Global Governance, NGOs, and International Organization

International Organizations: NGOs and IGOs

An NGO is a non-governmental organization, while an IGO is an intergovernmental organization. The latter is typically created between states. Trade agreements often create IGOs as enforcement mechanisms, for example. Thus, IGOs exist as intermediaries between the constituent nations. According to the Union of International Associations (UIA) (2014) definition, there are often three or more nations party to the agreement. The body will typically have a specific set of tasks for which it has been created, and any authority that the IGO has will be related to the performance of those tasks.

An NGO is also an international organization, but exists outside of state influence. The UIA defines an NGO as being transnational in nature but not bound or run by any nation. An NGO may theoretically receive some funding from a nation-state, but in many cases will raise funds privately. NGOs therefore operate independent of state influence and perform tasks on this basis. The UIA still precludes bilateral bodies in its definition of NGO. An NGO is distinguished from an IGO on the basis of not being part of any government, nor created by government. The distinct, independent, non-state nature of the NGO makes it a counterpart to an IGO. It is also worth noting that an NGO is not a multinational corporation. A corporation is defined by its profit motive, whereas an NGO will typically be a non-profit entity (UIA, 2014).

The Tragedy of the Commons

The tragedy of the commons is a term coined by Hardin (1968). This concept reflects the theory that the pursuit of individual outcomes will necessarily lead to negative consequences for society as a whole. The underlying theory is that humans are motivated by individual outcomes—we are essentially rational actors who will pursue that which is better for us. When an action has a negative consequence, we might avoid it. But in many situations on a shared earth, an action that has a positive consequence for me might have a negative consequence for another; or, as Hardin points out, a negative consequence only to the commons.

Climate change is a good way to explain the tragedy of the commons, because it is corollary to the herdsman allegory that Hardin used. Each of us pursues economic betterment. I will avoid actions that lead to direct negative consequences to me. But where there are negative consequences to a more generalized entity—the commons—I will pursue that activity. So it is that we as a human society have built our society and economy around the internal combustion engine. Yet, burning fossil fuels to power our world creates pollution. Smog was a tragedy of the commons, but climate change is a bigger tragedy. The costs of this will be borne by all humanity, not just by those who burned the carbon—indeed, many of those people will already be dead.

So this is the tragedy of the commons. It is essentially a rhetorical adaptation of the economic concept of negative externalities. Any indirect outcome is an externality. A negative externality is Hardin's tragedy because of its negative nature and the fact that it affects everybody. Hardin, of course, goes a bit further, pointing out that the world is finite. Increased consumption would not be a tragedy if there did not come at some point a constraint on increasing consumption. It begins with diminishing marginal returns and then finally the constraint becomes very real and people are forced to deal with the tragedy head on.

Global Governance: Prospects and Limitations

Global governance has more weaknesses than benefits. The biggest benefit is that it might give us a chance to eliminate the tragedy of the commons. Hardin's herdsman is basically the individual nation-state, and the tragedy of the commons can really only be avoided when decisions about resource use and allocation are made at the commons level. That is a bit utopian, and most of the drawbacks to global governance are related to how impractical global governance would be in today's world. This is a tribal world, where humans are more worried about what divides us—especially religion and ethnic identity—than about what we have in common with each other. Such divisions create otherization, and that would be very difficult to reconcile to make global governance work. This is especially an issue because different cultures have very different value systems, and there is sometimes little common ground that would enable cooperation to flourish.

Consider some examples of global governance in action. An example of how it does not work: tribalism and disproportionate voting at the UN gives 20 votes to 300 million Arabs, 1 vote to 300 million Americans, and a fraction of a vote to 300 million mainland Chinese. Global governance under such a system is never going to work. Where global governance successes might emerge would be in international trade, where an organization like the WTO has signed up most nations and, as a result, trade barriers around the world have fallen dramatically in the past two decades.