Norms for Global Governance

The need to manage systemic global risks and to promote global social goods requires better global governance. The accountability of national leaders to their citizens is often in conflict with the need to act in the global public interest. This tension is apparent in problems as diverse as the global financial crisis and problems involving climate change, freshwater scarcity and ocean acidification.

In the aftermath of great crises of the past, conferences such as Vienna (1815), Bretton Woods and San Francisco (1944–45) and Paris (1951) established shared normative frameworks that reflected prevailing values and served to define aspects of the international environment for many decades. Some suggest that today’s challenges and the risk of a looming tragedy of the commons cry out for a similar effort.

To address the challenges of global governance, what norms of behavior would be appropriate and desirable? How could such norms be accepted despite the divergence of cultures and values in the world? Which specific global problems could be mitigated through the adoption of such norms? How would these norms transform individual, social, national and international behavior?