Home › Books & Reviews › Capsule Reviews › The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance

The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance

Rodney Bruce Hall and Thomas J. Biersteker
Reviewed by By G. John Ikenberry
May/June 2003
Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.
Rodney Bruce Hall and Thomas J. Biersteker
Cambridge University Press
2003
272 pp.
0521523370
$23.00

States have historically been the dominant source of authority in international relations thanks to monopoly on the legitimate use of force. As this evocative book points out, however, authority has begun to take root in nonstate societal and transnational spheres -- particularly in the global economy, where private transnational regimes have been devised by banks and firms to regulate transactions. Centuries-old traditions of self-regulatory merchant law have grown into a highly institutionalized semiprivate commercial legal order in which states participate only indirectly to provide enforcement. Other chapters explore the moral authority of transnational religious movements and nongovernmental organizations, and the final chapters examine the authority exercised today by influential nontraditional private actors such as mafias and mercenary armies. Relations between authorities are multifaceted and difficult to pin down -- and, indeed, the privatization of specific jobs is now often promoted or welcomed by the state. Nonetheless, the authors succeed in illuminating the many dimensions and shifting terrain of state and nonstate authority, even if the extent and consequences of private governance remain ambiguous.

Related

Essay, May/June 2008
The Case Against the West
Kishore Mahbubani

The West is not welcoming Asia's progress, and its short-term interests in preserving its privileged position in various global institutions are trumping its long-term interests in creating a more just and stable world order. The West has gone from being the world's problem solver to being its single biggest liability.

Read
Essay, Jan/Feb 1997
The West and the Middle East
Bernard Lewis

The Middle East has probably been debating Western modernity longer than anywhere else, as many try to become modern without becoming Western. Since the sixteenth century, when British ships and trading companies sailed in, the region has become all too aware of Western superiority on the battlefield and in the marketplace. Middle Easterners have busily adopted or rejected Western innovations, trying to catch up or blaming the West for their predicament, or both. Meanwhile, their glorious history and their forebears' contribution to Western civilization is often buried and forgotten. In every age the dominant civilization defines modernity and claims the credit. Once it was Islam, now it is the West.

Read
Essay, Jan/Feb 2001
Will the Nation-State Survive Globalization?
Martin Wolf

Doomsayers predict that globalization will weaken national governments. They should bite their tongues. Global governance will of course grow in step with economic integration. But it will actually express and promote, rather than suppress, the interests of nation-states.

Read