Global civil society: lessons from ocean governance

Late 20th century ideas about governance of the world's oceans may provide clues to the role of “civil society” in the 21st century. The UN Convention on Law of the Sea has radically changed traditional ideas about “national sovereignty”, shifting its focus from territorial to functional, imposing on states the duty to cooperate and pay taxes, requiring the sharing of sovereign rights, and transcending sovereignty with the “common heritage” concept. The proliferation of nongovernmental organisations operating on the international stage is empowering all elements of a burgeoning global civil society. In some pioneering experiences in international relations, nongovernmental representatives sit on a par with delegates from governments. Most of the elements of global civil society—NGOs, international business, the community of scientists, worldwide media, and local communities—are not yet focused on the kinds of globalization that can narrow the rich–poor gap and promote sustainable development, but in the new century, a more global civil society can play a more constructive role.     

The two globalizations: notes on a confused dialogue

Globalization is highly controversial, but a major weakness in the global debate concerning its effects is that the word “globalization” itself is used in different ways. For some it is primarily an economic process (Globalization One), and of fairly recent origin. For others, it is a huge evolutionary unfolding (Globalization Two) which has been underway for centuries if not millennia and which involves not only economic but also political, cultural and biological transformations—and not only the processes, but also consciousness of globalization. Most of the current policy debates have to do with Globalization One. Both may be to some degree governable, but neither is reversible.     

The Global Century

No people, however they define themselves, can claim the 21st century as theirs; it can only be dubbed The Global Century. A sweep of the horizon at the end of the twentieth shows ten transformations going on at once — all related to the global spread of knowledge. We can't know what will happen or when, but we already know why. The “information environment” is changing our thinking about globalization, diversity, community, the world economy, the rich-poor gap, and education. Nobody can be in charge, so everybody is partly in charge. The implications for learning are huge, from pre-school to higher education. Education for the Global Century must help citizens think about “the situation as a whole”, think about how to “get it all together”.     

沉淀投资、税收政策竞争与跨国公司发展

如果没有公平的竞争环境,跨国公司的发展会受到限制,可以说建立一个公平竞争的国际环境是跨国公司得以发展的最根本的前提。事实上,公平竞争环境不仅包括产品市场竞争、生产要素市场竞争和金融市场竞争,而且还包括税收政策竞争等经济政策竞争。这些竞争环境都是跨国公司发展的必要国际条件。     

How can IMF policy eliminate country moral hazard and account for externalities?

Costly crisis prevention has positive external effects, which leads to free-riding of governments on each other's efforts. “Ordinary” IMF loans aggravate existing externalities, reinforcing the under-investment problem. We consider the reform proposals of the “Meltzer commission” in both loan and insurance models and show how the IMF can eliminate country moral. The efficiency-ensuring loan policy accounts for given externalities and involves effort-contingent discounts on interests or the extension of credit volume. Similar results hold for the insurance framework. Ex ante participation requires that smaller countries be “subsidized” by large ones, or that IMF policy consider distributional aspects in addition to efficiency.     

The four spikes

The unintended impacts of human appropriation of the planet's resources have become so numerous, voluminous, and entangled in feedback loops that they often overwhelm the capacities of decisionmakers to cope with current crises, much less prepare for a sustainable future. The difficulty may be alleviated by viewing global change from a broader perspective than is normally offered either by specialists (whose views are necessarily narrow) or by mainstream media (whose interests are usually fragmentary and parochial). From this broader perspective, it can be seen that four “megaphenomena” began sweeping the planet in the past century. Graphed on a time-line of millennia rather than years or days, they appear as four enormous “spikes” — of human population, materials/energy consumption, carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, and extinctions of species. These megaphenomena account for the proliferation of afflictions swamping humanity at the outset of the 21st century. Understanding the nature of the spikes may offer the most viable means of managing — by attacking the roots — of what could otherwise escalate into an increasingly disastrous cascade of impacts.     

Planning with scenarios : The banking world of 1985

Scenarios are widely used in large organisations as a planning tool. The success of this tool, however, depends on its ability to link macroviews of economic, social, and political events to the unique operating experience of a specific type of organisation. This article describes a formal linking procedure for assessing the impact of several scenarios on a large bank. The goal is to define those sets of economic, technological, and regulatory conditions which are most favourable (a “best scenario”) and those which are least favourable (a “worst scenario”).     

When courts are overgrown with grass: the role of courts in the 21st Century

What will be the social role of courts over the future? This essay explores this question by examining the “five dimensions” of judiciary—the judiciary as a branch of government, subsystem of the legal system, as a forum for resolving dispute, as public agency, and an institution of a changing society. It considers the duty of courts to safeguard the interests of future generations; the place of courts during “the end of authority”; the increasing use of artificial intelligence in formal adjudication, and concludes with a time when “the courts of justice are overgrown with grass”.     

