2012年1月13日星期五

Dani Rodrik: Leaderless Global Governance / 無領導的全球治理





CAMBRIDGE – The world economy is entering a new phase, in which achieving global cooperation will become increasingly difficult. The United States and the European Union, now burdened by high debt and low growth – and therefore preoccupied with domestic concerns – are no longer able to set global rules and expect others to fall into line.

Compounding this trend, rising powers such as China and India place great value on national sovereignty and non-interference in domestic affairs. This makes them unwilling to submit to international rules (or to demand that others comply with such rules) – and thus unlikely to invest in multilateral institutions, as the US did in the aftermath of World War II.

As a result, global leadership and cooperation will remain in limited supply, requiring a carefully calibrated response in the world economy’s governance – specifically, a thinner set of rules that recognizes the diversity of national circumstances and demands for policy autonomy. But discussions in the G-20, World Trade Organization, and other multilateral fora proceed as if the right remedy were more of the same – more rules, more harmonization, and more discipline on national policies.

Going back to basics, the principle of “subsidiarity” provides the right way to think about global governance issues. It tells us which kinds of policies should be coordinated or harmonized globally, and which should be left largely to domestic decision-making processes. The principle demarcates areas where we need extensive global governance from those where only a thin layer of global rules suffices.

Economic policies come in roughly four variants. At one extreme are domestic policies that create no (or very few) spillovers across national borders. Education policies, for example, require no international agreement and can be safely left to domestic policymakers.

At the other extreme are policies that implicate the “global commons”: the outcome for each country is determined not by domestic policies, but by (the sum total of) other countries’ policies. Greenhouse-gas emissions are the archetypal case. In such policy domains, there is a strong case for establishing binding global rules, since each country, left to its own devices, has an interest in neglecting its share of the upkeep of the global commons. Failure to reach global agreement would condemn all to collective disaster.

Between the extremes are two other types of policies that create spillovers, but that need to be treated differently. First, there are “beggar-thy-neighbor” policies, whereby a country derives an economic benefit at the expense of other countries. For example, its leaders restrict the supply of a natural resource in order to drive up its price on world markets, or pursue mercantilist policies in the form of large trade surpluses, especially in the presence of unemployment and excess capacity.

Because beggar-thy-neighbor policies create benefits by imposing costs on others, they, too, need to be regulated at the international level. This is the strongest argument for subjecting China’s currency policies or large macroeconomic imbalances like Germany’s trade surplus to greater global discipline than currently exists.

Beggar-thy-neighbor policies must be distinguished from what could be called “beggar thyself” policies, whose economic costs are borne primarily at home, though they might affect others as well.

Consider agricultural subsidies, bans on genetically modified organisms, or lax financial regulation. While these policies might impose costs on other countries, they are deployed not to extract advantages from them, but because other domestic-policy motives – such as distributional, administrative, or public-health concerns – prevail over the objective of economic efficiency.

The case for global discipline is quite a bit weaker with beggar-thyself policies. After all, it should not be up to the “global community” to tell individual countries how they ought to weight competing goals. Imposing costs on other countries is not, by itself, a cause for global regulation. (Indeed, economists hardly complain when a country’s trade liberalization harms competitors.) Democracies, in particular, ought to be allowed to make their own “mistakes.”

Of course, there is no guarantee that domestic policies accurately reflect societal demands; even democracies are frequently taken hostage by special interests. So the case for global rulemaking takes a rather different form with beggar-thyself policies, and calls for procedural requirements designed to enhance the quality of domestic policymaking. Global standards pertaining to transparency, broad representation, accountability, and use of empirical evidence, for example, do not constrain the end result.

Different types of policies call for different responses at the global level. Too much global political capital nowadays is wasted on harmonizing beggar-thyself policies (particularly in the areas of trade and financial regulation), and not enough is spent on beggar-thy-neighbor policies (such as macroeconomic imbalances). Over-ambitious and misdirected efforts at global governance will not serve us well at a time when the supply of global leadership and cooperation is bound to remain limited.


Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University, is the author of The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy.


