Brookings: Experts - Hakan Altinay

Global Norms as Global Public Goods

Hakan Altinay — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:40:00 -0400

We are increasingly becoming aware of a growing need for global public goods. It has been suggested that public goods are so important that the long history of civilization can be written as the history of provisions of various public goods. The argument therefore follows that our current world, being the most globally interdependent one, demands an ever more complex constellation of global publics good.

Global public goods is an intriguing concept; it is an extrapolation of public goods, an idea which has been with us for much longer. Public goods are the opposite of private goods. Once available, public goods are available to all, and not just to those who produced it or paid for it. In a further counterintuitive twist, the consumption of a public good does not decrease what is left for anyone else to consume. In other words, when a loaf of bread is available for sale and I buy that loaf of bread, no one else can have that loaf. But if I live in a country with adequate national defense, the fact that I enjoy security does not diminish the security that can be enjoyed by others in the same country, whether they are taxpayers or not. After it was proposed in 1954, the notion of a public good took hold rapidly and spun an extraordinary literature and policy consciousness. As such, global public goods emerged as a pedagogically seamless and tactically fertile iteration on an already well appreciated phenomenon.

Public goods emerged out of economics, and one way that the economists thought of public goods were as market failure. Markets, which are enviably efficient in allocating resources for private goods, did not work for public goods.

Yet, when we move from the traditional conception of public goods to global public goods, we also encounter challenges that defy simple extrapolation. Public goods emerged out of economics, and one way that the economists thought of public goods were as market failure. Markets, which are enviably efficient in allocating resources for private goods, did not work for public goods. Because public goods were things that everyone could and did enjoy, no single person had enough incentive to pay for optimal supply. It was concluded that public goods would ideally be provided by the state, and paid for through taxes; the optimal level of supply would be decided through societal deliberation and the political process. Along the way, public goods became a key justification for the existence of a state. The paradigm example is national defense. As it would be nonsensical to expect individual families or cities to organize or procure defense for themselves, this needed to be done on a national scale. Once provided, everyone benefitted from the security that national defense made possible, and it was logical that that national defense be paid through taxes. Globally, however, we do not have a one-world government, so how shall we organize the provision of global public goods?

Read the full paper »

Authors

Hakan Altinay

Image Source: © Damir Sagolj / Reuters

How Social Norms Change through Osmosis

Hakan Altinay — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:43:00 -0400

Does the outside world have a role as norms in a given society change? If asked this question, the first model that many international relations specialists would recall would be the transformation of Germany and Japan at the hands of the United States. The US militarily defeats these totalitarian and militarist countries, occupies them for a considerable while, supervises their constitutional overhaul, and two success stories emerge in due course. This would be the hard power option. It was no coincidence that in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 the trajectories of Germany and Japan were frequently evoked. There are also the 19th century precedents: Commodore Perry’s opening of Japan, the Opium Wars and the practices once generically referred to as white man’s burden would all fit into this category.

One can also imagine norm change through soft power. Changes in Turkey during the last decade have been explained through the EU’s soft power; EU presented a better way of organizing a society and an economy; and Turks set out to join this prized club and accepted the conditionality to become a member. In the 18th century, Russians chose to cut their beards in their rush to imitate the Europeans and acquire commensurate might. After WW2, inhabitants of the Pacific islands built airstrips, because, from where they were standing, the cause and effect relationship was all about the construction of airstrips and the arrival of precious goods, a process that the anthropologists termed “cargo cult.” Because soft power is still power, described as getting others to do what you want them to do, the quality of the deliberations by the weaker party is not the focus of attention. When they are not intimidated by the barrels of our guns, they are still awe-struck by our capabilities. If they are found to be wanting in analytical capacities, then so be it.

After Joseph Nye coined the term ‘soft power,’ like many good ideas before, it achieved rapid adoption. The dominant reaction from the international relations field was that something like soft power may indeed exist but that its importance should not be overstated. Soft power was too soft for many; smart power, an intelligent way to pick and choose from a menu of hard and soft power levers, became the new near-consensus.[1]

At the risk of going against the prevailing current, I wonder whether there could also be a less power-centric way through which norms change. Can we, for example, talk about norm osmosis? Osmosis, as we may recall from our high school science classes, is the movement of particles across semi-permeable membranes without needing any external kinetic energy. Can we think of cases where norms changed, not because societies in question were coerced or were awe-struck, but because they observed and studied practices and experiences of other societies?

One such example would be the accepted norms about wealth creation. Not so long ago, David Landes described a world divided by cultures of making and cultures of taking. Today, it is very difficult to find societies where culture of taking prevails. While we may debate proper levels of regulation and taxation, the notion that systematic pillage and confiscation as a route to prosperity, no longer exists. Another example would be whether key political posts could be inherited to one’s heirs: 300 years ago most such posts would be inherited. Nowadays, almost none are, barring North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Meritocracy has won over aristocracy. Another norm that is spreading is the desirability of having independent redress mechanisms. Swedes are often credited for establishing the first ombudsman in the 18th century.[2] Since then, the idea and the practice of instituting ombudsman-like structures have been adopted by more than 90 countries.[3] Are we to explain this norm osmosis through the size of Swedish gun boats? Not so long ago, high and hyperinflation plagued many developing nations; today, there are no policymakers who have not been convinced about the detrimental costs of high and hyperinflation. World Economic Outlook database shows that several dozen countries had high and hyperinflation throughout 1980s and 1990s; none had it in 2010. Can we explain this transformation only through IMF conditionality? What are we to do with all the countries where IMF was never involved? Take the death penalty: Once a universally accepted punishment, currently two-thirds of the countries in the world, 140 by last count,[4] no longer resort to the death penalty. Amnesty International and the European Union have long advocated for the elimination of the death penalty, but crediting the perseverance of the advocates, or the size of their megaphones, may blind us to what happens at the receiving end of these proposals. Management scholarship about leadership was previously built around arcane and hierarchical notions of charismatic leadership where leaders were endowed with certain qualities and the followers simply followed. The current scholarship, led by Robert Kelley, Ira Chaleff and David Berg, has moved its floodlights to the followers and the workings of followership. It may be that, in order to understand fully the dynamic at play, we need to be less mesmerized by the norm entrepreneurs and more curious about the followers and their deliberative processes.

Abolition of the slave trade has been the paradigm case for transnational norm entrepreneurship. It was ideal for many reasons: it is an early example of a counter-intuitive success. While Bartolomé de Las Casas had championed the rights of the non-whites in 16th century, the campaign to ban the international slave trade is the earliest success story that we can point to. International slave trade was profitable by many accounts, and its abolition cannot be explained away by less than normative motives. The campaign also had the distinct advantage of having one identified advocate for change. Much scholarship has been devoted to the study of this norm transformation, and justifiably so. Because it has been the main prism through which we had to comprehend norm transformation, we may have been relatively inattentive to other kinds of norm change where the process is less complete, at least in the short term, and where there is no discernible institutional advocate. Take, for example, the extraordinary findings of the World Values Survey: self expression values have advanced by similar rates in five different cultural zones of the world between 1981 and 2006, even with disparate base lines. It may be that enhanced self expression has been adopted through norm osmosis, rather than through the work of one clearly delineated advocate.

