The article examines the drive for `global governance'
led by the US, and powerful G8 countries. Though under the
aegis of the United Nations (UN) several international conferences
have been held over global security, environmental protection,
human rights, development, gender empowerment, natural resources
management, and climate change, and similar varied topics,
most international conventions have been stymied by American
refusal to ratify agreements. Following the US' military
actions after 9/11, and its insistence on unipolar dominance
of the world, the European Union (EU) countries have become
even more alarmed, and are using their commercial power
to create another centre of global power. There is little
cooperation between these two powerful blocs. There can
be little real global governance without a measure of global
equity in this era, which sees a continuation of neocolonialism
in the guise of globalisation.
Now that management gurus, from Drucker to Prahalad, seem
to have saturated the younger members of the business world
with better management principles, the expectation was that
business schools would turn their eagle attention to higher
goals. The issue of governance was a natural target, involving
as it does the higher principles of social organisation.
At the very pinnacle of attempts to reorganise the governance
of businesses (national and transnational), lies the prospect
of improving the way nation states run themselves, even
higher than the near celestial goal of perfecting global
governance. Not only the new business school entrants, but
several other groups have had a dash of utopianism at reforming
how we run the world. The Inter-Governmental Committee for
Climate Change of the United Nations comes instantly to
mind. The Pugwash group of scientists was an earlier attempt
to forestall nuclear annihilation, and other similar catastrophes.
Even civil society has added to such attempts, the World
Federalists, and the Women's International League for Peace
and Freedom being two ageing organisations that gamely pursue
their laudable goals.
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