importance of global governance essay

Why do we need global governance?

Global governance is necessary because humanity increasingly faces both problems and opportunities that are global in scale. Today, transnational problems such as violence and pandemics routinely reach across borders, affecting us all. At the same time, the increasingly integrated global system has also laid the necessary foundations for peace and spectacular prosperity. Effective global governance will allow us to end armed conflict, deal with new and emerging problems such as technological risks and automation, and to achieve levels of prosperity and progress never before seen. 1

The most important challenge for humanity to overcome is that of existential risks. One way to look at the danger of an existential risk is to quantify the level of global coordination needed to deal with it . While best-shot risks, at one end of the spectrum only require that a single nation, organization or even individual (i.e., superhero) has the means and the will to save everyone, weakest-link risks, at the other end of the spectrum, are dangers that might require literally every country to take appropriate action to prevent catastrophe, with no room for failure. 2 3

We’ve always been at risk of natural disaster , but with advances in our level of technology the risk we pose to ourselves as a species becomes ever greater. Nuclear weapons are a well-known risk that we still live with to this day. The progress of technological research exposes us to new dangers such as bioengineered superbugs, nanotechnological menaces, and the risk of an out-of-control artificial intelligence with ill-intent. Increased levels of global coordination are needed to combat many of these risks, as described in our article on the cooperation possibilities frontier.

There are other problems that don’t necessarily threaten the species or even civilization as we know it, but which are holding back the development of prosperity and progress. Armed conflict, around since the dawn of history, still haunts us today. Even though wars between great powers appear to be a thing of the past, regional conflicts still account for tremendous human suffering and loss of life in parts of the world without stable governance. 4

Other problems have emerged precisely because of our successes in the past. The unprecedented advancement of human wellbeing and prosperity over the past century has been based in large part on the use of fossil fuels, thus exposing us to climate change. Widespread automation, already a stressor on society, will put increased pressure on the social and economic fabric of our societies over the next few decades. Global governance can help alleviate these issues in various ways – we refer the interested reader to the very detailed work in Ruling Ourselves .

Finally, global governance will increasingly be judged not only by the extent to which it prevents harm, but also by its demonstrated ability to improve human wellbeing. 5 Progress has let us set our sights higher as a species, both for what we consider to be the right trajectory for humanity and for our own conduct. 6 Major advances in human wellbeing can be accomplished with existing technology and modest improvements in global coordination.

Effective global governance is global governance that tackles these issues better than the regional governments of the world can independently. Global governance is key to solving global problems. Without it, we may not be able to avoid weakest-link existential risks or regulate new and dangerous technologies. With it, we may be able to prosper as we never have before. The next step is to determine how effective global governance can be achieved.

• For a good primer on the subject of Global Governance, we suggest Hale, T., Held, D. and Young, K., 2013. Gridlock: why global cooperation is failing when we need it most . Hale et. all frame global governance as the solution to the issue of major world power’s inability to coordinate [ ↩ ]
• Hirshleifer, J., 1983. From Weakest-Link to Best-Shot: The Voluntary Provision of Public Goods. Public choice , 41[3], pp.371-386. [ ↩ ]
• Barrett, S., 2005. The Problem of Averting Global Catastrophe. Chi. J. Int’l L. , 6 , p.527. [ ↩ ]
• Pinker, S., 2012. The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined . Penguin Books. [ ↩ ]
• Harack, B., Laskowski, K., Bailey, R., Marcotte, J., Jaques, S., Datta, D., and Kuski, S., 2017. Ruling Ourselves: The deliberate evolution of global cooperation and governance . Available online: http://rulingourselves.com   [ ↩ ]
• United Nations, 2000. Millennium development goals. Available online: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals [accessed on 21 July 2017]. [ ↩ ]

Related posts for further reading:

• The cooperation possibility frontier
• What is global governance?
• A Very Long Peace: Potential solutions to armed conflict found in global governance?
• Humanity must flourish to survive
• How much do humans need to cooperate in order to survive?

2 thoughts to “Why do we need global governance?”

In case that you haven’t noticed, globalization is already lifting the standard of living for millions of people. There has been a dramatic improvement in people’s lives world wide. Well, world wide other than the developed nations who are loosing their middle class, as the middle classes sink into a level of low income. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty#/media/File:World-population-in-extreme-poverty-absolute.svg

Very true; thanks for the comment!

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Article contents

Global governance.

• Roberto Domínguez Roberto Domínguez Department of Government, Suffolk University
•  and  Rafael Velázquez Flores Rafael Velázquez Flores Faculty of Economics and International Relations (FEyRI), University of Baja California
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.508
• Published online: 30 July 2018

The goal of this article is to provide an overview of the literature on global governance, key elements for understanding its conceptualization, and a gateway to capture its multidimensionality. From this perspective, global governance is conceived as a framework of analysis or intellectual device to study the complexity of global processes involving multiple actors that interact at different levels of interest aggregation. The article is divided into four parts. The first section describes the origins, definitions, and characteristics of global governance. The second categorizes global governance based on different thematic areas where there is a confluence of governance practices, on the one hand, and the inclusion of a global level of interaction, on the other. The third discusses the different conceptual inquiries and innovations that have been developed around the term. Finally, the last part maps the different academic institutions that have focused their research on global governance and offer programs on this subject.

• global governance
• globalization
• international system
• institutions
• global actors
• global civil society
• international organizations
• global security
• global economic governance
• global environment

This article aims at explaining the development of the literature on global governance by providing a guide to understanding the evolution of its definitions, thematic applications, conceptual debates, and institutional developments. As the primary audience is scholars wishing to familiarize themselves with debates surrounding the topic, the article offers a gateway to capturing the multidimensionality of global governance. From this perspective and following its discussions, global governance is conceived as a framework of analysis or intellectual device for studying the complexity of global processes involving multiple actors that interact at different levels of interest aggregation.

The primary challenge of this article is to review a term that is amorphous (Zurn, 2012 ) and ubiquitous (Bevir, 2011 ). Global governance emerged as a practice and disciplinary field of inquiry as a product of the end of the Cold War, even though some early debates can be traced back to the late 1970s. The subsequent literature review is organized under the rationale that global governance is an analytical hub helping researchers and policymakers to explain and suggest new avenues of action in an increasingly interconnected world. A defining characteristic is that such interconnection blurs the distinction between public authority and private initiative, and steadily transforms the role of state and nonstate actors operating at different levels of analysis. Understanding global governance as an analytical hub allows grouping its extensive literature and interpreting the various adjectives that have been added to global governance over the years to adapt it to specific areas of human activity at the global level.

The unstructured and pervasive nature of global governance provides the potential for adopting a variety of forms to study it. This article begins with the identification of the main definitions and characteristics of global governance. The second section categorizes global governance based on different thematic areas where there is a confluence of governance practices, on the one hand, and the inclusion of a global level of interaction, on the other. The thematic criteria permit including an interdisciplinary perspective that enriches international relations in light of the evidence that governance practices at the global level operate in a wide range of areas. Later, the paper follows with the identification of some of the conceptual debates and innovations around global governance. The final section presents a survey of the institutions promoting the study of global governance.

Definitions and Characteristics: A New Framework For a Complex World

Globalization, technological change, and transformations in the international order have produced a puzzle that policymakers and scholars have been trying to disentangle since the end of the Cold War. While change is an inherent characteristic of the global system, each historical period experiences a particular articulation of dominant actors and prevailing environment. The arrival of global governance to the debates in international relations is not an exception. While global governance is associated with the transformations of the international system at the end of the 20th century , its roots are traced back to the gradual transformation that has taken place since the early 1970s, which includes the development of the consciousness about global environment, the increasing number of nonstate actors, and the enhancement of the UN system.

Some of the earliest scholarly references to global governance appeared in the mid-1970s. The journal Social Sciences Quarterly included several articles related to the scarcity of global resources and the creation of mechanisms to manage them in 1976 . Nelson and Honnold ( 1976 ) studied the possibility of severe global resource scarcity. They argued that the aggregate individual sacrifice, long-term planning, and global governance are commonly the social responses, but they also require the systematic application of social sanctions to make them consistent with organizational regularities and reinforcement principles (Nelson & Honnold, 1976 ). By the end of the 1970s, Onuf ( 1979 ) made some references to the concept of global governance in his discussion of the absence of an international legal regime, noting the state of global anarchy while emphasizing the lack of scholarly explanation. In a semantic reflection on the nature of authority and order, and how it relates to sovereignty, Onuf asserted that such a dichotomy does not preclude the existence of some order in the global arena (Onuf, 1979 ).

During the 1980s and early 1990s, global governance was increasingly used to relate to a more complex international system, but it was not the central concept of analysis. Dator ( 1981 , 2009 ) developed forecasting methods about alternative futures, archetypes, or images (continued growth, transformation, collapse, conserver/disciplined society) to help scholars and policymakers to explore the drivers, identify the emerging issues, and deconstruct/reconstruct models of development and power in global governance. Branscomb ( 1983 ) focused his research on the growing unregulated flow of data across borders and framed global governance as a mechanism which would contribute to regulating these data flows. After explaining the role of data in liberal societies, he provided some ideas about the role of global governance to develop regulatory data bodies. Senghaas ( 1993 ) also contributed to the analysis of global governance by exploring globalized problems such as climate conventions, responses to epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, and development regimes; his research lead him to explore the concept of a “world domestic policy” capable of addressing the global issues that the “sum of uncoordinated national policies” was no longer adequate to manage and ameliorate.

Incentivized by the uncertainties derived from the end of the Cold War, the theoretical mainstream in international relations gradually shifted away from the study of intergovernmental organizations, law, and world studies, which was seen as top-down and static, toward global governance (Weiss & Wilkinson, 2014 ). Alerted by the mismatch between new international challenges and lack of consistent responses from state and state oriented actors, James Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel sparked the debate on global governance after the publication of their theoretical collection of essays Governance without Government in 1992 (Rosenau & Czempiel, 1992 ). Global governance debates and studies experienced significant progress in 1995 . The policy-oriented Commission on Global Governance, co-chaired by Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson and former Commonwealth Secretary-General Shridath Ramphal, published the report Our Global Neighborhood (Commission on Global Governance, 1995 ). Later, in the winter 1995–1996 , the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACNUS) and the United Nations University sponsored the launch of the journal Global Governance , which has pursued nonpartisan, intellectually challenging, and academically sound debates about global governance (Coate & Murphy, 1995 ).

The transformations of the international context sparked a vivid and active scholarly conversation about the definitions and characteristics of global governance. Like other complex phenomena, global governance has been defined in a variety of ways. Two of the definitions related in this article observe the role of international institutions. Thakur and Van Langenhove ( 2006 ) defined global governance as “The complex of formal and informal institutions, mechanisms, relationships, and processes between and among states, markets, citizens, and organizations—both intergovernmental and nongovernmental—through which collective interests are articulated, rights and obligations are established, and differences are mediated” ( 2006 , p. 233). Rittberger ( 2002 ) presents a shorter definition stating that global governance “is the output of a nonhierarchical network of international and transnational institutions: not only IGOs and international regimes but also transnational regimes are regulating actors’ behavior” ( 2002 , p. 2).

Definitions of global governance have also emphasized the role of collective goods. Risse defines governance as “the various institutionalized modes of social coordination to produce and implement collectively binding rules, or to provide collective goods” (Risse, 2012 , p. 700), arguing that while the debate about global governance is focusing on governance without government and the rise of private authority in world politics, it is also based on the assumption that functioning states are capable of implementing and enforcing global norms and rules (Risse, 2011 ). Building on this, Zurn ( 2012 ) incorporates the element of regulations for transnational common goods. He states: “Global governance refers to the entirety of regulations [substantial norms, rules, and programs, the process by which they are adapted, monitored, and enforced, as well as the structures/institutions that house them] put forward with reference to solving specific denationalized and deregionalized problems or providing transnational common goods” (Zurn, 2012 , p. 731).

Other definitions interoperate global governance as a mechanism for addressing and managing conflicts. Miller ( 2007 ) perceives global governance as “the resolution of conflicts over divergent interpretations of evidence constraining the exercise of power and authority” ( 2007 , p. 327), while Castells ( 2005 ) briefly defines it as “the ability to manage the problems and issues of a world in turmoil” ( 2005 , p. 12). From a different angle, Ikenberry’s definition considers the general orientation of global governance as a process: “It is the collective effort of people to facilitate the upside of openness and exchange in the global system, while working together to manage the downside. Thus global governance is, in effect, the management of liberal internationalism” (Ikenberry, 2014 , p.18).

The previous definitions contribute to understanding the plasticity of the complex phenomenon that is global governance. Turning attention towards the characteristics, expressions, and elements of global governance provides a different perspective of analysis, which unpacks the essence of definitions. For the Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance, the institutions of global governance are the “mechanisms for steering” states and societies toward the goals of global public policy, as expressed in the UN Charter and other key documents for global governance. These mechanisms of global governance encompass international, national, subnational and local actors, existing to provide public goods, which one can neither diminish availability to others through use, nor be excluded from using (Albright & Gambari, 2015 ).

Rittberger makes an important distinction between international and global governance. In his view, international governance is “the output of a non-hierarchical network of interlocking international (predominantly, but not exclusively, governmental) institutions which regulate the behavior of states and other international actors in different issue areas of world politics” (Rittberger, 2002 , p. 2). In contrast to international governance, global governance is characterized by the decreased salience of states as well as the increased involvement of nonstate actors in the processes of establishing norms and rules, including compliance, monitoring, and contributing at multiple levels of policymaking (Rittberger, 2002 ). Weiss and Wilkinson ( 2014 ) have also identified some significant elements that describe global governance:

It refers to collective efforts to identify, understand, or address worldwide problems that transcend the capacities of individual states.

It reflects the capacity of the international system at any moment in time to provide government-like services in the absence of world government.

It encompasses a wide variety of cooperative problem-solving arrangements that are visible but informal (practices or guidelines) or were temporary formations (coalitions of the willing).

It also entails more formalized problem-solving arrangements and mechanisms, such as hard rules (laws and treaties) or institutions with administrative structures and established practices to manage collective affairs by a variety of actors—including state authorities, intergovernmental organizations, nongovernmental organizations, private sector entities, and other civil society actors (Weiss & Wilkinson, 2014 ).

Krahmann ( 2005 ) has expanded the explanations about the characteristics of global governance. She indicates that the shift from “government” to “governance” denotes the increasing fragmentation and reintegration of political authority among state and nonstate actors across levels of analysis along seven dimensions: geographical scope, functional scope, the distribution of resources, interests, norms, decision-making, and policy implementation (Krahmann, 2003 ). Particularly interesting is the reorientation characterized geographical fragmentation and integration away from the state as the central unit, which takes three forms: “downward” to local bodies, “upward” to international organizations, and “sideways” to private and voluntary actors.

As Krahmann ( 2005 ) indicates, one of the main characteristics of global governance is that it operates at different levels of political activity. Zurn ( 2012 ) specifically advances the understanding of global governance as a form of multilevel governance. Gary Marks initially characterized Multilevel Governance as the result of a “centrifugal process in which decision-making is spun away from member states in two directions,” namely, subnational and supranational (Marks, 1993 , pp. 401–402). Reflecting on these different contexts within which the multilevel governance concept is discussed, Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks ( 2010 ) have proposed distinguishing different “types” of multilevel governance. The first type of governance conceives the dispersion of authority to jurisdictions at a limited number of levels (international, national, regional, meso, local). A second vision of governance is task-specific jurisdictions, intersecting memberships, and no limit to a number of jurisdictional levels (Hooghe & Marks, 2010 ).

Another perspective from which to observe different forms of global governance is based on a combination of unidirectional and multidirectional flows of authority, in conjunction with formal, informal, and mixed structures, as Kacowicz ( 2012 ) suggests. The combination of both axes produces six types of governance. Under the axis of unidirectional flows of authority, Kacowicz ( 2012 ) suggests top-down or hierarchical, in which institutions contract and outsource activities; bottom-up governance, where civil society and networks of advocacy develop positive incentives and bargaining; and market-type governance, which is a public-private network/partnership. Under the axis of multidirectional flow of governance, the other three types of governance are the following: network governance, which is hierarchical with governments/nation states at the top and NGOs and businesses at the bottom; side-by-side governance, with all levels working in tandem together; and finally web-network governance, which is a public-private network/partnership that is nonhierarchical and combines efforts from all parts of society, including the people (Kacowicz, 2012 ).

The variety of definitions provided above conveys some of the dimensions of global governance. To enrich its understanding, Weiss and Wilkinson ( 2014 ) have framed three different angles of the challenging nature of global governance by arguing that it (a) is ubiquitous and omnipresent; (b) is used and abused by academics and policymakers (3.1 million hits in a Google search at the end of 2012 ); and (c) remains notoriously slippery. While the broadness of global governance may produce a lack of conceptual rigor, it also offers a wide avenue to bring a diversity of disciplines interested in improving the current transformations of the global system through more pluralist and comprehensive approaches.

Thematic Areas of Global Governance

The explanation of global governance is a daunting task, because there are multiples structures of interaction among different actors and processes. The word “governance” appears in diverse disciplines, each one acting sometimes within its own rationale and barely connecting with other disciplines. How to make sense to the multiple forms of global governance? Bevir suggests a starting point when he argues that “governance refers to theories and issues of social coordination and the nature of all patterns of rule” (Bevir, 2011 , p. 1). From the perspective of this article, global governance focuses on social coordination at the international level; in other words, global governance is based on different areas of human activity where there is a confluence of governance practices at the global level of interaction. This social coordination at the international level varies across the respective areas of human activity and hence sets different patterns of rule.

When attempting to systematically articulate and evaluate the concept of global governance, the mainstream thematic categorization for studying international relations offers a helpful starting point. Manuals and textbooks on international relations have been organized by either geographical or theoretical categories. The vast literature on international relations has produced several debates utilizing categories such as concepts, images, perspectives, understandings, and paradigms. From the theoretical perspective, images (realism, liberalism, economic structuralism, and English School) and interpretative understandings (constructivism, critical, postmodern, and gender studies) have shaped competing explanations about how the world works. However, the literature on global governance has emerged from several different areas, and hence a strict theoretical IR categorization would leave numerous contributions out of the analysis. From the thematic angle, however, the extensive literature in international relations is disaggregated in various topics such as politics (international law and organizations), security, international political economy, and more recently environment and civil society (Viotti & Kauppi, 2012 ). This approach allows broader inclusion of global governance contributions. Based on IR thematic traditions as well as the current literature on global governance, this section organizes the information in six main areas: politics, security, economic, environmental, civil society/human rights, and other emerging themes. The next section informs and completes the overview with a description of conceptual debates and global governance.

Global Governance and International Organizations

The United Nations has been one of the catalysts of global governance. While it has been subject to numerous criticisms due to the anachronism of the Security Council, the UN system is by far the most comprehensive global organization that has demonstrated the capacity to trigger and underpin mechanisms of cooperation on matters such as health, culture, refugees, and civil society, to name a few, for more than seven decades. Regardless of the positive or negative assessment of the performance of United Nations, the world after 1945 embarked on a journey of no return where global norms, laws, and customs matter more than in any other historical period. The contribution of global governance is indeed one of the multiple causes in the transformations of the behavior of international actors. Pierre ( 2013 ) has correctly argued that institutional changes in domestic governance over the past two decades are overwhelmingly driven by endogenous agents and changes related to international influences tend to be adaptations to globalization rather than globalization in itself.

The UN’s reform and performance have been at the center of the debates of global governance. Weiss and Thakur ( 2010 ) have identified five gaps between the nature of many current global challenges and the available inadequate solutions. The first is the knowledge gap, which contributes to developing a broad consensus on global problems such as climate change; the second is the normative gap, which can be defined as a pattern of behavior in international society; the third is the policy gap, which is the interlinked set of governing principles and goals in addition to the agreed programs of action to implement those principles and achieve those goals; the fourth is the institutional gap, including formal and informal institutions; the fifth and final is the compliance gap, which has three facets: implementation, monitoring, and enforcement. Another important dimension of global governance and international organizations is the regional level. While the global level of political aggregation is partially able to contribute to the amelioration of problems, it also requires the inclusion of regional organizations in order to galvanize the interest of regional actors in cooperating (Weiss & Thakur, 2010 ). All in all, the assumption is that regional organizations are more sensitive to cultural and political regional preferences and hence may contribute to implementing norms of good global governance (Rabe, 2007 ).

Global Security Governance

Explaining the mechanisms of provision of international security has been one of the essential driving forces in the discipline of international relations since the end of World War II and the rise of global governance following the Cold War. Concepts and debates produced within the umbrella of global security governance offer a variety of analytical schemes while revealing new avenues of research. The development of global security governance has been oriented to a large extent by the contributions, limitations, and performance of international and regional organizations as security providers, in addition to state and substate actors. As the number and scope of regional organizations have expanded since the end of the Cold War, the way regional organizations conceptualize security and practice their collective duties has become a focus of attention of scholars. The prolific literature on global governance and regional organizations has shed some light on the institutional mechanisms and autonomy (Acharya & Johnston, 2007 ; Tavares, 2010 ), the variety of security governance policies (Kirchner & Sperling, 2010 ; Kirchner & Dominguez, 2011 ), the conditions of becoming a significant actor in regional and global governance, and the capacity of member states to enable regional organizations to produce collective security goods, particularly in the cases of NATO and the EU.

While the research agenda of global security governance and regional organizations has produced significant contributions, some scholars, such as Christou and Croft ( 2011 ), rightly argue that it is still necessary to advance systematic comparisons and to strengthen the methodological foundations of security research in the analysis of security governance. Ceccorulli and Lucarelli ( 2014 ) have also argued that in order to make the concept of security governance more useful for assessing current security dynamics, four main challenges must be addressed. First, there is a need to expand the research agenda with regard to how security is understood and perceived by the actors involved in the governance system. Second, as the literature is divided into two main branches (one looking at governmental organizations and one dealing with nonstate actors), attempts should be made to impart a sense of coordination concerning efforts among different actors and layers of governance, even when focusing predominantly on one type of actor (e.g., regional state powers). Third, the literature (with notable exceptions) has predominantly focused on Europe and the transatlantic area, which is particularly limited in light of the emergence of new actors. Fourth, the literature on security governance has been too often detached from reflections on regionalism, limiting the understanding of the different dynamics and security arrangements around the world (Ceccorulli & Lucarelli, 2014 ).

Another dimension of global security governance is the case of nuclear security and US hegemony. Chung argues that given the increased threat of nuclear terrorism by nonstate actors, the current global mechanisms addressing nuclear security have revealed serious limitations, prompting a demand for developing new arrangements of global nuclear security governance (Chung, 2012 ). With regard to global security governance and US hegemony, Krahmann ( 2005 ) argues that the emergence of security governance appears to explain the changing strategies of America’s allies. Her argument suggests that major powers, including the United States, are increasingly collaborating through flexible coalitions of the willing. Crucially, these flexible coalitions do not constitute a new form of balance of power; they respond to differences in interests and capabilities within overlapping structures of regional and global security governance. The concept of security governance thus highlights and informs the complexities in the policies of the United States and these other states. It points to evidence showing that US imperialist strategy relies to a considerable degree on the cooperation of both state and nonstate actors and that its interests and reach may be more specific than frequently suggested in the current debate (Krahmann, 2005 ).

Due to the diversity of dimensions involving the area of security, the concept of global security governance has been used to understand more specific aspects of human activity capable of producing regional or global situations of instability such as food security and climate change. Following the 2007–2008 global food crisis, Margulis examined the Government of Canada’s efforts of promoting global food security governance behavior at meetings of the G-8 and the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS). While the global influence of Canada is to some extent marginal, Margulis underscored that the CFS has emerged as a key institution for agenda-setting, norm-building, and rule-making in global food security governance (Margulis, 2015 ). In the area of climate change, Floyd has advanced the argument that while institutional fragmentation of global climate security governance is not automatically problematic, the phenomenon of ideational fragmentation that often goes with it is highly disadvantageous to achieving climate security for people, particularly in light of the diverse and competing preferences and agendas of states and international organizations (Floyd, 2015 ).