Commonplace assumptions of norm diffusion are often predicated on unidirectional movement from the center to the periphery. Osmosis, on the other hand, entails selective, or differential, permeability. Furthermore, the movement is multi-directional.[5] Therefore, norm osmosis does not mean we should expect a total convergence on all tracks, a homeostasis of sorts.

The story of how movement of capital, goods and people has rendered national border porous, has been well chronicled, yet it is the movement of ideas and narratives, which gives us norm osmosis. Not only news from different parts of the world but also visually compelling narratives of daily life are now routinely available to many of us. Furthermore, this is a field with many new entrants. You no longer need to double check CNN with BBC World, but can rely on Al Jazeera or France 24. Hollywood not only has to contend with Bollywood and Nollywood, but also with Participant Media, TEDTalk, telenovelas and YouTube. Turkish soap operas have defied the conservative clerics and effectively conveyed a depiction of a different good life across the Middle East. Every day, latent definitions of good life are being perceived, chewed over, contested, internalized and reproduced by billions. The chances are that the definitions of the good life which end up being absorbed through selective osmosis are those propositions which best interface with our past experiences as well as our tacit aspirations about the future.[6] Cumulative effect is norm osmosis.

What does all this mean? Or, rather what does it not mean? Norm osmosis does not mean we should forget about norm change through hard or soft power. It does however mean that just because hard and soft power-centric options provide us with levers and a raison d’être, we should not assume that they are the only dynamics at play. Having a hammer at hand may nudge us into seeing only nails, but the reality tends to be more multifarious. Norms are shared definitions of what is legitimate and what is feasible. They give their environment a structure and a framework for predictability.[7] Norm osmosis, if real and significant as I claim, means that ours is, among other things, a virtual learning community. Through multiple interactions, we are negotiating and redefining what is feasible and what is acceptable. We are also known to seek each other’s regard; at a minimum, we strive to avoid others’ loathing.[8] The cumulative effect of these interactions is the emergence of a system of global conventions, albeit fragile and incomplete. This emergent system is as necessary as the system of formal rules and laws as we attempt to navigate our global interdependence.[9] It would not be unreasonable to assume that, as power disparities dissipate and cross border communication races ahead, this diffuse process will become more intense.

What we may need at this stage is more ethnographic surveys and a detailed combing through data. Norm osmosis is a diffuse dynamic where the multiple interactions that occur are separated by many layers of space and time. Therefore, combinations of cause and effect may prove elusive, and strong causal hypothesis may be difficult to prove.[10]Quantum physics has taught us that difficulties around measurement should not be allowed to conceal the underlying realities, and norm osmosis may be another case where we should not overlook a possible dynamic, only because methods to ascertain its prevalence are not immediately obvious.

Policy Implications:

Global norms are quasi global public goods. They represent shared definitions of what is feasible and what is ideal, and as such they provide a critical and enabling backdrop to our growing interdependence. Norm formation deserves more attention.
Hard power and soft power are not the only mechanisms through which interactions regarding norms take place. There is evidence that more ubiquitous and diffuse learning is taking place, and often below the radar of the policy makers.
Taking the deliberative processes and faculties of other societies seriously is one important way we can better understand and assist this benign process. Not poisoning the international environment with hubris would be another way.

[1] There is, to be sure, the small but significant constructivist school, which has taken the ideational side of international relations seriously, and treated it as a possible independent variable in their analysis.

[2] It has also been suggested that the administrative law and practices of the Ottoman Empire, where King Charles XII of Sweden spent five years in self-exile before he established the Swedish Ombudsman in 1713, was a key source of inspiration. If indeed true, this would a counter-intuitive example of norms moving from South to North. There are other examples of norms moving from South to North: Likes of Ayahuasca, Rumi, Ubuntu, yoga have provided layered references to those seeking to question Cartesian distinctions.

[3] International Ombudsman Institute reports that ombudsman like structures now exist in 93 countries.

[4] http://www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty/abolitionist-and-retentionist-countries (accessed 12 February 2012)

[5] The visual images we need for such a phenomenon may come from unlikely places such as fractal geometry or Hubble Telescope: http://www.vladstudio.com/wallpaper/?infinity_1_blue/3072x768/ (accessed 12 February 2012) and http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/nebula/pr2005037a/ (accessed 12 February 2012)

[6] A key issue is what qualities of the international system hinder or facilitate osmosis. One can posit that events such as the illegal invasion of Iraq undermine the sense of a benign world community, provide further proof for the primacy of the law of the jungle, increase skepticism, and slow down osmosis. On the other hand, opting to admit mistakes may restore the propensity to give the international community the benefit of the doubt, and enhance osmosis. This hypothesis, too, is in need of experimentation and research.

Authors

Hakan Altinay

Publication: Global Policy Journal

Global Governance Audit

Hakan Altinay — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:35:00 -0500

Why a Global Governance Audit?

We frequently treat the changing constellation that has come to be referred to as global governance as a lackluster fait accompli. Nobody has masterminded it. Nobody is really in charge. Almost everybody has reasons to be unhappy about what they view as its current suboptimal state. As such, global governance is not an easy phenomenon to assess or audit. The benchmarks and scales to be used are not obvious. Yet an audit attempt is nevertheless necessary, if for no other reason than to start to form a deliberated assessment, to develop some benchmarks, and to refine our questions for the future.

With this goal in mind, I, along with David Held of the London School of Economics, Miguel Maduro of European University Institute, Eva-Maria Nag of the Global Policy journal, and Kalypso Nicolaidis of Oxford, set out to organize such an audit and formulated three questions designed to assess the achievements of, impediments to, and imminent challenges for global governance. Throughout 2011, these questions were channeled to students and the younger generation of academics at universities and think tanks around the world. Many of the submissions we received were by single authors. Australian National University (ANU), Fundacao Getulio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro, Global Relations Forum in Istanbul, Hong Kong University, New Economic School (NES) in Moscow, Sabanci University in Istanbul, and Yale University ran workshops and submitted reports on their discussions and conclusions. Accepted submissions are available at the Global Policy website, and a subset is included in this working paper.

Several points emerge from both the content and the geographical origin of the responses to our audit. For starters, interest in global governance is not uniform across the world. Europeans seem most comfortable with, and fluent in, the global governance debates, which is not surprising. Europe, with the European Union (EU), has been functioning with pooled competencies and sovereignties for decades and is used to thinking about solutions to global problems and changing power architectures through the prism of international law and organizations. Zang reports a rapidly growing interest and debate concerning global governance in China. For much of the rest of the world, issues of global governance seem alien and have high entry barriers. Many in the South have been excluded for too long from the real deliberations. Both interest and familiarity seem to have suffered as a result.

