Description
This paper interrogates the relationship between impartiality and power and asks whether impartiality as a cornerstone of global governance can – and ought to – be re-envisioned in the context of changing global governance power relations. Impartiality, or to be precise, the successful performance of impartiality is a necessary precondition for collaborative action in global crisis governance. While criticisms of the impartiality claims of leading international organizations are neither new, nor necessarily unjustified, they are increasingly shared by actors previously associated with the core of the global liberal order and underpinned by a reconfiguration of global power relationships.
The paper treats impartiality as a contingent concept that is suffused with power and subject to reinterpretations. It interrogates the relationship between impartiality and liberal hegemony and explores alternative avenues for re-imagining impartiality as a strategy for facilitating cooperation ‘beyond’ liberal hegemony. The analysis employs a mix of historical process tracing and discourse analysis to identify alternative conceptions and practices of impartiality in the case of three regional organizations (OSCE, ASEAN, AU) whose context conditions and power relationships differ at least in part from those present at the centre of global liberal order.
