Global Governance and State Collapse

Abstract

At the core of the project of global governance lies a particular conception of the relationship between statehood and global order. In place of the now unsustainable idea that ‘sovereign states’ form the autonomous building blocks from which an anarchical international system is constructed, states have been reconceptualised as the key intermediaries between the norms according to which the new global system is expected to operate, and the implementation of that system on the ground. Despite the increased salience of other organisational forms, including nongovernmental organisations and international regimes, and despite the characteristic hiving off to other agencies of what were previously seen as essential state functions, there is no alternative to the state as the key regulatory agency at the local level. The ‘failure’ or complete collapse of states therefore arouses deep concern among the core states of the modern global order, as the actual or potential site for threats to systemic stability — a concern that has been massively enhanced in the aftermath of the attacks on 11 September 2001. As a result, the period since the end of the Cold War has been marked by attempts on the part of core states and associated institutions to reconstitute states that were seen as having ‘failed’, in accordance with a doctrine of statehood that is compatible with the legitimising principles of the new global order.