A bigger challenge is the fact that global governance is too sui generis. It is neither a world government nor is it a global version of the nation-state competencies. The EU cannot be looked to as an example of its most advanced form. It is, in actuality, the total sum of the things we do to manage the transnational externalities and challenges in the absence of a world government, within the confines of a given consciousness of global situatedness and a finite appetite for cross-border solidarity and coordination. A world government is not only unfeasible but it is not even desirable. Insisting on comparing global governance to nation-state competencies and finding it failing blinds us to the advances achieved by this messy phenomenon: In the 19th century, it took several decades to develop a system to send telegrams across national borders. And yet, today owners of 4 billion mobile phones have a reasonable expectation that their phones will work seamlessly when they travel to another country. World GSM operators have agreed to sensible standard practices, such as every operator dedicating the number 112 to emergency services. No coercion was needed to achieve this coordination and harmonization. With SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, money can be wired across countries with tremendous speed and little inconvenience; we expect our credit cards to work wherever we travel. We cooperate around the internet actively and every day. Vast amounts of data, information, and knowledge are available to all 7 billion of us. Encylopédistes of the 18th century would be awestruck by what is available through Wikipedia, JSTOR, Google Scholar, and the like. Popular VoIP facilities such as Skype have rendered international telephony, a facility not available to Napoleon or Genghis Khan, practically cost free for billions. The Creative Commons is becoming a popular alternative to conventional trademark practices. We all have access to transborder broadcasting through satellite TVs, which makes diverse ideas and varied lives and suffering accessible to a great many, nurturing awareness and a feeling of common humanity along the way. Furthermore, we have a way to allocate satellite orbits, and the system is working with relatively little discontent. Another area with a significant potential for discord, underground water supplies, now enjoys the norms and rules being established through the new Law of Transboundary Aquifers. We have, to take another example, managed to cooperate to protect the genetic diversity of our main crops, have established the Global Crop Diversity Trust, and have a global seed vault in Svalbard. Small pox has been eradicated through global cooperation, and malaria and polio may be next. It is often assumed that traditional sovereign competencies of national states, such as law and order, have been more resistant to international cooperation schemes. However, countries have the facility to seek cooperation through Interpol, which has coordinated in excess of 31,000 arrests in a decade.

Sensible methods to assess global governance would need to start with its sui generis nature and not succumb to implicit or explicit comparisons to how nation states manage their affairs with their monopolies on legal coercion. Actual motives for cooperation or sanctions for lack of cooperation turn out very rarely to be related to coercion, in any event.

Downloads

Download the full paper

Authors

Hakan Altinay

Image Source: © Eric Gaillard / Reuters

Is EU Accession in Turkey's Future?

Hakan Altinay — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:21:00 -0400

Editor's Note: The following chapter is from the European Council on Foreign Relations report "What Does Turkey Think?"

It’s been a good decade for Turkey. The Turkish economy grew from $200 billion in 2001 to $800 billion in 2011 and, according to forecasts by the Economist, is set to grow faster than the eurozone, the UK and the US in 2011 and 2012. Public debt has shrunk from 75 percent of GDP to 40 percent. Real interest rates have dropped from a whopping 35 percent to 2 percent, and Turkey’s risk premium is now lower than that of all her southern European neighbours. Once a source of national anxiety and a playground for mafioso practices, the modern Turkish banking system is now first rate, and weathered the 2008 crisis with no casualties and handsome profits.

No longer required to roll over large public debt and with high real interest rates, Turkey had the funds to adopt universal health care and impressive social policies, and along the way witnessed a significant drop in its Gini inequality index. Moreover, in the last 10 years, Turkey has removed the death penalty from its books; ended a state of emergency that had been in place for 25 years; ended restrictions on broadcasting in the Kurdish language; recognised the European Court of Human Rights’ decisions as the basis for retrials in Turkey; abolished incommunicado detentions and the effective impunity of torturers; eliminated reduced sentences for honour crimes; and ended the extraordinary privileges of the military.

Turkey’s troubled relations with many of her neighbours have also improved. A visa-free travel agreement now exists between Turkey and Georgia, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Russia and Syria; Ukraine may be next. Turkey has enhanced its soft power vis-à-vis her neighbours.[1] The basic school curriculum was overhauled to move away from rote learning and towards a modicum of critical thinking, and early childhood education was dramatically expanded. Compared to 2001, the Turkey of 2011 is a wealthier, more open, freer, more democratic, fairer and more peaceful country.

Whither the EU?

The EU has played a key role in this leap forward. FDI in Turkey increased fourfold immediately after the 2004 decision to start membership negotiations. The prospect of EU accession provided much-needed credibility and served to anchor Turkey’s economic future. The Copenhagen criteria, in turn, provided the parallel roadmap for Turkey’s political transformation. Between 2002 and 2004, political parties with diverse ideologies and priorities agreed to support several waves of EU political reforms.

Recently, the EU’s vital role in Turkey’s advancement has become more difficult to remember because just as this relationship was producing results, Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president of France. Unlike other sceptical leaders in Europe, not only did Sarkozy question the desirability of Turkish accession, but he went as far as to reject Turkey’s eligibility for membership. The fact that Turkey’s eligibility for membership had been confirmed unanimously in 1989, 1999, 2002 and 2005 did not trouble President Sarkozy, and his capricious obstructionism has not, to date, received the reprimand it deserves from his European peers.[2]

To be sure, Turkey has not done nearly enough to engage the European public or to explain how the nation will contribute to the EU project. Turks frequently argue that they will correct the European demographic predicament and contribute to its energy security, but both of these arguments have a dubious empirical basis. Turkey does have a younger population and is at a different state of demographic transition, but new university graduates in Turkey have one of the highest unemployment rates in the OECD. Turkey is not adequately preparing its youth for the domestic labour market, let alone the European labour market. Turkey also is more reliant on Russian hydrocarbons than many countries in Western Europe, so it is not a foregone conclusion that Turkey can necessarily boost European energy security. The real prize that Turkey brings to the table is enhancing Europe’s soft power in the region, but realising that potential requires a radical rethink on both sides. Currently, EU-Turkey relations call to mind the old Soviet joke of workers pretending to work and bosses pretending to pay them: the European Commission pretends that accession is possible, and Turkey plays along with this pretence.

A normative case for Turkish accession

To some, the EU is the visionary project of an ever-expanding realm of peace, prosperity and liberty. To others, it is simply a way of advancing petty national interests under the guise of higher and more enlightened goals. The advocates of the first view take pleasure and comfort in quoting Jean Monnet. Those who take the latter view point out that in the EU everyone wants to share what they do not have: for the UK, a continental market; for France, a monetary policy; for Germany, a foreign policy; and for everyone else, global relevance. Both of these narratives are partially true: integration could not have been achieved if it did not advance member states’ core interests; at the same time, however, this novel and bold project could not have progressed without dramatically transforming member states’ understanding of their national interest through a normative horizon.

Although the debate about Turkish accession has been going on for more than 10 years, there is not yet a normative case for Turkish accession. All previous accessions have had a more visible normative backdrop: the accession of southern Europe was not unrelated to the imperative of solidarity with new democracies; and eastern enlargement was perceived as a way of reaching out to estranged, and sometimes abused, neighbours. But no one has made a similar case for Turkish accession.

