Global public goods: Critique of a UN discourse

Global Governance

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 107-122

  Long, David ^a   Woolley, Frances ^a  

^a CARLETON UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

Externalities; International public policy; Public goods

Indexed keywords

EID: 62449123261     PISSN: 10752846     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/19426720-01501007     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. See, for instance, Todd Sandier, "Tropical Deforestation: Markets and Market Failures," Land Economics 69 3 (1993), and Jeffrey Frieden's review of Reuben Mendez's book International Public Finance, in American Political Science Review 87, no. 4 (1993).
2. For a discussion of the development of the concept, especially the influence of UNDP, see Maurizio Carbone, "Supporting or Resisting Global Public Goods? The Policy Dimension of a Contested Concept," Global Governance 13 (2007): 181-184. Global public goods are the focus of numerous websites promoted by, among others, the UNDP, as well as an International Task Force addressing the concept. Primary examples of the websites advocating for the concept of global public goods include www.undp.org/globalpublicgoods/, www.globalpublicgoods.org/, www.gpgnet.net/, and www.gpgtaskforce.org/. "Global public goods" is an extremely popular concept, however; a Web search produced 202,000 results. For an example of work published by the World Bank, see Marco Feroni, Reforming Foreign Aid: The Role of International Public Goods (World Bank, 2000);
3. Marco Feroni and Ashoka Mody, eds., International Public Goods: Incentives, Measurement, and Financing (Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, for the World Bank, 2002).
4. See also Helmut Reisen, Marcelo Soto, and Thomas Weithoner, "Financing Global And Regional Public Goods Through ODA: Analysis And Evidence from The OECD Creditor Reporting System," OECD Development Centre Working Paper No. 232, January 2004, available at www.oecd.org/dataoecd/47/13/ 24482500.pdf; Eduardo Viola, "Free Trade and the Global Environment as International Public Goods," in Chris Chuung, ed., Globalisation and the Environment: Perspectives from OECD and Dynamic Non-member Economies (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1998).
5. At www.undp.org/globalpublicgoods/
6. The rhetorical nature of global public goods has also been explored by Jean Coussy, "The Adventures of a Concept: Is Neo-classical Theory Suitable for Defining Global Public Goods? Review of International Political Economy 12, no. 1 (2005): 177-194.
7. Most point to Paul Samuelson, "A Pure Theory of Public Expenditures," Review of Economics and Statistics, 36, no. 4 (1954), though Inge Kaul, Isabelle Grun-berg, and Marc A. Stern, eds., Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. xxiii, suggest that the idea of public goods has been around since the origins of modern economic thought.
8. Kaul, Grunberg, and Stern, Global Public Goods, p. xx.
9. Ibid.
10. Ronald H. Coase "The Lighthouse in Economics," Journal of Law and Economics 17, no. 2 (1974).
11. Alan R. Prest, Public Finance in Theory and Practice, 4th ed. (London: Wei-denfeld & Nicolson, 1970), p. 66.
12. Kaul, Grunberg, and Stern, Global Public Goods, pp. xx, 4.
13. Ibid., pp. 6-7. For a discussion of different contexts in which this is a problem, with specific production technologies and cost functions, see Marc Bilodeau and Al Slivinski, "Toilet Cleaning and Department Chairing: Volunteering a Public Service," Journal of Public Economics 56, no. 2 (1996).
14. Lawrence H. Summers, "Knowledge as a Global Public Good," presentation at the Harvard University Weatherhead Center conference "International Public Goods for Economic Development," 7 September 2005, available at www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/0907-weatherhead. html.
15. Inge Kaul, Pedro Conceicao, Katell Le Gouveln, and Ronald U. Mendoza, eds., Providing Global Public Goods: Managing Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press, for the United Nations Development Programme, 2003), p. 96.
16. Kaul, Grunberg, and Stern, Global Public Goods, p. 3
17. Ibid., pp. xxi, 2-3.
18. Joseph E. Stiglitz, "Knowledge as a Global Public Good," in Kaul, Grunberg, and Stern, Global Public Goods, p. 310, argues that global public goods include international economic stability, international security, international environment, international humanitarian assistance, and knowledge. Kaul, Grunberg, and Stern, Global Public Goods, p. 44, list the ten global public goods noted in the UN Secretary General's Road Map report on implementation of the UN Millennium Declaration. The European Commission lists environment, health, knowledge, peace and security, and governance, in European Commission, "What Are Global Public Goods?" at http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/wssd/publicgoods.pdf. The Economist mentions international law and law enforcement, a stable global financial system, an open trading system, health, peace, and environmental stability.
19. Kaul, Conceicão, Le Gouveln, and Mendoza, Providing Global Public Goods, p. 95.
20. Kaul, Grunberg, and Stern, Global Public Goods, p. 454;
21. see also ibid., p. 100.
22. Kaul, Conceicão, Le Gouveln, and Mendoza, Providing Global Public Goods, p. 15.
23. For a discussion, especially with respect to the obscurities of the production function for these so-called goods, see David Long, "Public Goods in International Affairs: The Use and Abuse of an Economic Concept," manuscript, 2007.
