Browsing by Subject "Global governance"

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    Codified compassion: politics and principles in humanitarian governance
    (2012-08) Kennedy, Denis V.F.
    This dissertation analyzes recent attempts to devise rules and regulations to govern humanitarian action. Specifically, it asks: What drives humanitarian organizations to collectively regulate their principles, practices, and policies? Self-regulation, or self-organized attempts at collective action within direct state intervention, is a recent global phenomenon, affecting both the for- and non-profit worlds. In humanitarianism alone, there are now dozens of codes of conduct and other mechanisms that implicate all manner of humanitarian practice, from principles to aid provision. This research focuses on four key self-regulatory projects: the Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief; the Sphere Project; HAP International; and the Code of Conduct on Images and Messages.Contrary to the widespread view that firms regulate for branding and competitive reasons, this study finds that principled reasons better account for the origins of these initiatives. Specifically, it shows that self-regulation has emerged out of a crisis of legitimacy in the humanitarian sector, whereby aid veterans concluded that good intentions were no longer enough as a basis for action. As Rwanda demonstrated, good intentions can lead to terrible outcomes. Through self-regulation, aid workers have sought to shift humanitarianism's ideational foundations from charity and good deeds to professionalism, technical standards, and human rights. Contestations over self-regulation, in turn, derive from different understandings of humanitarianism - of its meanings and know-how.
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    Constructing knowledge and policies on avian influenza: how do international organizations craft global models?
    (2013-05) Chien, Yu-Ju
    My dissertation examines how three specialized international agencies - the World Health Organization (WHO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) - produced and shaped global authoritative knowledge and policies on avian influenza. Collaboration among international agencies is unprecedented in global governance. My dissertation examines this novel collaboration, specifically, how the three agencies managed to overcome disconnect and competition, and eventually agreed on a One Health policy framework. Besides explaining this policy transition, I reveal how the WHO, FAO and OIE negotiated, constructed, and prioritized their solutions; how they reshaped boundaries between research communities to curate avian flu science; and why gaps between their ideal framework and practices persist. By illustrating the crucial and influential role of international agencies in science and policymaking, my research contributes to theories on international policy and norm formation. I demonstrate that international agencies are actively involved in global knowledge, policy and norm-making. In this case, they not only manufactured consensus on One Health, but they also influenced the interests and interactions of other global actors such as experts, transnational agribusiness, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and nation states. My work proves that international agencies have autonomy and power independent of nation states, which is often neglected in conventional theories on international relations and policy formation. In addition, my research challenges the conventional unidirectional assumption of the relations between science and policy. My findings reveal that avian flu science has co-evolved with policies, and that the WHO, FAO and OIE actively mediated the production of avian flu science and One Health knowledge by networking with selected experts. Furthermore, I reveal that international agencies are actors with bounded rationality. Although they demonstrated great capacity to affect other actors' interests, they are still constrained by their own bureaucratic attributes, the influence of other stakeholders, and political economic realities in the policy arena. Essentially, my dissertation reveals both the power and limitations of international agencies. It contributes to understanding how power is exercised in global governance, and how knowledge, power, and social order are intertwined.