Given that the European project is first and foremost aimed at promoting peace, this could be the basis for a normative argument. Over the past century, Turkey’s predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, deployed troops within the current territories of two member states, Bulgaria and Greece. Turkey continues to have troops in Cyprus which are not welcomed by Greek Cypriots. Conversely, five current member states of the EU – Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom – have at some point over the past century deployed troops in what is today’s Turkey. Instead of initiating a process of self-reflection, none of these nations has admitted these deployments were wrong, although in some cases the capital city at the time was occupied for several years.

The history of European attitudes and prejudices towards “the East” are due for a re-examination. Martin Luther described the Turks as the anti-Christ and the agents of the devil. Voltaire and Lord Byron argued passionately in favour of chasing Turkish barbarians out of Europe. In a rather telling and illustrative narrative, the nineteenth-century British prime minister William Gladstone concluded that the Turks were “upon on the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity”. Unsurprisingly, in view of this thesis, Gladstone demanded that Europe should be thoroughly cleansed of the Turks.[3] Here lies another normative imperative: The gatekeepers of the European normative agenda must now explicitly confront Europe’s orientalism. In order to repudiate its previous misdeeds, Europe must treat Turkey as an equal and welcome partner.

At the same time, Turkey has to show to friend and foe alike that it has the wherewithal to be a part of the European normative space. In recent years, Turkish society has started to debate difficult chapters of its history: the fate of the Ottoman Armenians; the 1955 pogroms against the Greeks of Istanbul; and the horror of Diyarbakır Prison throughout the 1980s. Some have also taken the bold step of assuming responsibility. This is indeed very encouraging, but still does not go far enough. Turkey says it wants to join the EU and also be an actor on the world stage through membership of the UN Security Council and the G-20, but its education system reinforces existing xenophobia and inculcates a very cynical, might-isright view of the world. The meta-narrative in textbooks is Hobbesian and, as a result, comparative surveys have shown that Turks display relatively high levels of scepticism towards other nations. [4]

Making a normative case for Turkish accession will not be an easy task and requires both sides to act decisively. Perhaps because they had a longer list of pending issues, Turkish progressives seem to be a step ahead. The key question now is whether intellectual and progressive figures in Europe will reciprocate. If they do, each side could derive courage from the convictions of the other, forming a virtuous circle. If this happens, it could be the century’s greatest Nobel Peace Prize. If not, Turkey will continue to muddle along; the EU will not be nearly as relevant to Turkey’s evolution as it once was. [5]

The puzzle that is the future

Having presided over Turkey’s impressive leap forward, Prime Minister Erdoğan is supremely confident. To be sure, his temperament was never one of an unabated democrat; he was always more of a reluctant democrat. But he has become increasingly authoritarian over the last three years. He repeatedly tells people how many children to have, which newspapers to read, and to consume grapes rather than wine. He threatens to ban NGOs that he does not like. He explicitly holds media owners responsible for their editorial practices and columnists’ views, and expects them to fire anyone whose views they do not share. Doğan Group, the largest and most pluralist media group, has attracted his sustained wrath and was fined several times their market capitalisation for back taxes. All other media owners drew their own lessons from the Doğan affair and a troubling practice of self-censorship has since prevailed.

In a sense, the Turkish predicament is not that unique. Many successful leaders have succumbed to hubris and become intoxicated with power and increasingly intolerant of dissent. What makes the current state of Turkish affairs bizarre is the general acquiescence among Turkish liberals in the face of this type of authoritarianism. Turkish liberals have decided that the armed forces are the main – and, for some, the only – impediment to a liberal democracy in Turkey. To be sure, the Turkish armed forces have a worse than chequered history, and have threatened their government with a coup as recently as 2007. Liberals, in turn, have made easy alliances with all kinds of actors intent on pushing the armed forces back, and frequently play down or ignore the illiberal tactics of their allies. The result has been a peculiar constellation in which many liberals ignore bona fide and persistent evidence of the ostracism of non-pious people in the Turkish heartland; cases of manufactured evidence in key political trials; and character assassinations and intimidation of undesirable dissidents. If Turkey is to continue its evolution towards a vibrant open society, Turkish liberals will need to stop trading cardinal maxims of the liberal canon for short-term expediency.

While Erdoğan is becoming increasingly authoritarian and losing interest in the EU, the opposition in Turkey is finally finding its European bearings. Turkey had been suffering from the absence of a capable opposition for several years. The former CHP was xenophobic and reactionary. [6]The new CHP under Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is reengaging with the EU, producing creative social policy options, and most importantly shedding the loathsome practice of whitewashing the military’s illegitimate interventions. It is unclear whether the CHP will persevere and prosper in its new vocation. If it does, it will improve the health of Turkish democracy, and will even help Erdoğan as a constructive corrective.

In the unlikely event of finding its own purpose and bearings, the EU can provide an effective and constructive reference point for all political camps in Turkey. The prospect of EU accession could provide the same kind of soothing backdrop as it did for Spain as it faced its demons.[7] The work of the Independent Commission on Turkey deserves full acclaim in this regard.[8] With its 2004 and 2009 reports, the Independent Commission has been a beacon of thorough analysis and principled positions. Europe and Turkey have much to gain from this kind of engagement, and need more of the same.

Footnotes:

[1] For a discussion of Turkey’s soft power, see Hakan Altinay, “Turkey’s Soft Power: An Unpolished Gem or an Elusive Mirage?”, Insight Turkey, Vol. 10, No. 2, April-June, 2008.

[2] For a reprimand from civil society, see Altinay, Bayart, Bobinski, Hughes, Kral, Tocci and Torreblanca, “Sarkozy’s blithe inconsistency over Turkey puts EU credibility at risk”, letter to the Financial Times, 6 September 2007. Since then, we have witnessed bizarre moves such as altering the map of Europe engraved on euro coins so that Cyprus can be included without any sign of Turkey – a comical legerdemain.

[3] The only thing more disturbing than reading this 1876 manuscript in 2011 is the fact that no critique of it and its underlying mentality, along the lines of Edward Said’s forceful critique of “orientalism”, has yet emerged from Europe. Instead of a critique of Gladstone’s discourse, we instead have former British Prime Minister Tony Blair declaring Gladstone to be one of his political heroes.

[4] Turkey is not a party to the statute of the International Criminal Court and is one of the few countries that has still not associated itself with the Copenhagen Climate Accords.

[5] Erdoğan’s April 2011 address to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe provided a foretaste of what that future may look like. Erdoğan expressed in less than cordial terms that he had no intention of seeking European views and guidance on whether the 10 percent threshold for parliamentary representation was acceptable. In an eerie replay of L’état, c’est moi, Erdoğan also noted that he was the personal guarantor of minority rights in Turkey.