Global Economic Governance

Global economic governance has been defined as “governing, without sovereign authority, economic relationships that transcend national borders” (Madhur, 2012 , p. 18). While this definition encapsulates a large range of elements comprehended within economic relations, more challenging has been the implementation of global economic policy coordination. After the economic turmoil of the 1929 crisis and the interwar period, the Bretton Woods system was put in place, but it insufficiently addressed the financial instability of the 1970s. The disillusion with the neoliberal order continued to grow through the 1990s, paving the way for experimenting with alternative economic practices, particularly in Latin America. In addition, the 2008 financial crisis and the emergence of economic powerhouses such as India and China have also contributed to shaping the debates around global economic governance, which aims to “set formal and informal rules that regulate the global economy and the collection of authority relationships that promulgate, coordinate, monitor, or enforce said rules” (Drezner, 2014 , p. 124).

While the demands for producing global collective forms of action are increasing, the capacity of global economic arrangements to respond to secular stagnation, recession, or inequality has proven to be decidedly lacking. Nonetheless, the progress made in the construction of global economic governance should not be underestimated. Drezner argues that despite the failure of institutions of global governance to avert the 2008 crisis, international institutions and governance frameworks performed contrary to expectations, and on the whole “the system worked and the open global economy survived” (Drezner, 2014 , p. 124, 2012 ). This line of argument is predicated on the reforms in the US financial system, the coordination of the G-20, and the slow transformations of the triad of economic institutions. From a more skeptical position, Quinlan ( 2011 ) contends that globalization is in retreat after 2008 and the only solution is to find commonalities while subsuming national interest for the global good by expanding global governance, which will depend on how well the so-called G-2 (United States and China) gets along in conjunction with to what degree developing nations feel they are actual stakeholders in the global economy, among other factors.

The debate on global governance calls for revisiting the architecture of global economic institutions, with particular focus on the changes wrought in three major international institutions: the transformation of the IMF, the marginalization of the World Bank, and the creation of the Financial Stability Board. Woods ( 2014 ) identifies six core principles to be strengthened for producing good economic global governance: legitimacy, representation, responsiveness, flexibility, transparency and accountability, and effectiveness. The reform of the global economic architecture has also been studied from the angle of soft law, particularly through the study of the G-20, which strives to build a new economic and financial regime better suited to the global economy. The use of soft law is based on legal instruments such as G-20 communiqués and declarations (Filipovic & Buncic, 2015 ). The broader inclusiveness of emerging economies in shaping the global architecture has been largely advocated for as a way to strengthen global governance (Martin, 2007 ). From a more comprehensive perspective, Madhur ( 2012 ) advocates the concept of hybrid architecture, in which the rise of multilateralism in the past 20 years has produced a hybrid system with two interrelated yet distinct layers: a set of formal institutions (WTO, IMF, WB, and FSB) forming its four pillars, and the G-20 as an informal, yet prominently presiding, multilateral forum setting the overall agenda and guiding the formal institutions.

Global Environmental Governance

Environment is an area inherently conducive to global governance, because it involves numerous individuals and institutions operating at different levels of spatial activity. As there is no global government and environmental degradation is not confined to borders, the concept of global environmental governance has been helpful to explain this phenomenon that typically involves a broad range of actors, including states as well as regional and international organizations. John Vogler has defined global environmental governance as follows: “At a formal level it is virtually a synonym for international environmental cooperation; for the network of international environmental organizations and conventions and the spaces between them” (Vogler, 2005 , p. 835). While studies of global environmental regimes have allowed a better understanding of who, why, and how our ecosystems are affected, a more daunting analytical area is whether political actors are willing to adapt to sustainable practices. Nongovernmental actors, in concert with corporations, governments, and international organizations, have established new standard-setting bodies to guide and regulate behavior. Scholars have begun to document the rise of these new forms of private governance and hybridized public–private governance as a means of promoting environmental protection (OHCHR et al., 2013 ).

Another area that demands inclusive policies at different levels of government is sustainable development. Jeffrey Sachs ( 2012 ) has argued that the most effective way to reach the global goals of strengthening sustainable development is by focusing on three broad categories, economic development, environmental sustainability, and social inclusion, which will depend on a fourth condition: good governance at all levels, local, national, regional, and global. However, implementing the environmental regime is complex, because international agreements must operate at the domestic policy level, where there is often still a gap between broad international goals and local engagement for implementation (Busby, 2010 ).

Global Civil Society and Human Rights

The inclusion of the rights of individuals in international processes has been an inherent part of the genesis of global governance. From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1949 as a nonbinding document to the creation of the International Criminal Court in 1998 , the governance of global human rights has been evolving as normative framework and as common practice. The UN-led proliferation of national human rights institutions, whose purported aims are to implement international norms domestically, has expanded considerably since the early 1990s; such institutions have quadrupled in number and exist in almost 100 countries (Cardenas, 2003 ). However, despite overall advancements in advancing rights, applying them consistently remains an outstanding governance issue (Thompson, 2010 ). These mechanisms are far from consistent. Generally, when they are effective, they change a state’s conduct by publicizing abuses rather than by providing technical advice or applying punitive measures (Kaye, 2011 ). The protection of human rights in the global agenda has also advanced the debate for more proactive mechanisms to enhance the rights of people (Ruggie, 2014 ). However, challenges to implement full-fledged human rights protections worldwide still surpass the capacity of global governance actors to provide them.

The development of networks has been an important element in incentivizing the creation of global civil societies protecting human rights. The roots of global civil society have been the subject of debate. Two approaches have been adopted. The first suggests that global civil society has been developing rationally over a long period of time, continuous and parallel with the development of domestic civil society in democracies. The second postulates global civil society to be a relatively new phenomenon, one that has emerged in response to unprecedented challenges to democracy as a result of globalization (Coleman & Wayland, 2005 ).

National civil societies embark on developing links with peers around the world in multiple ways, producing a myriad of forms of interaction. Following Mor’s analysis ( 2013 ) and based on the approaches to exerting leverage on global society, four clusters of GSC are emblematic of the complexity of the phenomena of this emerging global society from below. The first is the GCS that aims to some extent to replace statist features of the international system; several networks have been developed along these lines, from global student protests to social groups working against globalization. The second frames GCS as being in opposition to the state system; social movements in Latin America and Eastern Europe working to promote an active citizenship outside and beyond the national borders are emblematic of this group. Nongovernmental organization (NGO) activism concerning the arms trade is emblematic of the significant and emancipatory role attributed to civil society in post–Cold War international politics. A distinctively liberal understanding of civil society as an increasingly global sphere marks discussions of NGOs’ efforts separately from the state and market, promoting progressive and nonviolent social relations. The final strand of GCS is mostly focused on advancing the rights of religions and ethnic movements, which in recent years have encouraged a new agenda to develop the fourth world, which includes indigenous peoples, refugees, and migrants, mainly.

The third GCS has been studied as a subsidiary organ to international society, in which, under a neoliberal perspective, civil society organizations become institutionalized and professionalized so that they can fit into the global political framework as partners rather than as opponents. First, liberal accounts underplay the mutual interdependence between the state, the market, and civil society. NGO agency is constrained as well as enabled by its historical structural grounding. Second, a more ambivalent understanding of NGOs’ progressive political value is needed. While some NGOs may play a role in counter-hegemonic struggles, overall they are more likely to contribute to hegemonic social formations. Third, liberal accounts of a global civil society inadequately capture the reproduction of hierarchies in international relations, downplaying ongoing, systemic patterns of North-South asymmetry. Fourth, the emphasis on the nonviolent nature of global civil society sidelines the violence of capitalism and the state system while serving as a means of disciplining dissent and activism (Stavrianakis, 2012 ).

Other Emerging Areas of Global Governance

As global governance studies have reached a prominent role in the agenda of IR research, numerous intersections have been developed between global governance and other policy domains. These intersections are the results of specific areas of policy action that have elevated their sphere of action to the global level and experienced the phenomenon of being affected by multiple actors and various levels of analysis. These are the cases of global governance in labor, migration, health, sustainable development, and water.

Global governance has been used as a frame for studying labor relations. Based on the analysis of International Labor Organization (ILO) standards and the setup of the UN Global Compact, Hassel ( 2008 ) argues that there is a plethora of voluntarist initiatives that converge over time toward a shared understanding of labor standards, which is part of the transformation of global labor governance institutions. Nonetheless, there are several problems for a full-fledged convergence of global norms on labor standards, such as the lack of governmental commitment in implementing labor standards in some countries in addition to the lack of coordination and the existence of collective action problems pertaining to various decentralized activities. In this regard, the strongest incentives for monitoring compliance, mostly advocated by the victims of noncompliance, as well as the development of a cognitive frame of unacceptable corporate behavior are essentials steps toward actualizing a “harder” institutional setting (Hassel, 2008 ).

Barnett ( 2002 ) has linked global governance with migration and refugees. She argues that the recent influx of internally displaced peoples (IDPs) has caused the UNHCR to rethink its governance model even further, as it does not accommodate the needs of all displaced people, especially IDPs, who are not strictly defined by borders. The UNHCR has been pushed to adapt their current state-centered global governance model toward a democratic governance model whereby a possible solution would be for the UN General Assembly to expand UNHCR’s mandate to include IDPs. However, the UNHCR remains unresponsive to this proposal (Barnett, 2002 ).

In the case of global health governance, Lee ( 2010 ) argues that the bulk of scholarship on international organization and health continues to be produced from outside the formal disciplinary boundaries of international relations. This literature, primarily from the perspective of public health, is concerned with improving the contemporary institutional mechanisms for addressing collective health problems. From such analyses, the broader question of what international organizations and health tell us about emerging forms of global governance can be raised. For example, what do innovations in international health cooperation tell us about the shifting boundaries between the state, the market, and civil society? What is the quality of global governance as provided by these diverse institutional actors? While a recent shift in the literature explores how international organizations matter in addition to the role of delegation and agency, more analysis is required beyond the study of the World Health Organization (Lee, 2010 ).

Particularly as a result of the post- 2015 development framework, global sustainable development governance provides an opportunity to address these global economic, social, and environmental issues in a coordinated, coherent, and collaborative manner. In this context, the global partnership can promote a more effective, coherent, representative, and accountable global governance regime, which should ultimately translate into better national and regional governance, the realization of human rights, and sustainable development (Madhur, 2012 ). Within the umbrella of environment and development, global water governance remains in its initial stages in spite of increasing awareness of the scarcity of this vital resource. Pahl-Wostl, Gupta, and Petry ( 2008 ) have argued that although a global discourse about water issues has evolved over the last five decades, unlike governance of many other environmental and resource issues, a clear global governance framework has still not emerged. They have advanced their studies on global water governance by compiling 86 international river basin organizations and advocating the discussion of the vital importance of water as it relates to global governance.

Conceptual Debates on Global Governance

Thematic categorizations provide an overview of the main areas where the literature on global governance has proliferated. However, scholars have also embarked on conceptual, rather than thematic, debates or have derived interesting conceptual discussions from their thematic research. Social scientists have studied global governance from a variety of angles, producing numerous analytical innovations which improve its comprehension. While debates on global governance are perpetually evolving and the related conceptual list is extensive, this section incorporates some emblematic concepts that have paved the way for debates enriching the understanding of global governance. These include common goods, good governance, power, legitimacy, authority, global governors, governmentality, governance in areas of limited statehood, and policy-centric systems of governance. These concepts have triggered the need of adopting global governance as a framework for analysis.

The perception of sharing a common milieu has been crucial for understanding the interconnections that global governance aims to study and explain. One of the main concepts that explicitly and implicitly remain in the debates on global governance is related to the preservation and enhancement of global common goods and, more importantly, the need to develop mechanisms for collective actions. Keohane ( 2010 ) has explained the complexity of dealing with common-pool resources and collective action in the context that they are subject to the challenge of underprovision or overuse because no individual actor has an interest in unilaterally preserving them. The link between common-pool resources and collective action varies from sector to sector of political action, and hence the concept of global commons has advanced at different paces in distinct areas of international activity. While the rationale of international security is still rooted in various levels of security dilemmas, the perception of a global commons has found better conditions to flourish in areas such as global environmental policy, because the stewardship of the global commons cannot be executed without global governance. This is the case of those parts of the planet that fall outside national jurisdictions and to which all nations have access (the high seas, the atmosphere, Antarctica, and outer space), and these resource domains are guided by the principle of the common heritage of mankind (OHCHR et al., 2013 ).

The concern about the depletion of common goods leads to the conception of global governance not only as a heuristic device to understand multiple and complex relations but also as a mechanism to suggest policy prescriptions to manage and ameliorate global problems. Central to this assumption is the concept of good governance. While postmodern critical theories and Gramscian cultural hegemony scholars contest the intentions of global good governance as conventional mechanism of domination, a substantial share of scholars working with the concept of global governance to some degree acknowledge the need for global good governance. Weiss’ definition of good governance entails the following elements: participation and empowerment with respect to public policies, choices, and offices; rule of law secured by an independent judiciary to which the executive and legislative branches of government are subject, along with citizens as well as other actors and entities; and standards of probity and incorruptibility, transparency, accountability, and responsibility (Weiss, 2013 ).

The fact that good global governance advocates a more comprehensive and inclusive agenda is not dissociated from the debates surrounding power and international relations. Barnett and Duvall ( 2005 ) argue that scholarly literature surrounding global governance largely dismisses the role of power. As power remains one of the most significant concepts in most international relations theories, from its relevance in realism to its relative contestation in social constructivism, two different lines of reasoning provide some elements acknowledging the pertinence of linking global governance and power.

The first is the understanding that power has been disaggregated in the past few decades. Based on IR debates on hard (military and economic) and soft (cultural) power and from the perspective of global governance, power has been embedded in two types of global governance, hard and soft. The former refers to formal rules, norms, and institutions that have been established to regulate the behavior of states and other actors in the international system. In this context, international law, treaties, conventions, and other juridical tools are capable of providing governance. But it also means that legitimate power can be used to produce world order in the absence of a global government. In this line of thought, the balance of power plays a significant role in reducing global anarchy. Soft governance includes informal rules, norms, and institutions that can also provide governance. In this perspective, persuasion and influence are key elements in the search for world stability (Kröger, 2008 ). From a different angle, Weiss ( 2013 ) rightly contends that it is often forgotten that power is not confined to states and that nonstate actors play an increasingly significant role in international relations. Along the same lines, while the increasing role of civil societies and political parties have underpinned the process of democratization around the world, some other subversive and opportunistic forces, such as criminal organizations, have taken control of areas where the state is fragile or absent, resulting in the weakening of the rule of law and the negative fragmentation of state power (Naím, 2013 ).

The second dimension of power that affects the architecture of global governance is its polarization. From the bipolar order that prevailed in the Cold War to the current multipolar system, global collective action assumes different forms. While hegemonic transition theories have been largely studied in international relations, some scholars have linked the US decline and global governance. Chase-Dunn, Kwon, Lawrence, and Inoue ( 2011 ) have argued that while the rise of another hegemon that could replace the United States is unlikely, there are clearly challenges to be addressed. Newly emergent national economies such as India and China need to be fitted into the global structure of power, while the unilateral use of military force by the declining hegemon (the United States) has further delegitimized the institutions of global governance and has provoked resistance and challenges (Chase-Dunn et al., 2011 ).

Barnett and Duval broaden the definition of power from the perspective of global governance, stating that power is “the production, in and through social relations, of effects on actors that shape their capacity to control their fate” (Barnett & Duvall, 2005 , p. 45). In other words, power is a means to govern people’s lives, or even international orders. The authors develop a taxonomy of power based on two analytical dimensions: the kinds of social relations through which power is exerted, and the specificity of social relations through which effects on actors’ capacities are produced. These two dimensions generate a fourfold taxonomy of power: compulsory, institutional, structural, and productive. But when it comes to the international system, it is structural power that specifically and directly affects global governance and its varying capacities. However, it is productive power, defined as the socially diffuse production of subjectivity in systems of meaning and signification, which will combat the negative view of power and will contribute to effectively analyzing global governance (Barnett & Duvall, 2005 ).

Associated with power, the concept of legitimacy has also been included in the debates on global governance. The main challenge, as Castells ( 2005 ) indicates, is that there is a credibility crisis as a result of the nation-state’s inability to adequately represent its citizens in the global governance era, where local and national governance has caved in and given way to global issues resolution, serving as a platform for the emergence of a global civil society. Another dimension of legitimacy in global governance is the case of compliance with international norms. The internationalization of norms leads to legitimized forms of behavior in which there is less need of coercion and calculation of interests. In other words, as Weiss has pointed out, “legitimacy is driven by the logic of appropriateness, whereby compliance can result from self-imposed obligation to do what is perceived as right” (Weiss, 2013 , p. 38). Despite the silver lining logic of appropriateness, three major global governance gaps still undermine legitimacy. The first is the jurisdictional gap, in which public policymaking is by nature predominantly national in both focus as well as scope. The second is the operational gap, wherein public institutions lack the policy-relevant information and policy instruments necessary to respond to the daunting complexity of global policy issues. The third is the incentive gap, in which the compliance problem makes it difficult for international governance systems to contribute effectively to the attainment of governance goals, since that remains contingent on the willingness of individual states to implement international regulations (Brüh & Rittberger, 2003 ).

The discussion on power and legitimacy in global governance has also provided the background for the discussion on global authority. Finnemore ( 2014 ) has underscored the challenges that global governance is facing with regard to global authority because while power can be an attribute of an actor in isolation, “authority is always conferred by others in some form, however distant. . . this conferral is central to the legitimation of many aspects of global governance” (Finnemore, 2014 , p. 221). For example, while the UN is authorized to exert power through established institutional procedures, its authority can increase or decrease based on performance and the response by others to UN actions. Based on this premise on global authority, Finnemore ( 2014 ) has pointed out the benefits of shifting the focus of global governance from actors to the relationships among actors involved in the making of global processes. From that perspective, Finnemore ( 2014 ) argues that it is hard to think of a policy area where a single “global governor” is acting alone and suggests that the nature of relationships among these potential governors can vary greatly, which in turn has diverse effects on policies and outcomes: “Global governors compete, conflict, cooperate, delegate, and divide labor in a host of ways we have not always examined systematically, but should” (Finnemore, 2014 , p. 223). Her emphasis on relationships rather than on single actors contributes to the understanding that the interactions among global governors vary enormously, shaping dynamics and outcomes of global governance (Finnemore, 2014 ).

Alexandria Jayne Innes and Brent Steele have developed the analysis of global governance through the lens of governmentality. They argue that practices and tactics of actors (such as states, individuals, NGOs, and for-profit agencies) produce a field of power where influences strategically oppose/coincide with one another to produce governmentality. In essence, their view is that governance is too narrow and, more specifically, “governmentality. . . offers insight into a concept of global governance that does not prioritize the state. Rather, it situates the state within a network of governance, representing an actor that governs itself and others” (Jayne Innes & Steele, 2012 , p. 717). Moreover, governmentality serves broadly as a regulatory factor/mechanism that promotes self-governance. In this case, sovereignty and governmentality coexist, with the latter allowing states to have sovereignty and control over disciplinary power over their people as well as the capacity to act as a “unitary cohesive agent in the global system” (Jayne Innes & Steele, 2012 , p. 724). Overall, the authors proclaim that global actors will be compelled to act a certain way because the chaos can be avoided in a nonhierarchical world where each state/actor works together under the wide-spread efforts of global governance and tactics of governmentality (Jayne Innes & Steele, 2012 ).

One of the conceptual innovations that has put in perspective the Western roots of global governance and the implementation limits of good governance is the debate around governance in areas of limited statehood (Risse, 2011 ). Risse argues that the governance discourse remains centered on an ideal type of modern statehood, with full internal and external sovereignty, a legitimate monopoly on the use of force, and checks and balances that constrain political rule and authority. This approach is very state-centric and mainly western-driven and is utilized in state building and development strategies. However, from the global as well as historical perspective, “the modern nation-state is the exception rather than the rule. . . areas of limited statehood lack the capacity to implement and enforce central decisions and the monopoly on the use of force” (Risse, 2011 , p. 2). In other words, in areas of limited statehood, from developing and transitioning countries to failing states, international sovereignty remains intact, while domestic sovereignty is lacking. Risse argues that governance in areas of limited statehood rests on the systematic involvement of nonstate actors and on nonhierarchical modes of political steering, yet these “modes of governance do not complement hierarchical steering by a well-functioning state but have to provide functional equivalents to develop statehood. . . in a multilevel governance which links local, national, regional and global” (Risse, 2011 , p. 3).

Along the same lines of observing the limits of global governance, Ostrom and Janssen analyze the differences between “high modernism” and “polycentric” systems of governance with regard to development and natural resource management. High modernism is characterized by situations where governments attempt to suppress complexity through the design of unitary governments, which rely on experts to dictate or optimize preferred desirable goals. These systems tend to fail due to their separation from local accountability. Polycentric systems, on the other hand, are those where many actors are capable of making mutual adjustments for ordering their relationships with one another within a general system of rules where each element acts with independence of other elements (Ostrom & Janssen, 2002 ).

Mapping Institutional Sources

Institutions play a significant role in supporting, deepening, and widening research on global governance. For decades, education and policymaking institutions prioritized IR studies focused on Cold War tensions and Soviet studies; later, in the 1990s, globalization became not only a buzzword of politicians to justify decisions, but also a priority in the research agenda of IR departments. By the early 2000s, governance and global governance were incorporated into the IR intellectual debate and institutions started supporting its study. The relationship and correlations between transformations in the international system and how IR departments, universities, and think tanks allocate resources to study the leading topics of a generation is quite straightforward. This section identifies the leading institutional sources for studying global governance, particularly from regional and national perspectives. While a detailed survey of institutions surpasses the limits of this article, this section examines two types of institutions that have led the debate and intellectual production regarding global governance: centers or programs focusing on conducting studies on global governance, and education programs at the graduate level where global governance plays a central role.

Centers For the Study of Global Governance

The United States and Europe remain the predominant places where the debates and allocation of resources for the study of international relations are taking place. The creation of centers for the study of global governance does not deviate from this general trend. In New York, Columbia University opened the Global Governance Center at the Columbia Law School in 2003 . The center addresses globalization’s legal dimensions through diverse interdisciplinary research and scholarship in addition to supporting public policy-oriented projects with other Columbia University centers and programs, including the Earth Institute, the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, and the Institute for Human Rights, as well as maintaining joint programs with international organizations such as the United Nations (Columbia University, 2015 ).

Also in New York, the Lublin School of Business at Pace University sponsors the Center for Global Governance, Reporting, and Regulation (Pace University, 2015 ). In New Jersey, the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance (CGG) at Princeton University started operations in 2004 . As part of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Niehaus Center is one of the few centers that combines globalization and governance under its research program (Princeton University, 2015 ). In North Carolina, the Global Value Chains Center at Duke University is built around the use of global value chains methodology to study the effects of globalization worldwide (Duke University, 2015 ).

In Europe, centers for studying global governance have also been created since the early 2000s, particularly in Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Belgium. The Hertie School of Governance together with the Freie Universität Berlin and the Social Science Centre Berlin (WZB) established the Berlin School of Transnational Studies in 2008 , which includes a cluster on European Global Governance in its PhD program. This research cluster focuses on the analysis of the postnational constellation in its multiple dimensions and studies the implications of the increasingly blurred boundaries of the political space for communities and forms of belonging as it relates to the rise of global civil society, and especially for the structures of governance beyond the state (Hertie School of Governance, 2015 ).

