Governing Uncertainty: The Future of Global Governance Over the Next 30 Years

Continuing growing inequality will undermine the legitimacy of global institutions as the diffusion of centers of power will create uncertainty and drive new conflict risks, the authors of a new report published by the United Nations University Center for Policy Research state. 

Strategic litigation will empower non-State actors and challenge State authority, while technology will continue to drive rapid, highly unequal advances in development, ADAM DAY and DAVID PASSARELLI add in the report titled ‘Governing Uncertainty’.

Commissioned by the UK Ministry of Defence’s Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, the report surveys major trends that will shape the future of global governance over the next 30 years. 

The report maps trends in society, politics, technology, security and the environment, and considers how the interplay across these sectors impact traditional and new development actors in their efforts to deliver a transformative development agenda centered on social inclusion, shared prosperity, safety and environmental sustainability.

The trends and changes outlined in the report are tied to a specific set of political and economic decisions and influences that marked the decades since the end of the Cold War. The globalization of economies and the impact of liberal trade and regulation policy on economic development and the distribution of wealth – within and across States – over three decades enabled rapid technological innovation, specialization through global value chains, poverty reduction and wealth generation in many parts of the world. However, this prosperity has not been equally distributed, leading to unequal development outcomes felt most acutely in the developing world and by global youth who will be forced to grapple with the intergenerational consequences of a worsening development emergency.

The report finds that many core societal risks – inequality, debt, mistrust, environmental and technological change, and the important role of non-State actors – persist today and have grown in importance following the outbreak of COVID-19.

Using the methods of foresight research, the report extrapolates possible future scenarios based on three cross-cutting trends (technological change, environmental change, demographic change and human mobility) and three megatrends (loss of trust in institutions, judicialization of governance, stakeholder activism). An integrated and systematic analysis of these trends results in four projections that will impact global governance, as well as security and development outcomes over the next 30 years:

-Inequality will continue to grow, undermining the legitimacy of global institutions.

-The diffusion of centres of power will create uncertainty and drive new conflict risks.

-Strategic litigation will empower non-State actors and challenge State authority.

-Technology will continue to drive rapid, highly unequal advances in development.

While it is impossible to say with certainty what this means for the future of global governance in 30 years, the authors formulate ten assumptions about the future, upon which three long-term pathways are explored.

Pandemic Pauses: Understanding Ceasefires in a Time of Covid-19

One year after the UN Secretary General called for a global ceasefire in the face of the novel cornavirus, has conflict paused for the pandemic?
A new report from United Kingdom-based Political Settlements Research Programme (PRSP) launched earlier this month tracks ceasefires declared during Covid-19 and analyses what this means for the wider peace process landscape.
On 23 March 2020, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for an immediate global ceasefire, to help tackle the threat of Covid-19 rather than compound the risk to those in fragile and conflict-affected areas. 
In response to this call, multiple states, international, regional, and local organizations declared their support for a global ceasefire. PRSP, which is run by a consortium of organizations, has been tracking ceasefires declared during Covid-19 with the ‘Ceasefires in a Time of Covid-19’ digital tracking tool. It data shows that since March 2020, conflict parties have declared 25 ceasefires across 17 countries.
To coincide with the one-year anniversary of the global ceasefire call, PSRP has launched a new report: ‘Pandemic Pauses: Understanding Ceasefires in a Time of Covid-19’. The report draws on data from the ‘Ceasefires in a Time of Covid-19’ tracker to analyse how ceasefires have unfolded throughout the pandemic, and to consider how the pandemic has affected moves towards ceasefires and peace processes.
In Part I, PRSP provides data on what types of ceasefires conflict parties have declared since March 2020, and the extent to which these ceasefires have held. In Part II, it puts forward key analytical and practical concerns for understanding these ceasefires and considering what, if anything, ceasefires during the pandemic mean for wider peace processes. 
In Part III, PRSP concludes that, although the Covid-19 pandemic has not been a ‘game-changer’ for ceasefire and peace process trajectories, it is now a crucial part of the context in which peace processes must take place. It makes recommendations for how ceasefires, and peacemaking more generally, can be better supported during global health emergencies.
The report was written by a team of researchers comprising: Laura Wise, Sanja Badanjak, Christine Bell, and Fiona Knäussel, and draws on data from the ‘Ceasefires in a Time of Covid-19’ tracker.

Realizing Inclusivity: The Role of the UN in Promoting Inclusion at the Country Level

How do UN Country Teams understand and act on policy recognition of the importance of social, economic and political inclusion?

While the obstacles to realizing inclusivity in peacebuilding have been identified in a number of reports in recent years, a deeper and contextualized understanding of how meaningful inclusion is pursued in practice at the country level is still needed.

Inclusivity is particularly vital as the United Nations supports countries in mitigating and recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and follows through on interlinked reforms affecting its development and management systems, and its work on peace and security, a new report by the the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation stresses.

This raises an important but complex question: how does the UN, working at the country level, understand and act on international policy recognition of the importance of social, economic and political inclusion for sustainable peace and development?

The report, titled ‘Realizing Inclusivity: The role of the United Nations in promoting inclusion at the country level’, explores how, and to what extent, the UN promotes and supports inclusivity in its policy, programming and stakeholder engagement processes in four country contexts: Colombia, the Gambia, Jordan and Sri Lanka.

Situating the Accountability of the UN Security Council: Between Liberal-Legal and Political ‘Styles’ of Global Constitutionalism?

‘Accountability’ is the international legal term du jour. The concept is omnipresent in contemporary discussions about the UN Security Council in particular. From the lack of due process guarantees for individuals implicated in its counter-terrorism sanctions regime, to the (in)compatibility of Council authorized uses of force with international human rights and humanitarian law, no aspect of the Council’s recent practice has been immune from an accountability critique. 

