Institutional Mechanisms and Global Governance

Nuket Kardam

Middle Eastern Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

(on sabbatical leave from Monterey Institute of International Studies, California, USA)

Governance is an ambiguous term like many others. Governance can be understood as "global governance" or "an international regime in a particular issue area" such as in nonproliferation, the environment, or international trade. Governance can also be understood within the context of national development as used by many donor agencies in tandem with democratization, and participation. Therefore, I decided to address both meanings of this term since they are both very relevant in our discussion of emerging issues and trends.

First set of questions I would like to address are related to global governance: Is there something called global governance on gender equality? What are its overall achievements – victories and new obstacles that have emerged in the 1990s and as we look toward the new century?

I understand global governance to be a set of principles, norms, rules, and institutional mechanisms in a given issue area. Global governance also incorporates the emergence of transnational issue networks which exercise influence both in the form of political clout and of production of new policy relevant knowledge in that issue area. Such networks obviously influence how norms, rules and institutional mechanisms are established and used. For example there is now a treaty to reduce landmines and there is a transnational network of organizations who have worked towards that goal; same thing with environmental and human rights networks. In my opinion one could also speak about an emerging global governance on gender equality, as well as the influence of transnational women’s networks in the formulation of existing principles, norms and institutional mechanisms.

Principles of nondiscrimination on the basis of gender and the active promotion of equality between the sexes are now pretty well accepted. These principles reflect a general agreement that women’s inferior status should change. It is important to remember that principles and norms represent the aspirations of the participants and are not legally binding. Rules on the other hand, or the better known word for it in this case "conventions" or "covenants" are. Some examples are the Land Mines Treaty, the Law of the Sea Treaty or the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights. The importance of these conventions and treaties is that institutional mechanisms can then be established for the purpose of supervision, monitoring of compliance with these conventions or treaties. In the case of gender equality, CEDAW serves this purpose such that state parties to this convention are responsible for taking all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in all areas of life. In other words, upon becoming parties to CEDAW, states undertake obligations to establish the means to eliminate discrimination against women, as well as actually to achieve that result by adopting constitutional, administrative and other measures. What are some of the institutional mechanisms regarding gender. There are many as we know: To name a few, UN Division for the Advancement of Women – this very workshop is one way of supervising and furthering the implementation of CEDAW and the Beijing Platform of Action. UNIFEM, INSTRAW, Commission on the Status of Women, all the National Women’s Machineries are part of the institutional mechanisms to further the goal of gender equality. Thus, one could clearly say that there is now a system of global governance on gender equality in place and this is an achievement.

The next question then is: how does it work? How is it supposed to work in the 21^st century? Is it effective? Since we still live in the world of nation states, it is important to realize that what is being sought in global governance is the cooperation among nation states. Therefore, when we ask whether global governance on gender is it effective, one major concern is whether states have agreed to cooperate in this issue area. Regardless of increased globalization, we also know the counter trends of nationalism and the need for new and old nation states to exercise sovereignty. If that is the case, we need to ask: what incentive do states have to accommodate greater efforts towards gender equality? International relations literature gives us several clues here.

The first one is the following: If issues are presented in terms of a common good, where lack of collaboration would lead to a collective loss, then states are more likely to collaborate. An example is the ozone layer or acid rain where states are more interested in collaborating as they realize they will lose collectively otherwise. In the case of gender, states are not faced with any such grave consequences; however, it is also true that as gender issues have been defined more and more in terms of a "common good", they have become more accepted. And such efforts have been bolstered with empirical evidence and the production of policy relevant knowledge. A good example of the common good argument is the summary statement of the 1995 UNDP report on women that says: "Human development, if not engendered, is endangered." In each different issue area, this argument is repeated, be it democratization, achievement of human rights, economic growth and so on. The advantages of such an approach are many: gender issues have been incorporated into all emerging themes such as democratization, human rights, population and so on. In order to do that gender issues have been discussed in more contractual rather than confrontational terms, as a positive sum game where no one loses, but everyone gains. This is well and good at the international level, where statements are ambiguous, efforts to reach consensus take precedence over everything else.

