Our world is rapidly changing. Many societal issues and challenges follow one another in growing turbulence and yet societal and political reactions remain anchored in more defensive logics, which tend to pursue solutions at a slower pace.

Whereas the economic structures and the financial world are rapidly conceiving new international dynamics responding to fundamental changes in global balances; whereas it has become evident that a growing number of business companies have managed to overcome their national economic challenges through adapted international production logics; whereas ecologic concerns and threats affect all countries irrespective of national boundaries and mechanisms; whereas young people and others in Tunis, Egypt and Libya have recently shown that there is a genuine craving for democracy; whereas more than half of the global population now lives in urban settings which were never meant for such numbers; whereas financial and energy crises are leading to massive land speculation generating fears that the world will not be able to meet global food needs; whereas emerging needs call for new dynamics and solutions, nevertheless global policies, deeply anchored in national perspectives, tend to follow their own pace and logics. It may indeed be observed that traditional impulses of national self protection continue to drive a believe that existing structures and procedures can be sufficiently adapted to efficiently serve a globalized and even further globalizing context.

National interests and politics often seem to culminate in what could be called a ‘sum of nations’ focusing on international synergies, but this adding up of national interests and in the mix looking for the best possible compromises, often raises the question if governance at supra-national level can be achieved through the logics of national units and if these national identities would not be themselves too much of an inherent roadblock to achieve adequate and equitable global responses. Put differently, it raises a question if the agenda drawn from the sum of nations would still be the same if instead it were the agenda developed by an international authority.

We witness how clear answers to challenges that are unequivocally global are avoided or substituted by predominantly national, occasionally regional approaches and statements on the many transitions that define our world. This state of mind is clearly mirrored in the enormous prudence with which both intergovernmental and governmental bodies are typically progressing in developing broader or global responses. Of course, there is reason for such prudence but it must equally be emphasized that the elements that are already deeply modelling humanity’s future need to be addressed with growing urgency, courageous vision and even bold decisions. The present pace in the building of solutions through mainly national perspectives is too slow for the speed with which many, if not all of the issues – including national impacts such as unemployment and declining or fast growing local economic markets, are awaiting global responses.

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Global governance in migration: Opting for a well-conceived process (455.19 KB)