[6] For a relatively unsuccessful attempt at demonstrating how the EU serves sceptical secularists, see Hakan Altinay and Kalypso Nicolaïdis, “Why the European Union strengthens Turkish secularism”, open Democracy, 3 September 2008, available at http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/the-european-union-and-turkey-strengthening-secularism. Erdoğan’s April 2011 address to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe provided a foretaste of what that future may look like. Erdoğan expressed in less than cordial terms that he had no intention of seeking European views and guidance on whether the 10 percent threshold for parliamentary representation was acceptable. In an eerie replay of L’état, c’est moi, Erdoğan also noted that he was the personal guarantor of minority rights in Turkey.

[7] For a discussion on Spain and Turkey, see William Chislett, Spanish Trajectory: A Source of Inspiration for Turkey?, Open Society Institute, Turkey, 2008.

[8] On the Independent Commission, see http://www.independentcommissiononturkey.42 org/.

Downloads

What Does Turkey Think?

Authors

Hakan Altinay

Publication: European Council on Foreign Relations

Image Source: Â© Umit Bektas / Reuters

Global Civics : Responsibilities and Rights in an Interdependent World

Hakan Altinay, ed. — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Brookings Institution Press 2011 145pp.

Foreword by Kemal Derviş

The simple yet challenging goal of this book is to deliberate the legitimacy, and advance the feasibility, of an important new concept—the notion of "global civics." We cannot achieve the international cooperation that is needed for a globalizing and interdependent century without embracing and implementing this important concept.

The first section of Global Civics is a presentation of the overall idea itself; the second section consists of diverse assessments from around the world of the concept and where it currently stands. The third section discusses various options for a global civics curriculum.

Praise for the Global Civics Program

"I agree with Hakan Altinay that in order to navigate our global interdependence, we need processes where we all think through our own responsibilities toward other fellow humans and discuss our answers with our peers. A conversation about a global civics is indeed needed, and university campuses are ideal venues for these conversations to start. We should enter this conversation with an open mind, and not insist on any particular point of view. The process is the key, and we should not wait any longer to start it."
—Martti Ahtisaari, 2008 Nobel Peace Laureate

"The growing interconnectivity among people across the world is nurturing the realization that we are all part of a global community. This sense of interdependence, commitment to shared universal values, and solidarity among peoples across the world can be channeled to build enlightened and democratic global governance in the interests of all. I hope that universities and think tanks around the world will deploy their significant reservoirs of knowledge and creativity to develop platforms to enable students to study and debate these issues. This project is a contribution toward that goal and I look forward to following it closely."
—Kofi Annan, Former Secretary General of the United Nations, 2001 Nobel Peace Laureate

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Hakan Altinay

Downloads

Ordering Information:

{9ABF977A-E4A6-41C8-B030-0FD655E07DBF}, 978-0-8157-2141-3, $18.95 Order
{B98DCBB0-3580-4D55-ABD4-AB91E00585E6}, 978-0-8157-2142-0, $!8.95 Order

Merkel Leads on Climate Change

Hakan Altinay — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 14:26:00 -0500

Climate change is one of the most difficult challenges that humanity has faced. In order to have any chance to contain this problem, even with potentially civilization- and geography-changing prospects, we need to alter our consumption patterns and possibly our way of life.

But the pleasure from today’s choices and the painful consequences of those choices are separated by a 30-year lag.

People are asked to forgo the convenience of driving gas-guzzling cars and of taking exotic vacations at faraway places in anticipation of violent weather, warmer temperatures and rising seas happening in several decades. The fact that roughly one-third of adults around the world still smoke, despite dire warnings about severe health consequences, is a good indication about people’s ability to discount today’s pleasures in anticipation of future costs. In the case of smoking, both pleasure and pain are by and large personal.

In the case of global warming, however, forgone pleasure is personal, but the costs are universal and disrupt life for future generations. We are asked to forgo personal pleasure for the goal of preventing pain for people we likely will never meet. Sacrifice is required of all nations, and the temptation to cheat will be fierce.

On top of all this, the costs of changing habits are significant. We managed the pull off a similar collective action problem, ozone depletion, mainly because the necessary technological changes did not involve dramatic costs. In the case of fossil fuels, hydrocarbons are much more ubiquitous than chlorofluorocarbons, and the current costs of hydrocarbons are significantly less than their actual costs to environment. Therefore, a low carbon future is a much bigger challenge.

Now that the Cancun Climate Summit is around the corner, researchers and politicians will bombard the global public with claims and counterclaims about reductions from various base years – 1990, 2005 or 2010 – dizzying carbon-intensity pledges, and business-as-usual scenarios incommensurate with the eventual consequences. The language of energy production, land use and deforestation will be impenetrable. It would be a miracle if most people do not tune out.

Meanwhile, the fundamentals are disturbing: The globe already emits more greenhouse gases than are sustainable. If we do not find a way to curb global emissions, we may start a chain reaction where the Siberian permafrost releases methane and we lose ability to contain climate change at tolerable levels. Whether random or desperate, our leaders decided that capping temperature increase at 2 degrees Celsius is the appropriate point between what’s ideal and what’s feasible. The global scientific community informs us that we already emit more than 40 gigatons of greenhouse gases, and if leaders are serious about the 2-degree Celsius target, those emissions must come down to 20 gigatons in 40 years. How to divide that limited capacity of 20 gigatons among a growing population that demands more comforts is the tricky issue.

Can there be a simple, universally acceptable rule of thumb that can guide such burden-sharing?

Doing unto others as we would want them do onto us has been the most resilient benchmark of decent conduct in human history. One can find similar tenets in Kant, the Bible’s old and new testaments, Africa’s ubuntu, Hinduism’s vasudheva kutumbakam and other philosophical and religious traditions.

Philosopher John Rawls gave us the most recent and creative methodology to apply this maxim. Rawls proposes that we agree upon the organizing principles for a society, hypothetically, in an initial position of equality, behind a “veil of ignorance,” which would keep any individuals or nations from knowing their position in society or their fortune in the distribution of assets and abilities. The point of this thought experiment is to ensure that organizing principles agreed to behind the veil of ignorance could not be designed to favor any particular condition. These principles would be the result of fair deliberation and agreement.

If nations were to apply the Rawlsian formula, a logical agreement arranged behind the veil of ignorance would be to distribute the safe level of greenhouse gases equally among all residents of our planet. This would require radical changes, and there could be a grace period of 10 years. Those wanting to emit more than their fair share after the grace period could do so only after establishing a sustainable, verifiable and measurable sequestering scheme or after receiving emission credits from others. Advanced societies could acquire emission credits through the provision of clean production, mitigation and adoption technologies to others, but the basic rule could not be negotiated.

This may seem farfetched in some powerful and intransigent corners of the worlds. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stated clearly that every individual in the world is entitled to emit the same volume of carbon dioxide, and solution to climate change must be based on that fundamental maxim. She used the German presidency of G-8, as well as several United Nations meetings since 2007, to restate this bold idea. Taking cues from Merkel, then-President Horst Köhler argued that every human being on earth has, as a matter of principle, a right to an equal and restricted volume of CO2 emissions and that the process of climate change demonstrates how nations of the world depend on one another. In the 2010 report, “2 Degree Max Climate Strategy,” Merkel’s chief climate scientist, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, reiterates that an allocation principle of “one human-one emissions right” is the fair burden-sharing rule of thumb

Merkel is alone among leaders of advanced economies in stating the obvious. To appreciate Merkel’s audacity, one only needs to recall how we were told some years ago that the American way of life was not open to negotiation, regardless of what happens to others. Continued reluctance to face up to historical and current responsibilities lingers in other powerful capitals.