Yet, we have to admit that empowering women is not always perceived as a common good for a variety of reasons: at the individual level, it requires a rearranging of gender relations where men have to reconsider and perhaps give up their privileged status, and at the national level, empowering women requires the allocation of scarce resources over which there is already great competition. In other words, gender equality may be seen as a "common good" on international stages, but not so much so at the national and subnational levels.

Thus, my first recommendation is to take a closer look at the process of resource allocation at the international, national and subnational levels and its impact on gender equality and the implementation of the Platform for Action. This is the heart of the matter in many ways. Talk is cheap but action requires resources and we need to know how they are acquired, where they come from and what needs to be done to get them. At the international level, arguments may be based on the common good, but when it comes to the allocation of resources for gender equality in donor agencies, we know that other forces are at work. In short, I am saying that in order to further gender equality and work toward the full implementation of the Beijing Platform of Action, we cannot ignore the political, organizational and economic bases of allocation of resources and how it impacts gender equality. Are resources allocated on the basis of merit, justice or need (as Jaquette has pointed out)? Is resource allocation influenced by corruption, by extra attention to military expenditures? What kinds of conflicting objectives are at work?

The second condition for collaboration at the global level for nation states is the amount of pressure exerted on them by other actors, in this case, it is pressure in the form of new funds made available for gender equality by donors or in the form of embarrassment at international forums. The response to these forms of pressure come from simple self-interested calculations. The question here is this: Is pressure in the form of embarrassment and the promise of donor funds necessary and sufficient to move states into action? This, of course, depends on the perception of policy makers and the amount of funds that come in support of gender related project activity. Of course, donor funding has its pros and cons. On the one hand, donor funding has been pivotal in supporting gender equality in many countries, on the other hand, such funding relieves governments of responsibility and shapes development activities towards donor priorities.

These incentives I mentioned have, with help from women’s groups inside a country, have been able to convince most states to sign conventions and platforms for action. And this is an achievement. Now, our greatest challenge now lies in the translation of general norms and principles, filling them in, and changing legal, judicial, law enforcement systems among others, so that the real implementation of gender equality becomes possible at national and local levels.

This brings me to my second recommendation: Regional, national and subnational gender networks have to created, supported and promoted. They have to become politically skilled and savvy to hold governments accountable for gender equality. An example of such activity comes from Turkey. Just recently women’s groups from Greece and Turkey met on Rhodes and formed a network to promote peace and the resolution of conflict between the two countries. Ways of communication and dialogue have to devised among diverse women’s groups. This is especially important in countries where there is a lack of dialogue between women’s groups based on differences in religious perspective, differences in ethnicity or socioeconomic status.

International relations literature also tells us that global governance requires effective leadership. Who are the leaders in this case? It is the transnational women’s networks, international donor agencies, and some bilateral donors, the usual suspects - Northern European governments and Canada. European Union, and the OECD now have clear gender policies as well. Yet, if nation states still are the main group that need to be convinced, it is only a small group of them that have actively put their weight behind gender equality. More powerful states such as the United States has not. Let’s consider how effective this cast of leaders is.

On the positive side, the trend towards globalization has brought to light the powerful role of transnational social movements and so called epistemic communities that have emerged as a result. The environmental movement has been lauded for its substantial contribution to global governance on environmental issues, so has the human rights movement. These networks, in the age of technological advances in communication, have been pivotal in promoting democratization, advertising human rights abuses in remote corners of the world, or lobbying in UN conferences for change. They have become very politically savvy and literally helped translate knowledge they gathered into policy and action. And this is exactly what the transnational women’s networks have also done at many international forums.

