“The Public and the Private in Global Governance”
Global governance is constructed by both public and private actors. Governments have created international institutions and transgovernmental networks; companies have established self-regulatory structures; civil society and business organizations have been active in norm-setting and monitoring. They have joined forces in various hybrid organizations, which collaborate and compete with each other, and all perform functions in the many regulatory spaces that include institutions and actors of various origins. At the same time, many privately-created bodies claim to provide public goods, while many institutions of public origin are criticized for pursuing private gains or for being strongly influenced by private interests. As a result, the boundaries between public and private in global governance have become blurred, and the classical public/private distinction – central to structuring our understanding of domestic government – is under increasing pressure. On this background, the 2015 Barcelona Workshop on Global Governance asks how ‘the public’ and ‘the private’ are related in current structures of global governance. Key questions involve:
- Does it make sense to maintain a distinction between public and private authority, and if so, how ought ‘publicness’ to be reformulated for the global sphere? What could take the place of the public/private distinction for structuring accounts of legitimacy and accountability in global governance?
- Do the authority and legitimacy of global governance, both normatively and sociologically, depend on the ‘publicness’ of its institutions?
- How do institutions (including privately-created ones) generate, or seek to generate, ‘publicness’ in their rhetoric, procedures and accountability mechanisms, and with what success?
- How do private actors, both national and transnational, participate in global governance regimes? What patterns of interaction exist between privately- and publicly-created institutions?
- What success can the construction of a ‘global public law’ as a law of global governance have?
The Barcelona Workshop on Global Governance is a venue for the study of global governance – its structure, effects, and problems – from an interdisciplinary perspective, bringing together scholarship from international relations, law, sociology, anthropology, political theory, public administration and history. Its 3rd edition will be held on 15 & 16 January 2015 in Barcelona. Confirmed practitioner speakers include Narcís Serra (former Spanish Defense Minister and Deputy Prime Minister) and Javier Solana (former NATO Secretary General and EU High Representative for Common and Foreign Security Policy). Confirmed academic keynote speakers include Andrew Hurrell (University of Oxford) and Jonas Tallberg (Stockholm University).
Venue
January 15, 2015: Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI)
January 16, 2015: Esade Business and Law School
Organized by
EsadeGeo-Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics, www.esadegeo.com
Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), www.ibei.org
Organizing Committee
Miriam Bradley, IBEI
Nico Krisch, IBEI & Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
Angel Saz-Carranza, EsadeGeoNico Krisch, IBEI