In effect, Merkel has told the rest of the affluent world that the emperor has no clothes – that our current way of life is unsustainable without lower and equalizing per capita emissions. This fact is impossible to unlearn or ignore for long. We may or may not achieve the equal per capita emissions maxim in the next few years, but this is the only maxim that has enough moral and popular gravitas to harness necessary global consensus. There are plenty of selfish, arbitrary, even barbaric reasons to oppose this maxim. But there is no globally legitimate and accepted reason. Anyone who opposes this maxim risks being branded as pariah for centuries.

Bringing our per capita emissions down to 2 tons per person by 2050 is a colossal task and will require multiple technological breakthroughs. To get the impressive forces of the markets and human ingenuity, we need a predictable framework of prices and market incentives. German political leaders and scientists have the most compelling proposals on how to deal with this Gordian knot. We need to listen to them and allow the urgent business of developing the technological advances to commence.

In 2009, the Nobel Committee apparently concluded that someone powerful speaking the truth after years of hubris and deceit by his predecessors was reason enough to be granted the Nobel Peace Prize. If this benchmark applies, Merkel has stated even more desperately the needed obvious fact that other powerful folks would rather not hear. She deserves our attention, respect, and the Nobel Peace Prize for her courage and determination to speak this vital truth to power.

Authors

Hakan Altinay

Publication: YaleGlobal Online

Does Fairness Matter in Global Governance?

Hakan Altinay — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0400

INTRODUCTION

Worldwide, there has been a recent increase in expressions of cynicism. We are reminded that all power is hard power, and that being loved or respected is no substitute for being feared. The great power game of nations always continues, we are forewarned, even when a higher goal or rhetoric is evoked. Superpowers are selfish, arbitrary, and dangerous nations, and they should not be embarrassed to be so and not feel constrained by international legitimacy and laws. We are cautioned against assuming that the rise of the world’s emerging powers is doing anything to the status of the United States as the sole superpower. Naturally, it would be a folly to think that global public opinion is, in effect, a “second superpower,” or is even a crucial factor. Such concerns are akin to the Lilliputians binding an unsuspecting Gulliver. Anyone harboring naïve views needs to be told that good intentions are, at best, a distraction and a nuisance and, at worst, a recipe for disaster, given their imprudence. Cynics prefer to be unconcerned about the achievements of transnational normative actions, such as abolishing the slave trade or establishing the International Criminal Court.

The advocates of these views would readily conclude that fairness does not matter in managing our global challenges—only power does. And these cynical views are not advanced only in the hard center of the international system. In a fascinating twist, many on the various peripheries of the international system also agree with this depiction. They argue that might makes right, and this absolves those without formidable power of any responsibility for solving global problems or even articulating their potential contributions if something other than the law of the jungle were to prevail. Thus, the hubris of the powerful triggers irresponsibility among the not so powerful, which in turn is used by the cynics to argue the need for unadulterated power, given the rampant irresponsibility in the world at large.

This working paper, however, is based on a hypothesis that the cynics may be wrong. Its central conjecture is that fairness in global governance does matter today and will matter more in the future. Long-term projections are notoriously and predictably difficult. The forecast that the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and the Next 11 group of emerging nations will overtake the Group of 7 may not materialize for a very long time. Yet it is evident that power disparities are less severe today and are likely to be even less so in the near future. At the same time, the current level of global interdependence and the very nature of the imminent global problems we face have clear repercussions for the minimum constellation of alliances that is necessary to overcome these problems. Climate change is the most obvious case in point; unless all the major players and their citizens willingly and proactively cooperate, it is unlikely that human civilization as we know it will survive. It is clear that Commodore Matthew Perry’s body language will not secure the proactive and willing cooperation of citizens around the world. Hubris and cynicism will also not embolden those who witness emergent threats and plots, as diverse as those by Osama bin Laden and Abdul Qadeer Khan, to speak out. And, thus, both notions and perceptions of fairness will be central to developing the master narrative about our epic interdependence and our responsibilities toward each other. Without a sense of fairness that appeals to many and a corresponding framework of global civics, we cannot navigate the treacherous waters of global interdependence

Downloads

Download full paper

Authors

Hakan Altinay

Image Source: © Denis Sinyakov / Reuters

Is the United States a Hero or a Villain?

Hakan Altinay — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Another July 4th is around the corner, and the United States will turn 250 in less time than children born this week need to graduate from high school. Will humanity consider the U.S. a hero or a villain when that happens?

At its founding, United States had the wherewithal to proclaim that all men are created equal, and are endowed with inalienable rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This proclamation turned out to be the most potent sentence ever uttered in the English -- or in any other language, for that matter. More importantly, the United States did not merely make an audacious proclamation, but realized this bold vision set in 1776 in a gradual but steady fashion, and the American experience inspired many societies to go down a similar path. As a result, we now live in a world where human dignity and freedom reigns larger than any other time in our history. For this achievement alone, humanity owes a great deal to the American experiment and its inspiration.

The United States also gave the world electricity, light bulbs, cars, planes, phones, computers, internet and the Google Scholar. The sum total of these inventions means that the median human being in early 21st century has at her disposal greater capabilities than emperors, tycoons and geniuses of previous centuries. No other country in history improved the lot of humanity as much as the United States.

However, the United States' track record has not been without blemish. The American conduct in Iran under Musadiq, in Chile under Allende, and in Vietnam, Dresden and Hiroshima -- not to mention slavery and slow elimination of American Indians -- are difficult to forget or forgive. Yet on balance, no country in history has contributed to humanity, its potential and its welfare more than the United States. The pervasive hubris found in the Bush administration and at the commanding heights of Wall Street precluded the rest of the world from expressing its gratitude to the United States. That should not be. On this July 4 and others yet to come, we should take the time and tell our American friends that we appreciate what their country has done for the rest of humanity.

Yet, in 2026, humanity may give a much harsher verdict on the American legacy. That is, if the U.S. does not do something dramatic about climate change, really soon. The efforts by the United States to combat climate change so far have been woefully inadequate and thoroughly incommensurate to the challenge at hand. We have already exceeded the safe level of 350 ppm. Greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for an average of 30 years, and nearly 30% of historical emissions originated from the United States. The chances of triggering an uncontrollable chain reaction are very real. If the rest of the world were to emit as much per capita carbon dioxide as the United States, we would be doomed for catastrophic results. We have known about climate change since 1987, and the evidence in the last 10 years have been has been unequivocal.

The U.S. can and should lead through funding and offering clean technologies to the rest of the world, while committing to stringent targets for itself. Continuing to fail to act is not only irresponsible, but suicidal. If the U.S. stays on business-as-usual course or shies away from the necessary steps due to parochial concerns, at the 250th anniversary, the world may have a severe verdict on the country that could have thwarted global catastrophic climate change, but did not. It would be tragic for the country which did so much for humanity to be judged so disparagingly at its 250th birthday.

