Reflexive Governance for Global Public Goods
Eric Brousseau, Tom Dedeurwaerdere, and Bernd Siebenhüner
Abstract
Global public goods (GPGs)—the economic term for a broad range of goods and services that benefit everyone, including a stable climate, public health, and economic security—pose notable governance challenges. At the national level, public goods are often provided by government, but at the global level, there is no established state-like entity to take charge of their provision. The complex nature of many GPGs poses additional problems of coordination, knowledge generation, and the formation of citizen preferences. This book considers traditional public economy theory, which considers the provi ... More
Global public goods (GPGs)—the economic term for a broad range of goods and services that benefit everyone, including a stable climate, public health, and economic security—pose notable governance challenges. At the national level, public goods are often provided by government, but at the global level, there is no established state-like entity to take charge of their provision. The complex nature of many GPGs poses additional problems of coordination, knowledge generation, and the formation of citizen preferences. This book considers traditional public economy theory, which considers the provision of public goods as oversimplified because it is state-centered and fiscally focused. It develops a multidisciplinary look at the challenges of understanding and designing appropriate governance regimes for different types of goods in such areas as the environment, food security, and development assistance. The chapter authors explore the misalignment between existing GPG policies and actors’ incentives and understandings. They analyze the complex impact of incentives, the involvement of stakeholders in collective decision-making, and the specific coordination needed for the generation of knowledge. The book shows that governance of GPGs must be democratic, reflexive—emphasizing collective learning processes—and knowledge-based, in order to be effective.
Keywords:
stable climate,
public health,
economic security,
knowledge generation,
citizen preferences,
food security,
development assistance,
incentives,
stakeholders,
collective decision-making
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780262017244 |
| Published to MIT Press Scholarship Online: August 2013 |
DOI:10.7551/mitpress/9780262017244.001.0001 |