Driven by the context in which it has emerged, the turn to accountability is seemingly prompted by a felt desire among international lawyers to constrain the arbitrary use of the Council’s considerable powers. However, beyond this felt desire, the concept lacks a robust theoretical foregrounding, both on its own terms and in relation to existential developments in international law, BEN L. MURPHY writes in the journal Global Constitutionalism.

In an attempt to remedy this, MURPHY, in his article titled ‘Situating the accountability of the UN Security Council: Between liberal-legal and political ‘styles’ of global constitutionalism?’, situates the turn to accountability as a product of the broader turn to ‘constitutionalist’ thinking in international law. 

Specifically, he suggests that mainstream approaches resonate with a particular ‘liberal-legalist style’ of global constitutionalism. 

“From both an etymological and epistemological perspective, however, I argue that this prevailing style offers an incomplete sense of accountability,” MURPHY states. 

The article introduces the dichotomy of ‘liberal-legal’ and more overtly ‘political’ styles of global constitutionalism as a heuristic device in order to offer a broader conception of accountability in the Security Council context. 

“Political constitutionalism, I believe, offers important insights that will allow us to perceive and critique the Security Council in new ways.”

MURPHY, B. (2020). Situating the accountability of the UN Security Council: Between liberal-legal and political ‘styles’ of global constitutionalism? Global Constitutionalism, 1-35. doi:10.1017/S2045381720000222

COVID-19, the UN, and Dispersed Global Health Security

The response to COVID-19 demonstrates an inclusive and dispersed form of global health security that is less reliant on the UN Security Council or the World Health Organization (WHO). 

While WHO remains central to fighting the pandemic, the dispersed global health security addressing the crisis is inclusive of the wider UN system, civil society, and epistemic communities in global health. 

Writing in the special issue of the journal Ethics and International Issues on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” SOPHIE HARMAN, in an essay titled “COVID-19, the UN, and Dispersed Global Health Security” argues that instead of facing crisis or criticism like WHO, this inclusive and dispersed form of global health security provides mechanisms of resilience and support to the UN at the height of global political tensions surrounding COVID-19.

Harman, S. (2020). COVID-19, the UN, and Dispersed Global Health Security. Ethics & International Affairs, 34(3), 373-378. doi:10.1017/S0892679420000398

UN Peace Operations in a Multipolar Order: Building Peace Through the Rule of Law and Bottom-up Approaches

UN peace operations need a new peacebuilding agenda that acknowledges both the transboundary nature of conflict drivers and the multipolar nature of the global order. 
This means casting aside the current stabilization approach, but also abandoning the pursuit of liberal peacebuilding of the unipolar era, KARI M. OSLAND & MATEJA PETER write in the journal Contemporary Security Policy. 
Such a conflict transformation agenda would require UN peace operations to prioritize the rule of law and bottom-up approaches, thus creating the potential to be embraced by a much broader range of member states, they write in the article titled ‘UN peace operations in a multipolar order: Building peace through the rule of law and bottom-up approaches’
“In this article, we bring liberal peacebuilding critiques into a discussion with debates on the nature of the global order. Liberal peacebuilding critiques are rooted in the bottom-up problematization of international interventions and show what kind of peacebuilding is desirable. Conversely, the debates on the multipolar nature of the global order expose the top-down constraints as to what kind of peacebuilding is feasible.”

Kari M. Osland & Mateja Peter (2021): UN peace operations in a multipolar order: Building peace through the rule of law and bottom-up approaches, Contemporary Security Policy, DOI: 10.1080/13523260.2021.1898166

Future of UN Peace Operations: Principled Adaptation Through Phases of Contraction, Moderation, and Renewal

CEDRIC DE CONING considers the future of United Nations peace operations through a complexity theory lens in the journal Contemporary Security Policy.

In the short-term, peacekeeping will have to adapt to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fall-out of the Trump presidency, while in the medium-term it will go through a phase of uncertainty and turbulence due to geopolitical power shifts in the global order, he writes in ‘The future of UN peace operations: Principled adaptation through phases of contraction, moderation, and renewal’.

In the longer-term, the author states, peacekeeping will have to adapt to a new multipolar global order characterized by coexistence, and a changing security landscape shaped by, among others, climate change, urbanization, and new technologies. Throughout these contraction, moderation, and adjustment phases, UN peacekeeping is likely to be guided by a principled adaptive approach, that allows it to adapt to the realities of the moment whilst staying true to its core form and identity. As a result, UN peacekeeping is likely to remain one of the most visible symbols of global governance and international cooperation.

UN peace operations have shown a remarkable resilient capacity to continuously adapt to new challenges over the past 70 years, and there is no evidence to suggest that it will not continue to do so into the future, the author concludes. 

Despite the significant changes currently underway in the global order, and the uncertainties that come with such turbulence, most countries and regional blocs, such as the African Union, European Union, the Nordic region, and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), agree on and repeatedly emphasize the importance of the UN, and UN peace operations, as the centerpiece of global governance and a rules-based multilateral order.

“Despite the short-, medium-, and longer-term changes UN peace operations are likely to undergo, UN peacekeeping is likely to remain the flagship enterprise of the UN. This is because UN peacekeeping has become one of the most remarkable achievements, and thus symbols, of the post-World War II multilateral system of global governance.”

Cedric de Coning (2021) The future of UN peace operations: Principled adaptation through phases of contraction, moderation, and renewal, Contemporary Security Policy, DOI: 10.1080/13523260.2021.1894021