Communities in global governance

Reflections on global/transnational governance have not really taken hold in France, more comfortable, internally and internationally, with the notion of “ government » because of its state tradition. There “ governance », once mentioned by Jean-Pierre Raffarin, gave way to the “ hyper-presidency “. European governance only seems to work when there is an impetus coming from the major States of the Union, in particular France (this is the speech which triumphed in 2008 during the French Presidency). Even if there is, strictly speaking, no equivalent in France to American neorealism, the analysis of international relations is often limited to the study of the great powers, their ascendancy and their decline, or to that international institutions, which French diplomacy seeks to put in order (a specific Security Council for the economy, a sort of equivalent of theWTO for the environment), in a very Louisquatorzian architecture where everything is well separated and bordered. As for studies on the transnational (actors, identities, mobilizations, etc.), they are often disconnected from the issues of “ global governance “, except when they wonder if the world of States and power is overwhelmed and bypassed, and if it takes into account new transnational solidarities.

A sociological approach to governance

Marie-Laure Djelic, professor at theESSEChas long placed his work in a movement in sociology interested in the global, combining strong historical, quantitative and theoretical dimensions. His research agenda joins in a certain way, in the French-speaking European world, that of specialists in international political economy (Jean-Christophe Graz, Christian Chavagneux, etc.), that of jurists (Anne-Marie Frison-Roche, Hervé Ascensio …) and that of certain political scientists specializing in public policies. They strive to understand how power works in the world today and who determines legitimate issues, rules and norms. They therefore describe in small touches the “ patchwork » of so-called global/transnational governance. The existence of this governance is contested by realists who believe that States and power relations remain the alpha and omega of the international scene. ; by the neo-Marxists for whom it is only the organization by private international actors for the benefit of a global elite ; and by skeptics who doubt the analytical value of a virtually everything-encompassing concept that is just a way of talking about the post-Cold War world.

By introducing the notion of community (“ Gemeinschaft “) in the analysis of governance, the work attempts to put flesh on institutions and networks traditionally understood through a technicist and functionalist approach to the economic and social, which contributes to a de-ideologization of politics and poses real problems of “ accountability » (mistranslated into French as “ accountability “). But it is a fluid, liquid, hybrid flesh, like the post-modern world: communities are recomposed, are sometimes ephemeral, and those who participate have multiple identities and affiliations. Like governance itself, building communities is a process, which studies on communities have already noted “ diasporic », on transnational activism and transnational communities.

The work would have benefited from having a more historical perspective, drawing on numerous recent works which highlight the historicity of transnational mobilizations and attempts at transnational regulation, too often neglected by classic state-centric international relations. One contribution, however, is devoted to the transnational temperance movement of the 1870s-1930s, largely initiated by the Protestant world and linked to the missionary impulse, and which reached its peak with the prohibitionist legislation of the 1920s. On the other hand, downstream , the work tries to understand the communities ofopen source and Creative Commons on the Internet, and their activist dimensions. Historically, several chapters are important for understanding how postulates and practices known as “ neo-liberals » ; thus the community of discourse resulting from the Société du Mont-Pèlerin, which became transnational from the 1960s, or the triumph of the international auditing giants in France who gradually siphoned off the elite of the grandes écoles and marginalized auditors.

If the contributions deconstructing the notions of “ Chinese business community ” (in reality very diverse, with a comparison between Singapore and Malaysia) and informal cross-border trade participating in a “ globalization from below » (with the example of the boom in a market in Turkey generated by the arrival of products from the former Soviet Union) do not add much to previous work, close quantitative studies are very useful. This is the case of the one comparing the internationalization of Boards of large British and French companies, without, however, the hypothesis of the creation of a transnational capitalist class being posed, and especially the article dealing with the world of environmental and social certification. The origins of this certification are highlighted, particularly among opponents of American policy in Central America in the 1980s. But of this origin “ activist » has emerged a complex, heterogeneous, interconnected and competitive world, with the continued entry of new players and increasing funding by American foundations of certification bodies.

A patchwork made of communities

The concluding chapter is essential to fully understand the role of these communities, which are summarily classified in the work as “ classic communities with transnational extension » (the diasporas), professional communities with a transnational extension (the Boardsassociations dedicated to financial governance, etc.), virtual communities and communities based on transnational interests or issues. Today they occupy leading seats at the table of global governance, while participating in its character “ patchwork “. These conclusions enrich the numerous recent collective works which attempt to describe this complex world of regulation and its rules of the game.

It is, however, a shame that the sociological traditions mobilized in this work somewhat evacuate the notion of power. We can find a complement to the approach proposed by the authors in works inspired by Bourdieu which try to highlight the trajectories of the actors of these transnational communities, as in the work of Yves Dezalay, in research on the world of finance, or in a number of articles in Proceedings of Research in Social Sciences. Above all focused on economics, these traditions ignore the work of Anne-Marie Slaughter. However, the sociological dimension of Transnational Communities would have made it possible to enrich the hypotheses of this jurist, by showing how governance works “ inter-governmental » with its transnational communities of judges, legislators, experts from para-governmental agencies, as was done, notably under the leadership of Didier Bigo in France, for communities of police officers and security experts.