Institutional theory and accounting rule choice: an analysis of four US state governments' decisions to adopt generally accepted accounting principles

In this study, we use institutional theory to explore how institutional pressures exerted on four state governments (New York, Michigan, Ohio, Delaware) influenced the decision of these governments to adopt or resist the use of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) for external financial reporting. We identify resource dependence as a potent form of coercive institutional pressure that was associated with early GAAP adoption. We identify three factors that may lead to initial resistance to institutional pressures for change. First, if accounting bureaucrats are not active in professional associations that promote GAAP adoption, they may miss the educational process that we believe is important to early adoption of GAAP. Second, organizational printing may impede GAAP adoption. Third, powerful interests may impede GAAP if the proposed GAAP legislation is expected to alter the existing power relationships. We found that key accounting bureaucrats in New York and Michigan used “compromise” as an initial strategic response to institutional pressures to adopt GAAP, Ohio's key accounting bureaucrat adopted a “defy” strategy, although the political leadership endorsed an “acquiesce” strategy. While Delaware initially employed a “manipulate”strategy with some success. Delaware did not adopt GAAP for external reporting until a political entrepreneur for GAAP emerged in the early 1990s. Our study suggests that all strategic responses to resist institutional pressures for GAAP adoption will ultimately fail because of the potency of the institutional pressures that result from the well organized professional accounting and governmental institutional fields.     

Cocreating business's new social compact

Moving beyond decades of mutual distrust and animosity, corporations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are learning to cooperate with each other. Realizing that their interests are converging, the two sides are working together to create innovative business models that are helping to grow new markets and accelerate the eradication of poverty. The path to convergence has proceeded in three stages. In the initial be-responsible stage, companies and NGOs, realizing that they had to coexist, started to look for ways to influence each other through joint social responsibility projects. This experience paved the way for the get-into-business stage, in which NGOs and companies sought to serve the poor by setting up successful businesses. In the process, NGOs learned business discipline from the private sector, while corporations gained an appreciation for the local knowledge, low-cost business models, and community-based marketing techniques that the NGOs have mastered. Increased success on both sides has laid the foundation for the cocreate-business stage, in which companies and NGOs become key parts of each other's capacity to deliver value. When BP sought to market a duel-fuel portable stove in India, it set up one such cocreation system with three Indian NGOs. The system allowed BP to bring the innovative stove to a geographically dispersed market through myriad local distributors without incurring distribution costs so high that the product would become unaffordable. The company sold its stoves profitably, the NGOs gained access to a lucrative revenue stream that could fund other projects, and consumers got more than the ability to sit down to a hot meal-they got the opportunity to earn incomes as the local distributors and thus to gain economic and social influence.     

Global expectations and their association with corporate social disclosure practices in Australia, Singapore, and South Korea

This paper explores the social disclosure policies of large Australian, Singaporean, and South Korean multinational corporations. The researchers advanced arguments about why large multinational corporations respond to “global expectations” rather than simply to the expectations of those people residing in the corporation's “home” country. Two large international surveys conducted in 1998 and 1999 are used to determine global expectations. The results of the testing indicate a minimal association between global expectations, as represented by the two surveys, and social disclosure policies of large multinational corporations. Consistent with previous research, country of origin and industry of operation appear to significantly influence disclosure practices.     

Balanced wealth creation across cooperative economics

Cooperation is a necessary condition, along with competition, for the creation of wealth, innovation and knowledge. We briefly re-visit and critique certain neo-classical arguments in regards to pure competition and profit maximization that continue to be carried forward by current neo-liberal thought. We also attempt to illustrate the unbalanced and damaging outcomes of neo-liberal logic across the lens of enactment; as well as across our own discernment of holographic analogies to the individualism–collectivism dyad that exist within our complex environments. Within the spirit of evolutionary economics and complexity theory, early and more recent theoretical and empirical underpinnings for cooperation are presented, with the argument that it, combined with competition, leads to more well-balanced wealth creation—be it regional, national or global in character. Finally, we review competitive vs cooperative economic approaches across the lens of emergent complex systems. We then present two possible ‘future’ scenarios: one extreme outcome occurring as a result of truncating or de-balancing the individual vs collective dyad and its holographic analogies; while another outcome attempts to integrate a more inherent balance within these same dyads.     

