Global Governance vs. State Failure
Global Governance vs. State Failure

Summary/Abstract: The article presents some conceptual innovations to aid research on state failure by freeing it from some of its burden of a specifically West-centric kind of normativity. It looks to do so firstly by offering a more universally relevant definition for the central concept of the discourse. Following a dual conceptualisation of the notion, it deals with state failure primarily from an external/security perspective, using the concept of Negative Spill-over Effects (NSEs). This has the added benefit of leading to a potentially refined definition of global governance by pointing to a program of Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) as the latter’s essential contemporary mission. With regards to what that may imply, an overview of the discourse on state failure and a description of different schools of thought within it follow. A theoretical construct of the discourse is laid out, which may allow for distinguishing between various conceivable and debatable normative frameworks for CTR and global governance, each read out from one of the respective schools of thought presented in the overview of the discourse.

• Details
• Contents