KARL-HEINZ LADEUR’S

PUBLIC GOVERNANCE IN THE AGE OF

GLOBALIZATION

Vik Kanwar*

Book Review

Karl-Heinz Ladeur, PUBLIC GOVERNANCE IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION.

Aldershot, Hants, England, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2004.
Pp. 339. $114.95. ISBN: 0-7456-2368-8

Mark Twain once quipped, “Everybody talks about the weather but
nobody does anything about it.” At times, the same seems true of
“globalization”. Though globalization is more topical than ever, the most
trenchant normative critiques have receded as scholarly discussions have
taken an increasingly empirical turn. While diverse descriptive accounts—
qualitative or quantitative, impact studies or forecasts— should be
welcomed, they often risk ignoring new normative challenges by treating
the actions of global institutions as quasi-natural and inevitable processes—
as blameless as thunderstorms. This volume of inter-disciplinary essays
edited by Karl Heinz-Ladeur is refreshing in its attempt to apply empirical
insights to emerging normative questions about global governance.
Published recently, but collecting papers delivered at the European Union
Institute in March 2001, the ideas presented in this book still seem
inventive, though Ladeur’s editorial introduction responding to
overestimations and over-simplifications of early anti-globalization (now
“alter-globalization”) rhetoric is a vestige of a more polemical time. Still,
this frees up the other contributors to treat the “age of globalization” as a
social scientific phenomenon rather than a topic of controversy, and more
importantly, to develop a pragmatic paradigm of “public governance.” In
my view, this paradigm does not remove normative questions, but raises a
second level of normative debate. To say globalized institutions have
“public” characteristics is to recognize their relationships to effected
populations, even if these arrangements often fall short of constitutional or

*
JSD Candidate, NYU School of Law
2 BOOK REVIEW [2004

democratic legitimacy. Similarly, to say “governance” is to stop short of

saying “government.” While both terms connote “steering,” governance has
come to suggest “policy without politics,” or coordination without
hierarchy. The notion of public governance gives shape to a sphere of
global “administration” that is neither as chaotic as “globalization” nor as
structured as a “global regulatory state.” The normative payoff of this
conceptual shift is a renewed focus on purposive decision-making and
accountability. This is tempered by an empirical recognition, however, that
“accountability” no longer refers to any familiar notion of political
responsibility, but instead to multiple responsive mechanisms across
disparate market-driven, institutional, regional, quasi-judicial, or expert
networks. Ladeur’s book captures this complexity effectively.

The book’s interdisciplinary approach to public governance is

particularly valuable since certain disciplines are better suited to
investigating certain institutions. Legal historian Lawrence Friedman
provides a helpful, if generic, opening essay on the cultural dimensions of
globalization. Several essays introduce new terms for hybridized forms of
public-private administration. These include “open states” and “polycentric
networks” (Ladeur), “global private regimes” (Gunther Teubner),
“transnational regulatory networks” (Thomas Vesting), “privatized norm-
making” (Saskia Sassen), “deliberative polyarchy” (Charles Sabel and Josh
Cohen), and the interpenetration of “global networks” and “disaggregated
states” (Anne-Marie Slaughter). All of these descriptions agree on two basic
characteristics— the pluralism of global order and the state’s
permeability— but subtly tilt toward different prescriptions.

It is probably significant that these papers were written before 9/11, and
before the “global war on terror” temporarily eclipsed the globalization
debate. Only one contribution, Martin van Crevald’s historical essay on the
monopolization of collective security, was revised to take account of post-
9/11 developments. Still, the book gives insufficient attention to the military
dimensions of globalization, a topic that could include emergent public-
private partnerships in recent conflicts (e.g., Private Military Firms) or the
global impact of resource wars. Finally, despite terminological differences,
the essays successfully contribute to the development of a unified academic
idiom. Yet, as talk of globalization becomes as commonplace as discussing
the weather, global governance warrants a more accessible language. The
material here deserves a broader readership and several contributors have
written popular works for general audiences, yet these essays are addressed
to narrower peer networks. Moreover, at USD 115, the present edition will
likely be relegated to academic libraries.