In the United Kingdom, the London School of Economics (LSE) opened the Global Governance program in 2003 with a grant from the Ford Foundation. The program aimed to establish a rigorous conception and typology of global governance as well as construct an account of emergent international and transnational authority structures. While the LSE Global Governance closed as a formal research center in July 2011 as a result of a shift in research priorities, global governance has remained in the agenda of its scholars in other parts of LSE (London School of Economics, 2011 ). Also in London, the Global Governance Institute at University College of London undertakes cross-disciplinary study of crucial governance “deficits” in order to explore the nature of the problem and the processes, structures, and institutions involved, as well as identifying and postulating potential solutions. The Institute’s research activities coalesce around the following five thematic tracks: global governance, global security, global environmental sustainability, global justice and equity, and global economy (University College of London, 2015 ).

In Italy, the European University Institute in Florence launched the Global Governance Program (GGP) in 2010 , which is one of the flagship programs of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. It aims to build a community of outstanding professors and scholars, produce high-quality research, engage with the world of practice through policy dialogue, and contribute to the fostering of present and future generations of policy- and decision-makers through its executive training. With its three dimensions (Research, Policy, and Training), the GGP aims to serve as a bridge between research and policymaking (European University Institute, 2015 ). In Belgium, the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies was set up in 2007 , linking governance processes and multilateralism with a particular focus on the European Union’s role in global governance. With more than 60 senior and junior members, the Centre hosts a seven-year research program ( 2010–2017 ) on Global Governance and Democratic Government (Leuven University, 2015 ).

Global governance centers worldwide have followed the American and European trends, with the added value of focusing on their own specific regional agenda priorities. In East Asia, Waseda University Organization for Japan-US Studies (WOJUSS) was established in Japan in 2007 as a new type of research institution providing a platform for collaborative, interdisciplinary research on Japan-US relations. Later, in 2012 , WOJUSS renewed research programs and teams to further promote policy-oriented research on the current state of global governance studies (Waseda University, 2015 ). In Korea, the Hills Governance Center at Yonsei University in Seoul became the second Hills Governance Center worldwide when it opened in 2003 . The Center focuses on analysis, research, and dissemination of findings on governance-related issues and pursues specific projects such as regionally relevant case studies, the development of methodologies to measure the cost of poor governance, and identifying the best practices of successful firms in the country. Also in Korea, the Asian Institute for Policy Studies hosts the Center for Global Governance in order to offer policy recommendations which improve international relations and politics by making them more effective. With an office in Washington, DC, the center itself tries to bring forth traditional ways of thinking that focus on state actors and national security as well as recommending policies that account for nontraditional security factors such as human security (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2015 ).

In South Asia, Jindal University created the Centre for Global Governance and Policy (CGGP) in the late 2000s in Delhi, India. The distinctive feature of the CGGP is that it emphasizes a Global South perspective and probes the possibility for more a balanced and even-handed structure for global governance. It also focuses on an agenda that goes beyond India’s regional priorities (Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, etc.) or relations with Europe and the United States, incorporating multidisciplinary and non-state-driven debates taking place in Latin America, Africa, and the rest of Asia. Emblematic of this approach is the CGGP report entitled Rethinking International Institutions: A Global South Agenda released in 2011 (Jindal University, 2015 ). In Africa, the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation (GovInn) is the first research institution in Africa dedicated entirely to governance innovation. With a strong orientation on African topics in the context of global governance, GovInn prioritizes producing cutting-edge research capable of generating new thinking about governance and development as well as attracting innovators from all over the world. GovInn focuses on new economic governance, governance of the commons, transboundary governance, and security governance (University of Pretoria, 2015 ).

Education Programs on Global Governance

Education programs underpin developing a better understanding of global governance. At the doctoral level, three programs on Global Governance are salient. University of Massachusetts in Boston offers a PhD program in Global Governance and Human Security which aims to develop skills in topics such as emerging nonstate actors, norms, conflict resolution, and geopolitical competence (University of Massachusetts Boston, 2015 ). In Canada, a PhD in Global Governance, offered jointly by Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo, examines power and authority in the global arena and aims to examine and re-evaluate concepts, tools, and assumptions that have served scholars in the past and assesses new approaches for addressing contemporary and future challenges in six areas: global political economy, global environment, conflict and security, global justice and human rights, multilateral institutions and diplomacy, and global social governance (Balsillie School of International Studies, 2015 ). In Germany, the University of Bremen and Jacobs University Bremen founded the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS), which offers a PhD program focused on three thematic fields, one of which is Global Governance and Regional Integration (Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences, 2015 ).

More focused on training and specialization than on research, a variety of Masters programs are offered in several parts of the world. Florida International University offers an MA program in Global Governance featuring two tracks: globalization and security, and corporate citizenship (Florida International University, 2015 ). In Canada, the University of Waterloo opened an MA in Global Governance that goes beyond the rigidities and formalities of established academic boundaries by drawing on a variety of disciplines (Balsillie School of International Studies, 2015 ). In Europe, among other institutions, Sussex University offers an MA in Global Governance and the University of Kent offers an MA in European and Global Governance in the United Kingdom. In Italy, the University of Siena opened an MA in Global Governance Studies and Cultural Diplomacy. One example in South Asia is Jindal University, which has offered an MA in Global Governance since 2012 , in which students are encouraged to raise awareness and analytical depth in India about academically neglected regions such as Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean (Jindal University, 2015 ).

Future Directions of Global Governance

This article has provided an extensive review of the literature on global governance. However, the significant scholarly development of the concept in the last decades still demands further analytical tools to explain the permanent transformations of international relations and the problems derived from the lack of global governance. In this regard, the current literature on global governance offers a platform where theories and concepts are adaptable and versatile, providing the research agenda of global governance with conditions conducive to expand its explanation about an increasingly more complex reality.

Some future areas of research around the global governance agenda include the exploration of areas conducive to reducing anarchy in the international system through several policy instruments. Cooperation and multilateral approaches are pillars for the creation of more effective global public policies considering the limited capacity of states to resolve simultaneously every local or international problem. As a consequence of globalization, the nature of problems is increasingly defined by multiple domestic and international factors. Therefore, governments have to resort to creating schemes of coordination with other actors to confront contemporary challenges, and more research is required to decipher and better understand how to create and protect collective global goods. International organizations, private actors, civil society, and even individuals are necessary to promoting global governance. Since there is not a central global government to cope with international conflicts and problems, norms and institutions are needed to provide legitimacy for—and protect the stability of—the international system.

Global governance is also an important framework of analysis that incentivizes ontological and epistemological approaches to study how the international system works. Not only governmental officials but also scholars and nonstate actors are deeply concerned with understanding the mechanisms to promote global governance, which include legitimate authority to solve international conflict and enhance mutual cooperation. The recent emergence of academic institutions and programs to address such topics is integral to this process. It is probable that in the near future more think tanks and universities will facilitate further research on global governance.

A current and future challenge pending in the global governance agenda is to develop further interconnections between different areas of human activity which also percolate at the global level. Economic interactions need a framework of rules, norms, and institutions to avoid financial crisis, facilitate cooperation, and promote global development. Global economic disparities will not be reduced if states, transnational companies, international organizations, and civil society do not establish cooperative schemes. For a more secure world, the international community must seek the creation of instruments to promote global security governance. These kinds of institutions will be necessary to diminish international terrorism, wars, organized crime, and other global threats. Global governance is also a key element for reducing ecological degradation, climate change, and other environmental challenges the world is facing today. States and international organization are not able to solve those problems without the participation of civil society and individuals. For the conservation of natural resources and the creation of new energy sources, global public policy will be required as well. Health and food issues are also a primary concern of global governance studies. As this article has illustrated, the future of international relations will benefit from developing the concept of global governance, debating better practices, and implementing effective global policies.

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What role for global governance?

Subscribe to global connection, kemal derviş kemal derviş vice president and director.

August 22, 2016

Can global governance solve most of our economic problems? Or does it too often promise more than it can deliver, and divert attention from more practical reforms that national governments should implement? In a recent commentary , Harvard University economist Dani Rodrik thoughtfully argues the latter. Is he right?

To be sure, national policy has a more direct effect – good or bad – on a country’s citizens. But we cannot ignore the global effects of bad national policies, the most obvious examples noted by Rodrik being greenhouse-gas emissions and infectious diseases. People in the “country of origin” may pay a price, but so will the rest of us.

“Globalization” has been a catchword for decades, and the need for global governance has admittedly been exaggerated in recent years, especially by those on the center left. This has led to calls for new alternatives , such as “ responsible nationalism ” or “inter-governmental” – as opposed to supranational – decision-making in the European Union.

Such proposals make for a healthy debate. For example, we should reevaluate the current system for deciding trade agreements, which have become more about regulatory and investment issues than about eliminating import tariffs or other import barriers. It is no surprise that even some free-trade supporters object to agreements that allow trade groups to insert language granting multinational corporations undue market power at the expense of consumer protection.

Still, the push for stronger global governance in recent years has not happened in a vacuum. Countries have undoubtedly become more economically and socially interdependent, owing to trade, travel, and telecommunications, not to mention multinational corporate structures and international financial flows. Global intercourse is broader, faster, and more ubiquitous than ever before.

Globalization may occasionally hit speed bumps, such as the current slowdown in world trade; but the underlying technological changes driving interconnectivity will only continue to bring people and countries closer together.

Ultimately, this is for the best, because the major challenges we face today are global in nature. Efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change will require consistent global coordination. Even local initiatives, which are increasingly important for addressing the problem, must fit into a framework of converging global policies and obligations. Otherwise, people will not feel as though they are making a difference or contributing to a shared goal, and others will not feel pressure to do anything at all.

Another global challenge is taxation, which requires international coordination to stanch rampant avoidance and evasion . The problem is not just individual “tax havens”; there is also a need to capture corporate profits that companies’ move internationally with complex devices such as “transfer pricing” and “tax-base shifting” to minimize their tax bill.

Disparate tax rules among different countries have resulted in close to a zero-sum game for national governments, which are forced to pursue beggar-thy-neighbor policies to secure a bigger slice of a shrinking pie. Under the current system, countries have strong incentives to offer ever-greater tax advantages to companies operating within their borders, even though they stand just as strong a chance of being undercut by another country as companies shift their declared profits from one jurisdiction to another.

In most cases, companies are not doing anything illegal by taking advantage of this fragmented system. But if countries are serious about reducing inequality and funding pensions and health care for their citizens, they will have to cooperate in global-governance efforts to prioritize fair taxation.

Climate change and taxation are just two issues requiring global coordination, but the list goes on. The monetary policies of large reserve-currency central banks such as the United States Federal Reserve can have far-reaching spillover effects , as can self-destructive exchange-rate policies or regulations on cross-border financial flows. In most of these cases, the damage runs downstream from large countries to smaller countries; however, if enough small countries are affected, the aggregate damage can flow back to the larger economies themselves, as we’ve seen in the European debt crisis.

Given the scale of these challenges, we have no choice but to cooperate internationally and strengthen global and regional institutions and frameworks such as the International Monetary Fund, the EU, and the G20, which will meet in Hangzhou, China, next month. But global governance is not an either/or proposition. When national or local policies are sufficient to address a problem, then they should be pursued.

Indeed, the principle of subsidiarity – whereby decision-making should occur at the most local level possible – is crucial to flexible, functioning global governance. The presence of global-governance frameworks should never become an excuse for national or local inaction. Public policy is a multi-level and multi-channel effort with local, national, regional, and global dimensions. Ideally, policy debates should acknowledge this reality.

We also must acknowledge the urgency of shoring up faith in global governance from another perspective. Across the US, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, a resurgence of identity politics and xenophobic nationalism threatens to reprise the great tragedies of the twentieth century. Against this backdrop, stressing the existence and needs of a global community is necessary not only for economic reasons, but also to help ensure a peaceful world.

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• Published: 19 January 2016

Global governance: present and future

• Jinseop Jang 1 ,
• Jason McSparren 1 &
• Yuliya Rashchupkina 1  

Palgrave Communications volume  2 , Article number:  15045 ( 2016 ) Cite this article

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• Politics and international relations

Globalization, the end of the Cold War and increased involvement of non-state actors in global affairs represent fundamentally shifting relations of power, speeding up national economies’ integration and contributing to the convergence of policies in different issue domains. This review considers the state of global governance by presenting a variety of global governance arrangements, key challenges facing governance in an increasingly globalized context and possibilities for the future governance. Current global governance arrangements favour flexibility over rigidity, prefer voluntary measures to binding rules and privilege partnerships over individual actions. This synopsis of the state of global governance examines the evolving role that sovereignty and the enduring human struggles for power and equity are playing in shaping international relations and governance. This contribution argues that individual empowerment, increasing awareness of human security, institutional complexity, international power shifts and the liberal world political paradigm will define the future of global governance. This article is published as part of a thematic collection dedicated to global governance.

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Introduction.

Global governance is a product of neo-liberal paradigm shifts in international political and economic relations. The privileging of capital and market mechanisms over state authority created governance gaps that have encouraged actors from private and civil society sectors to assume authoritative roles previously considered the purview of the State. This reinforces the divergence of views about how to define the concept of global governance, issues that are of the utmost importance and priority. Some scholars argue that global governance as it is practiced is not working ( Coen and Pegram, 2015 : 417), while others believe that global governance is constantly adapting by readjusting strategies and approaches to solutions and developing new tools and measures to deal with issues that impact communities throughout the world ( Held and Hale, 2011 ). Rather than judging current global governance, this contribution seeks to provide an overview of the current state of global governance by discussing its present state vis à vis the challenges that it faces and its future.

The perspective employed here presents global governance as a tool to identify solutions to problems created by neo-liberal globalization ( Biermann and Pattberg, 2008 : 279). As such, the concept of global governance relates to the interaction of myriad collective or individual entities emanating from various societal and professional orientations, which form networks that engage to address issues that threaten local and global communities. Global governance is concerned with issues that have become too complex for a single state to address alone. Humanitarian crises, military conflicts between and within states, climate change and economic volatility pose serious threats to human security in all societies; therefore, a variety of actors and expertise is necessary to properly frame threats, devise pertinent policy, implement effectively and evaluate results accurately to alleviate such threats.

Structure and actors: stakeholders of global governance

The proliferation of networked global markets, revolution in global communications technologies, the end of the Cold War and increased involvement of non-state actors in global affairs all contribute to “globalization”. Increased interconnection among nations has advanced the exchange of knowledge by bringing peoples, cultures, communities and states closer in an era in which issues call for increased international collaboration ( Bhagwati, 2004 ; McGrew, 2008 ). The scope of modern issues has become “global”, beyond the capacity for state governments alone to address such issues. The former United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, Kofi Annan acknowledged that “no State, however powerful, can protect itself on its own” ( Annan, 2005 : 7) and that “the threats we face are interconnected” ( Annan, 2005 : 25). As a result, we witness broad strands of cooperative and competitive interdependency among sovereign nations, transnational corporations (TNCs), networks of experts and civil societies.

The current phenomenon of global governance is well captured by Biermann and Pattberg in their overview of global environmental governance for the Annual Review of Environmental Resources of 2008. They describe contemporary governance through the following features: (1) the emergence of new types of agency and of actors in addition to national governments; (2) the emergence of new mechanisms and institutions of global governance that go beyond traditional forms of state-led, treaty-based regimes; and (3) increasing segmentation and fragmentation of the overall governance system across levels and functional spheres ( Biermann and Pattberg, 2008 : 280).

A multitude of actors define and shape the current structure of global governance. States, international organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), multinational corporations, scientific experts, civil society groups, networks, partnerships, private military and security companies, as well as transnational criminal and drug-trafficking networks provide world politics with multi-actor perspectives and take part in steering the political system ( Dingwerth and Pattberg, 2006 ; Biermann and Pattberg, 2012 ; Karns and Mingst, 2015 ). Global governance actors broaden the scope of activities in which they are involved and they also change the patterns of interaction and cooperation in tackling current issues on a global level. Current global governance arrangements favour flexibility over rigidity, prefer voluntary measures to binding rules, choose partnerships over individual actions, and give rise to new initiatives and ideas.

While the modes of global governance vary widely, four general structures can be identified: International Governmental Organizations (IGOs), Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs), Private governance and tripartite governance mechanisms. IGOs such as the World Trade Organization and the UN system are examples of existing state-centered governance mechanisms. IGOs, however, utilize partnerships with non-state actors that have expertise and resources concentrated in service sectors and environments that IGOs may lack. Such arrangements maximize efficiency. Abbott and Snidal (2010) use the term “Transnational New Governance” to recognize the way IGOs expand capacity and access to resources by including private and non-governmental actors and institutions. This formulates global collaborative networks in which IGOs shape and support the operations of NGOs and certain private enterprises. Such governance structures are considered to be PPPs. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) utilize the PPP strategy across all aspects of implementation of the SDGs.

The UN Global Compact is another example of an international PPP. The UN Global Compact is a forum that encourages TNCs to share case studies that illustrate the ways a firm is implementing the SDGs in host communities where they operate. The objective is to formulate a digital record of best practices in Corporate Social Responsibility for public, private and civil society stakeholders located at all levels of governance—the local, state and transnational—to engage in discourse and form collaborative efforts for the purpose of accomplishing what the SDGs identify as expected outcomes. In addition, an increasing trend of private governance exists that sets sector-specific standards; and, there are alternative forms of governance that are considered as tripartite arrangements among state, private and civil society actors. Tripartite arrangements among state, private and civil society actors exemplify alternative, public–private or private governance arrangements. Tripartite governance such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Publish What You Pay and the African Peer Review Mechanism, while categorized as PPPs, “are located in the policy space between states and markets” ( Carbonnier et al., 2011 : 250). PPP-type arrangements empower civil society actors to not only coordinate with state and corporate entities, but also to monitor state–corporate activities. Often such mechanisms are “voluntary, horizontal, multi-actor and participatory, and address global issues” (Ibid.).

In some areas of business, private governance has supplanted state authority to regulate industry, showcasing the work of private governance. Examples of private governance include international accounting standards; the private bond-rating agencies (for example, Moody’s Investors Service and Standard and Poor’s Rating Groups); International Chamber of Commerce rules and actions; private industry governance such as the Worldwide Responsible Apparel Manufacturing Principles and the Forest Stewardship Council ( Karns and Mingst, 2015 : 34); Equator Principles ( Wright and Rwabizambuga, 2006 ). Global corporations also actively develop, promote and implement their own codes of conduct that concern issues of labour, environment and health. Those voluntary codes are usually adopted as a response to NGO campaigns, and primarily target developed country consumers, rather than tackle the problems faced by a diverse set of vulnerable worker groups. However, the processes through which codes have been developed enables better representation of hitherto excluded groups of workers (women export workers, homeworkers, casual workers) in social policy and labour regulation debates ( Pearson and Seyfang, 2001 ).

Multi-actor configurations in global governance broaden the scope of policy solutions that, combined with current capacities for information sharing and learning, advance policy changes. Yet this also increases fragmentation and segmentation of different layers and clusters of rule-making and rule-implementing ( Biermann and Pattberg, 2008 : 289). The result is increased competition over resources that may lead to paralysis in cooperative efforts. On the other hand, this competition may produce innovative solutions. In the subsequent sections, we offer an overview of the current challenges to global governance concluding with a discussion on the role that it may play in the future.

Present challenges of global governance

A growing number of emerging global governance actors aim to contribute to the solution of interdependent issues supplementing, and sometimes clashing, with already established regimes designed to address certain international problems separately from other issues. Hale et al. (2013) define the situation when current international institutions fail to provide a coordinated response to current agendas challenges as “gridlock”. Through the examples of sovereignty, and by discussing the questions of power and equality we will show how new developments in international relations affect and reshape collaborative responses to the most pressing issues.

Various global governance actors coalesce around the ideas and norms of human rights and human security; however, the principle of sovereignty continues to challenge the practical application of those ideas internationally. Huge and severe violations of peoples’ rights and freedoms during inter- or intra-state wars or conflicts continue to erode human security in different parts of the world. However, governance actors working for the maintenance of peace, security, justice and the protection of human rights have limited capacity to improve situations because of complicated approval procedures of humanitarian intervention or authorization of peacekeeping operations. For example, political divisions and partisan interests within the Security Council (particularly the use of veto power by some of its permanent members) blocked any international response to the mass atrocities committed in Syria, thus strengthening impunity and encouraging the expansion of war crimes and crimes against humanity ( Adams, 2015 ). A rise of nationalist sentiments and movements in Russia and some European countries also continues to erode international cooperation in response to challenges such as the huge influx of refugees, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. All of these threaten the international security, and order in general, that was created during the post-Cold War period. Yet, even as the principle of the responsibility to protect has gained political support and international legitimacy since it was introduced about a decade ago, its contribution to preventing mass atrocities and protection population remains low. As Luck (2015) points out, policy practitioners and scholars need to think in a more nuanced way about sovereignty. Both decision-making sovereignty, when governments choose to independently determine whether a particular course of action for the cause of human rights protection is in their national interest and erosion of sovereignty open the door to more atrocities within and across states’ boundaries. This scholar, for instance, argues that the ineffective exercise of sovereignty by a number of states over their own territory becomes a significant barrier to exercising protection responsibilities in other places ( Luck, 2015 : 504).

Power in the current system of global governance has become more diffused. The power shift accompanying the rise of Brazil, Russia, India, China (the BRICs) and other so-called “rising powers” pose questions about the possible reordering or shifts in the current state of global governance. While advocating for better representation in institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the UN Security Council, the governments of China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies have started to develop and maintain alternative institutions for economic and political collaboration. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank are products of these efforts. While rising powers’ behaviours are shaped by the structural features of global capitalism, “the differing contours of BRICs’ state-society relations provide the foundations for conflicts with Western powers over the most liberal aspects of global governance” ( Stephen, 2014 ). The Western ideas of privatization, autonomous markets and open capital accounts are challenged by state-controlled approaches to development in the countries of so-called Global South. The proliferation of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs), and national development banks in BRICs challenge an autonomous status of private capital in current global economic affairs. Those developments have led to the conclusion, by some scholars, that the most liberal features of global governance order are being contested by rising powers ( Stephen, 2014 ). In addition, a small group of big and influential countries such as India and China gain more negotiating power ( Barkin, 2013 ), as their non-participation in international treaties and policies (for example, climate change) might substantially diminish the effects of other countries’ efforts to solve these global issues. The shifting global power configuration challenges each type of multilateral setting whether it concerns international institutions that have a selective Western-based membership (for example, OECD, NATO, G7/G8); international institutions that shape the state of international policies but do not provide rising powers with equal membership and power in their governing bodies (the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the UN Security Council); or multilateral settings in which rising and established powers interact more or less on an equal footing (the World Trade Organization, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) ( Lesage and Van De Graaf, 2015 ).

Economic and political inequality have long-lasting implications for governance both within and between states. Inequality in either form contributes to a rise in extremism and social unrest, and it also raises the questions of what responsibility the international community should bear for human development beyond just satisfying basic needs, that is, security, food and shelter. While the SDGs agenda of 2015 prioritizes the goal to “(e)nd poverty in all its forms everywhere” (United Nations, 2015), questions still remain about exactly who will fund this eradication of poverty and which actions are best suited to this fight. Global governance actors, for example, focus more on intervention measures in poor countries, as they are primarily guided by a “narrow” understanding of security rather than thinking of more long-term development issues, or the “everyday” insecurities experienced by individuals in different parts of the world. A huge diversification of financial sources of development aid complicates the task of applying a common framework, based on individuals’ needs and development interests approach. In addition, the supply of development resources including official development assistance is also moving away from the old North towards the BRICs and other new official donors such as South Korea and Turkey, plus private foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, faith-based organizations, remittances from diasporas, heterogeneous SWFs and a plethora of Exchange-Traded Funds as well as novel sources of finance such as taxes on carbon, emissions, financial transactions and so forth ( Shaw, 2015 ).