 Dani Rodrik: 無領導的全球治理
劍橋——世界經濟正在進入一個新階段, 實現全球合作將日益困難。美國和歐洲如今負債累累,經濟增長乏力——因此國內的問題已經自顧不暇——它們不再能制定國際規則並期望其他國家遵守規則。

中國和印度等崛起中的大國非常重視國家主權和不干涉內政的政策,這強化了這種趨勢。這使它們不願遵守國際規則(或者要求其他國家遵守這些規則),因此不太可能像美國在二戰之后所做的那樣對多邊機構進行投資。

因而全球領導和合作仍然有限,要求在世界經濟治理方面做出謹慎的反應——具體而言,即一系列更少的規則,認可各國情況的不同並要求自主制定政策。但是20國集團、世貿組織以及其他多邊論壇上進行的討論似乎表明,正確的補救方法是大同小異的——在國家政策方面制定更多的規則、更加一致以及更加有紀律。

回到基本問題上來,“自主權”原則為思考全球治理問題提供了正確的方法。它告訴我們,哪些政策應該由全球協調或統一制定,哪些政策應該基本上由各國國內決定。有些領域,我們需要廣泛的全球治理,有些領域隻需少量國際規則就夠了,該原則將這些領域區分開來了。

經濟政策基本上可以分為四類。一個極端是國內政策,這些政策不會(或者很少)會影響到其他國家。比如,教育政策不需要國際一致通過,可以放心地交給國內的決策者。

另一個極端是涉及“全球共同利益”的政策:每個國家的結果不是取決於國內政策,而是取決於所有其他國家政策的總和。溫室氣體排放問題就是一個典型的例子。在這樣的政策領域內,有充分理由建立富有約束力的國際規則,這是因為每個國家要是根據自己的規則行事,都會有意忽視自己對維護全球共同利益應盡的那份責任。全球無法達成協議將導致所有國家集體遭殃。

在兩個極端之間還有其他兩種政策類型,它們會帶來影響,但是需要區別對待。首先是“以鄰為壑”的政策,即一個國家以犧牲其他國家的利益來獲取經濟利益。比如,其領導人限制某種自然資源的供應以推高該自然資源在世界市場上的價格或者以大量貿易順差的方式採取重商主義的政策,尤其是在失業和產能過剩的情況下。

由於以鄰為壑的政策是通過迫使別人承受損失來獲取利益,因此這樣的政策也是需要受到國際監管的。要求中國的貨幣政策或像德國貿易順差這樣的宏觀經濟大失衡接受比現在更多的國際約束,這是最強有力的理由。

以鄰為壑的政策必須與可稱之為“以己為壑”的政策區別開來,“以己為壑”的政策所帶來的經濟損失主要由本國承當,盡管它們可能會影響到其他國家。

比如農業補貼、轉基因食品的禁令或寬鬆的財政監管。盡管這些政策可能會使其他國家遭受損失,但是推行這些政策並不是為了從中獲取優勢,而是因為其他國內政策問題——比如分配、管理或公共健康問題——比經濟效率的目標更加重要。

以己為壑的政策要遵守全球紀律的理由要弱一些。畢竟,“國際社會”不應該告訴各國,它們應該如何權衡競爭的目標。迫使其他國家承受損失本身並不是需要全球監管的理由。(實際上,當某個國家的貿易自由化對競爭者造成傷害時,經濟學家幾乎不會抱怨。)尤其是民主國家應該是允許自己犯“錯誤”的。

當然,無法保証國內政策准確地反映社會需求,即便是民主國家也經常受到特殊利益集團的嚴重束縛。因此制定全球規則的理由對於以己為壑的政策要採取不同的形式,需要旨在提高國內決策質量的程序性要求。比如,與透明度、廣泛的代表、問責制以及確鑿証據的使用有關的全球標准不要影響最終結果。

在全球層面上,不同的政策類型需要不同的回應。如今,太多的全球政治資本浪費在了統一以己為壑的政策上(尤其在貿易和金融監管領域),而花在以鄰為壑政策上的資本卻不夠(比如宏觀經濟失衡)。在全球領導和合作仍然有限的時期,在全球治理方面過於雄心勃勃和南轅北轍的努力不會給我們帶來多少好處。

Dani Rodrik,哈佛大學國際政治經濟學教授,著有《全球化的矛盾:民主和世界經濟的未來》一書。