My recommendation here is to work with these leaders but examine their activities more closely and find ways to promote more effective leadership. Some questions we need to address are: How deep do the roots of these transnational networks go? Is there an interface between transnational and local networks? What messages do these networks carry? What issues are they mostly concerned with and are those the relevant ones at the regional, national and local levels? Turning to donors, what are the donors’ objectives re gender equality? Do they have a clear policy on the promotion of gender equality? Is there policy coherence among them? Is there policy dialogue with recipients in shaping funding priorities? These are some important questions that need to be addressed. Since for the foreseeable future, we see these parties as the leaders of the global governance on gender, my recommendation is to work on helping them become better at what they do.

As I said at the beginning of my talk, global governance on gender equality is one understanding of the concept governance. But we can’t discuss governance without also touching on the meaning of governance in development policy and development assistance. As we know, it is widely used. What does governance mean and what is its impact on gender equality? What challenges and opportunities does this new emphasis on governance present? I would now like to turn to these questions and briefly address them.

We often see governance, spoken in the same breath with democratization and participatory development, and the word "good" is added to governance. I looked this concept up in the development literature and decided to offer to you the definition adopted by the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD. As defined by DAC of OECD, good governance is one major component of development assistance policy along with participatory development, democratization, and human rights, and is divided into several subcategories: Rule of law, public sector management, corruption and military expenditure. Rule of law means helping strengthen the rule of law by providing assistance to improve and reinforce the legal, judicial and law enforcement systems and ensure their effective application. Public sector management emphasizes strengthening public sector management and transparency/accountability. Corruption category has to do with helping to control corruption through supporting anticorruption strategies to reduce the opportunities for corrupt practices and encourage exposure of corrupt practices. Finally, reduction of excessive military expenditures are encouraged by helping to ensure transparency and proper control in military budgeting, and to develop effective and efficient security strategies.

My main point here is this: I would like to say that there is a great need for a 1999 World Survey on these four aspects of good governance as they impact and relate to gender issues, just like the new publication on the World Survey on Globalization, Gender and Work that we were sent prior to coming here. This is imperative and I don’t think there is systematic examination of each of these aspects of governance as they impact gender equality. This doesn’t mean there is no work done, but in my view, we are only at the beginning. Let me end by saying a few words on each of these components.

Rule of law: There is a great deal of room for gender mainstreaming in the reform of legal, judicial and law enforcement systems. Many initiatives on women’s human rights have been taken in these areas, such as violence against women, education of women on their rights, the education of law enforcement officers towards greater gender sensitivity. There is certainly room here for more in depth examination and synthesis of already existing materials.

Public sector management: There is an opportunity for women’s groups to demand greater accountability within this context. Yet, the major constraint here is the trend towards streamlining and reducing the public sector since resource allocation towards gender equality is mainly achieved through institutional mechanisms of the state. New bureaucracies – national Machineries for women – have been established just at the same time as state bureaucracies are being asked to scale down and become more "efficient".

Studies have shown that gender mainstreaming and the achievement of gender equality as a goal would require multiple interventions by different parties, not just by national women’s Machineries. Accountability and transparency may require establishing multiple structures and mechanisms such as focal points in government departments, parliamentary committees, rules and procedures that ensure gender analysis in policy and program planning and implementation. It would require establishing points of entry for women’s NGOs in the policy making process. In short, it is necessary to move beyond the conventional understanding of the concept and practice of national Machineries. Again, these issues can be examined in a future World Survey on Governance and its impact on Gender Equality. In this way, our understanding of processes of resource allocation and their impact on gender equality would be increased as well.

Corruption and military expenditures: these are areas of opportunity – greater involvement by women in security building and conflict resolution, as well as in curbing corruption. As far as I am aware, these are also areas that have begun to attract attention as well, and where we need more systematic attention.

In summary, I would like to invite participants of this workshop to consider governance both in terms of global governance on gender equality and of "good governance" an integral part of development assistance policy and offer my recommendations as a point of departure for identifying opportunities and challenges and future actions in these areas.