Writing earlier this week in the Financial Times, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard
Haass made "The Case for Messy Multilateralism." Haass is almost always sensible, and this piece was
too. His basic argument is that
many global issues are increasingly complex, and trying to negotiate big global
treaties or pacts (like Kyoto or the Doha Round) are probably beyond anyone's
capacity, due to the enormous number of players involved and their widely
diverging interests and capacities.
Better to go with more limited agreements (i.e. involving the most
powerful or engaged stakeholders), or various "coalitions of the willing." With luck, this flexible and
opportunistic approach will produce a gradual evolution in the world's
institutional structure (e.g., from G8 to G20, etc.), and allow us to make
progress on issues that might otherwise defy solution. You know, the best is the enemy of the
good, and all that.
Of course, FP readers will recognize that this idea bears a
lot of resemblance to Moisés Naím's earlier argument for "minilateralism," and
my minor reservations about that concept apply here too. But one passage in Haass' piece leapt out at me, where
he says:
"In many cases it will prove impossible to negotiate
international accords that will be approved by national parliaments. Instead,
governments would sign up to implementing, as best they can, a series of
measures consistent with agreed-upon international norms."
I haven't thought about this notion for very long, but at
first read this sounds like a retreat from our usual ideas about democratic
accountability, or at least the form that it normally takes here in the United
States (i.e., where the Senate has to approve treaties). In essence, Haass seems to be saying
that executives need to make an end-run around constitutional limits, by
negotiating informal or tacit measures that don't need to be ratified by
legislatures. I can see the appeal of that idea, I suppose, but despite my concerns about excessive congressional
oversight (read: gridlock), I'm at least as worried by the damage that unconstrained executives can do.
Bottom line: this proposal ought to be read in conjunction
with James Fallows' Atlanticcover
story (which I'm still digesting) on the need for institutional reform here at home. I've been thinking similar thoughts
myself, and I'll share them when they've gelled a bit more. The Burkean conservative in me says:
"don't go there," but I have occasional Jacobin moments too.
P.S.
I'll be traveling over the next week, so posting will be limited by my
schedule and by internet availability. I'm counting on all of you to
keep things quiet, ok?
There is only one major problem with giving executive authorities more power over the legislature, and that problem is called the democratic-deficit. If you think the separation between European politicians and European electorates is wide now, just imagine how abruptly the breach would widen if parliament was ignored during the multilateral treaty process.
Many European countries are already trying to mitigate the pervasive gap between what the people really want and what politicians in the European Commission (among others). In reality, the only institution in the European Union that takes public opinion into consideration is the European Parliament; a structure that is essentially a figurehead compared to the EU's more policy-oriented institutions.
Don't get me wrong. It would so much easier to create international treaties on global climate change, terrorism, and human rights if world leaders did not have to worry about politics back home. But who is to say that world leaders would not be constrained by domestic politics anyway? If the issue is controversial enough, a decision at the international level would still resonate outrage or opposition at home. This is the American equivalent of the President signing onto an anti-free trade initiative and expecting that no political fallout would occur as a result.
It all depends on which side you are on. If you want dramatic and effective change globally in a quick period of time, then bypassing parliaments and legislatures is your best bet. But if your an individual that firmly believes in democratic principles and a system of checks-and-balances, then "minilateralism" is not for you.
I happen to think that collective concerns- like terrorism and climate change- are more vital to the achievement of world security than miniscuel concerns at the district-level.
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One would venture to say that, going to a conference dealing with multi-lateral issues, can be as pleasurable as a vist to the dentist [with all due respect to dentists and their professionalism; I am seeing one in a couple of days], with more or less the same immediate effects.
However, any other alternative to the current format of such gatherings, will mean undoubtedly, that the have-not nations will never be sitting alongside the Haves nations; even just to air their views, and the like-minded will end up dictating their terms and enforcing their priorities on the rest without even having to hear the point of view of those whom are likely to suffer from such consequences.
khairi janbek.paris/france
Yard by yard, life is hard; inch by inch, it's a cinch!
Would things go better, if we break down the steps and participants and proceed by increments?
Or--even better, take a look at Sen. Jim Webb's bill to essentially unilaterally use clean energy and green transportation systems to clean up our own mess. Personally, I wonder if a unilatteral innitiative would give us a head start on the rest of the world and we would end up with in a much stronger position because we had already gotten the jump on everybody else.
As for this country, our own recent history of the South may offer a few lessons. Take my state of Virginia. V.O. Key, Jr. said that under the Byrd machine, we had the most autocratic government in the western hemisphere.
Virginia was highly centralized until the mid '70's. Now the whole U.S. is highly centralized with a few interest groups collaborating with a few insolated officials to do whatever they want. Israel proved that they could do whatever they want with what they did to Gaza. The financial interests can do whatever.
I believe that the whole country has been sliding towards a "southernization" ever since Vietnam and Watergate. We felt defeated just as the South is a defeated land ever since the Civil War. We elected Reagan to pump up our egoes just as happens all the time in the South.
Anyway, if we can study how Virginia went from the Byrd Machine to Jim Webb's bill to build a clean economy, we may learn a few lessons about the entire country.
It might be true that the more parties are involved the more difficult agreement becomes, but some issues are simply so global that they need some kind of consensus worldwide. Also, large scale multilateralism doesn't always fail. Despite constant criticism of it for generations the IAEA has done a rather impressive job.
Remember Schelling's conjecture about the advantages of being able to tie your hands. Sometimes the US negotiator can get better deals from other countries because they understand the negotiator has to convince the legislature to ratify the deal. The domestic constraints credibly tie the US negotiator's hands in the international bargaining table. Enabling the executive to bypass the domestic constraints will be observed by foreigners and it will annul the bargaining advantage.
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
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