When people talk about international politics, people talk about theories of International Relations as well as interpretation by scholars of International Relations. Global governance, however, makes no difference. Due to the fact that global governance deals with global challenges which require contributions ranging from states to individuals, global governance deal with the question of who govern and how governance could be implemented. Since global governance can be carried out based on the constant changes of international politics, it can be explained by four main theories in International Relations such as Liberalism, Realism, Constructivism and Marxism.
1-Liberalism
The nature of Liberalism is optimistic that people are good and peace can be preserve by state cooperation. Liberalism values institution or international order because they think that people like state are rational and want interest. As long as the central power and order are held by institution, states can trust each other and cooperate with each other for mutual interest.
Ex. After the WWI, U.S President initiated to form League of Nations which he believed this institution would serve as world government to keep international order, maintain peace and promote closer cooperation in both politics and economic among states.
Liberalism accepted that states are key actors but states should be acting based on freedom and democracy. Financial crisis in early 1970s can be a good case study. Although the crisis was serious, most of non-state actor such as World Bank, IMF and Bretton Wood did not collapse. The logic here is easy because states and states cooperated with one another to survive. Furthermore, another good case study is the term of Prisoner’s Dilemma in which the lack of communication channel would result in lose-lose policy.
-Functionalism: governance is the belief that needs contribution from both state and people to fulfill the needs and demands of humanity. States should put difference concepts aside and start working with each other to focus on common issues as whole.
-International Regimes: it is important for states to think about morality and benefit as well as human security as a whole. As long as states understand that they are forming framework which serve everyone’s interest, states would join that framework. Liberalism believes that social cooperation is a root to political and security cooperation referring the case to the history of EU and ASEAN.
-Collective Goods: People are rational to maximize the profit. Collective goods try to manage the uses of scare resources which would eventually end up with term of Tragedy of Commons.
2-Realism
Realism is pessimistic about people. Realists believe that state is the only actor in international politics. Due to the fact that world is anarchy, states need to seek for power to server their interest and to balance power with another states. Thucydides writing the history of Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta believed that the weak have to accept what the strong does. Moreover, Machiavelli wrote in the his book, The Prince, that the prince always has reason to break his promise while Han J Morgenthau believed that leaders need not to apply to morality or he or her will be cheated. All of these arguments can be understood that leaders have to prioritize the national interest and they are willing and ready to do everything for their national interests including breaking promise, applying for immorality and coercive forces.
A case study of War in Iraq is good to describe the core idea of realism. Before invading Iraq, U.S President accused Iraq of possessing and producing chemical and biological weapons as well as Weapon of Mass Destruction. The accusation, however, turned out as invalid and groundless as nothing found after control by United States. The lesson we learn from this case is that in order to bring Sadam Hussein down, weaken Iraq in the Middle East, spread the idea of freedom and democracy, sell weapons to allies in the Middle East, American leaders lied not only their people but people in the world as a whole that Iraq is a threat to humanity.
