Abstract
How comprehensively and thoroughly must something be governed in order for the governance in question to be fully meaningful? The governance of any large human system can comprise a staggering number of component sub-systems and variables, many of which can have negative, though not usually systemically threatening consequences. States, for example, can experience a variety of economic, social and political crises which might unseat a government but leave the general integrity of the state unscathed. Even the routine business of hard budgetary choices can affect the quality of some aspects of state governance as much as instances of managerial incompetence or the impact of unanticipated events. And although weak, failed and ‘quasi states’ are a source of practical concern and of scholarly interest,1 the terms themselves are not free of ambiguity; and a determination of these conditions is a matter of judgement, not precise measurement against agreed criteria. Yet when a state is unable or unwilling to halt widespread violence, human rights abuses, or other sources of large-scale human suffering within its sovereign bounds, definitional precision is moot. Indeed, the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty argued that sovereign immunity from humanitarian intervention should be regarded as conditional on a state’s ability and willingness to protect its citizens from catastrophe, not a legal absolute.2
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Notes
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Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005);
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© 2009 Jim Whitman
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Whitman, J. (2009). Global governance systems must deal with or be able to accommodate large-scale violations/disruptions. In: The Fundamentals of Global Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234338_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234338_7
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