The conference at which these papers were presented occurred just months after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It was clear, at that point, that the world was entering the deepest recession since the Great Depression seventy-five years earlier. Unemployment would inevitably rise. It was unclear how long and how deep the downturn would be—and years later, as this volume goes to press, those uncertainties remain. One out of six Americans who would like a full-time job still can’t get one. In Spain, the official unemployment rate exceeds 24 percent, but youth unemployment is twice that.

The Great Recession affected...

The various papers in this volume highlight different dimensions of the rise in insecurity. The increased threat of terrorism may have decreased our sense of physical security. With growing numbers of Americans not covered by health insurance, there is an increase in “health insecurity.” In addition, global warming confronts everyone around the world with an important new set of environmental risks. This chapter focuses on one key dimension of insecurity—economic insecurity.

In spite of the social and economic progress of society in recent decades, in many countries—both developed and developing—individuals have less economic security today than they...

Going on his nine-month-long trip to North America in 1830, Alexis de Tocqueville¹ was curious about the impact of democratic equality. Summing up his impressions inDemocracy in America,he was astonished:

Among the new objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States none struck my eye more vividly than the equality of conditions. I discovered without difficulty the enormous influence that this primary fact exerts on the course of society; it gives a certain direction to public spirit, a certain turn to the laws, new maxims to those who govern, and particular habits to the...

The following commentaries are adapted from the transcript of the Social Protection panel of the conference on which this volume is based. Karl Ove Moene and Joseph E. Stiglitz’s presentations preceded a discussion between the other panelists. These commentaries were originally delivered on December 1, 2008. In an effort to preserve their tone and reflect the perspectives of that time, they have only been minimally revised for clarity in a few places.

Let me start with a general comment: I do hope that the current crisis will get us to a new equilibrium between two things that are desirable; one...

At the heart of a global social covenant is a commitment by political authorities at all levels—global, national, regional, and local—to protect individual human beings from life-threatening harms. The first part of this book focused on social protection; this part is about protecting people from violence—the domain we usually describe as security even though, as these chapters stress, protection from violence is difficult to disentangle from protection from other kinds of risks.

Four themes run through this part of the book. The first theme is the changing nature of the sources of insecurity. In the past, the...

In the twenty-first century, the United States confronts a complex array of security challenges—diffuse, shifting, and uncertain. This is good news and bad news. The good news is that the old sources of violence and insecurity that plagued the last century—great power war and a superpower nuclear arms race—have become less salient. We live in the longest era of great power peace. The United States is the leading global power. China is rising, but the United States is still unchallenged by a coalition of balancing states or by a superpower wielding a rival geopolitical ideology. Most of...

In today’s world, many people lead intolerably insecure lives. They risk being killed, kidnapped, raped, robbed, or expelled from their homes; they fear earthquakes or cyclones, the spread of disease, or losing their life’s savings; they may not have enough to eat or clean water to drink; they may lack access to healthcare. In today’s conflicts, civilians are targeted with impunity. Moreover, the insecurities generated by political violence are inextricably linked to insecurities resulting from transnational organized crime, environmental degradation, food shortages, or financial crises. No country, not even the United States, is immune from these insecurities any longer; some...

The evolution of global criminal markets, involving every country in the world (including those such as North Korea that purportedly aspire to autarky), has been one of the most striking developments of the past thirty years.

The global financial meltdown and the consequent economic crisis triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2008 have had several indirect effects in the pattern of transnational organized crime. Although some of these would appear to be merely conjunctural, others indicate a shift in the longer-term strategies of global criminal communities. They further confirm the gradual transfer of global economic...

Today one of the major threats to individuals’ security—economic and physical—around the world arises from the danger of global warming and climate change associated with the increased atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. Changes in weather affect those whose livelihood is dependent on agriculture, and extreme weather events—such as floods and cyclones—have left thousands, in some cases millions, homeless. Insecurity going forward is even greater: Rising sea levels will inundate low-lying coastal areas. As an example, rising sea levels are predicted to displace millions of people in Bangladesh.

Global warming is the quintessential global public good (or...

The risks of climate change resulting from the increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases have been well documented. There are likely to be especially adverse effects on developing countries and particularly the poor within these countries. There is a global consensus that strong actions need to be taken to ensure that the world does not faceexcessiverisk from an increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases that would, say, lead to an increase in average global temperatures of more than 2 degrees Celsius. This chapter is concerned with how the global community should respond to this...

