Refine
Document Type
- Article (3)
- Part of a Book (2)
- Lecture (1)
Language
- English (6)
Has Fulltext
- no (6)
As public power is increasingly exercised in structures of global governance, principles of domestic law and politics are extended to the global level, with serious repercussions for the structure of international law. Yet, as this article seeks to show for the emerging global administrative law, this extension is often problematic. Using administrative law mechanisms to enhance the accountability of global regulation faces the problem of fundamental contestation over the question of to whom global governance should be accountable. National, international and cosmopolitan constituencies are competing for primacy, and this results in an often disorderly interplay of accountability mechanisms at different levels and in different regimes. This pluralist structure, based on pragmatic accommodation rather than clear decisions, strongly contrasts with the ideals of coherence and unity in modern constitutionalism and domestic administrative law. However, given the structure of global society, it is likely to endure and it is also normatively preferable to alternative, constitutionalist approaches. It helps avoid the friction that may result from a federal-type distribution of powers and the practical problems of a consociational order, and by denying all constituencies primacy it reflects the legitimacy deficits of each of them. Mirroring divergent views on the right scope of the political order, it also respects everybody’s equal right to political participation. A pluralist global administrative law thus presents an alternative to problematic domestic models for ensuring accountability in the circumstances of global governance.
Subsidiarity has become increasingly prominent in the theory and practice of global governance and international law. It responds to a need for a principled distribution of tasks between different layers of governance and expresses a general commitment to lower-level decisionmaking at a time when many fear that international authority might be expanding too fast. The symposium which this paper introduces interrogates the prospect and limits of the subsidiarity principle in the global context, focusing on different issue areas – regional economic integration, trade and investment, human rights, and international security, as well as cross-cutting empirical and normative aspects. This framing paper situates subsidiarity among competing principles, evaluates its appeal from a normative perspective and develops a number of conjectures about its prevalence, potential and limitations based on insights from comparative politics as well as the case studies of the project. The picture that emerges from this inquiry is not a homogeneous one. Subsidiarity is not present or desirable in all contexts, and empirically we find significant variation across issue areas and institutional settings. But the principle is beginning to shape different areas and institutional contexts, and it holds significant promise as normative and legal guidance for institutional design and the exercise of authority in the global realm. The landscape of subsidiarity is bound to remain variegated, but the concept is gaining ground and for many actors holds much appeal as a principled way of balancing the need for strong global cooperation with a continuing emphasis on the value of local self-government.