Thus, the observed changes in socio-economic and political aspects of the current world pose new questions and create new challenges for previously active participants of global policy processes, as well as for new actors of global governance. Global governance actors will need to critically reflect on the relevance of earlier policy tools to rapidly changing conditions in the current world.

The future of global governance

Global governance is arguably inevitable for the survival of the human race in present and future generations. Although global governance sometimes appears fragile and ineffective in response to current challenges, the trend of globalization and the demand for global governance approaches have already passed the point of no return. The future of global governance will be mainly shaped by the following five factors: individual empowerment, increasing awareness of human security, institutional complexity, international power shift and liberal world political paradigm. We draw this conclusion by applying the findings and observations from different field of studies including security studies, international political economy, global governance field and communications studies.

First, because of information technology and mass/social media, individual citizens—especially in developed countries—have acquired much more information power than a half century ago. Individuals can attain higher awareness of situations related to national and international affairs. Compared with humans in the twentieth century, a majority of those in the twenty-first century can more easily access international security information, thanks to the Internet and media exposure. Therefore, individual citizens of the world are more likely to understand the importance and the impact of international security on their personal lives. Digital media played a major role in the Arab Spring of 2011 in Egypt and Tunisia: social networks allowed communities to unite around shared grievances and nurture transportable strategies for mobilizing against dictators ( Howard and Hussain, 2011 ). Globalization of the new media illustrates how communities throughout the world can be mobilized for collaborative response as well signals a new trend in the intersection of new media and conventional media such as television, radio and mobile phone ( Khondker, 2011 ). The US National Intelligence Council also identified individual issues and the decreasing influence of the state as one of the main global trends for the twenty-first century, arguing that the potential political power of individuals has significantly increased since the end of the Cold War because of the proliferation of information and transportation technologies ( National Intelligence Council, 2012 ). This trend will strengthen the convergence between domestic and international politics, constraining state behavior ( Putnam, 1988 ) and continue to produce many transnational actors. Considering the dramatic increase of individuals’ capabilities in information gathering, analysis and political projection, the trend of individual empowerment is logically supposed to pave a wider road towards cooperative global governance, because peace is generally preferred over war by individual humans.

Second, as the trend towards “individual empowerment” continues, global society through global governance architecture will need to pay high attention to human security, which protects individual humans from fatal threats to physical safety, and human dignity, whether human-made or of natural origin. Human security is an innovative concept for security in response to horizontal (such as military, economic and political) and vertical (such as individual, state and global) threats, which traditional security concepts cannot effectively control ( Grayson, 2008 ). The focal point of state security is too narrow to encompass the myriad threats that challenge societies today. The threat of sovereign states engaging in large-scale war is less probable today than at any time in modern history. War has not been eliminated, rather its form has shifted from sovereign versus sovereign to substate wars between differing identity groups or insurgencies against the state. Beyond war, the concept of human security is concerned with varieties of security: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community and political security ( UNDP 1994 ). Human security provides an excellent compatible conceptual paradigm to global governance regimes in the future, which must respond to transnational, multi-dimensional threats that a single country cannot manage. For example, a number of national security analysts have already begun to recognize environmental degradation and natural disasters such as epidemics, floods, earthquakes, poverty and droughts as national security threats similar to military disasters ( King and Murray, 2001–2002 ).

Third, we must additionally consider “institutional complexity” ( Held and Hale, 2011 ) as another direction for future global governance development. As the trend of individual empowerment gains more momentum, the influence of civil society is expected to grow in terms of authority and resources. Various non-state actors will not only affect their national governments’ behavior more significantly, but will also engage in networks of transnational relations more actively. International institutions in global governance will likely keep expanding to “regime complex”, a concept defined as “an array of partially overlapping and nonhierarchical institutions governing a particular issue area” ( Raustiala and Victor, 2004 ).

Fourth, global governance in the future will be also be shaped by power shifts in international relations. Almost all the traditional institutions of global governance were initiated by Western countries, and their pluralistic political culture and influential civil societies have shaped the political context of global governance. States of the Global South, especially China, have improved their relative power in relation to the Global North. As a result, the voice of actors originating from the Global South is expected to become more prominent in global governance regimes and institutions traditionally dominated by a small number of the Global North states. Therefore, an increase in multilateralism will further complicate the face of global governance.

Fifth, the future of global governance is also rooted in liberal paradigms of world politics. States and non-state or transnational actors tend to be more cooperative with global governance when a liberal world order is maintained. Global governance regimes to date have evolved with liberal paradigms such as democracy, bottom-up orientations and human rights promotion. While the advancement of democratic practices in the states without strong traditions of following liberal values remain a challenge, democracy has near-universal appeal among people of every ethnic group, every religion, and every region of the world and democracy is embraced as an international norm by more states, transnational organizations and international networks ( McFaul, 2004 ). Liberal approaches challenge the traditional concept of the state as a unified unitary actor that lacks adverse interpretation of national interest. Accordingly, even in traditional security areas, there are more spaces for international cooperation. Global security governance through intergovernmental institutions such as the UN, International Atomic Energy Agency and International Criminal Court has made considerable progresses and gained more influence. If the realist paradigm dominates national security, however, the world would have to overcome deep uncertainty and doubt about the effectiveness of global governance. As a result, global governance today and in the future will be in the face of such serious threats as US–China hegemony rivalry, US–Russia military confrontation and Middle East conflicts. Nevertheless, as long as global society retains liberal paradigms powerful enough to offset the negative effects of mutually suspicious realist paradigms, global governance will continue to generate into effective hybrid regimes that hold the potential of creating a future world that is more cooperative, sustainable and secure.

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Today we have come to understand better not only why there is such discontent with globalization, but why globalization has not worked as well as it could for so many of the world's people. It is essentially a problem of governance. The international rules of the game are often unfair, and the international institutions are undemocratic and have pushed an ideology that has resulted in policies ill-suited to many developing countries. In spite of increasing global collective action, change has been slow. This chapter focuses on the forces that may actually lead to meaningful reform of global government, and discusses a few of the elements of the system of governance that may or should evolve. These reforms include increased transparency and democracy in the official and unofficial global governance institutions, improved financing of global public goods, better management of global natural resources and public knowledge, and the creation of a global legal infrastructure. Unless these reforms are made, the already palpable disillusionment with globalization will spread, with untold consequences, both for those in the developed and the less developed countries.

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Essay: Where Global Governance Went Wrong—and How to Fix It

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Where Global Governance Went Wrong—and How to Fix It

International agreements have not balanced our freedoms in the way that they should..

Global governance, never really settled, has recently been having an especially hard time. Everyone believes in a rules-based system, but everyone wants to make the rules and dislikes it when the rules work against them, saying that they infringe on their sovereignty and their freedom. There are deep asymmetries, with the powerful countries not only making the rules but also breaking them almost at will, which raises the question: Do we even have a rules-based system, or is it just a facade? Of course, in such circumstances, those who break the rules say they only do so because others are, too.

The current moment is a good illustration. It is the product of longstanding beliefs and power relations. Under this system, industrial subsidies were a no-no, forbidden (so it was thought) not just by World Trade Organization rules, but also by the dictates of what was considered sound economics. “Sound economics” was that set of doctrines known as neoliberal economics, which promised growth and prosperity through, mostly, supposedly freeing the economy by allowing so-called free enterprise to flourish. The “liberal” in neoliberalism stood for freedom and “neo” for new, suggesting that it was a different and updated version of 19 th -century liberalism.

This essay is adapted from the book T he Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society by Joseph E. Stiglitz, W.W. Norton, 384 pp., $29.99, April 2024

In fact, it was neither really new nor really liberating. True, it gave firms more rights to pollute, but in doing so, it took away the freedom to breathe clean air—or in the case of those with asthma, sometimes even the most fundamental of all freedoms, the freedom to live.

“Freedom” meant freedom for the monopolists to exploit consumers, for the monopsonists (the large number of firms that have market power over labor) to exploit workers, and freedom for the banks to exploit all of us—engineering the most massive financial crisis in history, which required taxpayers to fork out trillions of dollars in bailouts, often hidden, to ensure that the so-called free enterprise system could survive.

The promise that this liberalization would lead to faster growth from which all would benefit never materialized. Under these doctrines that have prevailed for more than four decades, growth has actually slowed in most advanced countries. For instance, real growth in GDP per capita (average percent increase per annum) according to data compiled by the St. Louis Fed, was 2.5% from 1960 to 1990, but slowed to 1.5% from 1990 to 2018. Instead of trickle-down economics, where everyone would benefit, we had trickle-up economics, where the top 1 percent and especially the top 0.1 percent, got a larger and larger slice of the pie.

These are illustrations of British political theorist Isaiah Berlin’s dictum that “total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs”; or, as I have sometimes put it less gracefully, freedom for some has meant the unfreedom of others—their loss of freedom.

Just as individuals rightly cherish their freedom, countries do, too, often under the name “sovereignty.” But while these words are easily uttered, there is too little thought about their deeper meanings. Economics has weighed into the debate about what freedom and sovereignty mean, with John Stuart Mill’s contribution in the 19th century ( On Liberty ), and Milton Friedman’s and Friedrich Hayek’s works in the mid-20th ( Capitalism and Freedom and The Road to Serfdom ).

But contrary to what Hayek and Friedman asserted, free and unfettered markets do not lead to efficiency and the well-being of society; that should be obvious to anyone looking around. Just think of the inequality crisis, the climate crisis, the opioid crisis, the childhood diabetes crisis, or the 2008 financial crisis.  These are crises created by the market, exacerbated by the market, and/or crises which the market hasn’t been able to deal with adequately.

Economic theorists (including me) have shown that whenever there is imperfect information or imperfect markets (that is to say, always), there is a presumption that markets are not efficient. Even a very little bit of imperfection can have big effects.

The problem is that much of the global economic architecture designed over recent decades has been based on neoliberalism—the kinds of ideas that Hayek and Friedman put forward. The system of rules that evolved from there must be fundamentally rethought.

U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at the G-20 economic summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 8, 2017. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

From an economist’s perspective, freedom is the “freedom to do,” meaning the size of the opportunity set of what a person can do, or the range of the choices that are available.

Someone on the verge of starvation has no real freedom—she does what she must to survive. A rich person obviously has more freedom to choose. “Freedom to do” is also constrained when an individual is harmed. Obviously, if an individual is killed by a gunman or a virus, or even hospitalized by COVID-19, he has lost freedom in a meaningful sense, and we then have a dramatic illustration of Berlin’s dictum: Freedom for some—the freedom to carry guns, or to not be masked, or to be unvaccinated—may entail a large loss of freedom for others.

The same principle applies to the international arena. The rules-based trade system consists of a set of rules intended to expand the freedoms of all in a meaningful way by imposing constraints. The idea that constraints can be freeing, while seemingly self-contradictory, is obvious: Stoplights force us to take turns going through intersections, but without this seeming constraint, there would be gridlock and no one would be able to move.

All contracts are agreements about constraints—with one party agreeing to do or not do something in return for another person making other promises—with the belief that in doing so, all parties will be better off. Of course, if one party cheats and doesn’t deliver on its promise, then that party gains at the expense of others. And there is always the temptation to do so, which is why we require governments to enforce contracts, so that promises mean something. No government could enforce all contracts, and the so-called free market would crash if all participants were grifters.

But while there are similarities between discussions of freedom at the individual level and the country level, there are also a couple of big differences. Most importantly, there is no global government to ensure that the powerful countries obey an agreement, as we are seeing today in the case of U.S. industrial subsidies. The World Trade Organization (WTO) generally forbids such subsidies and especially disapproves of some of the provisions—such as requiring domestic manufacturing (“Made in America”)—in legislation passed recently by the U.S. Congress, including the CHIPS and Science Act .

Big Tech Is Trying to Prevent Debate About Its Social Harms

The industry’s “digital trade” strategy seeks to preemptively constrain governments.

The Global Credibility Gap

No one power or group can uphold the international order anymore—and that means much more geopolitical uncertainty ahead.

Moreover, within democratic countries, the role of power in the making and enforcement of the rules is often obscure; we know that inequalities in wealth and income get translated into inequalities in political power, which determines who gets to design the rules and how they are enforced. An imbalance of power means that the powerful within a country determine the rules in ways that benefit them, often at the expense of the weak.

Still, the democratic context means that every once in a while, power is checked—as it was when the antitrust laws were passed in the United States in the latter part of the 19th century, or the Wagner Act was passed during the New Deal of the 1930s, giving workers more power.

In an international setting, power is even more concentrated, and democratic forces are even weaker. What has happened in the past few years illustrates this. The United States was at the center in constructing the rules-based system, in both designing the rules and how they were to be enforced, including dispute resolutions through the WTO’s Appellate Body.  But when the rules—such as those concerning industrial subsidies—were inconvenient, it decided to ignore them, knowing that there was little, if anything, that any country could or would do about it. So much for the rules-based system.

And the United States’ confidence that nothing could or would be done was reinforced by the fact that it had effectively defenestrated the Appellate Body, because that Body had made decisions it didn’t like, and the U.S. thought that the Body was guilty of overreaching, going beyond what it was entitled to do. But rather than going back to the WTO and clarifying what the Body’s role should be, the U.S. simply hamstrung any adjudication within the WTO. The situation would be like suspending the U.S. Supreme Court while figuring out how to bring the justices back to a reasonable theory of jurisprudence.

This imbalance of power has played out repeatedly in recent years. When developed countries attempted to implement industrial policies—even mild policies, such as Brazil’s effort to provide capital to aerospace corporation Embraer at reasonable interest rates through that country’s development bank (as opposed to the outlandishly high rates then prevailing in its financial markets)—they were attacked . When Indonesia tried to ensure that more of the added value associated with its rich nickel deposits remained in Indonesia, it was attacked .

People line up to receive the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccination at a local hospital in in Harare, Zimbabwe, on March 29, 2021. Tafadzwa Ufumeli/Getty Images

Even worse, when more than 100 countries proposed a waiver of intellectual property related to COVID-19—in the spirit of the compulsory licenses already seemingly part of the WTO framework, but given the urgency of the moment, a less bureaucratic process was of the essence—they were denied. The result: vaccine apartheid , where the advanced countries had all the vaccines they wanted, and the developing countries had almost zero access. This almost surely resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths and tens of thousands of unnecessary hospitalizations in the poorer countries.

These are obviously no small matters in the well-being of citizens around the world, especially not for developing countries and emerging markets. Nor are they small matters in geoeconomics and geopolitics. The neoliberal rules forbidding subsidies effectively meant that developing countries couldn’t catch up to the advanced countries; the rules condemned them to being commodity producers, reserving the higher value-added production for the advanced countries.

This tariff structure has been rightly criticized as a crucial tool in the preservation of colonial trade patterns—aided and abetted by other unfair aspects of the trade regime, such as escalating tariffs. As economist Ha-Joon Chang has put it , the advanced countries “kicked away the ladder” from which they themselves had used.

It should be clear, too, that there are geopolitical consequences in refusing to play by the rules. The United States and the advanced countries are losing support for some of the most important issues requiring global cooperation, including climate change , global health, and the support needed to resolve the conflict in Ukraine as well as Washington’s apparent battle for democracy and hegemony with China.

The global south may yet steer the ship of international rules back on course. When the United States was the hegemon, it could do as it wanted, but its influence is now being challenged. China has provided more infrastructure than the United States has; early on in the pandemic, both China and Russia seemed more generous in providing vaccines.

Washington told the developing countries to open their doors to its multinationals, but when those countries asked that the rich corporations pay the taxes they owed, the United States was not supportive—reforms under an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development initiative called BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) generated sparse revenues for the poorer countries, and in return, the developing countries were asked to forego digital taxation. When, accordingly, the African Union asked for a change in venue of the discussions of global tax reform to the United Nations, the United States not only opposed it , but also tried to strong-arm others to do so. Last November, the United States lost the vote overwhelmingly at the U.N.

So whither goes global governance? In the absence of rules, the law of the jungle prevails. While the United States might win that fight, it would simultaneously lose the cooperation it needs so badly in a host of arenas. Overall, it would lose.

It is in the interests of the United States to abandon the corporate-driven rules-based system and work instead to create a set of at least basic rules that would reflect common interests. For instance, instead of the comprehensive so-called free trade agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership , that were really managed trade agreements (and managed specifically in the interests of Big Pharma and some of the big polluters), the United States should have narrow agreements—say, a green agreement to share knowledge and technology, promote sustainable forests, and work together to save the planet.

We need agreements that do more to constrain the large countries—whose actions can hurt the global economy—and do less to constrain the small, whose actions have little global consequences.

For instance, we need rules that would constrain the European Union and the United States from using monetary policy in ways that benefit their economies at the expense of others, as the United States has repeatedly done. Today, even the United States recognizes that investment agreements (such as NAFTA’s infamous Chapter 11 ) that allow corporations to sue states actually exert constraints on sovereignty without commensurate benefits. A key difference between NAFTA and the trade agreement that succeeded it is the effective dropping of Chapter 11. But the United States should go further, strengthening the ability of any government party to an agreement to sue corporations when terms of the agreement have been violated.

To win the hearts and minds in the new cold war brewing between the United States and China, the United States needs to do more. Washington needs to use the money it has to provide assistance to the poor, and the power that it possesses to construct rules that are fair. Nowhere is that more evident than in response to the debt crisis that the United States faces today and the recent pandemic, another of which the world will almost surely face in the future.

An aerial view shows open graves, left, near recent burials at a cemetery in São Paulo, Brazil, on May 22, 2021, during a surge of deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic. Mario Tama/Getty Images

With most sovereign debt contracts written in the United States, Washington has the power to change the legal framework governing these contracts in ways that make the resolution of crises—where countries can’t pay back what they owe—faster and better. This approach would address the “too little, too late” problem by which one crisis is followed by another, which has plagued the world for so long. With more creditors entering the field, debt resolution is becoming ever more difficult. There are important proposals currently before the New York legislature (where most of the money is raised), but support from the Biden administration would be enormously helpful.

The world has just gone through a terrible pandemic, and the recognition that there will be another has spurred work on a proposed pandemic preparedness treaty. Unfortunately, under the influence of Big Pharma, there are no provisions in the treaty for the kind of intellectual property waiver that the world so badly needs, let alone the technology transfer that would allow the production of all the products—protective gear, vaccines, and therapeutics—necessary to fight the next disease that strikes.

The freedom to live is the most important freedom that we have. Our global agreements have not balanced our freedoms in the way they should. Better global agreements can benefit all countries, though not necessarily all people within them: Such agreements would constrain the power of the exploiters to exploit the rest of us, thereby making a dent on their bottom line, but they would benefit society more generally.

Striving to create global agreements that are fair and generous to the poor would, I believe, be in the United States’ self-interest—in its “enlightened” self-interest, taking into account the new geoeconomics and geopolitics. It was never in the United States’ self-interest to pursue a corporatist global agenda, even when it was the hegemon. But it is especially not so today.

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Joseph E. Stiglitz is a Nobel laureate in economics and a professor at Columbia University. Twitter:  @JosephEStiglitz

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Introductory essay

Written by the educators who created Cyber-Influence and Power, a brief look at the key facts, tough questions and big ideas in their field. Begin this TED Study with a fascinating read that gives context and clarity to the material.

Each and every one of us has a vital part to play in building the kind of world in which government and technology serve the world’s people and not the other way around. Rebecca MacKinnon

Over the past 20 years, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have transformed the globe, facilitating the international economic, political, and cultural connections and exchanges that are at the heart of contemporary globalization processes. The term ICT is broad in scope, encompassing both the technological infrastructure and products that facilitate the collection, storage, manipulation, and distribution of information in a variety of formats.

While there are many definitions of globalization, most would agree that the term refers to a variety of complex social processes that facilitate worldwide economic, cultural, and political connections and exchanges. The kinds of global connections ICTs give rise to mark a dramatic departure from the face-to-face, time and place dependent interactions that characterized communication throughout most of human history. ICTs have extended human interaction and increased our interconnectedness, making it possible for geographically dispersed people not only to share information at an ever-faster rate but also to organize and to take action in response to events occurring in places far from where they are physically situated.

While these complex webs of connections can facilitate positive collective action, they can also put us at risk. As TED speaker Ian Goldin observes, the complexity of our global connections creates a built-in fragility: What happens in one part of the world can very quickly affect everyone, everywhere.

The proliferation of ICTs and the new webs of social connections they engender have had profound political implications for governments, citizens, and non-state actors alike. Each of the TEDTalks featured in this course explore some of these implications, highlighting the connections and tensions between technology and politics. Some speakers focus primarily on how anti-authoritarian protesters use technology to convene and organize supporters, while others expose how authoritarian governments use technology to manipulate and control individuals and groups. When viewed together as a unit, the contrasting voices reveal that technology is a contested site through which political power is both exercised and resisted.

Technology as liberator

The liberating potential of technology is a powerful theme taken up by several TED speakers in Cyber-Influence and Power . Journalist and Global Voices co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon, for example, begins her talk by playing the famous Orwell-inspired Apple advertisement from 1984. Apple created the ad to introduce Macintosh computers, but MacKinnon describes Apple's underlying narrative as follows: "technology created by innovative companies will set us all free." While MacKinnon examines this narrative with a critical eye, other TED speakers focus on the ways that ICTs can and do function positively as tools of social change, enabling citizens to challenge oppressive governments.

In a 2011 CNN interview, Egyptian protest leader, Google executive, and TED speaker Wael Ghonim claimed "if you want to free a society, just give them internet access. The young crowds are going to all go out and see and hear the unbiased media, see the truth about other nations and their own nation, and they are going to be able to communicate and collaborate together." (i). In this framework, the opportunities for global information sharing, borderless communication, and collaboration that ICTs make possible encourage the spread of democracy. As Ghonim argues, when citizens go online, they are likely to discover that their particular government's perspective is only one among many. Activists like Ghonim maintain that exposure to this online free exchange of ideas will make people less likely to accept government propaganda and more likely to challenge oppressive regimes.

A case in point is the controversy that erupted around Khaled Said, a young Egyptian man who died after being arrested by Egyptian police. The police claimed that Said suffocated when he attempted to swallow a bag of hashish; witnesses, however, reported that he was beaten to death by the police. Stories about the beating and photos of Said's disfigured body circulated widely in online communities, and Ghonim's Facebook group, titled "We are all Khaled Said," is widely credited with bringing attention to Said's death and fomenting the discontent that ultimately erupted in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, or what Ghonim refers to as "revolution 2.0."

Ghonim's Facebook group also illustrates how ICTs enable citizens to produce and broadcast information themselves. Many people already take for granted the ability to capture images and video via handheld devices and then upload that footage to platforms like YouTube. As TED speaker Clay Shirky points out, our ability to produce and widely distribute information constitutes a revolutionary change in media production and consumption patterns. The production of media has typically been very expensive and thus out of reach for most individuals; the average person was therefore primarily a consumer of media, reading books, listening to the radio, watching TV, going to movies, etc. Very few could independently publish their own books or create and distribute their own radio programs, television shows, or movies. ICTs have disrupted this configuration, putting media production in the hands of individual amateurs on a budget — or what Shirky refers to as members of "the former audience" — alongside the professionals backed by multi-billion dollar corporations. This "democratization of media" allows individuals to create massive amounts of information in a variety of formats and to distribute it almost instantly to a potentially global audience.

