erc/metu
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN ECONOMICS  IV
September 13-16, 2000, Ankara

What's New about Global Governance?

Sol Picciotto (Lancaster University, UK )

Abstract

Although capital accumulation (and hence the state) has always been international in some sense, its forms have changed, although `globalisation' is a misnomer for the present phase. It misleadingly suggests a heightened global unity and socio-economic homogeneity, instead of a conflictual process involving contradictory processes of homogenisation and heterogenisation. This paper will focus on the emergence of what has been described as `multi-level governance', as a technicist and bureaucratic mode of reorganisation of the world market and new patterns of accumulation, based on the `knowledge society'. It will consider the example of intellectual property protection to compare and contrast the classical liberal international system (Berne & Paris conventions), with the current phase of globalisation, in which the WIPO treaties (Berne, Paris etc) are subsumed under WTO via TRIPs, but also via a network of other governance regimes (e.g. patent offices and courts). Movements aiming at the democratisation of these processes also should operate at multiple levels, and governance at every level should be subject to the principles of transparency, accountability, responsibility, and empowerment.

Economic Research Center
Middle East Technical University
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