Multi-Stakeholder Cooperation in Global Governance

Abstract:

Over the past few decades, new forms of international cooperation have emerged that go beyond traditional intergovernmental multilateralism. In this new mode of global governance, 'global public-private partnerships',
'multi-sectoral networks', 'multi-stakeholder arrangements',
'plurilateral coalitions', and 'global public policy networks' bring multiple stakeholders – public, private and not-for-profit – together in common forums to engage in consensus-oriented problem-solving.

Today, such multi-stakeholder cooperation can be identified in a variety of issue-areas across global, regional and local levels, involving a broad set of actors ranging from governments and international organizations to NGOs and transnational corporations. As such, these are initiatives
that try to respond to the new challenges of governance in the age of globalization.

The paper is organized so that the second section provides a
discussion of the failed attempt to forge a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). The political and economic liberalization associated with globalization, in conjunction with the development of new communications technologies, have propelled the emergence of powerful private actors at the international level, such as transnational NGO networks, which effectively have come to challenge the legitimacy of traditional structures of global governance.

In this context, institutional arrangements for multi-stakeholder cooperation have began to take shape and are now promoted as critical mechanisms for narrowing the 'governance gap' in international politics and for the effective tackling of global problems. The third section
provides an analysis of three cases of multi-stakeholder cooperation: the World Commission on Dams; the Forest Stewardship Council; and The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. In the concluding section, the most important lessons of these multi-stakeholder initiatives are discussed and distilled to some modest recommendations for how to best manage multi-stakeholder cooperation.