Shirky is especially interested in the Internet as "the first medium in history that has native support for groups and conversations at the same time." This shift has important political implications. For example, in 2008 many Obama followers used Obama's own social networking site to express their unhappiness when the presidential candidate changed his position on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The outcry of his supporters did not force Obama to revert to his original position, but it did help him realize that he needed to address his supporters directly, acknowledging their disagreement on the issue and explaining his position. Shirky observes that this scenario was also notable because the Obama organization realized that "their role was to convene their supporters but not to control their supporters." This tension between the use of technology in the service of the democratic impulse to convene citizens vs. the authoritarian impulse to control them runs throughout many of the TEDTalks in Cyber-Influence and Power.

A number of TED speakers explicitly examine the ways that ICTs give individual citizens the ability to document governmental abuses they witness and to upload this information to the Internet for a global audience. Thus, ICTs can empower citizens by giving them tools that can help keep their governments accountable. The former head of Al Jazeera and TED speaker Wadah Khanfar provides some very clear examples of the political power of technology in the hands of citizens. He describes how the revolution in Tunisia was delivered to the world via cell phones, cameras, and social media outlets, with the mainstream media relying on "citizen reporters" for details.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown's TEDTalk also highlights some of the ways citizens have used ICTs to keep their governments accountable. For example, Brown recounts how citizens in Zimbabwe used the cameras on their phones at polling places in order to discourage the Mugabe regime from engaging in electoral fraud. Similarly, Clay Shirky begins his TEDTalk with a discussion of how cameras on phones were used to combat voter suppression in the 2008 presidential election in the U.S. ICTs allowed citizens to be protectors of the democratic process, casting their individual votes but also, as Shirky observes, helping to "ensure the sanctity of the vote overall."

Technology as oppressor

While smart phones and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have arguably facilitated the overthrow of dictatorships in places like Tunisia and Egypt, lending credence to Gordon Brown's vision of technology as an engine of liberalism and pluralism, not everyone shares this view. As TED speaker and former religious extremist Maajid Nawaz points out, there is nothing inherently liberating about ICTs, given that they frequently are deployed to great effect by extremist organizations seeking social changes that are often inconsistent with democracy and human rights. Where once individual extremists might have felt isolated and alone, disconnected from like-minded people and thus unable to act in concert with others to pursue their agendas, ICTs allow them to connect with other extremists and to form communities around their ideas, narratives, and symbols.

Ian Goldin shares this concern, warning listeners about what he calls the "two Achilles heels of globalization": growing inequality and the fragility that is inherent in a complex integrated system. He points out that those who do not experience the benefits of globalization, who feel like they've been left out in one way or another, can potentially become incredibly dangerous. In a world where what happens in one place very quickly affects everyone else — and where technologies are getting ever smaller and more powerful — a single angry individual with access to technological resources has the potential to do more damage than ever before. The question becomes then, how do we manage the systemic risk inherent in today's technology-infused globalized world? According to Goldin, our current governance structures are "fossilized" and ill-equipped to deal with these issues.

Other critics of the notion that ICTs are inherently liberating point out that ICTs have been leveraged effectively by oppressive governments to solidify their own power and to manipulate, spy upon, and censor their citizens. Journalist and TED speaker Evgeny Morozov expresses scepticism about what he calls "iPod liberalism," or the belief that technology will necessarily lead to the fall of dictatorships and the emergence of democratic governments. Morozov uses the term "spinternet" to describe authoritarian governments' use of the Internet to provide their own "spin" on issues and events. Russia, China, and Iran, he argues, have all trained and paid bloggers to promote their ideological agendas in the online environment and/or or to attack people writing posts the government doesn't like in an effort to discredit them as spies or criminals who should not be trusted.

Morozov also points out that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are tools not only of revolutionaries but also of authoritarian governments who use them to gather open-source intelligence. "In the past," Morozov maintains, "it would take you weeks, if not months, to identify how Iranian activists connect to each other. Now you know how they connect to each other by looking at their Facebook page. KGB...used to torture in order to get this data." Instead of focusing primarily on bringing Internet access and devices to the people in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, Morozov argues that we need to abandon our cyber-utopian assumptions and do more to actually empower intellectuals, dissidents, NGOs and other members of society, making sure that the "spinternet" does not prevent their voices from being heard.

The ICT Empowered Individual vs. The Nation State

In her TEDTalk "Let's Take Back the Internet," Rebecca MacKinnon argues that "the only legitimate purpose of government is to serve citizens, and…the only legitimate purpose of technology is to improve our lives, not to manipulate or enslave us." It is clearly not a given, however, that governments, organizations, and individuals will use technology benevolently. Part of the responsibility of citizenship in the globalized information age then is to work to ensure that both governments and technologies "serve the world's peoples." However, there is considerable disagreement about what that might look like.

WikiLeaks spokesperson and TED speaker Julian Assange, for example, argues that government secrecy is inconsistent with democratic values and is ultimately about deceiving and manipulating rather than serving the world's people. Others maintain that governments need to be able to keep secrets about some topics in order to protect their citizens or to act effectively in response to crises, oppressive regimes, terrorist organizations, etc. While some view Assange's use of technology as a way to hold governments accountable and to increase transparency, others see this use of technology as a criminal act with the potential to both undermine stable democracies and put innocent lives in danger.

ICTs and global citizenship

While there are no easy answers to the global political questions raised by the proliferation of ICTs, there are relatively new approaches to the questions that look promising, including the emergence of individuals who see themselves as global citizens — people who participate in a global civil society that transcends national boundaries. Technology facilitates global citizens' ability to learn about global issues, to connect with others who care about similar issues, and to organize and act meaningfully in response. However, global citizens are also aware that technology in and of itself is no panacea, and that it can be used to manipulate and oppress.

Global citizens fight against oppressive uses of technology, often with technology. Technology helps them not only to participate in global conversations that affect us all but also to amplify the voices of those who have been marginalized or altogether missing from such conversations. Moreover, global citizens are those who are willing to grapple with large and complex issues that are truly global in scope and who attempt to chart a course forward that benefits all people, regardless of their locations around the globe.

Gordon Brown implicitly alludes to the importance of global citizenship when he states that we need a global ethic of fairness and responsibility to inform global problem-solving. Human rights, disease, development, security, terrorism, climate change, and poverty are among the issues that cannot be addressed successfully by any one nation alone. Individual actors (nation states, NGOs, etc.) can help, but a collective of actors, both state and non-state, is required. Brown suggests that we must combine the power of a global ethic with the power to communicate and organize globally in order for us to address effectively the world's most pressing issues.

Individuals and groups today are able to exert influence that is disproportionate to their numbers and the size of their arsenals through their use of "soft power" techniques, as TED speakers Joseph Nye and Shashi Tharoor observe. This is consistent with Maajid Nawaz's discussion of the power of symbols and narratives. Small groups can develop powerful narratives that help shape the views and actions of people around the world. While governments are far more accustomed to exerting power through military force, they might achieve their interests more effectively by implementing soft power strategies designed to convince others that they want the same things. According to Nye, replacing a "zero-sum" approach (you must lose in order for me to win) with a "positive-sum" one (we can both win) creates opportunities for collaboration, which is necessary if we are to begin to deal with problems that are global in scope.

Let's get started

Collectively, the TEDTalks in this course explore how ICTs are used by and against governments, citizens, activists, revolutionaries, extremists, and other political actors in efforts both to preserve and disrupt the status quo. They highlight the ways that ICTs have opened up new forms of communication and activism as well as how the much-hailed revolutionary power of ICTs can and has been co-opted by oppressive regimes to reassert their control.

By listening to the contrasting voices of this diverse group of TED speakers, which includes activists, journalists, professors, politicians, and a former member of an extremist organization, we can begin to develop a more nuanced understanding of the ways that technology can be used both to facilitate and contest a wide variety of political movements. Global citizens who champion democracy would do well to explore these intersections among politics and technology, as understanding these connections is a necessary first step toward MacKinnon's laudable goal of building a world in which "government and technology serve the world's people and not the other way around."

Let's begin our exploration of the intersections among politics and technology in today's globalized world with a TEDTalk from Ian Goldin, the first Director of the 21st Century School, Oxford University's think tank/research center. Goldin's talk will set the stage for us, exploring the integrated, complex, and technology rich global landscape upon which the political struggles for power examined by other TED speakers play out.

Navigating our global future

i. "Welcome to Revolution 2.0, Ghonim Says," CNN, February 9, 2011. http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/02/09/wael.ghonim.interview.cnn .

Relevant talks

Gordon Brown

Wiring a web for global good.

Clay Shirky

How social media can make history.

Wael Ghonim

Inside the egyptian revolution.

Wadah Khanfar

A historic moment in the arab world.

Evgeny Morozov

How the net aids dictatorships.

Maajid Nawaz

A global culture to fight extremism.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Let's take back the internet.

Julian Assange

Why the world needs wikileaks.

Global power shifts

Shashi Tharoor

Why nations should pursue soft power.

The case for global governance of AI: arguments, counter-arguments, and challenges ahead

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It is increasingly recognized that as artificial intelligence becomes more powerful and pervasive in society and creates risks and ethical issues that cross borders, a global approach is needed for the governance of these risks. But why, exactly, do we need this and what does that mean? In this Open Forum paper, author argues for global governance of AI for moral reasons but also outlines the governance challenges that this project raises.

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Recently there have been more calls for a global approach to the governance of AI across international organizations, industry, and academia. The UN’s Secretary-General and his Envoy on Technology, for example, have called for globally coordinated AI governance as ‘the only way to harness AI for humanity while addressing its risks and uncertainties’. Footnote 1 Earlier a Resolution adopted by the UN’s General Assembly called for improving digital cooperation and deliberation using the UN as a platform for stakeholders, Footnote 2 thus preparing work on global governance. In September, the G20 leaders called in New Delhi for global governance for AI to harness AI for ‘Good and for All’. Footnote 3 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called for coordinated international regulation of generative AI. Footnote 4 And while still relatively rare, several academics have discussed how to achieve global governance of AI, often calling for new policies and new institutions (Erman and Furendal 2022 ; Dafoe 2018 ) and recognizing existing and emerging initiatives and regimes (Schmitt 2022 ; Butcher and Beridze 2019 ; Veale et al. 2023 ), also from non-governmental and non-profit directions. For example, next to the AI for Good summits Footnote 5 that have discussed how AI can contribute to solving global, the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has its Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems Footnote 6 and in May 2021, the International Congress for the Governance of AI (ICGAI) held its first conference in Prague. Footnote 7

But why, exactly, is global governance needed, and what form can and should it take?

The main argument for the global governance of AI, which is also applicable to digital technologies in general, is essentially a moral one: as AI technologies become increasingly powerful and influential, we have the moral responsibility to ensure that it benefits humanity as a whole and that we deal with the global risks and the ethical and societal issues that arise from the technology, including privacy issues, security and military uses, bias and fairness, responsibility attribution, transparency, job displacement, safety, manipulation, and AI’s environmental impact. Since the effects of AI cross borders, so the argument continues, global cooperation and global governance are the only means to fully and effectively exercise that moral responsibility and ensure responsible innovation and use of technology to increase the well-being for all and preserve peace; national regulation is not sufficient.

Some might add that the alternative to global governance is a race to the bottom: a kind of Hobbesian situation in which nations engage in a competitive race without heeding ethical standards, safety, and accountability, resulting in widespread injustice and inequality, displacement, security problems, power concentration, and perhaps even totalitarianism. Just as Hobbes thought that individuals left to themselves and not ruled by a state authority would render the life of individuals nasty, brutish, and short, one could argue that nation states left without global governance would result in a global disastrous situation where only some nations and their citizens benefit from the technology and others suffer. A global authority that reigns in the power of the individual nation states could solve this situation. A similar Hobbesian argument can and has been made regarding the climate crisis and other global challenges (Saetra 2022 ).

The Hobbesian for of the global governance of AI argument is not absolutely necessary, at least not in that form. Without world government, one could argue, the situation might not be as bleak as sketched here. There is already regulation at national and even supranational level. The EU, for example, will implement its AI Act, Biden recently issued an Executive Order to create A.I. safeguards, Footnote 8 and China has published rules for generative AI. Footnote 9 However, while this objection defuses the specific Hobbesian view, it does not undermine the general moral argument for global governance of AI: with national regulation in place in some countries, the world might get less nasty for some (e.g., for EU citizens), but such islands of regulation do not benefit those who do not have the luck to live in these parts of the world. In other words, even without a race to the bottom everywhere and for everyone, the general argument still holds. For sake of justice, equality, and inclusion, we need a global governance framework, regardless of national regulation.

Sometimes the argument is made that AI will accelerate and that we need global governance given the risks of AGI (Artificial General Artificial Intelligence)—intelligence comparable to human intelligence—or superintelligence. It is argued that AGI might be in charge of global governance or may lead to (other) global existential risks. Sam Altman and Geoffrey Hinton, for instance, hold this view. Footnote 10 Mitigating such risks, including risk of extinction from AI, is then a reason for global governance. While neither the acceleration thesis nor this view concerning the existential risks of AGI are shared by everyone in the scientific community, they have received increasing attention and are currently influencing AI policy—not only in the US but also in the EU, for example. I am very concerned about this development, if only since it contributes to increased power of people like Altman: they do not only create the problem but also claim to sell the solution, which gives them a unique undemocratic position of power. However, regardless of one’s view on these matters, it is important to see that the world governance of AI argument does not depend on it. Just as a specific Hobbesian version is not necessary, a specific AGI version of the argument is also not necessary for it to work. Even without the supposed risks that might be created by AGI (if such a thing would ever exist), there are sufficient risks left and there is sufficient moral reason to mitigate them. Not believing in the possibility of AGI or in the acceleration thesis is not an excuse to reject global governance of AI.

A more challenging range of counter-arguments, however, has to do with the precise form global governance of AI can and should take. These counter-arguments point to important challenges for those who support this project and wish to implement it, and deserve careful consideration.

A first objection is that global governance is undemocratic. Here the assumption is that global governance means establishing a world government and that a world government is necessarily undemocratic. But these assumptions do not hold. Global governance can in principle be organized in a (more) democratic way, for instance, more democratic than currently the UN works, and there is no obvious reason why world governance should be organized along the lines of the nation state (or any particular nation state for that matter). If we can find a way to do this differently but still establishing sufficient authority then let us do that. In the history of politics and political theory, it has always been a challenge to combine legitimacy and authority; this is not different in this case. Supporters of global governance of AI, therefore, can (and do) argue that they want a multistakeholder approach and want inclusivity and participation not only in terms of AI ethics but also when it comes to the global governance process. For example, the UN has recently established a multistakeholder advisory body on AI. Footnote 11 While this is arguably not democratic enough since it is composed of a rather selective membership, there is a growing awareness of the need for inclusivity and democratisation. Moreover, global agencies and (other) authorities are just one form global governance can take; there are also councils, international agreements, and other instruments of global governance. That being said, how to organize global governance remains a challenge and requires much more research and innovation efforts. Unfortunately, usually the degree and pace of institutional and political innovation does not match the speed of technological development. This needs to change. Institutions needed to be created that can respond faster to technological developments.

Another objection is that global governance of AI is unrealistic and too idealistic: that nation states are not, and will not be, willing to give up national sovereignty and delegate power to a global governance entity or framework, and that even if they would do so, it would be difficult to enforce anything since they would anyway do what they want. This objection can have two faces: a normative and a descriptive one. If the point is that we should not delegate this to supranational governance then one can reply with the moral imperative that we should do something about the risks and ethical problems; in other words, one can reiterate the main argument. If the point is that, as a matter-of-fact, nations are not and would not be willing to do this; one could point to existing global governance in other technological areas such as aviation and nuclear technology, and point to current and emerging initiatives that get the support of nation states. For example, those who argue for global regulation of AI often refer to the current nuclear governance model. Altman has used the analogy and UN Secretary Antonio Guterres has proposed the establishment of an international AI agency akin to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Footnote 12 While there are good reasons to be sceptical about the comparison between AI and nuclear weapons (Does AI pose existential risk similar to nuclear weapons, if it poses an existential risk at all? Does this distract us from real and known risks? And are nuclear weapons not easier to control given that they need specific resources? Footnote 13 ), the example shows that it is not only desirable but also possible to reach agreements about global regulation of technology. The UN’s history when it comes to nuclear, aviation, and indeed climate change (Guterres also referred to the IPCC) shows that it is perfectly possible to come to new rules, treaties, and agencies at a global level in response to global threats.

A third potential weakness of the argument concerns, surprisingly perhaps, its moral component. The argument seems to assume that we all agree on AI ethics. But, so this objection goes, apart from nations having different interests (a point that is somewhat covered in the previous paragraph), they might also have different values. Given cultural diversity across the world, so it is argued, it is unlikely that nations might agree on a global governance framework. In response, one may point again to the fact that this has so far not been a barrier for international cooperation and global governance. Consider for instance human rights frameworks and their supranational institutions at UN and EU level, which despite being subject to decades of philosophical criticism that stresses difference and diversity, have been at least partly successful as a form of global governance by focusing on what we have in common as humans. And currently there seems consensus rather than divergence within the AI ethics community. Even if there is valid criticism that points to the danger of neo-colonialism and hegemony, ethical frameworks in this area look surprisingly similar and seem to have found some kind of pool of shared values. Consider for example UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, which lists a number of such values. Footnote 14 Moreover, from a philosophical point of view, it can be argued—as is done in the case of human rights for example—that while it is important to respect diversity and difference, humans also share a lot of needs, interests, and values, regardless their differences in terms of citizenship, culture, and identity. In other words, it is both possible and desirable to establish a global ethics, including a global AI ethics. Yet the objection does help to create sensitivity and awareness of the importance of respect for diversity and in this context must be seen as a call for creating global governance of AI in a global-inclusive way—for example, in a way that includes the Global South—and in a way that avoids the instalment of (another?) unjust and hegemonic regime. Global governance of AI can only succeed if it has broad global support across cultures and continents and takes into account all these values and interests.

Finally, there might be the worry that global governance of AI might hinder technological innovation. For example, in the process towards the E.U.’s AI Act, OpenAI and other big tech companies have expressed concerns about this Footnote 15 ; similar concerns exist concerning global governance of AI. But this is a familiar discussion also at the national level, and is not as such a good objection to global governance. What I currently see is that the tech industry itself also calls for regulation of AI, both at national level and at global level. The argument, I guess, is that innovation can only succeed if there is a regulative framework that brings more certainty and stability in this turbulent policy area, and that makes sure that the technology can be used and developed in a safe and ethical way. It is in the long-term interest of innovation and business that there is a robust and integrated global governance framework. The extent and nature of that framework may be under discussion—as it should be—and that discussion may well have to include this concern about protecting innovation, but this can hardly be an argument against a global approach. At most, it signals that there are of course power interests at play here, also at the global level. Big tech companies risk to monopolize both the development and the regulation of AI, at least those AI systems that are currently most successful and pervasive. The global governance of AI project questions this monopoly and rightly asks these companies to share the responsibility for better AI and a better world with global frameworks and global institutions that represent and protect citizens and their communities and cultures. How they can and should do this is a huge challenge, but this problem should not justify halting efforts towards more global governance of AI.

In conclusion, here is a good argument for global governance of AI, based on moral reasons and aimed at avoiding a situation in which only some citizens and countries benefit from AI whereas others have to deal with most of the risks and ethical issues. Objections that the global governance of AI project would necessarily be undemocratic, unrealistic, not respecting diversity, and hindering innovation, can be countered. Nevertheless, these objections point to challenging issues that the UN and other actors in this global policy arena will have to deal with in the coming years when trying to build this global governance framework. More research in this area is urgently required to support these efforts.

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In solidarity with a rising Global South

China, which is committed to building a community with a shared future for mankind, stands firmly alongside other developing countries to increase their representation and influence in global governance

The Global South, which refers to countries that are not fully industrialized and uphold the principles of independence, is playing an increasingly important role in major-country relations, regional conflicts and global governance.

Major-country competition has provided the Global South more room for choice. Another reason is the Ukraine crisis. The United States has been imposing sanctions against Russia since 2014. The European Union has imposed 11 rounds of sanctions against Russia since the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis. As of April 2023, the US-led West had imposed over 8,000 sanctions against Russia. However, many Global South countries continue to develop cooperative relations with Russia, upsetting the US and the EU's project of isolating and blocking Russia.

Not taking sides between Russia and the US-led West is clear evidence of the Global South emerging as a strategic force.

In addition, Global South countries have chosen not to take sides in the major-country competition between the US and China. For instance, in a number of regional and multilateral cooperation frameworks such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum, the East Asia Summit and APEC Summit, countries have demonstrated their reluctance to choose sides between China and the US. Instead, they have adopted a hedging strategy by trying to strike a balance.

Since the end of the Cold War, global problems — such as international terrorism, the global financial crisis, global climate change, global energy landscape adjustments, the rise of artificial intelligence, the global COVID-19 pandemic and global supply chain adjustments — have presented common challenges to the entire world. No single country can solve these problems by itself. All countries, including the Global South and the Global North, should vigorously participate in the reform and construction of the global governance system and work together to tackle those challenges.

To start with, the strategic influence of the Global South comes from their participation in the reform and construction of the global governance system.

The common interest of the Global South lies in promoting its modernization and maintaining its political independence, neither being dependent on a major power nor becoming part of major-country rivalry. They seek to pursue a unique and successful path of modernization in line with their own national conditions.

After World War II, led by the US, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and other victorious countries, an international political security order centered on the United Nations system and an international economic and financial order centered on the Bretton Woods system were established. However, the system and order mainly reflected the interests and demands of those developed countries, while a vast number of Global South countries had not yet gained independence from the system of imperialism and colonialism.

Thus, there exist unjust and unreasonable aspects in the global governance system. The say and representation of the Global South have been greatly restricted. After more than 70 years of development, the global governance system is facing many difficulties, and reform is a major trend.

Second, as the biggest victim of global problems, the Global South is a firm practitioner in promoting reform and construction of the global governance system.

At present, economic globalization is facing headwinds, global climate change is intensifying, the energy landscape is undergoing a profound transformation, infectious diseases are ravaging the world, global supply and industry chains are being profoundly restructured, and AI technology is progressing with each passing day. Problems caused by these ongoing global changes have exerted enormous pressure on Global South countries.

Peace, stability and sustained development have always been the core demands of countries in the Global South. Thus, they have been actively seeking the reform and construction of the global governance system. The international community should listen carefully to the voice of the Global South, actively adopt their proposals, and support them to become important participants in the reform and construction of the global governance system.

Third, the reform and construction of the global governance system is a systematic project, a unity of reform and creation.

On the one hand, active participation in the reform of the global governance system is imperative for Global South countries.

They can play a constructive role in the reform of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, strengthen solidarity and cooperation among Global South countries, advance the development of cooperative partners for global governance, strive to expand consensus as much as possible, and enhance the representation and voice of developing countries in the reform of the global governance system.

On the other hand, Global South countries can play a pivotal role in the process of creating new international mechanisms for global climate change, digital transformation and supply chain adjustment, among others, by contributing their wisdom and strength.

Fourth, in order to promote the reform and construction of the global governance system, the Global South should focus on strengthening capacity-building.

Global South countries started the modernization process later than Global North countries. They thus have structural shortcomings, particularly in terms of experience, knowledge and talent in global governance.

Consequently, it will be beneficial for countries in the Global South to focus on the topic of reform and construction of the global governance system, foster global governance talents, strengthen the construction of the subject system, academic system and discourse system of global governance, and cultivate a large number of high-caliber global governance talents who know the South, know the world, know the rules and are good at negotiations.

The countries of the Global South could consider not only stepping up the training of globally competent talents, but also actively provide international organizations, transnational corporations and NGOs with excellent talents in global governance, so as to enable them to represent the Global South in the reform and construction of the global governance system at all levels and in all areas of the international community.

