Global Governance in Practice. Issue 2 (27th December 2017) - Pouliot, Vincent
Abstract: We argue that a focus on practices can enrich the study of global governance by drawing attention to a wealth of informal processes and their politics. After explaining the usefulness of a practice approach, we examine four pervasive practices in contemporary world politics: hosting a global conference, accrediting NGOs, mandating a group of experts, and forming multistakeholder partnerships. For each of these established 'ways of doing things, ' we provide a definition, decline its variations, and analyze its politics. Through our case studies, we show that global governance practices often generate competing social effects, by which inclusionary trends combine with more exclusionary tendencies. This common dialectic of inclusion and exclusion provides an analytical key to better understand the politics of global public policy making, including its power dynamics. Abstract : Although identifying the core practices of global governance will always remain an issue of debate, we maintain that the hosting of global conferences, the accrediting of NGOs, the mandating of groups of experts, and the forming of multistakeholders partnerships represent established ways of doing things that most analysts and diplomats would easily recognize as significant elements of global policymaking. What makes these practices particularly meaningful is their prevalence across issue‐areas, their salience in the current era, and their comprehensiveness in terms of actors and sites involved.