bleak assessment of the pros-pects for achieving worldwide sustainability. For the agreements reached

in Johannesburg to be translated into effective authority that inches the world toward sustainability, a wide variety of numerous actors, both in-dividuals and collectivities, have to be coordinated and their differencesat least minimally subordinated to the interests of their great grand-




children. More than that, given the boundary-spanning nature of envi-ronmental dynamics, all concerned have to recognize that people everywhere have an interest in your grandchildren as well as their own.

We have not adjusted our conceptual equipment to facilitate theanalysis of how authority gets exercised in a decentralized world.We are still deeply ensconced in a paradigm that locates authorityexclusively in states and environmental challenges exclusively intheir shared problems.

The chances of such mobius webs being fashioned as effective rule sys-

tems seem very slim indeed. Too many actors can intrude ruptures in the webs. Whether they are corporate executives who sacrifice the well beingof future generations for the sake of immediate profits, states that pursueeconomic goals at the expense of sustainable development, sovereignty-protective officials who are oblivious to the great grandchildren of pub-lics other than their own, ngos that put their narrow interests ahead of collective ecological policies, the United States that withdraws from trea-ties, individuals whose corrupt practices undermine efforts to preserve

endangered species, or bureaucrats and analysts mired in conceptual con-fusion who do not fully appreciate the numerous local foundations of global structures – to mention only a few of the ways in which the diverseactors on the global stage can divert movement toward a sustainable world – the coordination needed to implement the goals articulated inJohannesburg seems unlikely to surmount the disaggregated authority structures on which global governance rests. Stated less pessimistically,»reversing ecological decline in the early decades of the new century willrequire innovative partnerships between many different actors, includingngos, businesses, governments, and international organizations«.27

This is not to suggest that no progress toward meaningful sustainabil-ity lies ahead. Already there has been a proliferation of environmentalregimes: »fourteen different global environmental agreements [were]concluded in the rather short period between 1985 and 1997«28 (though,to be sure, the record of compliance with these treaties has been, at best,

27. French, Vanishing Borders, p. 164.28. Walter Truett Anderson, All Connected Now: Life in the First Global Civilization

(Boulder: Westview Press, 2001), p. 117.



spotty). Equally relevant, there is no lack of good, knowledgeable leadersand activists who expend a lot of energy on behalf of decent goals. Noris there a shortage of research centers and other organizations of civilsociety that can make constructive inputs into governance processes.

Pockets of progress will thus doubtless occur as some countries, corpora-tions, and ngos sign on to constructive rule systems designed to advancesustainability as the skill and organizational revolutions lead to publicpressures on recalcitrant collectivities.

My own view is that, on balance, the dynamics that underlie thedisaggregated character of global governance seem likely to thwart move-ment toward a viable and worldwide sustainability. It was neither anaccident nor pervasive malevolence that prevented the earlier alarms from

being heeded and the commitments made at the 1992 Rio meeting frombeing implemented. The pervasive inaction appears, rather, to be in-herent in the structural constraints and conceptual blocks that currently prevail in the global system.

More on issues of global governancein international politics and society

Hanns W. Maull: Containing Entropy, Rebuilding the State: Chal-lenges to International Order in the Age of Globalization (2/2002)

Ian Martin Witte/Wolfgang H. Reinicke/Thorsten Benner: Beyond Multilateralism: Global Public Policy Networks (2/2000)

Dirk Messner: Globalisierung, Global Governance und Entwick-lungspolitik (1/1999)

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