Looking ahead, the Global South is making robust progress, with huge potential waiting to be tapped. They are an important force for promoting global development, maintaining global security, and deepening the reform of global governance.

China is a natural member of the Global South. China and other Global South countries share a similar history, a common position as developing countries, and common interests in pursuing development, which make them natural allies in promoting the reform and construction of the global governance system.

China is committed to building a community with a shared future for mankind, and promoting the common values of mankind — peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom, standing firmly on the side of Global South countries, speaking out for Global South countries, actively participating in the reform and construction of the global governance system, and continuously increasing the representation, voice and influence of Global South countries.

The author is deputy dean of the School of Social Sciences and vice-president of the Institute for Global Development at Tsinghua University. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at [email protected].

Data Science Journal

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Research Papers

Unrestricted versus regulated open data governance: a bibliometric comparison of sars-cov-2 nucleotide sequence databases.

• Nathanael Sheehan
• Federico Botta
• Sabina Leonelli

Two distinct modes of data governance have emerged in accessing and reusing viral data pertaining to COVID-19: an unrestricted model, espoused by data repositories part of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration and a regulated model promoted by the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza data. In this paper, we focus on publications mentioning either infrastructure in the period between January 2020 and January 2023, thus capturing a period of acute response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a variety of bibliometric and network science methods, we compare the extent to which either data infrastructure facilitated collaboration from different countries around the globe to understand how data reuse can enhance forms of diversity between institutions, countries, and funding groups. Our findings reveal disparities in representation and usage between the two data infrastructures. We conclude that both approaches offer useful lessons, with the unrestricted model providing insights into complex data linkage and the regulated model demonstrating the importance of global representation.

• Genomic Data Sharing
• Data Infrastructures
• Data Governance
• Open Science
• Metascience

1 Introduction

To date, no other scientific data has been shared as widely as the genetic information on the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the 2019 pandemic. This phenomenon has led some scholars, such as Leach ( 2021 ), to argue that, alongside the COVID-19 pandemic, we are witnessing another kind of outbreak, where the act of sharing data has evolved into active participation in Open Science, giving rise to an ‘open data pandemic’. While the notions of Open Data (OD) and Open Science (OS) have been topics of discourse among scientists, philosophers, and policymakers for well over two decades, they have gained unprecedented prominence during the COVID-19 crisis both within and outside of science. This surge in interest and application reflects a broader call for increased transparency, inclusivity and accountability in data-centric research ( Burgelman et al. 2019 ). This push towards openness has led to numerous national and international policies implementing infrastructures, principles and resources in a top-down fashion, which is not always aligned with what specific groups of actors understand responsible OD or OS to be ( Leonelli 2023 ).

This study focuses on the contrasting repertoires ( Ankeny and Leonelli 2016 ) of data governance that have arisen in accessing and reusing viral data concerning SARS-CoV-2. So far, at least two distinct models have emerged: the unrestricted model endorsed by data repositories within the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC RRID:SCR_011967) and the regulated model promoted by the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza data (GISAID RRID:SCR_018251). 1 The former encourages free access to data with no constraints, emphasising interpretable and rapid dissemination, while the latter maintains free data access but implements certain constraints and rules around data usage to address issues of credit attribution and exploitation. A notable global health concern amidst these models is the challenge of equity and inclusion within the research landscape. The barriers and limitations that researchers from low-resourced environments and less-visible research locations face, including problems with receiving due credit for their contributions and participating in subsequent research and development ( Bezuidenhout and Chakauya 2018 ), have prompted the development of governance strategies along the lines implemented by GISAID ( Khare et al. 2021 ). Yet, in the midst of these endeavours to ensure inclusivity and fairness, GISAID’s regulated data model became a point of contention, drawing repeated criticisms from the INDSC during the height of the pandemic for not being open enough and thereby not supporting response efforts as well as the emergency required ( EBI 2021 ; Enserink and Cohen 2023 ).

The study is presented as follows: First, we provide an account of the two data infrastructures and their principles of sound data management. We then go on to compare the characteristics of bibliometric indicators, access patterns, publishers, key terms, viral variants, research collaborations and funding dynamics for GISAID and each of the repositories that make up the INSDC—The European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ). Our analysis is grounded on data from Digital Science’s Dimensions.ai literature database which mentions either repository in the period between January 2020 and January 2023. We conclude with a reflection on what these two modes of data governance have achieved in terms of their representativeness and interpretations of openness.

2 Background: Two models of Governance for Covid-19 Data

2.1 gisaid: a regulated access model of open data governance.

The GISAID Epi-Flu database was launched in 2008, on the anniversary of the Spanish influenza, to foster the sharing of influenza genomic data securely and responsibly. Data sharing was immediately conceptualised not as straightforward ‘opening up’ of the data by placing them online without restrictions to access and re-use, but rather as an alternative to the public sharing model, whereby users agree to authenticate their academic identity and not to republish or link GISAID genomes without permission from the data producer. GISAID acts as a mediator and enforcer of such rules, granting access solely to users who credibly profess to adopt them, and thereby acting as a guarantor for the effectiveness of the sharing agreement entered by data contributors. This arrangement stems from the recognition that some researchers—commonly located in low-resourced environments—are reluctant to share data due to fears of better-equipped researchers building on such work without due acknowledgment ( Bezuidenhout and Chakauya 2018 ; Elbe and Buckland-Merrett 2017 ). This model proved successful in facilitating better credit attribution to contributing scientists in relation to influenza research and, since its launch, GISAID has played an essential role supporting data sharing among the WHO Collaborating Centers and National influenza Centers in response to the bi-annual influenza vaccine virus recommendations by the WHO Global influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS). It is no surprise, therefore, that GISAID was swiftly redeployed, in early 2020, to include SARS-CoV-2 data through the EpiCov database, which stores, analyses and builds evolutionary trees of SARS CoV-2 genome sequences and hosts several daily updates of visualisations ( Khare et al. 2021 ). GISAID is now the leading open access database for SARS-CoV-2, with over 15 million genomes sequenced by February 2023.The Epi-CoV database provides 11 tools to explore SARS-CoV-2 sequence data; these include Audacity—global phylogeny of hCoV-19 as a downloadable newick tree file; CoVizue—near real-time visualisation of SARS-CoV-2 genetic variation; and a collection of thirty-two analysis figures updated daily.

GISAID has played a key role in supporting the identification and study of variant evolution, lineages and spread in real-time during the first three years of the pandemic; and, at the time of writing, it still features as a key data provider for a wide variety of consortia, initiatives and projects devoted to the analysis of COVID-19 variants of interest (some of which listed on this page: https://gisaid.org/collaborations/enabled-by-hcov-19-data-from-gisaid/ ). Accordingly, GISAID is funded by a wide consortium of public and private bodies, including the Federal Republic of Germany, who first backed the project at its main site in Geneva, as well as public-health and academic institutions in Argentina, Brazil, China, Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, Senegal, Singapore, South Africa and many other countries, as well as several donors and partners garnered under the label of ‘Friends of GISAID’.

The GISAID model has fostered information exchange among groups that differ considerably in their geo-political locations, funding levels, material resources and social characteristics, thereby expanding the range of data sources shared online ( Shu and McCauley 2017 ). At the same time, GISAID has been frequently scrutinised as limiting the extent to which data can be accessed and linked, thereby negatively affecting the insight, pace and breadth of future research—leading to backlash from hundreds of leading researchers concerned about the urgency of an effective pandemic response ( EBI 2021 ). During the height of the pandemic, questions were also raised regarding the quality and integrity of metadata coming from the GISAID platform ( Gozashti and Corbett-Detig 2021 ), as well as epistemic importance being placed on the lag in submissions times at the global scale ( Kalia et al. 2021 ). Some scientists called for a complete opening of genomic data sharing for SARS-CoV-2 ( Van Noorden 2021 ), stating that GISAID’s policy may be ‘open data’, but it does not make the data easily shareable or useable ( Yehudi et al. 2022 ). These critiques have run alongside controversy around who retains ownership of the data stored in GISAID, and how reliably its governance is actually managed. During past viral outbreaks, GISAID has been involved in legal disputes between the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) over monetary funds of the infrastructure ( Greenemeier 2009 ), events which led to a spokeswoman at GISAID asserting that the SIB had misappropriated the database on grounds of data ownership ( Butler 2009 ). Recent allegations also emerged around GISAID refusing to share data with researchers who, despite complying with its policies, had been critical of them ( Enserink and Cohen 2023 ). Though worth mentioning here given their heated and prominent nature, this paper does not concern itself with these debates, focusing instead on the ways in which GISAID data have been accessed and used.

2.2 INSDC: An unrestricted access model of open data governance

The fully open model promoted by the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) has its origins in the first nucleotide sequence database, dating back to the development of the Data Library at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL RRID:SCR_004473) in 1982 Heidelberg, Germany. Soon after its development, the database collaborated with GenBank (RRID:SCR_002760) at the Los Alamos Science Laboratory, USA ( Arita 2021 ) and finally with the DNA data bank of Japan (DDBJ RRID:SCR_002359) in 1987 ( Fukuda et al. 2021 ), resulting in what Bernasconi et al. ( 2021 ) call a ‘political integration of sequences’.

By 2002, the governing board of the INSDC had published a data sharing policy which permitted free and unrestricted access to all data in the triad of repositories. The policy makes all data records immediately available to all users, commercial sectors included, without any licensing stipulations, access restrictions, or monetary charges ( Karsch-Mizrachi et al. 2018 ). Internally, all data shared with either node of the INSDC would be mirrored into the other repositories. The INSDC’s policies of unrestrictive data sharing follow in the steps of the Bermuda Principles of 1996, which established the norm of full and immediate data sharing for genomic information within biology ( Maxson Jones et al. 2018 ); at the same time, they precede the institutionalisation of the Open Access Movement in academic publishing and institutes such as Open Data Institute (ODI RRID:SCR_021681), effectively making it an avant-garde institution in the broader context of Open Science ( Arita 2021 ).

After four decades of operation, INSDC has displayed a remarkable constancy, with superficial changes largely limited to institutional rebranding. For example, the EMBL Data Library has metamorphosed into the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA RRID:SCR_006515), now under the aegis of the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge Hinxton, while GenBank falls under the purview of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI RRID:SCR_006472) in Bethesda, USA. Amidst the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic, the INSDC’s well-established data infrastructures offered critical support for data submission, harmonisation, and the ability to publicly access sequence data with a range of new and old tools and portals. For the NCBI, these included: Genebank for annotated sequences of RNA and DNA data; RefSeq for tasks ranging from genome annotations to mutation and polymorphism evaluations, as well as the development of the NCBI virus data dashboard and the NCBI Covid Hub ( Berasconi et al. 2021 ). Additionally, in April 2020, the European Commission, through the auspices of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and Elixir (a 23-country node network in Europe dedicated to openly sharing life science data), launched another platform for sharing scientific information of relevance to the biological study of COVID-19: the COVID-19 Data Portal (CV19-DP RRID:SCR_018337) ( Harrison et al. 2021 ). This data infrastructure hosts a diverse array of genetic, epidemiological, socio-economic and literature data, encouraging data linkage and cross-analysis ( Saravanan et al. 2022 ). Notably, CV19-DP features a modular design that allows for the rapid development of nation-specific customised interfaces; examples include versions for Spain, Sweden and Poland. However, the primary portal remains the principal access point. One of the overarching aims of CV19-DP is to expedite scientific research by enhancing data interoperability across various bioinformatics platforms, such as ENA, UniProt (RRID:SCR_002380), PDBe (RRID:SCR_004312), EMDB (RRID:SCR_003207), Expression Atlas (RRID:SCR_007989), and Europe PMC (RRID:SCR_005901). To achieve this, the portal deploys a high-level Application Programming Interface (API) and supports direct bulk downloads, ensuring minimal user tracking for transparent and efficient data dissemination.

CV19-DP provides two primary data visualisation tools. The first is an open-source phylogenetic tree that displays COVID-19 sequences, constituting 98% of the reference SARS-CoV-2 genome, including PANGO lineages stratified by World Health Organization (WHO) regions. The second is CoVeo, a proprietary browser that performs systematic analysis of raw sequence data, providing visual and summary analyses for various regions, particularly focused on Variants of Concern (VOCs) and Variants of Interest (VOIs) ( Rahman et al. 2023 ). The interface of CV19-DP was later adapted for the Pathogens Hub by the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), launched in July 2023. This hub is a curated repository founded on the UK’s Health and Safety Executive’s list of approved biological agents, as well as the WHO’s global priority pathogens list. Although other interfaces exist within the INDSC, such as NCBI Virus (RRID:SCR_018253) and the EBI SARS-CoV-2 data hub, the CV19-DP has assumed a significant role. It notably hosted an open letter advocating for the unreserved sharing of SARS-CoV-2 resources and urging submissions to one of the INSDC databases. While the letter did not explicitly name GISAID, it was widely interpreted as a critique of GISAID’s data governance and vision.

2.3 Principles of sound data management

For CV19-DP, and the rest of the cadre in the INSDC, sound data management is predicated on the FAIR data principles, which espouse the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability of research data ( Wilkinson et al. 2016 ). This was justified by the ENA with regards to the publication of CV19-DP where they state

…unrestricted access to data plays a critical role in the rapid coronavirus research necessary to respond to this global health crisis…. Ensuring open science and unrestricted international collaborations is of key importance, and it is recognised that these datasets must be shared openly and meet FAIR standards ( Harrison et al. 2021 ).

The FAIR principles are also found on the NCBI Covid-19 Data Submissions page, where they state a benefit of submitting data to them is to ‘follow FAIR data-sharing principles’ . The principles of FAIR have been embraced by a number of different research areas; this is demonstrated by the growing body of literature on FAIR data sharing ( Bezuidenhout 2020 ; European Commission 2022 ; Goble et al. 2021 ; Leonelli 2022 ; Stall et al. 2019 ; Wise et al. 2019 ) and the cross fertilisation to principles in other scientific practices, such as software ( Barker et al. 2022 ; Hasselbring et al. 2020 ; Hong et al. 2022 ; Katz et al. 2021 ; Lamprecht et al. 2020 ). While this framework is designed to promote transparency and data sharing, it remains subject to interpretation and implementation by individual data repositories, with potential variations in compliance and enforcement across different contexts ( Boeckhout et al. 2018 ; Tacconelli et al. 2022 ) and a prioritisation of machine readability over human inclusivity ( Sterner and Elliot 2022 ).

GISAID’s approach to sound data management is also arguably compatible with FAIR principles but places a higher premium on regulating data flows and interactions between users and the infrastructure, as exemplified by its database access agreement. The EpiFlu™ Database Access Agreement is a mechanism designed to facilitate the sharing of influenza gene sequence data among researchers and public health professionals worldwide. This agreement outlines the terms under which users may provide data to the database, as well as the rights and obligations of authorised users with respect to that data. In particular, the agreement grants GISAID and authorised users a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free and irrevocable license to use, modify, display, and distribute the data submitted by users for research and intervention development purposes, provided they acknowledge the originating and submitting laboratories as the source of the data. Moreover, the agreement establishes certain restrictions on data access and distribution to ensure that users are acting in the best interests of public health. For example, users are not permitted to access or use the database in connection with any other database related to influenza gene sequences, nor are they allowed to distribute data to any third party other than authorised users. Users are also required to make best efforts to collaborate with representatives of the originating laboratory responsible for obtaining the specimen(s) and involve them in such analyses and further research using such data. Although this agreement is established to promote collaboration between scientists, a recent publication in Science exposed GISAID as having different tiers of access which aren’t defined in the agreement ( Enserink and Cohen 2023 ). 2

The differences in the interpretation and implementation of sound data management by GISAID and INDSC illustrate the pluralistic nature of data governance and highlight the need for critical reflection on the normative foundations and ethical implications of data sharing practice. Even though both data infrastructures share common epistemic goals, cognitive-cultural resources, and knowledge forms on complex biological systems, they create distinct digital artifacts as a result of different policies and values (Elliot 2022). A review of metadata by Bernasconi et al. ( 2021 ) concludes that, while GISAID’s partially closed model is likely to attract international collaboration from under-resourced countries, it fails to provide features of data provenance such as persistent URLs to samples or publications. The urgency to better understand the epistemic role of these infrastructures—and those to come after it—is underscored by the work of Chen et al. ( 2022 ) and Brito et al. ( 2022 ), who identified that countries in lower income groups often lack efficient genomic surveillance capabilities, not due to being able to access the data infrastructure but due to socioeconomic factors, such as inadequate infrastructure, low national GDP and meagre medical funding per capita.

Building on prior work on data sharing strategies and understandings of openness between these two systems of data governance ( Leonelli 2022 ; Leonelli 2023 ), our aim in this paper is to provide an empirical examination of a crucial process of relevant data journeys ( Leonelli and Tempini 2020 ), specifically the transfer of SARS-CoV-2 genetic data from the collection stage to the analytical stage. These data movements often cross institutional and international borders, thereby posing challenges to conventional scientific divisions of labour, disciplinary boundaries and epistemic hierarchies. Despite the inherent challenges in identifying and reconstructing these journeys, they present valuable units of analysis for mapping and comparing the diverse practices and circumstances involved in the mobilisation and utilisation of data ( Leonelli 2016a ; Leonelli and Williamson 2023 ). At the heart of our inquiry lies the research question of how data infrastructures function as entities that mediate the interplay between data and research practices, thereby affecting the processes and outcomes of data exchange. To answer this, our methodology entails a synthesis of quantitative methods, such as data collection, frequentist statistics, and network analysis, and is informed by critical data studies debates on the governance and inclusivity of data infrastructures ( Beaulieu et al. 2013 ; Borgman 2017 ; Borgman and Bourne 2022 ; Curry 2022 ; Fecher 2018 ; Kitchin 2014 ; Kitchin & McArdle 2016 ; Leonelli 2016b ; Wilson et al. 2022 ).

3 Data and Methods

To explore collaborative research patterns across each data repository, our study draws on an analysis of collaboration in published articles and other bibliometric indicators. Bibliometrics as a meta-science methodology has been widely used to study the impact of COVID-19 on the research landscapes ( Acciai et al. 2022 ; Benach et al. 2022 ; Chahrour et al. 2020 ; Mohabab et al. 2020; Sofi-Mahmudi et al. 2023 ; Wang and Tian 2021 ; Yinka Akintunde et al. 2021 ; Zhang et al. 2022 ; Zhong and Lin 2022 ). Although bibliometrics was established in the 1950’s, bibliometrics is increasing in usage across academic disciplines, and has become a central methodology to explore trends in international and national collaboration, thematic clustering of keywords and topics, and structural patterns of networks dynamics ( Donthu et al. 2021 ; Subramanyam 1983 ). By focusing on collaboration between institutions, countries and researchers, bibliometrics are able to better explore the involvement of actors involved in COVID-19 research. One caveat of this methodology is that it only captures a partial picture of research collaboration, with little information being placed on practices or informal collaborations; therefore, it should not be understood as the entire landscape ( Leonelli 2022 ). In recent years, a number of online databases, such as Web Of Science (RRID:SCR_022706) and Dimensions.ai (RRID:SCR_021977), have become easily accessible in providing a systematic collection of multi-disciplinary publications, and a number of software packages, such as VosViewer (RRID:SCR_023516), Bibliometrix (RRID:SCR_023744) and Gephi (RRID:SCR_004293), have made the analysis of such data more achievable ( Moral-Muñoz et al. 2020 ).

Each corpus was analysed using common bibliometric indicators, collaboration and equity measurements and network analysis. To begin, we considered indicators which are grounded in the existing bibliometric literature, such as total number of publications, average citations per publication, total citations, average Altmetric score, accessibility options (Open or Closed Access), publishers’ landscape and co-occurrence of key terms within publications. The results of these were plotted as line graphs or tree maps for each dataset. After this, we extended our statistical framework to include a bar chart of the distribution of variants between each dataset—aligning our approach with many bibliometric studies that focus on phenomena-specific metrics. We then deployed two measurements to understand the author and income collaborations between countries. The first is based on inter and intra-regional collaborations and the second identifies collaboration in relation to income groups classified by the World Bank.

Lastly, we explored the relational dynamics among publications by engaging in bibliographic coupling and social network analysis (SNA). We employed the standard formulation of bibliographic coupling as introduced by Kessler in 1963 :

Here, B is the bibliographic coupling matrix and A is the bipartite network adjacency matrix. Each row and column in A corresponds to a node, which may represent entities such as publication data, countries, academic institutions and funders. The elements aij in the adjacency matrix A represent the number of bibliographic couplings between article i and article j . We used two common SNA metrics to plot the structural impacts of the network: degree and betweenness , where degree is the number of associations a particular node has, and betweenness represents the number of occurrences a node acts as a bridge between one node to another ( Newman 2005 ). All analysis was conducted using an R Project for Statistical Computing (RRID:SCR_001905). The project, along with the code and data to reproduce the analysis, have been made openly available on Zenodo ( 10.5281/zenodo.8399189 ).

3.1 Data collection and filtering

In bibliometric analyses, delineating precise search strategies and choosing a source of truth database is of paramount importance to capture a comprehensive dataset. Within the genomic data repositories landscape, GISAID and the INSDC groups exhibit divergent data citation protocols. Crucially, GISAID enforces a stringent requirement whereby members must cite and formally solicit permission from data depositors prior to any publication endeavours. This procedural characteristic facilitates a streamlined search strategy for GISAID data. Specifically, by employing the terms ‘Global initiative on sharing all influenza data’, ‘GISAID’ or ‘EpiCov’ in conjunction with a curated set of COVID-19-centric keywords. Conversely, the INSDC groups, devoid of such stipulations, present a slightly more intricate search matrix. Though there is an absence of a formal citation requirement, it is a common observation that published outputs frequently reference the PRJ accession code associated with a sequence or directly name the data repository. Consequently, the search query for the INSDC groups necessitates the integration of terms such as ‘ENA’, ‘The Covid-19 Data Portal’, ‘NCBI Virus’, and ‘NiH’ with additional accession codes, such as ‘PRJ’. A full table of search queries can be found in Table 1 . In order to ensure the data queried was relevant to the study of SARS-CoV-2 and not any other influenza or pathogen disease, the following inclusion criteria are applied: A Covid-19 related term had to be in the full text; the study had to be an academic article; the article was published between January 2020 and January 2023; and all types of methods and disciplines are allowed.

Workflow for Dimensions.ai searches on publications referencing major SARS-CoV-2 data repositories.

Using these search queries and filters, we chose to use the Dimensions Analytics API ( Herzog et al. 2020 ; Hook et al. 2018 ) as our source of truth to build collections for each repository. Established in 2018 by Digital Science, the Dimensions Analytics API provides one of the largest sources of publication data ( Adams et al. 2018 ; Bode et al. 2018 ; Visser et al. 2021 ). Our initial search returned the following number of publications for each repository: GISAD ( n = 14,092), NCBI (n = 12,751) , ENA (n = 13,491) , DDBJ (n = 508) . However, as Guerrero-Bote et al. ( 2021 ) point out, the validity of Dimensions data can often be less reliable than Scopus—as it depends on machine learning curated data and fields such as research affiliations often contain missing entries and may contain duplicates based on preprints. For these reasons, we further filter our data to remove any duplicates of publication.ids or titles, and, for our network analysis, we remove any entries where country or institution affiliation is not documented. After this filtering, the size of our final dataset for each repository is: GISAD (n = 11,945), NCBI (n = 10,685) , ENA (n = 9728) , DDBJ (n = 325) . Similarity between each corpus’s publication id, shown in Figure 1 , identifies that each repository has a mostly unique corpus of data. The biggest overlap between corpuses was between GISAID and NCBI, narrowly followed by the ENA and NCBI. There was a significantly low similarity of articles mentioning all three INSDC members.

