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Overview
Global governance is here--but not where most people think. This book presents the far-reaching argument that not only should we have a new world order but that we already do. Anne-Marie Slaughter asks us to completely rethink how we view the political world. It's not a collection of nation states that communicate through presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers, and the United Nations. Nor is it a clique of NGOs. It is governance through a complex global web of "government networks."
Slaughter provides the most compelling and authoritative description to date of a world in which government officials--police investigators, financial regulators, even judges and legislators--exchange information and coordinate activity across national borders to tackle crime, terrorism, and the routine daily grind of international interactions. National and international judges and regulators can also work closely together to enforce international agreements more effectively than ever before. These networks, which can range from a group of constitutional judges exchanging opinions across borders to more established organizations such as the G8 or the International Association of Insurance Supervisors, make things happen--and they frequently make good things happen. But they are underappreciated and, worse, underused to address the challenges facing the world today.
The modern political world, then, consists of states whose component parts are fast becoming as important as their central leadership. Slaughter not only describes these networks but also sets forth a blueprint for how they can better the world. Despite questions of democratic accountability, this new world order is not one in which some "world government" enforces global dictates. The governments we already have at home are our best hope for tackling the problems we face abroad, in a networked world order.
Synopsis
Global governance is here--but not where most people think. This book presents the far-reaching argument that not only should we have a new world order but that we already do. Anne-Marie Slaughter asks us to completely rethink how we view the political world. It's not a collection of nation states that communicate through presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers, and the United Nations. Nor is it a clique of NGOs. It is governance through a complex global web of "government networks." Slaughter provides the most compelling and authoritative description to date of a world in which government officials--police investigators, financial regulators, even judges and legislators--exchange information and coordinate activity across national borders to tackle crime, terrorism, and the routine daily grind of international interactions. National and international judges and regulators can also work closely together to enforce international agreements more effectively than ever before. These networks, which can range from a group of constitutional judges exchanging opinions across borders to more established organizations such as the G8 or the International Association of Insurance Supervisors, make things happen--and they frequently make good things happen. But they are underappreciated and, worse, underused to address the challenges facing the world today. The modern political world, then, consists of states whose component parts are fast becoming as important as their central leadership. Slaughter not only describes these networks but also sets forth a blueprint for how they can better the world. Despite questions of democratic accountability, this new world order is not one in which some "world government" enforces global dictates. The governments we already have at home are our best hope for tackling the problems we face abroad, in a networked world order.Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Breaking new ground in international relations theory, Slaughter urges readers to lose their "conceptual blind spot" and see how the world really works. Scholars, pundits and policymakers, she writes, have traditionally seen nations as "unitary"-that is, as single entities that "articulate and pursue a single national interest." In fact, she says, we would do better to focus on government networks, both horizontal and vertical. Horizontal networks link counterpart national officials across borders, such as police investigators or financial regulators. Vertical networks are relationships between a nation's officials and some supranational organization to which they have ceded authority, such as the European Court of Justice. Networks, she says, are the solution to the "globalization paradox": The world needs global governance to combat problems that jump borders, like crime and environmental degradation, and yet most people fear-rightly, Slaughter implies-the idea of a centralized, all-powerful world government. The book both describes the here and now and plots a course for the future: Strengthening existing networks and developing new ones "could create a genuine global rule of law without centralized global institutions." The author, who is the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton as well as president of the American Society of International Law, is steeped in these issues and offers genuinely original thinking. Written in dense academic language, this book will not pick up many casual readers, but it will likely attain instant textbook status and generate much discussion about foreign policy and whether, as Slaughter believes, the U.S. should welcome such networks in a globalized world. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.Foreign Affairs
In this major new statement about modern global governance, Slaughter, dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, argues that governments are increasingly working together through transnational networks to respond to the challenges of interdependence. On issues ranging from organized crime and terrorism to human rights, the environment, finance, and trade, officials are exchanging information, coordinating policies, enforcing laws, and regulating markets through increasingly elaborate informal intergovernmental channels. In the traditional view, global governance results from states pursuing national interests. In Slaughter's view, however, global governance is manifest in the decentralized (and less visible) activity of judges, regulators, and legislators working with foreign counterparts and nongovernmental organizations on specific issues. Much of A New World Order is a mapping of these networks. Particularly revealing is Slaughter's remarkable account of the cooperation between national judicial authorities and international and regional courts, which is serving to globalize jurisprudence. The larger purpose of the book, however, is to suggest how such networks should be strengthened to improve governance. The challenge, as Slaughter sees it, is to make these networks accountable without ceding authority to potentially coercive centralized multinational organizations. She argues that transparency and norms of inclusiveness can help make them responsive to the public will.New York Review of Books
[An] important [book]. By showing how today's world—of what she calls 'disaggregated states'—actually works, Slaughter cuts the ground away from nationalists and internationalists alike. This, she says, is how it is, for America and everyone else. She also, quite clearly, believes that this how it should be . . . because nothing else will work. . . . I have absolutely no doubt that Slaughter is on to something.— Tony Judt
Foreign Affairs
[A] major new statement about modern global governance. . . . Particularly revealing is Slaughter's remarkable account of the cooperation between national judicial authorities and international and regional courts.Harvard Law Review
[A] groundbreaking book, a striking combination of both pragmatism and vision. . . . Slaughter represents the cutting intellectual edge of this decade's new way of thinking about global governance.— Kenneth Anderson
Financial Times/getAbstract
This excellent, thought-provoking analysis covers a widespread but little studied shift in the way the world works.
International Journal of Constitutional Law
The new world order of network governance will be a better place, especially if the reforms proposed by Slaughter are adopted and networks open up, enabling broader participation and increased accountability.— Andras Sajo