Diverse aspects of human activity around the world result in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that contribute to global climate change. Emissions come from coal-fired power plants in the United States, diesel buses in Europe, rice paddies in Asia, and the burning of tropical forests in South America. These emissions will affect the global climate for generations because most greenhouse gases reside in the atmosphere for decades to centuries. Thus, the impacts of global climate change pose serious, long-term risks.

Global climate change is the ultimate global commons problem: Because GHGs mix uniformly in the upper atmosphere, damages are completely independent...

Opening up existing formal governance frames to the city level carries significant implications. It can help overcome the narrow nationalisms of interstate negotiated agreements. Large, complex cities share far more with other cities across the world in terms of challenges and the resources they need than they share with their national states and that national states share with each other. Cities share a specific position in a multiscalar global governance system. The ongoing elaboration of the European Union has brought this to the fore, notably in the need for subsidiarity regimes that go from the European to the local level....

Incorporating the urban scale into global-level environmental governance framings can take us beyond the limitations and distortions of a carbon trading regime. This in turn takes us beyond the kinds of nationalisms that carbon trading brings into negotiations. Among the key properties that distinguish cities as a site for environmental policymaking, and thereby as a source of policy innovations, are their multiple scales and diverse socio-physical ecologies. I want to argue that these two features should be conceived of as urban capabilities for addressing the environmental challenge. A key obstacle to this potential is that cities tend to be excluded...

Lack of safety, insecurity, and violence raise complex challenges that cities need to address as part of the pursuit of environmental sustainability. Large cities have long evinced a general inability to anticipate what may happen: accidents, catastrophes, or collective violence (Virilio 2002). But if we are to make cities key spaces for advancing an environmental agenda, then urban violence in its many manifestations becomes urgent.

This chapter examines this issue and situates it as part of the groundwork for the environmental process. Several questions organize the chapter. How are global cities doing in this respect? What resources do they have...

This chapter represents first thoughts about a potential new sphere for research and policy within the field of global governance. The ideas included are an attempt to stimulate a discussion and debate about the way cities may be able to play a role in the evolution of good government across international boundaries.

Global governance has traditionally been concerned with the activities of nation-states and with the international organizations that have been created to provide laws, regulation, oversight, and intervention in relation to people, their rights, and their protections. Research and practice have concentrated on key players and institutions within diplomacy...

Cities have emerged as important actors within multilevel arrangements that govern climate change. Global climate change affects local governments in three different ways. First, a high and increasing proportion of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is generated in metropolitan areas (Stern 2006; International Energy Agency 2008), and the world’s biggest cities such as London, Tokyo, and Beijing generate more GHG emissions than small countries. Second, the effects of global climate change have direct impacts on metropolitan regions and, although the vulnerabilities of both ecosystems and social systems vary considerably, cities need to adapt to the changing situation. Third, metropolitan regions are...

The chapters in this final part are about the global democratic deficit. The fundamental problem is that politics and power are no longer congruent. On the one hand, procedural democratic processes are largely confined to the nation-state. But on the other hand, elected governments no longer have the same power to respond to the demands of the electorate as they once did; this is even true of a powerful country such as the United States. Power has moved beyond national borders. Many of the decisions that affect the everyday lives of citizens are no longer taken at national levels. Democracy...

Recent years have been characterized by growing frustration with globalization, reflecting unsatisfactory processes and outcomes in multiple areas. In the social area, disenchantment is the result of the uneven way the benefits of globalization have spread in developing and developed countries alike. In the economic area, high financial volatility and a broad regulatory deficit have resulted in a sequence of national and international financial crises and, most recently, in a global financial crisis unprecedented since the Great Depression. In the environmental area, no effective action has been taken so far to face the unprecedented challenges posed by climate change and...

The G20 leaders group seems a solution to global governance problems. Called to meet together in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the group was able to convene rapidly. An agenda was quickly formulated. A work plan was announced. Averted were the excruciating slowness and dissent that characterize most international negotiations. This led some to herald the arrival of a new and better form of global governance (Helleiner and Pagliari 2009; Garrett 2010; Dewatripont, Freixas, and Portes 2011).

By 2010, the G20 leaders were still meeting regularly, but their initial momentum had slowed. Dissent marked the...

Different aspects of global governance often have common properties. The interrelationships between finance and security, for example, run deep. Security can be regarded as one of the quintessential public goods that are essential to human welfare. It constitutes a field of action in and of itself—the business of promoting security is a discrete policy area—but it also enables many other fields of action because without a modicum of security the structure of the polity changes completely. Likewise, the system of financial flows and the management of credit in general can also be likened to a kind of essential...