Corpus similarity across major SARS-CoV-2 repositories: Similarity of publication corpuses across major SARS-CoV-2 repositories (January 2020–January 2023). Each oval represents a repository’s corpus with GISAID (red), ENA (green), NCBI (blue) and DDJB (purple). The total number of unique publications are labelled for each overlapping circle as well as the percentage of the entire corpus.

4.1 Bibliometric indicators

Notwithstanding the comparatively reduced aggregate of publications in the GISAID repository relative to the comprehensive corpus of the INSDC, GISAID manifests a superior metric in several key bibliometric indicators such as average citations per month, total monthly citations, and average Altmetric scores as seen in Figure 2 . This discrepancy is largely attributable to GISAID’s recurrent citation in seminal works delineating the initial virological properties of SARS-CoV-2 ( Wölfel et al. 2020 ; Walls et al. 2020 ; Wang et al. 2020 ; Zhu et al. 2020 ) and discussions of its phylogenetic origins ( Andersen et al. 2020 ; Holshue et al. 2020 ; Zhou et al. 2020 ), as well as foundational studies on therapeutic and vaccine protocols ( Hoffmann et al. 2020 ; Polack et al. 2020 ; Wölfel et al. 2020 ).

Temporal trends in scholarly metrics across major SARS-CoV-2 repositories. This line graph illustrates longitudinal variations in key bibliometric indicators: (1) Total Number of Publications (top left), (2) Average Citations per Publication (top right), (3) Average Altmetric Score (bottom left) and (4) Cumulative Citation Count (bottom right). Data points span from January 2020 to January 2023. The DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), and Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) are represented by red, purple, green and aqua blue lines, respectively.

In the context of the INSDC consortium, the total number of publications across all databases stands at n = 20,059 , which is 59% more than GISAID with n = 11,945 . Among the INSDC constituents, DDBJ records the most modest performance across all bibliometric impact measures. However, the DDBJ makes a perk in the Altmetric graph, this spike reflects both the low number of publications mentioning the DDBJ but also the high alt metric score of Amendola et al.’s ( 2021 ) early work on evidence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA from a swab in Italy December 2019. Conversely, despite possessing a fewer number of articles than NCBI, the ENA surpasses all other INSDC members impact factors, facilitated in part by pivotal contributions to the PRIDE database resource ( Perez-Riverol et al. 2022 ) and the Ensembl 2021 project.

In Figure 3 , for all GISAID, NCBI, ENA and DDBJ repositories, Gold Open Access (OA) emerges as the predominant access modality, registering a prevalence of 43%, 47%, 39% and 71%, respectively. In GISAID, subsequent access modalities adhere to a conventional OA hierarchy, featuring Green (32%), Bronze (12%), Hybrid (8%) and Closed (5%) categories. ENA diverges the most, with Closed (25%) being the second leading access type, followed by Green (18%), Hybrid (11%) and lastly Bronze (8%). For the NCBI access types, Green (20%), Closed (16%), Bronze (8%) and Hybrid (8%) trail Gold. The case of DDBJ is a similar pattern, with Green (20%), Closed (15%), Bronze (5%) and Hybrid (8%).

Publication access types across major SARS-CoV-2 repositories. This treemap quantifies the distribution of open access (OA)—Gold, Green, Bronze and Hybrid—and closed access publications across The DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) and Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID). Each rectangle’s area is proportional to the frequency of publications within that category. Databases are delineated by white borders and labelled at their centres in italicised black text. Within each database, access types are labelled in white text.

For NCBI, in Figure 4 , publishers in terms of prominence are Elsevier (19%), Springer Nature (16%), MDPI (12%), Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (11%) and Frontiers (8%). In the same figure, ENA exhibits a similar trend with Springer Nature (27%), Elsevier (20%), MDPI (8%), Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (8%) and Frontiers (5%). In the case of DDBJ, the leading publisher instead is Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (41%), followed by Springer Nature (14%), Elsevier (9%), Oxford University Press (6%) and MDPI (6%). GISAID demonstrates a preference for Elsevier (20%), trailed by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (20%), Springer Nature (12%), MDPI (9%) and Research Square Platform LLC (5%). All other publishers were less than five percent.

Publisher landscape across major SARS-CoV-2 repositories. This treemap quantifies the distribution of publishers across The DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) and Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID). Each rectangle’s area is proportional to the frequency of publications within that category. Databases are delineated by white borders and labelled at their centres in italicised black text. Within each database, publishers are labelled in white text.

4.2 Variant and keyword distribution

For all repositories, the World Health Organization (WHO) nomenclature exhibited a more pervasive mention as opposed to the Pango lineage classifications as shown in Figure 5 . In the ENA corpus, variant denominations predominantly adhere to the WHO taxonomy, with the following distribution: Alpha (145), Beta (145), Delta (142), Gamma (54) and Kappa (20). Conversely, the Pango lineage descriptors manifest with a diminished frequency: P.2 (75), B.1.1.7 (49), B.1.617.2 (32), B.1.351 (23) and B.1.1.529 (21). GISAID encapsulates the largest share of variant mentions. Predominantly, WHO nomenclature appears more regularly, with leading variants being Omicron (2093), Delta (1879), Alpha (1098), Beta (795) and Gamma (606). For GISAID, Pango lineages appear with B.1.1.7 (832), B.1.351 (506), B.1.617.2 (514), P.1 (400) and B.1.1.529 (367). The NCBI encompasses the most substantial proportion of variant mentions among the INSDC repositories. The paramount WHO classifications are Alpha, Beta, Delta, Omicron and Gamma with frequencies of 274, 263, 252, 239 and 136, respectively; for Pango lineages, they are B.1.1.7 (86), P.1 (77), B.1.351 (65), B.1.617.2 (60) and B.1.1.529 (34).

Frequency distribution of viral variants mentioned in abstracts across major SARS-CoV-2 repositories. This bar chart represents the frequency of mentions for specific viral variants and lineages in the dataset’s abstracts. WHO labels (e.g., alpha, beta) and Pango lineages (e.g., b.1.1.7, b.1.351) are accounted for. Each bar corresponds to a distinct variant or lineage, ordered in descending frequency of mentions. The x-axis quantifies the number of abstracts mentioning each variant and the y-axis identifies the respective variants and lineages.

Figure 6 shows that the keyword distribution of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms convergence on analogous themes across the repositories, encompassing gender dichotomies (female and male), species delineations (animals, human, mice), age categorizations (adult), data types (RNA, genomics, genome), and facets of pandemics and viral evolution (pandemics, viral, spike glycoprotein, phylogeny). An idiosyncratic characteristic of GISAID is its heightened frequency of therapeutic-centric terminologies (vaccines, mutations, neutralising antibodies). In juxtaposition, other INSDC repositories underscore methodological lexemes such as databases and computational biology. Subsidiaries of INSDC spotlight repository-specific keywords: for instance, the ENA emphasises Climate Change, while the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) accentuates infections, pneumonia and, not surprisingly, Japan. Within the confines of GISAID and NCBI, the uppermost 15 keywords converge on a centrality of 14. In contrast, DDBJ and ENA oscillate between a centrality range of 5–12.5. Within the network framework of GISAID, the highest betweenness centrality is attributed to ‘adult’ and ‘neutralizing’. Conversely, for NCBI, ‘computational biology’ and ‘mice’ emerge preeminent, for ENA it’s ‘databases’ and ‘male’, and for DDBJ, ‘humans’ and ‘animals’ occupy this distinction.

Co-occurrence network of top MeSH terms across major SARS-CoV-2 repositories. This graph depicts a co-occurrence network of the top 15 Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms within the given dataset, represented as nodes. Edges between nodes are weighted by the frequency of co-occurring terms across publications, and edge thickness scales with weight; edges with weight below a threshold of 5 are excluded for clarity. Node size is dictated by the node’s degree and colour is mapped to betweenness centrality.

4.3 Author collaboration

As Table 2 shows, within the GISAID repository, the year 2020 manifested a marked inclination towards collaborative endeavours, evidenced by a significant number of papers with either 2–5, 5–10, and 10–20 authors juxtaposed against a modest 64 single-authored papers. By 2021, a proliferation in contributions was observed, most prominently in the 10–20 author category, amassing a noteworthy 1207 papers. However, by 2022, while the papers in the 10–20 author bracket peaked at 1254, those exceeding 50 authors witnessed a slight decrement to 60. In terms of hyper authorship, GISAID featured a decent share of 50–100 authors and was the leading year-on-year growth of 100–250 authors. Although GISAID didn’t have any papers with between 250–500 authors, they beat every member of the INSDC in the extreme authorship categories with leading representation every year for 500–1000 and 1000–5000.

Number of papers per number of authors across major SARS-CoV-2 repositories. This table displays the cumulative number of papers per number of authors for each repository between 2020 and 2022.

The ENA database, in 2020, registered most of its papers within the 2–5 author cohort, with 420 contributions. This was contrasted by 72 papers in the single author category and 29 in the 50+. An intriguing surge was witnessed in 2021, particularly with a staggering 1219 in the 2–5 authored contributions and related increases in all other categories. In 2022, the surge continued but at a slower rate, with the most significant increase being the jump in single author papers to 407. The ENA trumped GISAID in the 50–100 author per paper and had the best year-on-year representation for the hyper authorship categories between the INSDC members. For the NCBI repository, the data from 2020 underscores a dominant trend towards collaborative work, with 613 papers in the 2–5 author bracket and 546 in the 5–10 author segment. This collaborative proclivity augmented in 2021, especially within the 2–5 author category, which culminated in 1032 papers. In 2022, all categories up to 50 authors continued to rise. NCBI displayed marginally less than the ENA in the 50–100 authorship category and marginally less than GISAID in the 100–250 authorship category but failed to represent continuous improvement in hyper authorship categories on a yearly basis. Lastly, the DDBJ repository, in 2020, was most prolific in the 2–5 author segment, recording 49 papers. The subsequent year, 2021, saw relatively modest numbers, with the 2–5 author category, still leading but with less papers. However, 2022 registered a marginal upswing, particularly in the 2–5 and 10–20 author categories. By 2023, the repository only had one paper with a hype authorship of 50+ across all years.

4.4 Geographical and income collaboration

Figure 7 shows the ENA was the only repository to have a higher share of multi-region collaborations than single region, with 13,819 beating 15,269. Countries with the leading number of documents were United States, United Kingdom, Germany, China, Australia, Spain, Italy, India, France, Canada, Netherlands, Japan, Switzerland, Brazil, Sweden, South Africa, Belgium, Austria, Denmark and Norway. Countries with a higher ratio of multi-region collaborations were South Africa, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Brazil, United Kingdom, Belgium, Denmark, Japan, United States, Norway, Spain, Austria and the Netherlands. Countries in the ENA with a large proportion of single region collaborations were China, Italy, France and India. Germany had a relatively equal ratio between the two collaborations.

Distribution of single- and multi-region collaborations in scholarly publications by top 20 countries across major SARS-CoV-2 repositories. This stacked bar chart portrays the extent of single-region and multi-region collaborations in scholarly documents for the top 20 countries based on publication volume. The x-axis indicates the number of documents associated with each country, and the y-axis lists the countries in descending order of total documents. The colours in each bar segment represent the type of collaboration: single-region or multi-region.

For GISAID, single region collaborations were the most frequent, with a total of 21,432 over 13,476 multi-region collaborations with the total number of documented coming from United States, China, United Kingdom, India, France, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Canada, Spain Australia, South Africa, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Singapore, Bangladesh, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The countries with the most amount of multi-regional collaboration were South Africa, United Kingdom, Brazil and Bangladesh, all of which had more multi-regional collaborations than single-region. Following this, Switzerland, Singapore and Australia had roughly equal share between the two collaborations categories. Countries with the highest single region collaboration were France, China, Spain, India, Italy and Germany, all of which had over double the amount of single regional collaborations over multi-regional collaborations. Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Japan, Israel and United States had between 40–10% more single regional collaborations.

For NCBI, the split between single region and multi-region collaboration was less than GISAID, with 15,440 and 10,742, respectively. The leading countries with the greatest number of documents were United States, China, United Kingdom, India, France, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Canada, Spain, Australia, South Africa, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Singapore, Bangladesh, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Countries with the highest multi-regional collaboration were Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Bangladesh and United Kingdom. Countries with the highest single-regional collaborations were China, India, Italy, Germany, Canada, Japan and France. The rest of the countries had a relatively equal ratio of single and multi-region collaborations.

DDBJ had the lowest number of total articles and had greater share of single region (451) collaborations over multi region (214). The leading countries collaborating on documents were Japan, United States, China, India, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Italy, Brazil, France, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Malaysia, Canada, Indonesia, Switzerland, Tanzania, Denmark, Austria, Lebanon, Netherlands, Nigeria and Norway. Lebanon had the entirety of its collaborations based as multi-region, with the Netherlands, South Africa and the United Kingdom following them with higher proportions of multi-region collaboration. China, Brazil, Thailand, Malaysia, Germany, Spain, Japan, Australia, Switzerland, France, India, United States, Denmark and Canada all had over 40% more single regional collaborations, with the rest of the countries having a tied split.

From the data presented in Table 3 , it is evident that collaborations between High-Income-to-High-Income groups (HI-HI) dominate the submissions in GISAID, NCBI and ENA, with notable figures of 8504, 6599, and 11,199, respectively. DDBJ shows a significantly lower count of 151 in this category. In contrast, collaborations between Low-Middle-Income and Low-Income (LMI-LI) groups are sparse across all repositories. Interestingly, collaborations involving Upper-Middle-Income groups (UMI) with other income groups, such as Low-Income (LI) and Low-Middle-Income (LMI), show varied results across databases. For instance, UMI-LMI collaborations are relatively higher in NCBI (349) compared to GISAID (269) and ENA (228), while DDBJ shows little representation in this category. Furthermore, an intriguing pattern observed in the other HI category, where each repository—apart from the DDBJ—leads the collaboration type in one way. Most interestingly, the ENA database exhibits a substantially higher number of collaborations in the HI-MIX category (3830) compared to both GISAID (2099) and NCBI (1754); GISAID led in the HI-UMI category (6494), followed by the ENA (5376) and the NCBI (4521). Both NCBI (2214) and GISAID had the same number of HI-LMI of 2161, followed by the ENA 1724. The DDBJ does feature as the greatest percentage (21.7%) but with significantly less collaborations.

Income collaboration across major SARS-CoV-2 repositories. This table presents the share of income group (based on World Bank classifications) collaborations for each repository.

4.5 Networks

Table 4 provides a comprehensive network analysis of the various databases, detailing their network characteristics across different types: Authors, Country, Funder, and Institution. A salient observation from the table is the pronounced homogeneity in the funding network across the databases. Specifically, the nodes in this network span from 13 (DDBJ) to 17 (both ENA and NCBI), with GISAID closely trailing at 16. GISAID’s funding ecosystem, with a mean weighted degree of 2289, indicates a potential proclivity of funders towards research utilizing GISAID data. Nonetheless, the elevated clustering coefficient and density metrics for all databases underscore a robust collaboration among funders.

Comparative network statistics across major SARS-CoV-2 repositories. This table delineates the network attributes of various databases across distinct classifications: Authors, Country, Funder and Institution. Metrics included are node count, edge count, clustering coefficients and density scores.

The country network also exhibited considerable homogeneity, albeit with more distinctive characteristics relative to the funding network. GISAID’s network emerged as the most expansive, boasting 159 nodes and 3220 edges. Most databases trended towards a singular community size, with DDBJ being an outlier with three communities. The apex clustering coefficients and density metrics were identified in the ENA network, registering at 0.71 and 0.29, respectively. The mean degree was highest for ENA at 43.54, while GISAID closely followed with 40.50, and NCBI and DDBJ were relatively lower at 27.31 and 4.56, respectively.

The institutional network landscape revealed intriguing variances. Notably, the ENA dominated in terms of nodes (6898) and edges (763,790). The subsequent rankings were NCBI and GISAID with 6485 nodes (81,002 edges) and 6030 nodes (82,466 edges), respectively, while DDBJ lagged considerably at 418 nodes and 1095 edges. All databases manifested exceedingly low-density metrics, with ENA leading at 0.3. The clustering coefficients mirrored this trend, with ENA outpacing GISAID and NCBI by a factor of three and DDBJ by two. An interesting revelation was NCBI’s network comprising the largest number of communities at 131, superseding GISAID, ENA and DDBJ, which had 125, 101 and 87 communities, respectively.

The ‘Authors’ category emerged as the predominant network across databases. GISAID’s network was the most extensive, with 85,387 nodes and 6,771,757 edges. NCBI and ENA followed with 74,155 nodes (2,140,401 edges) and 69,717 nodes (8,583,776 edges), respectively, while DDBJ was significantly smaller with 21,152 nodes and 17,359 edges. Owing to their extremely large size, density metrics were exceedingly low across all databases, with DDBJ being a notable exception. The clustering coefficient was predominantly high, with ENA leading at 0.99, trailed by NCBI and DDBJ at 0.97 and 0.96, respectively. In terms of community counts, NCBI was predominant, with 70,002, followed by ENA, GISAID and DDBJ with 6,179, 4,679 and 246, respectively. The community sizes (mean, median and minimum) across databases exhibited remarkable consistency.

For the ENA database, in terms of connectivity degree of the network, the leading countries were as follows: the United States (126), the United Kingdom (124), Germany (112), Canada (105), South Africa (103), France (102), India (102), Australia (100), Brazil (97), the Netherlands (96) and China (95). In relation to betweenness centrality, the United States stood out with a score of 758.18. This was followed by the United Kingdom (652.73), France (510.59), Canada (455.33) and South Africa (322.51).

In the GISAID database, the countries with the highest degrees of connection were the United States (125), the United Kingdom (126), France (109), Germany (108), Brazil (104), Switzerland (103), South Africa (101), Canada (96), Saudi Arabia (95), Japan (94) and Egypt (93). When evaluating betweenness centrality, the leading countries were Senegal (653.05), Sweden (601.17), Italy (561.47), Australia (541.90), Brazil (474.20), Canada (411.64) and Nigeria (377.70).

For the NCBI database, the foremost countries in terms of degree were the United States (118), the United Kingdom (108), Germany (97), France (86), Italy (83), India (82), Australia (81), China (79), Switzerland (77), Canada (73) and Spain (72). Regarding betweenness centrality, France held the highest score with 708.41, followed by Italy (711.71), South Africa (563.36), the United Kingdom (495.84) and Portugal (469.37). For the DDBJ, the leading countries in terms of degree were Japan (20), United Kingdom (19), United States (19), Italy (11), Sweden (10), Germany (10), Switzerland (10), Israel (9), Australia (9) and Croatia (8). Japan had the leading betweenness centrality score followed by United Kingdom, United States, China, Israel and Australia.

As shown in Figure 8 , the predominant collaboration in the DDBJ network was between Japan and the United States, registering 94 instances, representing a significant majority. Subsequent collaborations included the United Kingdom and the United States (34), Australia and the United States (30), Japan and Norway (14), and Lebanon and the United Kingdom (14).

Country collaborations across major SARS-CoV-2 repositories. The figure provides a visual representation of global collaborations among countries. It plots a geographical map overlaid with collaboration lines between countries, where the colour of the lines represents the intensity or weight of the collaborations. Countries are color-coded based on their total number of publications.

Within the ENA database, the largest global reach of country collaboration was recorded, with collaborations involving the United States dominating the top seven positions, collaborating with China (33,298), Germany (22,125), the United Kingdom (20,314), Spain (16,911), Italy (16,750), France (14,899) and Japan (14,371). In the GISAID database, the United States also led country collaborations. But the top collaborative instances were far less: United Kingdom (3,393), Germany (2,745), China (2,021), Canada (1,680), Spain (1,599), Australia (1,373), Japan (862) and India (835). A similar trend was identified in the NCBI database, where the United States featured prominently in the top eight collaborative positions. Collaborative instances included the United Kingdom (3,393), Germany (2,745), China (2,021), Canada (1,680), Spain (1,599), Australia (1,373), Japan (862) and India (835).

In the analysis of funding networks in Figure 9 , the principal funders for GISAID included ICRP, NIH, cOAlitionS, NSF, UKRI, DoD and US Federal funders, exhibiting 15 degrees of connection. Of these, UKRI demonstrated the most significant betweenness centrality. However, when considering the entire network, USDA held the highest betweenness centrality, valued at 57.5, with 12 degrees. The most substantial collaborations were observed between ICRP and US Federal Funders (2166 instances), followed by ICRP-NIH (2094) and NIH-US Federal Funders (2094). Subsequent significant collaborations were identified between cOAlitionS and ICRP (1433), EC & ERC (940), and UKRI (695). Within the NCBI network, the top funders in terms of connection degrees, totalling 16, were IRCP, NIH, cOAlitionS, UKRI and US Federal Funders. In this group, UKRI retained the highest betweenness centrality, registering 32.5. Overall, NOAA exhibited the leading betweenness centrality at 68.67 with 10 degrees. The primary collaborations were between ICRP and US Federal Funders (1755), NIH and US Federal Funders (1723), and ICRP and NIH (1720). Further collaborations included cOAlitionS with ICRP (711), EC & ERC (535) and US Federal Funders (390). For the ENA funding network, the dominant funders in terms of connection degrees, all at 16, were ICRP, NIG, cOAlitionS, AMRC, EC & ERC, NSF, UKRI, HRA, CDC and US Federal Funders. Among these, CDC displayed the highest betweenness centrality at 48.67, but in a broader context, NOAA, with 12 degrees, possessed a greater betweenness centrality of 67. The chief collaborations were with ICRP and US Federal Funders (1374), NIH and US Federal Funders (1317), and ICRP and NIH (1314). This was followed by collaborations involving cOAlitionS and ICRP (1113), EC & ERC (940) and UKRI (740). In the DDBJ network, the US Federal Funders emerged as the primary funding group, reflecting 14 degrees of connection. The maximum betweenness centrality was attributed to NSF, although it only had 10 degrees. Predominant collaborations were discerned between ICRP and US Federal Funders (44), ICRP and NIH (43), and NIH and US Federal Funders (43), followed by CDC and US Federal Funders (24). Additional collaborations involved cOAlitionS and ICRP (23), EC & ERC (19), US Federal Funders (14) and UKRI (12).

Funder group collaborations across major SARS-CoV-2 repositories. This graph depicts a collaboration network of funder groups within the given dataset, represented as nodes. Edges between nodes are weighted by the frequency of co-occurring funders across publications. Node size is dictated by the node’s weighted degree.

In the institutional network presented in Figure 10 , the University of Oxford (826), followed by Imperial College London (668), University of Edinburgh (651), Harvard University (638), the Ministry of Health (596), University of Washington (570), University of Cambridge (537), University College London (504), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (501) and the Institut Pasteur (462), were the leading nodes for GISAID. In the same network, the University of Oxford again leads in the largest betweenness centrality with 604,373.83, followed by Harvard University, University of Hong Kong, University of Edinburgh and the Ministry of Health with 564,449.4, 478,585.8, 435,489.2 and 405,605.17, respectively. The top five leading collaborations were between the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Centre and the University of Washington (141), KU Leuven and Rega Institute for Medical Research (116), Imperial College London and the University of Oxford (113), Howard Hughes Medical Institute and University of Washington (73), and the Institute of Microbiology and the University of Chinese Academy Science (73).

Institution group network across major SARS-CoV-2 repositories. This graph depicts a collaboration network of the institutions within the given dataset, represented as nodes. Edges between nodes are weighted by the frequency of collaborating institutions across publications. Node size is dictated by the node’s weighted degree, and colour is mapped to betweenness centrality, following a viridis scale.

