GLOBAL PUBLIC GOODS AND TRADE: CONFLICTS, COMPATIBILITY AND COMPLEMENTARITIES
Round Table 1 - Global Public Goods: one definition?


Global Public Goods…
or the use of a legitimizing term in international fora


François CONSTANTIN
Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour (France)

 For a political scientist, the expression "GPG" appears to be a new catch-all term inherited from economic theory, but which is now used to propose new frameworks to achieve the millenium quest for common interest. Common interest is at the roots of politics (in particular but not exclusively, according to democratic theory) insofar as it is the fundamental reference for legitimizing the strategies and decisions of actors trying to design the future of global society. This global society can be either the city, or the community, or the nation (or the nation-state), or the world… or mankind. The discovery of GPGs is more specifically related to the challenges the world has been confronted with since the late XXth /early XXIst centuries.
After some investigation (and a seminar of the Association française de Science politique, paper to be published) and given current use of the term in various international fora and debates, what appears clearly is that the term "GPG" can be considered as a new kind of social representation, or ideology. Like other social representations, it has been constructed at a particular moment in social history by certain groups (intellectuals, experts, members of the epistemic community, prophets), which are organized to emerge successfully from conflictual issues and are closely linked to the policies developed by public and/or private actors (governments, politicians, firms, NGOs…), and by national and/or international agencies.
In my opinion, the important issue for a political scientist is not the definition of GPGs as such: it is clear from the literature (be it from economists or other scientists, social scientists or otherwise) that everything related to some social concern could be called a GPG, from international peace (and even this could be discussed… remember Munich!) to the conservation of a unique Indonesian mosquito. The problem then is rather HOW and WHY some agencies or scientists produce an ideological representation classifying a good or a service or indeed anything else as a GPG.

The debate about this kind of common interest, or GPG, started and has particularly developed among economists and social scientists, who Gramsci would have called the "organic intellectuals" of the world's intergovernmental agences, and specifically within the aid and monetary agencies (WB, UNDP, IMF). It is also on the agenda of various national aid agencies, in, for example, France…

As far as political science is concerned, two main questions emerge from these discussions:
1) Why have these agencies produced this GPG ideology and why is it becoming the basic reference term for those involved in international multilateral or bilateral assistance programmes?
2) How could the (re-) invention of GPGs help to improve the efficiency of the international assistance public policies these agencies have been created for?

1) In response to the first question, the WB, UNDP, and other technical bodies (from the old WHO to the new WTO), at multilateral and at state levels, are confronted with a twofold crisis which has contributed to the legitimacy deficit of international assistance and cooperation:
- A resource (or funding) crisis in which the contributions of the rich member states fail to meet the needs of agency programmes, particularly since these states have had to deal with the global economic crisis which began in the mid-70s;
- An efficiency crisis, made clear by the fact that after at least four decades of international assistance programmes, the gap between rich and poor and between North and South is widening, as shown by all data produced by UN and EU offices;

These two crises have caused a global legitimacy crisis: the rich consider that they are wasting resources which could be more efficiently used at home, where they are confronted with growing demands; the poor consider that their living conditions are not improving; and finally, experts contemplate the failures of their sophisticated theoretical constructions and the dissolution of their scientific certitudes.

However, international cooperation must continue, just as trade and other forms of formal and informal exchanges and interactions among people continue throughout the world (and because international cooperation management remains a viable and stimulating job for many experts and businesspeople). Overcoming the crisis requires a new mobilizing approach and perhaps a new terminology. The focus on GPGs follows mottos such as "development decades", "structural adjustment programmes", "sustainable development", "struggles against poverty", etc. The term GPG presents a new (or rather a re-designed) and attractive figure for those who are expected to fund international organisation programmes (and their bureaucracies), for those whose job it is to contribute to real improvement in the conditions of the poorest, and perhaps for those who have nothing at all apart from hoping for some improvement in their daily lives.

2) In response to the second question, if GPG is a soft concept - which is a prerequisite for its acceptance by an enlarged audience the world over - it is designed in particular to satisfy the ideology and the arguments of those whose resources are to be mobilized, i.e. the custodians of neo-liberal policies. GPG ressembles some kind of a rhetorical medicine which could avoid the failures and social disturbances caused by SAPs, by reintroducing the regulating role of governments without giving up the neo-liberal tenets. "GPG" is clearly an attempt to update and legitimize the search for a new "governance" mixing capitalist elements (by giving an increasing role to private corporations and to the free market since private profits would help to produce and maintain GPGs) and democratic aspects (by addressing an elusive "civil society" and valorizing NGOs). But questions remain: to what extent could common interest be effectively achieved through free (or even loosely regulated) markets, and how could ordinary people, particularly from the South (but even from the North), participate fully and efficiently in this Edenic construction

From a political scientist's point of view, the main issue is whether or not this mode of discourse can effectively achieve the ethical objectives of justice, equality and development. If it can do so, it must be valid, and GPGs could thus be analysed as a form of… global public goods.
But after considering the eventual usefulness of the concept, there is still one question on the agenda. The real question is: what do "Justice", "Equality", and particularly "Development" mean? Considering the influence and the power of the organic intellectuals we discussed above, it could be feared that eventually, one century after the WMB ("White Man Burden"), GPG would become just the updated, sophisticated and scientific-looking version of the old tradition of hegemonic Western Ideology.