Authors

Hakan Altinay

Publication: The Huffington Post

A Global Civics: Necessary? Feasible?

Hakan Altinay — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Introduction

In its conventional use, “civics” refers to the familiar constellation of rights and responsibilities emanating from citizenship in a nation-state. But what about global civics? Would this be feasible—or even desirable?

There are several plausible objections to the concept of global civics. One can argue that allowing for even a modest level of responsibility toward all the world’s 6.7 billion people is so overwhelming that it is a nonstarter. Furthermore, it can be argued that any meaningful experience of pan-global solidarity among human beings is nascent at best, and therefore cannot form the basis for a formidable constellation of rights and responsibilities, and that the experience of being a global citizen is restricted to a few activists and international elites like those who gather for the World Economic Forum in Davos. Finally, one can argue that civics assumes effective enforcement and a state, and since we do not have a world government, any talk of global civics is whimsical.

Notwithstanding such skepticism, I will attempt to demonstrate that it is in fact possible to imagine global civics. First I consider the unhelpful views that have impeded fruitful consideration of the concept of global civics. Then I outline the rationale for global civics and offer two thought experiments to operationalize this new concept.

View the entire article » (external link)

Authors

Hakan Altinay

Publication: Global Policy

In Global Governance, Does Fairness Matter?

Hakan Altinay — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Introduction

Worldwide, there has been a recent increase in expressions of cynicism. We are reminded that all power is hard power, and that being loved or respected is no substitute for being feared. The great power game of nations always continues, we are forewarned, even when a higher goal or rhetoric is evoked. Superpowers are selfish, arbitrary, and dangerous nations, and they should not be embarrassed to be so and not feel constrained by international legitimacy and laws. We are cautioned against assuming that the rise of the world’s emerging powers is doing anything to the status of United States as the sole superpower. Naturally, it would be a folly to think that global public opinion is in effect a “second superpower,” or even a crucial factor. Such concerns are the Lilliputians binding an unsuspecting Gulliver. Anyone harboring naïve views needs to be told that good intentions are at best a distraction and a nuisance, and at worst a recipe for disaster, given their imprudence. Cynics prefer to be unconcerned about the achievements of transnational normative action, such as abolishing the slave trade or establishing the International Criminal Court.

The advocates of these views would readily conclude that fairness does not matter—only power does. And these cynical views are not advanced only in the hard center of the international system. In a fascinating twist, many on the various peripheries of the international system also agree with this depiction. They argue that might makes right, and this absolves those without formidable power of any responsibility for solving global problems or even articulating their potential contributions if something other than the law of the jungle were to prevail. Thus the hubris of the powerful triggers irresponsibility among the not so powerful, which in turn is used by the cynics to argue the need for unadulterated power, given the rampant irresponsibility in the world at large.

This working paper, however, is based on a hypothesis that the cynics may be wrong. Its central conjecture is that fairness does matter today, and will matter more in the future. Long-term projections are notoriously and predictably difficult. The forecast that the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and the Next 11 group of emerging nations will overtake the Group of 7 may not materialize for a very long time. Yet it is evident that power disparities are less severe today, and are likely to be even less so in the near future. At the same time, the current level of global interdependence and the very nature of the imminent global problems we face have clear repercussions for the constellation of minimum alliances that are necessary to overcome these problems. Climate change is the most obvious case in point; unless all the major players and their citizens willingly and proactively cooperate, it is unlikely that human civilization as we know it will survive. It is clear that Commodore Matthew Perry’s body language will not secure the proactive and willing cooperation of citizens around the world. Hubris and cynicism will also not embolden those who witness emerging threats and plots, as diverse as those by Osama bin Laden or Abdul Qadeer Khan, to speak out. And thus both notions and perceptions of fairness will be central to developing the master narrative about our epic interdependence and our responsibilities toward each other. Without a sense of fairness that appeals to many and a corresponding framework of global civics, we cannot navigate the treacherous waters of global interdependence.

Downloads

Download

Authors

Hakan Altinay

The Case for Global Civics

Hakan Altinay — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:15:00 -0500

Introduction

“Civics” often refers to the familiar constellation of rights and responsibilities emanating from citizenship in a nation-state. But what about global civics? Would this be feasible—or even desirable?

Notwithstanding such skepticism, here I attempt to demonstrate that it is in fact possible to imagine global civics. First I consider the unhelpful views that have impeded fruitful consideration of the concept of global civics. Then I outline the rationale for global civics and offer two thought experiments to operationalize this new concept. Finally, I argue that universities should be key sites for the conversation about global civics. One of the invaluable missions of a university education is to equip younger generations with the information and analytical tools for them to exercise competent control over their lives and become conscientious citizens. Given our increasing interdependence, a university education which does not provide effective tools and forums for students to think through their responsibilities and rights as one of the several billions on planet Earth, and along the way develop their moral compass, would be a failure.

Downloads

Download

Authors

Hakan Altinay

The State of Global Governance: An Audit

Hakan Altinay — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Management of transnational issues through voluntary international cooperation has come to be referred as Global Governance. The term sounds like global government, but it is really the opposite, as it refers to management of the transnational challenges in the absence of a world government. Neither transnational challenges, nor attempts to manage them are new. We have had things like the Rhodian Law of the Sea, which provided a framework to govern maritime losses. The Hawala system has worked over a thousand years through the proactive participation of countless actors across South Asia, Middle East and the Mediterranean. The Hanseatic League provided an early glimpse of true multilateralism. Nevertheless, the depth and breath of current international cooperation around transnational issues is unprecedented.

Let’s review some of the manifestations of our existing international cooperation: It took several decades to develop a system to have telegrams across national borders. And yet, today owners of four billion mobile phones have a reasonable expectation that their phones will work seamlessly when they travel to another country. World GSM operators have agreed to sensible standard practices such as every operator dedicating 112 to emergency services.

At a mundane level, money can be wired across countries with tremendous speed and little inconvenience. SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, and IBAN, International Bank Account Number, are two systems which expanded to many a task which would not have been routine even for Rothschild.

We cooperate around the internet actively and every day. Tremendous amount of data, information and knowledge is open to all 6.7 billion of us. Encylopédistes of the 18^th century would be awe-struck by what is available through Wikipedia, JSTOR, Google Scholar and the like. Popular VOIP facilities such as Skype have rendered international telephony, a facility not available to Napoleon or Cengiz Khan, practically cost free for billions. CreaticeCommons is becoming a popular alternative to conventional trademarks practices. And, we all have access to trans-border broadcasting through satellite TVs, which makes diverse ideas, lives and sufferings accessible to great many, and nurturing awareness and a feeling of common humanity along the way.

We have assumed that traditional sovereign competencies of national states have been more resistant to international cooperation schemes. However, countries have the facility to ask other countries to apprehend criminal suspects through Interpol, which reports to have enabled 5,600 arrests in 2008. This is not a minor achievement.