24. Francisco Sagasti and Keith Bezanson, "Global Public Goods: Opportunities and Threats," The ACP-EU Courier, no. 202 (2004), available at http://europa.eu.int/comm/development/body/publications/courier/ courier202/pdf/en-15-ni.pdf. Sagasti and Bezanson suggest that global public goods is a fuzzy concept encompassing a "growing number of disparate ideas." They argue that "extrapolation of the rather precise concept of 'public good' from economics to broader social contexts ⋯ requires considerable conceptual stretching," which has rendered the term all but meaningless.
25. See also Carbone, "Supporting or Resisting Global Public Goods?" p. 185, and Coussy, "The Adventures of a Concept," p. 190.
26. Stiglitz, "Knowledge as a Global Public Good."
27. For a discussion, see, for example, Yola Georgiadou and Richard Groot, "Capacity Building for Geo-information Provision: A Public Goods Perspective" (2002), from the Geospatial Research Portal at www.gisdevelopment.net/proceedings/gisdeco/sessions/Georgb.htm.
28. Harvey Rosen, Beverly George Dahlby, Roger Smith, and Paul Boothe, Public Finance in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill-Ryerson, 1999), p. 52;
29. Inge Kaul and Katell Le Gouveln, "Institutional Options for Producing Global Public Goods," in Kaul et al., Providing Global Public Goods, p. 371.
30. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1977).
31. Kaul, Grunberg, and Stern, Global Public Goods, p. 13.
32. To see an example of the problems with costing deterrence, see the crude calculations in Frank Harvey, "The International Politics of National Missile Defense: A Response to the Critics," International Journal 55, no. 4 (2000).
33. Ruben P. Mendez, "Peace as a Global Public Good," in Kaul, Grunberg, and Stern, Global Public Goods, p. 388;
34. though for some this is an outcome rather than a good as such: see Marina Fe B. Durano, "Understanding Global Public Goods and Differentiating them from Publicly Provided Goods" (2001), www.dawn.org.fj/global/unconferences/ ffd/ffddocs/globalgoods.doc, p. 4. For the argument against defense as a global public good, see Mendez, "Peace as a Global Public Good," p. 384. For a discussion in the context of research and development spending on defense, see David Gold, "Does Military R&D Generate International Public Goods?" paper presented at the American Economic Association meetings, New York, January 1999, available at www.ecaar.org/Articles/gold.pdf.
35. See also David Moore, "The Second Age of the Third World: From Primitive Accumulation to Global Public Goods?" Third World Quarterly 25, no. 1 (February 2004): 102, who argues that "GPG is ideologically unmoored."
36. Charles Kindleberger, The International Economic Order: Essays on Financial Crisis and International Public Goods (Brighton, UK: Wheatsheaf, 1988), p. 189.
37. See also Michel Camdessus, "International Financial and Monetary Stability: A Global Public Good?" remarks at the IMF research conference "Key Issues in Reform of the International Monetary and Financial System," Washington, DC, 28 May 1999, available at www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/1999/052899.htm. Camdessus begins an argument that the monetary and financial system is a global public good and ends with the argument that the open and liberalized system overseen by the Bretton Woods institutions is the public good.
38. See Kaul et al., Providing Global Public Goods, pp. 21-36. For a critical view, see Long, "Public Goods in International Affairs."
39. Richard A. Musgrave, Peggy B. Musgrave, and Richard M. Bird, Public Finance in Theory and Practice (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1987).
40. Rosen et al., Public Finance in Canada;
41. K. N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
42. See Kaul et al., Providing Global Public Goods, p. 26. And it is also why different authors emphasize different elements. Compare the emphasis on non-excludability in Bruno S. Frey, International Political Economics (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1984), p. 123, with that on nonrivalry in Kindleberger, The International Economic Order, p. 186. While Richard A. Musgrave and Peggy B. Musgrave, "Prologue," in Kaul et al., Providing Global Public Goods, pp. xii, xiii, emphasize nonrivalry in the preface to the second Global Public Goods volume, the editors continue to emphasize both elements with a preference for what they call non-exclusiveness.
43. See the comments by Vandana Shiva in the Toronto Globe and Mail, 21 March 2006.
44. See Richard W. Tresh, Public Finance: A Normative Theory, 2nd ed. (Amsterdam: Academic Press, 2002), for a treatment of public goods as externalities.
45. Kaul, Grunberg, and Stern, Global Public Goods, pp. 5, 458.
46. We owe this suggestion to a referee.
47. Kaul et al., Providing Global Public Goods, p. 53.
48. We owe this insight to an anonymous reviewer.
49. Donald N. McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). Of course, importing economic concepts and analysis into the study and policy prescription for international relations is hardly novel. Kindle-berger, The International Economic Order, p. 123, suggests that some view the concept as an example of economic imperialism, but this is hardly a unique or clear-cut example.
50. Robert Cox, "States, Social Forces and World Order," Millennium Journal of International Studies 10, no. 2 (1981).
51. Standard public economics texts feature public goods, along with externalities, as part of the discussion of the economic basis of government intervention in the economy, since governments address the resulting market failures. Public goods are presented alongside other rationales for government activities (for example, Rosen et al., Public Finance in Canada;
52. Joseph E. Stiglitz, Economics of the Public Sector (New York: Norton, 1986);
53. and John Leach, A Course in Public Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
54. Mark Malloch Brown, "Foreword," in Kaul et al., Providing Global Public Goods, p. xvi.
55. Kaul et al., Providing Global Public Goods, pp. 30-36.