Description
Global order is undoubtedly in flux with global governance severely challenged. It seems to be fracturing greatly in areas that it pledged to serve foremost i.e. restricting the use of force, ensuring territorial integrity, and securing humankind’s fundamental freedoms. Irrespective of being a horizontal legal system, International Law managed to keep power and authority within legitimate bounds for ensuring efficient governance. But for now, both International Law and global institutions stand trumped by power politics.
In an otherwise anarchic world, global governance is where power and authority intersect with legitimacy. Contrarily, global governance gets incapacitated where multiple contestations (driven by actors’ divergent interests) choke the rulemaking in areas of evident concern. The return of devastating full-blown interstate wars (Russia-Ukraine, Pakistan-India, and Iran-US/Israel), uncapped human catastrophe facing Kashmiris, Rohingyas, Sudanese, and Congolese, audaciously ascendent war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon, and unaccounted casualties in protracted civil wars in Syria and Yemen, all manifest a governance failure.
It is argued that such unbridled, unabashed, and unpunished use of force is facilitated when strong/big actors turn their back on the rules they consensually created. Governance frameworks are repeatedly violated when powerful fail to thrust their authority towards what is right and just and become complicit in norm substitution via inaction. Resultantly, the power-authority nexus loses legitimacy, and the dwindling credibility of governance frameworks creates space for call/action towards a reconfiguration, either towards an alternative order or dis-order.