In contrast, the ENA platform showcases a broader scope of institutional collaborations. The Sun-Yat Institute (also referred to as Zhongshan University) emerges as the most connected with 2593 degree, followed by the University of Paris (2361), University of Oxford (2031), University College London (1987), Imperial College London (1894), Harvard University (1876), University of Cambridge (1811), University of Edinburgh (1738), Kings College London (1732) and Stanford University (1695). Institutions pivotal in the genesis of ENA, EMBL-EBI, namely the European Bioinformatics Institute and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, also feature prominently, with the European Bioinformatics Institute receiving 1637 degree and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory with 1542. The leading institutes in terms of betweenness centrality are University College London, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Harvard University and Sun Yat with 366,428.6, 363,747.68, 258,835.77, 244,949.02 and 242,804.76, respectively. The leading collaboration between institutes was the British Medical Association and the Canadian Medical Association (80), followed by the University of Cambridge and the Wellcome Sanger Institute (75), Broad Institute and Harvard University (69), Imperial College London and University of Oxford (61) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and Heidelberg University (59). The European Molecular Biology Laboratory also had high collaborations with the German Cancer Research Center (51), while the European Bioinformatic Institute had substantial collaborations with the University of Cambridge (45), the Wellcome Sanger Institute (44) and University College London (37).

For the NCBI, the leading institutions in terms of degree were Harvard University (820), University of Cambridge (693), Wellcome Sanger Institute (498), University of Washington (496), Cornell University (487), Stanford University (477), University College London (476), National Center for Biotechnology Information (475) and the University of Melbourne (453). In terms of betweenness centrality, Harvard University overshadowed the rest with a score of 724,458.49, followed by University of Oxford, University of Melbourne, Imperial College London and the University of California with 519,537.68, 346,122.59, 316,106.06 and 213,986.81, respectively. The leading institutions in terms of collaboration were the BGI Group (China) and the University of Chinese Academy of Science (80), Broad Institute and Harvard University (58), Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital (39), Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University (37), and Broad Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the top twenty of collaborations, the NCBI themselves did not appear.

For the DDBJ, the leading institutes in terms of degree were Harvard University (49), National Institute of Infectious Diseases (48), University of Tokyo (32), Kyoto University (30), Broad Institute (26), Waseda University (24), Hokkaido University (23), Keio University (22), European Bioinformatics Institute (22) and Cornell University (22). In terms of betweenness centrality, the highest were Harvard, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, European Bioinformatics Institute, Kyoto University and Research Organization of Information and Systems with 6304.96, 4225.42, 3541.08, 2943.33 and 2851.85, respectively.

5 Discussion

A significant distinction between the two data governance models is observed in the variance of MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) keywords and the distribution of variants. GISAID possesses the most significant proportion of variant names within its corpus, lending credence to the notion that its primary objective is to monitor novel variants, assess genetic mutations, and evaluate vaccine immunity in relation to these variations. This is corroborated by the relative distribution of keywords in which GISAID shows a marked inclination towards public health applications and therapeutic-centric terminologies, while INSDC captures a wider spectrum of biological and epidemiological research domains, including substantive efforts in upstream research. Such distinctions manifest in the kind of data each model disseminates: GISAID predominantly shares RNA or protein data, which it provides in a ready-to-use format for immediate employment by public health officials, whereas the INSDC provides a broader spectrum of epidemiological data, encompassing a considerable quantity of raw reads and annotation data and providing more opportunities for linking the data to other existing resources.

This difference in audiences, and usage goes some way towards accounting for the difference in emphasis in the governance models preferred by the two infrastructures. While GISAID depends on the comprehensiveness of its respondents and participants to be able to provide as wide-ranging a picture of global mutation patters as possible, INSDC is more focused on facilitating linkage between datasets, thereby supporting discovery on a variety of novel aspects of SARS-CoV-2 behaviour and interactions with host organisms and environments. Openness in the sense of immediate, wide-ranging usability of data is therefore arguably more crucial to INDSC, while attention to which sources are captured and the extent to which they can represent the world-wide situation is of primary concern for GISAID.

The disproportionate size of the DDBJ corpus compared to NCBI or ENA can be understood in the context of a government mandate by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in Japan, which required all SARS-CoV-2 genomes to be registered with GISAID, not elsewhere ( MHLW 2021 ). In turn, this meant sequences submitted to GISAID from Japan were not allowed to go into an INSDC repository due to licencing terms.

Even when taking this difference in emphasis into account, the results from the analysis above present a mixture of benefits and drawbacks to GISAID and the members of the INSDC in their capacity to support diverse research collaboration for the study of SARS-CoV-2, and thus deserves some critical reflection and contextualization.

For a start, during the 2020–2022 pandemic years, the GISAID corpus has witnessed an increased frequency of publication, citation, and discussion compared to other INSDC members. This underscores GISAID’s instrumental role in forging early collaborative efforts between global researchers and institutions ( Khare et al. 2021 ). However, when combining the output of all INSDC members, the cumulative publications significantly eclipse that of GISAID and demonstrate comparable citations and Altmetric scores. While there are indications of GISAID’s publication volume diminishing in 2023, both the ENA and NCBI are observing an upward trajectory in their publication count. The slow start exhibited by INSDC members may be attributable, in part, to the delayed release of COVID-19-specific data portals and services, like CV19DP and the NCBI SARS-CoV-2 Data Dashboard, until 2021. Since their inception, these platforms have undergone iterative enhancements, encompassing new functionalities for data submission, retrieval and linkage ( Rahman et al. 2023 ). Nevertheless, this growth should be approached circumspectly. The rising prevalence of both gold and green access classifications, coupled with the emergence of hyper authorship papers comprising 50+ authors within both GISAID and INSDC, illuminates a trajectory towards augmented collaboration and transparency in virological inquiries. At the same time, this highlights the conundrum where fully open repositories like ENA may simultaneously amplify the frequency of restricted access and solo authorship articles at the same time. This raises the question of whether the unrestricted data sharing paradigm, endorsed by INSDC members, inadvertently leans towards an object-oriented perspective on Open Science, where the sheer volume of outputs being shared may overshadow diversity and inclusivity ( Leonelli 2023 ).

Beyond these emerging concerns around the meaning and implications of openness for research, our findings also point to the potential dangers of implementing openness in ways that inadvertently constructs new obstacles in the way of scientific collaboration. Both GISAID and INSDC exhibit high representation of data from high-income countries. Adding to this, the country collaboration networks show there is a distinct prominence of certain nations in the global bioinformatics landscape. The United States and the United Kingdom recurrently emerge as frontrunners in terms of connectivity degree across these platforms, situating them as key actors in the genomic surveillance landscape. Recurrent actors weren’t only limited to countries. The heterogeneity observed between the funding network for GISAID and INSDC, for instance, raises important questions about the extent to which funding sources influence the distribution and accessibility of research resources. The results similarly show institutional hierarchies and clustered collaborations across GISAID, ENA, NCBI and DDBJ platforms. Unsurprisingly, esteemed institutions like the University of Oxford, Harvard University and University College London consistently appear pivotal, either by connection degrees or betweenness centrality. Moreso, the general dominance of inter-regional partnerships—or, in the case of ENA, intra-regional connections mainly with high income countries—in research collaborations raises questions about the extent to which research data accumulated in centralised data infrastructures can truly be considered a global endeavour, or whether it is still largely driven by a select few countries, institutions, income groups and funders. These results raise concerns about the representation of data from low-income countries within both data governance models, which raises important questions about access to and sharing of scientific resources, as well as the potential for biases in data sampling based on incomplete data—which align with emerging scholarship questioning the accessibility and equitable distribution of supposedly open scientific resources ( Leonelli 2023 ; Ross-Hellauer et al. 2022 ; UNESCO Recommendations 2021 ). Efforts to improve data sharing and promote equity in scientific research are critical for ensuring that all populations, regardless of geography or economic status, have access to the best available information and resources for preventing and treating disease ( Cousins et al. 2021 ; Pratt and Bull 2021 ; Staunton et al. 2021 ).

Characteristics of the lesser prominent collaborations between each repository offer revealing insights. For instance, in the GISAID country network Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa make up a decent share of degree and betweenness centrality. This united front may in part be due to the federated effort by African nations to share data between themselves using GISAID to keep their data secure ( Tegally et al., 2022 ). This might suggest the GISAID model has been more effective in building trustworthiness among users from different resource environments to collaborate and engage in data generation ( ODI 2019 ; Pickering et al. 2021 ). It also seems to reinforce claims by Bernasconi ( 2021 ) that a partially closed access model is preferred at a global scale for viral data sharing. In contrast to Bernasconi, however, our results also suggest that GISAID’s network topology appears less densely interconnected than that of the ENA or NCBI. ENA’s pronounced interconnectivity might suggest either the emergence of specialised research clusters or a propensity towards insular data exploration, as evidenced by their large growth in single author papers. Interestingly, data trends support the latter option, with ENA fostering broader multi-regional collaborations, potentially benefiting from its commitment to data interoperability. Placing emphasis on interoperability and usability by members of the INSDC may permit users of the infrastructure to explore their own research questions and methods more easily by linking together the wider variety of research data types. However, GISAID’s low density and high average path may positively reflect the controlled access to the repository’s data and the repository’s tendency to have much larger authorship per paper. These results warrant further exploration into the communities and segregated communities’ part of each repository. For a full list of pros and cons for each repository see Table 5 .

List of pros and cons for the strategies adopted by each repository based on results.

6 Conclusion

Our bibliometric analysis highlights the strengths and limitations of the regulated and unrestricted approaches to open data governance embodied by GISAID and INSDC, respectively. These databases furnish valuable resources for scientific research, yet they diverge in their bibliometric indicators, country and income collaboration, and corpus networks. While data sharing initiatives advocating for complete openness, like members of the INSDC, highlight the advantages of immediate data access, they tend to overlook the sociocultural, institutional and infrastructural factors that affect data reuse. These factors include disparities in geo-political locations, power dynamics among research sites, expectations regarding intellectual property, funding availability and digital connectivity resources. GISAID’s partially open model offers an alternative approach that has drawn more diverse geo-political locations into its fold. However, despite this increased geographical representation, it does not necessarily translate into greater epistemic diversity within research topics. This can limit the breadth of scientific perspectives and inadvertently funnel research into narrow or pre-established trajectories. While the different user base of GISAID and INSDC can explain some of the discrepancies between these two systems, their respective approaches to openness arguably account for at least some of the attitudes and preferences of their users, including the greater emphasis on wide-ranging and exploratory biological research facilitated by INSDC.

Looking ahead, while our current analysis has placed significant emphasis on betweenness centrality measurements, future research could explore community segregation between institutions, thereby uncovering deeper insights into the inherent collaborative or insular behaviours of academic institutions in the context of data sharing. The landscape of data governance is rife with contention, especially concerning what constitutes responsible and ethical practices. Yet, both GISAID and INDSC, in INSDC respective ways, demonstrate and support effective modes of collaboration. Through critical reviews of such data repositories, we can ascertain the nuances and implications of their governing structures. Through empirical exploration and better understanding of these intricacies, the academic community stands a better chance to design robust and inclusive systems for data governance that truly foster global scientific collaboration.

Note that our discussion is not meant to be comprehensive of all possible forms of data governance in this domain. Rather, we take these two cases as exemplifying significant and widespread models of data sharing, which are worth comparing to further enhance existing understandings of best data management practice.  

Given these controversies, this paper does not aim to take a strong position on whether GISAID, in fact, complies with the FAIR principles, which would require a different kind of analysis and empirical evidence (including checks on the extent to which GISAID data have been accessible in practice). Rather, we focus on the GISAID governance mode as articulated by the infrastructure itself, according to which data are accessible upon request and in compliance with the GISAID license agreement; findable on the GISAID database; interoperable as long as users declare prospective purposes and delimit the degree to which GISAID data are integrated with other data sources; and reusable as long as the provenance of data is clearly acknowledged and the prospective use serves public health goals.  

Acknowledgements

We thank colleagues at the European Bioinformatics Institute, the ‘Philosophy of Open Science for Diverse Research Environments’ (PHIL_OS) project and the Exeter Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences (Egenis) for their feedback and support in this research, as well as Carole Goble for illuminating discussions and the attentive audience of the PhilInBioMed conference in Pittsburgh (November 2022) where this work was first presented.

Funding Information

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 101001145). This paper reflects only the authors’ views and the Commission/Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. N.S. was funded via a doctoral training grant awarded as part of the UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Environmental Intelligence (UKRI grant number EP/S022074/1).

Author Contributions

N.S. and S.L. conceived the presented idea. N.S., S.L. and F.B. contributed to the design and implementation of the research. N.S. and F.B. performed the data analysis, and N.S. and S.L. wrote the manuscript.

Competing Interests

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

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Visser, M, van Eck, N J and Waltman, L 2021 Large-scale comparison of bibliographic data sources: Scopus, Web of Science, Dimensions, Crossref, and Microsoft Academic. Quantitative Science Studies , 2: 20–41. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00112  

Walls, A C, Park, Y-J, Tortorici, M A, Wall, A, McGuire, A T and Veesler, D 2020 Structure, function, and antigenicity of the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein. Cell , 181: 281–292. e6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.02.058  

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NeurIPS 2024

Conference Dates: (In person) 9 December - 15 December, 2024

Homepage: https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2024/

Call For Papers 

Author notification: Sep 25, 2024

Camera-ready, poster, and video submission: Oct 30, 2024 AOE

Submit at: https://openreview.net/group?id=NeurIPS.cc/2024/Conference  

The site will start accepting submissions on Apr 22, 2024 

Subscribe to these and other dates on the 2024 dates page .

The Thirty-Eighth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2024) is an interdisciplinary conference that brings together researchers in machine learning, neuroscience, statistics, optimization, computer vision, natural language processing, life sciences, natural sciences, social sciences, and other adjacent fields. We invite submissions presenting new and original research on topics including but not limited to the following:

• Applications (e.g., vision, language, speech and audio, Creative AI)
• Deep learning (e.g., architectures, generative models, optimization for deep networks, foundation models, LLMs)
• Evaluation (e.g., methodology, meta studies, replicability and validity, human-in-the-loop)
• General machine learning (supervised, unsupervised, online, active, etc.)
• Infrastructure (e.g., libraries, improved implementation and scalability, distributed solutions)
• Machine learning for sciences (e.g. climate, health, life sciences, physics, social sciences)
• Neuroscience and cognitive science (e.g., neural coding, brain-computer interfaces)
• Optimization (e.g., convex and non-convex, stochastic, robust)
• Probabilistic methods (e.g., variational inference, causal inference, Gaussian processes)
• Reinforcement learning (e.g., decision and control, planning, hierarchical RL, robotics)
• Social and economic aspects of machine learning (e.g., fairness, interpretability, human-AI interaction, privacy, safety, strategic behavior)
• Theory (e.g., control theory, learning theory, algorithmic game theory)

Machine learning is a rapidly evolving field, and so we welcome interdisciplinary submissions that do not fit neatly into existing categories.

Authors are asked to confirm that their submissions accord with the NeurIPS code of conduct .

Formatting instructions:   All submissions must be in PDF format, and in a single PDF file include, in this order:

• The submitted paper
• Technical appendices that support the paper with additional proofs, derivations, or results 
• The NeurIPS paper checklist  

Other supplementary materials such as data and code can be uploaded as a ZIP file

The main text of a submitted paper is limited to nine content pages , including all figures and tables. Additional pages containing references don’t count as content pages. If your submission is accepted, you will be allowed an additional content page for the camera-ready version.

The main text and references may be followed by technical appendices, for which there is no page limit.

The maximum file size for a full submission, which includes technical appendices, is 50MB.

Authors are encouraged to submit a separate ZIP file that contains further supplementary material like data or source code, when applicable.

You must format your submission using the NeurIPS 2024 LaTeX style file which includes a “preprint” option for non-anonymous preprints posted online. Submissions that violate the NeurIPS style (e.g., by decreasing margins or font sizes) or page limits may be rejected without further review. Papers may be rejected without consideration of their merits if they fail to meet the submission requirements, as described in this document. 

Paper checklist: In order to improve the rigor and transparency of research submitted to and published at NeurIPS, authors are required to complete a paper checklist . The paper checklist is intended to help authors reflect on a wide variety of issues relating to responsible machine learning research, including reproducibility, transparency, research ethics, and societal impact. The checklist forms part of the paper submission, but does not count towards the page limit.

Please join the NeurIPS 2024 Checklist Assistant Study that will provide you with free verification of your checklist performed by an LLM here . Please see details in our  blog

Supplementary material: While all technical appendices should be included as part of the main paper submission PDF, authors may submit up to 100MB of supplementary material, such as data, or source code in a ZIP format. Supplementary material should be material created by the authors that directly supports the submission content. Like submissions, supplementary material must be anonymized. Looking at supplementary material is at the discretion of the reviewers.

We encourage authors to upload their code and data as part of their supplementary material in order to help reviewers assess the quality of the work. Check the policy as well as code submission guidelines and templates for further details.

Use of Large Language Models (LLMs): We welcome authors to use any tool that is suitable for preparing high-quality papers and research. However, we ask authors to keep in mind two important criteria. First, we expect papers to fully describe their methodology, and any tool that is important to that methodology, including the use of LLMs, should be described also. For example, authors should mention tools (including LLMs) that were used for data processing or filtering, visualization, facilitating or running experiments, and proving theorems. It may also be advisable to describe the use of LLMs in implementing the method (if this corresponds to an important, original, or non-standard component of the approach). Second, authors are responsible for the entire content of the paper, including all text and figures, so while authors are welcome to use any tool they wish for writing the paper, they must ensure that all text is correct and original.

Double-blind reviewing:   All submissions must be anonymized and may not contain any identifying information that may violate the double-blind reviewing policy.  This policy applies to any supplementary or linked material as well, including code.  If you are including links to any external material, it is your responsibility to guarantee anonymous browsing.  Please do not include acknowledgements at submission time. If you need to cite one of your own papers, you should do so with adequate anonymization to preserve double-blind reviewing.  For instance, write “In the previous work of Smith et al. [1]…” rather than “In our previous work [1]...”). If you need to cite one of your own papers that is in submission to NeurIPS and not available as a non-anonymous preprint, then include a copy of the cited anonymized submission in the supplementary material and write “Anonymous et al. [1] concurrently show...”). Any papers found to be violating this policy will be rejected.

OpenReview: We are using OpenReview to manage submissions. The reviews and author responses will not be public initially (but may be made public later, see below). As in previous years, submissions under review will be visible only to their assigned program committee. We will not be soliciting comments from the general public during the reviewing process. Anyone who plans to submit a paper as an author or a co-author will need to create (or update) their OpenReview profile by the full paper submission deadline. Your OpenReview profile can be edited by logging in and clicking on your name in https://openreview.net/ . This takes you to a URL "https://openreview.net/profile?id=~[Firstname]_[Lastname][n]" where the last part is your profile name, e.g., ~Wei_Zhang1. The OpenReview profiles must be up to date, with all publications by the authors, and their current affiliations. The easiest way to import publications is through DBLP but it is not required, see FAQ . Submissions without updated OpenReview profiles will be desk rejected. The information entered in the profile is critical for ensuring that conflicts of interest and reviewer matching are handled properly. Because of the rapid growth of NeurIPS, we request that all authors help with reviewing papers, if asked to do so. We need everyone’s help in maintaining the high scientific quality of NeurIPS.  

Please be aware that OpenReview has a moderation policy for newly created profiles: New profiles created without an institutional email will go through a moderation process that can take up to two weeks. New profiles created with an institutional email will be activated automatically.

Venue home page: https://openreview.net/group?id=NeurIPS.cc/2024/Conference

If you have any questions, please refer to the FAQ: https://openreview.net/faq

Ethics review: Reviewers and ACs may flag submissions for ethics review . Flagged submissions will be sent to an ethics review committee for comments. Comments from ethics reviewers will be considered by the primary reviewers and AC as part of their deliberation. They will also be visible to authors, who will have an opportunity to respond.  Ethics reviewers do not have the authority to reject papers, but in extreme cases papers may be rejected by the program chairs on ethical grounds, regardless of scientific quality or contribution.  

Preprints: The existence of non-anonymous preprints (on arXiv or other online repositories, personal websites, social media) will not result in rejection. If you choose to use the NeurIPS style for the preprint version, you must use the “preprint” option rather than the “final” option. Reviewers will be instructed not to actively look for such preprints, but encountering them will not constitute a conflict of interest. Authors may submit anonymized work to NeurIPS that is already available as a preprint (e.g., on arXiv) without citing it. Note that public versions of the submission should not say "Under review at NeurIPS" or similar.

Dual submissions: Submissions that are substantially similar to papers that the authors have previously published or submitted in parallel to other peer-reviewed venues with proceedings or journals may not be submitted to NeurIPS. Papers previously presented at workshops are permitted, so long as they did not appear in a conference proceedings (e.g., CVPRW proceedings), a journal or a book.  NeurIPS coordinates with other conferences to identify dual submissions.  The NeurIPS policy on dual submissions applies for the entire duration of the reviewing process.  Slicing contributions too thinly is discouraged.  The reviewing process will treat any other submission by an overlapping set of authors as prior work. If publishing one would render the other too incremental, both may be rejected.

Anti-collusion: NeurIPS does not tolerate any collusion whereby authors secretly cooperate with reviewers, ACs or SACs to obtain favorable reviews. 

Author responses:   Authors will have one week to view and respond to initial reviews. Author responses may not contain any identifying information that may violate the double-blind reviewing policy. Authors may not submit revisions of their paper or supplemental material, but may post their responses as a discussion in OpenReview. This is to reduce the burden on authors to have to revise their paper in a rush during the short rebuttal period.

After the initial response period, authors will be able to respond to any further reviewer/AC questions and comments by posting on the submission’s forum page. The program chairs reserve the right to solicit additional reviews after the initial author response period.  These reviews will become visible to the authors as they are added to OpenReview, and authors will have a chance to respond to them.

After the notification deadline, accepted and opted-in rejected papers will be made public and open for non-anonymous public commenting. Their anonymous reviews, meta-reviews, author responses and reviewer responses will also be made public. Authors of rejected papers will have two weeks after the notification deadline to opt in to make their deanonymized rejected papers public in OpenReview.  These papers are not counted as NeurIPS publications and will be shown as rejected in OpenReview.

Publication of accepted submissions:   Reviews, meta-reviews, and any discussion with the authors will be made public for accepted papers (but reviewer, area chair, and senior area chair identities will remain anonymous). Camera-ready papers will be due in advance of the conference. All camera-ready papers must include a funding disclosure . We strongly encourage accompanying code and data to be submitted with accepted papers when appropriate, as per the code submission policy . Authors will be allowed to make minor changes for a short period of time after the conference.

Contemporaneous Work: For the purpose of the reviewing process, papers that appeared online within two months of a submission will generally be considered "contemporaneous" in the sense that the submission will not be rejected on the basis of the comparison to contemporaneous work. Authors are still expected to cite and discuss contemporaneous work and perform empirical comparisons to the degree feasible. Any paper that influenced the submission is considered prior work and must be cited and discussed as such. Submissions that are very similar to contemporaneous work will undergo additional scrutiny to prevent cases of plagiarism and missing credit to prior work.

Plagiarism is prohibited by the NeurIPS Code of Conduct .

Other Tracks: Similarly to earlier years, we will host multiple tracks, such as datasets, competitions, tutorials as well as workshops, in addition to the main track for which this call for papers is intended. See the conference homepage for updates and calls for participation in these tracks. 

Experiments: As in past years, the program chairs will be measuring the quality and effectiveness of the review process via randomized controlled experiments. All experiments are independently reviewed and approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB).

Financial Aid: Each paper may designate up to one (1) NeurIPS.cc account email address of a corresponding student author who confirms that they would need the support to attend the conference, and agrees to volunteer if they get selected. To be considered for Financial the student will also need to fill out the Financial Aid application when it becomes available.