We have rules governing safety at sea, pollution, and even a system for a global maritime distress, search and rescue system. There exists an audit scheme, albeit a voluntary one, to monitor compliance. Furthermore, we have a way to allocate satellite orbits, and the system is working with relatively little discontent.

We have mechanisms for global health challenges and even some vital successes. Small pox has been eradicated though international cooperation; And polio may be next. The world has had the wherewithal to come up with ad hoc responses when traditional mechanisms did not suffice; The Global Fund to Fight TB, AIDS and Malaria is one such ad hoc response with encouraging results. We have also managed to cooperate to protect the genetic diversity of our main crops, and have established the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

The world has demonstrated crucial capacity to identify ozone depletion as a potential problem with global consequences, and was capable of hammering out a set-up where the ozone depleting gases have been phased out. The basic grammar of the ozone problem is not very different from the climate change predicament, and the Vienna Convention and the Montreal protocol are no small accomplishments.

The first example of an international normative campaign for global rules was the anti-slavery movements of 19^th century, and their efforts took more than 50 years to produce the first international treaty on the issue. Another seemingly gargantuan task was around the land mines, one of the most popular ammunition of armed forces around the world. In the latter case, it took a mere seven years for a global consensus to be achieved, and for this once-popular weapon to be outlawed. There is now a new movement to establish norms concerning the trade and transfer of small weapons, which are responsible for many more deaths than nuclear weapons.

Another very significant development was the formation of the International Criminal Court. Not all the states are party to the International Criminal Court, and yet the mere existence of ICC would surpass even the most optimistic utopias of the multilateralists from the last century.

Amartha Sen has recently warned us against excessive fascination with ideal justice at the expense of multiple and seemingly disjointed ways of decreasing injustice. The patterns of global cooperation of the last decades seem to support Sen’s argument. Progress has been uneven and less than ideal, but, on balance, we should be encouraged by the advance of international cooperation and global governance on these multiple tracks. The more visible absence of progress is the exception, and should not be the basis of a debilitating cynicism; We need to celebrate our accomplishments and in the process muster the energy to overcome remaining challenges to a fuller global cooperation.

Two glaring gaps in the existing global governance schemes are effective procedures for Responsibility-to-Protect, and of course a framework to thwart climate change. One of the earliest modern attempts to set transnational norms was around proper conduct during the time of war. The first Geneva Convention dates back to 1864. Humanity has been aware of the ultimate crime of genocide, and has profusely sworn not to let it occur again since 1940s. Yet, what has come to be known as the Responsibility to Protect, has been systematically abdicated. As long as humanity is organized primarily through national states, there is an inherent problem to send national armies to harm’s way without clear national interest. Yet, that is not the only option we have. Humans have always taken up arms in other countries for their beliefs. The international brigade at the Spanish Civil war is the most celebrated example, but the practice is older. UN needs to have a mechanism to accept volunteers; ensure adequate representation of all regions so that no particular group ends up dominating the UN Army at any given conflict; and, of course ensure their discipline during their mission as there are too many examples of presumed rescuers harassing the very people they are meant to rescue. One can even imagine a set up where not just UNSC but UNSG or the college of all former UNSGs can endorse a given mission, so that action cannot be held hostage to veto by P5.

Climate change is clearly the most pressing issue facing us. Business as usual means that we will soon cross the point of no return in triggering a chain reaction of catastrophic results for human existence and civilization on Planet Earth. The qualities of the underlying dynamics make climate change an especially difficult challenge: There is some 30 years between cause and effect; that is carbon emissions and the full consequences of those emissions. The fact that significant percentages of adults continue to smoke demonstrates that humans find it difficult to give up immediate gratification in anticipation of deferred costs in 30 years. As such, climate change is the collective action problem from hell. After years of neglect, denial and foot dragging, humanity now seems to have harnessed the wherewithal to address climate change. No other challenge we face brings home our epic interdependence. Therefore, a solution to the climate change challenges could serve as the paradigm for solving other global public goods problems.

Ours have been a story of trial and error, and slippages as we found ways to cooperate across border, a process which we began thousands of years ago. The audit of current state of international cooperation and global governance patterns show that perseverance, creativity, pragmatism and vision are the answer, not despair or cynicism.

Authors

Hakan Altinay

Publication: YaleGlobal Online

1000 Days to the 7th Billion Human: What Do We Tell Her?

Hakan Altinay — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

We have roughly 1,000 days before the seventh billion human being joins the rest of us on Planet Earth. A worthwhile exercise would be for each of us to take 15 minutes as we ride the bus to work, run on our tread mill, or sip our coffee, and imagine what we would say to our seventh billion fellow human being about the human condition awaiting her. This conversation, however hypothetical, can help us take stock of the global constellation that we all have helped produce.

The first thing we could tell our newcomer is that she can expect to live in excess of 70 years, and that this is twice as long as what people counted on a century ago. We would tell her that while the world is a very unequal place in terms of income and wealth, disparities in life expectancy are decreasing. We could report in good conscience that the world possesses some effective global public health instruments, and that we have eradicated small pox and might see the end of polio and malaria in her lifetime. She could be told to expect to have more than 11 years of schooling, education being another area where gross but diminishing disparities loom large in the world. We could also report that the world which awaits her prizes gender equality more than any other era, so she can anticipate a more enabling world than her mother or grandmother endured.

In the spirit of first giving the good news, we can in good faith report that she will have capabilities which can not only empower her but would have been the envy of emperors and tycoons from earlier centuries. In terms of information and knowledge, our newcomer will have unprecedented access through the likes of Wikipedia, JSTOR, and Google Scholar. The breadth of information and knowledge and the ease of her access would have been unfathomable to the Encylopédistes and Academies of Sciences of previous centuries.

At the same time, we should admit to her that there are critical risks. Although we know about the mind-numbing results of previous genocides and have profusely sworn not to allow this ultimate crime to take place again, the sad fact is that if our seventh billion fellow human were to face genocide, chances are that nobody will come to her rescue. We would need to tell her that not only the able military powers of the world have abdicated their solemn responsibility to protect, but that they have also not allowed the development of institutions for people to join a UN Volunteer Army.

We would also need to tell her that we have set into motion, first unknowingly and for the last 20 years in full realization, a chain of events which will soon become irreversible and will lead to catastrophic consequences through climate change. We would need to add that while we were able to devise a scheme for collective global action to prevent ozone depletion, a similar framework to contain climate change has eluded us.

More importantly, working on a welcome message to our seventh billion fellow human being provides us with a rare but overdue opportunity for introspection as well as a frank accounting of the implicit responsibilities we have toward other human beings and future generations. The contours of our epic interdependence should be evident to many of us by now. What is less apparent is our working answer to what our responsibilities are toward each other and what, in turn, our rights are. Without some notion of global civics, the waters of interdependence are treacherous to navigate. Doing unto others what we would have others do unto us remains the most resilient benchmark for decent conduct in human history. This hypothetical conversation with our newcomer could set us on a path toward answering some to these cardinal questions.

Authors

Hakan Altinay

Publication: The Huffington Post