rodrik122_Martin Barraud_Getty Images_globalization Martin Barraud/Getty Images

The False Economic Promise of Global Governance

The claim that the world needs stronger global governance is so widely accepted today that challenging it may seem like arguing that the sun revolves around the earth. But what may be true for genuinely global problems such as climate change or health pandemics is not true for most economic issues.

CAMBRIDGE – Global governance is the mantra of our era’s elite. The surge in cross-border flows of goods, services, capital, and information produced by technological innovation and market liberalization has made the world’s countries too interconnected, their argument goes, for any country to be able to solve its economic problems on its own. We need global rules, global agreements, global institutions.

This claim is so widely accepted today that challenging it may seem like arguing that the sun revolves around the earth. Yet what may be true for truly global problems such as climate change or health pandemics is not true when it comes to most economic issues. Contrary to what we often hear, the world economy is not a global commons. Global governance can do only limited good – and it occasionally does some damage.

What makes, say, climate change a problem that requires global cooperation is that the planet has a single climate system. It makes no difference where greenhouse gases are emitted. So national restrictions on carbon emissions provide no or little benefit at home.

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