Global multi-level governance. European and East Asian leadership

Abstract:
This timely and insightful book underscores the growing prospect of sustaining peace and prosperity through dynamic, multi-level governance in which individual states better engage in both global processes and institutions via broad and hyperlinked regional and interregional regimes.

Since the end of the Cold War, European and East Asian states have been actively enhancing a series of unique trans-boundary structures and agreements. The European Union is but the core of a fluid model of peaceful supranational cooperation, and countries in Southeast and Northeast Asia are gradually developing the ASEAN+3 process into a flexible East Asian community. Through new bilateral, multilateral and especially interregional relationships, both Europe and East Asia are now helping to transform other regions and the global community.

De Prado’s clear vision rests on his unique theoretical framework highlighting how energetic actors sustain political, advisory, economic and social multi-level governance. He provides four detailed cases that examine governments advancing agendas through formal institutions and flexible processes, track-2 think-tanks and networks linking governments with private actors, economic innovators connecting through info-communication technologies, and human resources learning in upgraded education systems.

The author concludes that the continuing convergence of European and East Asian political, economic and social agendas should spur the United States and other powers and regions to better engage in global multi-level governance, and reinvigorate multilateral regimes like the United Nations.

César de Prado is a Researcher at the University of Tokyo and a visiting professor at the University of Salamanca.

Contents:
1. Global multi-level governance
2. Advancing multi-level intergovernmentalism
3. The crucial influence of Track-2 advisory processes
4. Global multi-level knowledge economies
5. Towards higher levels of education
6. Envisioning a better multi-level world