The transmodern hypothesis: towards a dialogue of cultures

For a Brussels Seminar at the European Commission, a “double hypothesis” was proposed: that we are in transition to a transmodern way of thinking that combines intuition and spirituality with rational brainwork; and that 21st century conflicts will likely be not between religions or cultures but within them, between premodern, modern, and transmodern worldviews. Non-Western thinkers find this framework useful: it opens a door to criticism of the worst aspects of modernity without being “anti-Western”. Western reactions are more mixed, some critics wanting to maintain a high fence between religion and governance, others welcoming the transmodern concept as helpful in relating states to religions, and in analyzing conflicts involving beliefs about belief. “Transmodernity” turns out to be a rich tool of analysis, with important implications for European foreign policy in the century to come.     

Accounting and the examination: A genealogy of disciplinary power

Historical elaboration of Foucault's concept of “power-knowledge” can explain both the late-medieval developments in accounting technology and why the near-universal adoption of a discourse of accountancy is delayed until the nineteenth century. It is the disciplinary techniques of elite medieval educational institutions—the new universities and their examinations—that generate new power-knowledge relations. These techniques embody forms of textual rewriting (including the new “alphanumeric” system) from which the accounting advances are produced and “control” is formalised. “Double-entry” is an aspect of these rewritings, linked also to the new writing and rewritings of money, especially the bill of exchange. By the eighteenth century accounting technologies are feeding back in a general way into educational practice (e.g. in the deployment of “book-keeping” on pupils) and this culminates in the introduction of the written examination and the mathematical mark. A new regime of “objective” evaluation of total populations, made up of individually “calculable” subjects, is thereby engendered and then extended — apparently first in the U.S. railroads — into modern comprehensive management and financial accounting systems (systems of “accountability” embodying Foucault's “reciprocal hierarchical observation” and “normalising judgement”), while written examinations become used to legitimate the newly autonomous profession of accountancy.     

“A deficient performance”: The regulation of the train operating companies in Britain's privatised railway system

This paper focuses on the performance and regulation of the train operating companies in Britain's privatised railway system. It places regulation in context by examining rail privatisation, with particular scrutiny given to the theory and practice of the franchising process which established these companies. The record of the regulatory authority is assessed up to the announcement in 2004 of its planned abolition. This assessment employs critical financial analysis, and draws on non-financial performance indicators, in order to examine the extent to which it achieved its five main objectives: increasing the number of rail passengers; managing franchises in the interests of passengers; encouraging efficiency and economy in the provision of passenger rail services; encouraging investment in rail services; and securing a progressive improvement in the quality of rail services. The paper concludes that the regulatory authority's performance was “deficient” as it only achieved the first of these objectives. It places this failure in context by highlighting the fundamental problem—the flawed concept of fragmenting and privatising a loss-making rail industry in the interests of British capitalism. The “stronger” regulation envisaged by the Blair Government is revealed as a smoke screen behind which there is a continuing transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the owners and providers of capital.     

British central government and “the mercantile system of double entry” bookkeeping: a study of ideological conflict

The study examines the contest between rival interests following the Treasury's decision to explore the potential of “the mercantile system of double entry” bookkeeping as the basis for recording and reporting the financial affairs of British central government. At the heart of the ensuing dispute was an ideological conflict between individuals representing the competing interests of the aristocracy and those of the new capitalist classes. The battleground was whether the mercantile system of double entry should be designed to reflect the “old society” priorities of stewardship, patronage and personal accountability or “new society” pressure for a business framework judged capable of achieving “cheap and efficient government”.     

Is Government Regulation of Banks Necessary?

Banks have been involved with and regulated by governments for hundreds of years. Following a brief review of this history, I delineate nine reasons that could justify continued regulation, particularly in the United States. These include deposit insurance, preventing banks from obtaining excessive economic power, reducing the cost of individual bank insolvency, avoiding the effects of bank failures on the economy, protecting the payments system, serving the interests of popularly elected officials, enhancing the Federal Reserve's control over the money supply, suppressing competition, and protecting consumers. Analysis of each leads me to conclude that deposit insurance, which allows banks to hold insufficient capital, is the only public-policy-justifiable rationale for regulation. This concern can be managed with capital requirements; otherwise, banks should only be regulated as are other corporations.     

Genetic counselling: ethical mediation of eugenic futures?

This paper examines some proposals concerning the involvement of genetic counsellors in reproductive decisionmaking. This involvement represents the future situation as being shaped decisively by the “relevant” knowledge of powerful medical and other political interests. The paper deconstructs and reorders this proposed knowledge in order to make it problematic. The projected involvement of genetic counselling backed by claims of ethical expertise is rendered denaturalised and particular, opening a conceptual space for the emergence of other futures. An alternative future in which public communication, not private medical decisions, is given as the primary ethical focus.