Governing Security in the 21st Century: Emerging Powers and Strategies for Cooperation
This project aims to produce a new framework for explaining and understanding security and cooperation in the 21st Century. It brings together expert knowledge about security, risk and international cooperation. There is currently a mismatch between the increasingly complex problems faced by the world and the segmented research and management activities in developing governance structures that are more responsive and adaptive to these complex problems. Governments must find ways to respond collectively to collective action problems such as the global financial crisis, pandemics, energy security, nuclear non-proliferation and climate change. A failure to act on any of these issues will have severe consequences. As global power shifts, innovations in governance and cooperation are essential.
Existing theories of cooperation assume a stable geo-political order, led by countries with a shared conception of the scope and modalities of global cooperation. These assumptions are no longer justified. Western liberal order is in a protracted process of transition, and in the wake of the recent financial crisis some countries are retreating back to a more nationalistic approach. There is no new hegemon that would be able (or willing) to replace the United States and to push for a redesign of the global governance architecture from scratch. Emerging powers such as China, India, and Brazil are engaging in global cooperation in their own way and on their own terms. In sum, while there seems to be a growing demand for effective global cooperation, there are no longer universally applicable concepts to analyse it nor a common language with which to describe it.
This project takes up this challenge. First, it examines specific global risks – e.g. financial stability, trade, nuclear non-proliferation, energy security, and climate change – and their variation in significance across regions. Second, it defines the problems that require collective action. Third, it pays careful attention to the rapidly changing reality of how governments are cooperating on different issues. The new framework will expose and explain the variations in strategies of cooperation being used by governments across different issues and regions.
