Here are some excerpts from a recent speach titled "Global Governance: Learning From The European Model" by Pascal Lamy, Director General of the World Trade Organisation, Published Monday, 9 November, 2009 - in which he discusses the EU model of "integration" and urges to consider it when dealing with the "problem" of global governance.

(e gov monitor ) "Globalization today is posing a serious challenge for our democracies, and our governance systems must respond to the challenge says Pascal Lamy as he discusses the global governance challenges and how Europe might be the right model to follow.

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The reality is that the end of the cold war caught everyone by surprise. It was the end of a bi-polar world. A new world order was being born. And yet there was not enough thinking and discussion about its governance structures. There was never a Bretton Woods Conference or a San Francisco Conference post 1989. As a result global governance structures did not adjust. And here lies the root of many of today’s problems. Global challenges need global solutions and these can only come with the right global governance, which today, twenty years later, remains too weak.
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And yet there is a place on earth where new forms of global governance have been tried following World War II: in Europe. More than half a century ago Jean Monet said: “the sovereign nations of the past can no longer provide a framework for the resolution of our present problems: And the European Community itself is no more than a step towards the organizational forms of tomorrow’s world”. This was as valid then as it is now.

Governance to which end?

What do I mean by global governance? For me global governance describes the system we set up to assist human society to achieve its common purpose in a sustainable manner, that is, with equity and justice. Growing interdependence requires that our laws, our social norms and values, our mechanisms for framing human behaviour be examined, debated, understood and operated together as coherently as possible. This is what would provide the basis for effective sustainable development in its economic, social and environmental dimensions.

Whether public or private, governance needs to provide leadership, the incarnation of vision, of political energy, of drive.

It also needs to provide legitimacy, which is essential to ensure ownership over decisions which lead to change. Ownership to prevent the in-built bias towards resistance to  modify the status quo.

A legitimate governance system must also ensure efficiency. It must bring about results for the benefit of the people.

Finally, a governance system must be coherent.
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What then are the specific challenges of global governance?

The first challenge stems from the difficulty to identify leadership. Who is the leader? Should it be a super power? A gathering of national leaders? Selected by whom? Or should it be an international organization?

As to classical legitimacy, this entails citizens choosing their representatives collectively, by voting for them. But it also relies on the political capacity of the system to bring forward public discourse and proposals that produce coherent majorities and provide citizens with the feeling they are participating in a debate. Since legitimacy depends on the closeness of the relationship between the individual and the decision-making process, the challenge of global governance is distance. The other legitimacy challenges are the so-called democratic deficit and accountability deficit, which arise when there are no means for individuals to challenge international decision-making. In sum, the specific challenge of legitimacy in global governance is to deal with the perceived too-distant, non-accountable and non-directly challengeable decision-making at the international level.  

As with legitimacy, coherence is also proper to the nation state and it is transferred to specialized international organizations whose mandates are limited. In theory there should be no problem. The coherent action by the nation-state in the various remits of international governance would be translated into a coherent global action. But we all know that nation-states also have the monopoly of incoherence. In practice they often act incoherently and here lies the third challenge of global governance: how to deal with partial and incoherent efficiency.

Finally, remoteness of power and multiple levels of government pose a challenge for efficiency. Nation-states resist more or less intensely — largely depending on the state and on the topic — transferring or sharing jurisdiction over certain matters within international institutions. And the national diplomatic systems often do not reward international cooperation. As I have said on numerous occasions, I know of no diplomat having been fired for saying “no” whereas I know some who have been fired for having said “yes”!

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Europe as a new paradigm of global governance

In these troubled times for the European Union it is no easy matter to present it as a new paradigm of global governance. And yet the European construction is the most ambitious experiment to date in supranational governance. It is the story of a desired, defined and organized interdependence between its member states. It is therefore worth examining how Europe has coped with the challenges I have described above.

My starting point is the building of Europe as work in progress. It is not complete in any of its dimensions. Not in that of geography. Not in its depth, that is, in the powers conferred by its member states to the European Union. And certainly not in the sense of identity that provides the glue which holds any human society together.
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What marks the essence of the European governance paradigm is the coming together of a political will, a goal to be attained as well as an institutional set up. It is the combination of these three elements and not the specific method of governance used. Not that we should underestimate the technological leap forward in the building of Europe.

The fact that Community law takes precedence over national law. The creation of a supranational body such as the European Commission that has been given the monopoly of initiating legislation. A European Court of Justice whose decisions are binding on national judges. A Parliament composed of a senate of member states and a house of representatives elected by the European “demos” and which has gained in competences over the years.

These are just a few of the things that, taken together, make the European Union a radically new economic and political entity on the scene of international governance.  But this unprecedented creation could not be the product of those innovations alone.  Indispensable and indisputable though they are, those institutional innovations are still inseparable from the conditions from which they emerged.  It is agreement on the substance that permits agreement on the form.

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If there is an area where Europe would get a B minus, it is probably in legitimacy. We are witnessing a growing distance between European public opinions and the European project.

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The final lesson I would draw is that since the political “demos” remains essentially national, legitimacy would be greatly enhanced if international issues become part of the domestic political debate. If national governments are held accountable for their behaviour at the international level. The exercise of democracy at the national level needs to integrate an international dimension to foster legitimacy at the global level. The fact that the governments which represent states at international organizations are the result of citizens' choices through domestic elections is, in itself, not sufficient to ensure the legitimacy of the international organizations. The fact that in an organization like the World Trade Organization, decisions are taken by consensus and where each country has one vote may not be enough to create a sense of legitimacy in the actions of the organization......

The good news is that many of these issues are already work in progress and that therefore we need not expect a big bang. The global economic crisis we are witnessing has accelerated the move towards a new architecture of global governance, in what I have called a “triangle of coherence”.

On one side of the triangle lies the G20, replacing the former G8, providing political leadership and policy direction. On another side lie member-driven international organizations providing expertise and specialized inputs, be they rules, policies or programmes. The third side of the triangle is the G-192, the United Nations, providing a forum for accountability.

In the longer term, we should have both the G20 and the international agencies reporting to the “parliament” of the United Nations. In this respect, a revamping of the UN Economic and Social Council could lend support to the recent resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly on a UN-system wide coherence. This would constitute a potent mix of leadership, inclusiveness and action to ensure coherent and effective global governance. With time, the G20 could even be a response to the reform of the UN Security Council.

..............It is a commendable effort to provide a “new global economic contract”, to anchor economic globalization on a bedrock of ethical principles and values which would renew the trust that citizens need to have that globalization can indeed work for them.

Globalization today is posing a serious challenge for our democracies, and our governance systems must respond to the challenge. If our citizens feel that the global problems are insoluble, if they feel they are out of reach, this will risk emasculating our democracies."

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