Global Governance and the Creative Economy: The Developing versus Developed Country Dichotomy Revisited

The past century has seen drastic changes, and the pace with which these changes occur still appears to be accelerating. It is not only us as individuals who have difficulties in following these perceptual processes and in finding the appropriate conceptual responses and actions. The international legal and institutional framework put in place by previous generations equally seems no longer to be capable of providing the efficient responses needed to tackle the imminent global challenges and to secure a sustainable development in the future. Put briefly and more generally, the gap between our perceptual processes and the corresponding conceptual responses is widening. As a result, it appears that the perennial paradoxical struggle between continuity and change, which underlies the fundamental problem of preserving the integrity of the law, has reached a new level. As a paradox, it is in view of the absence of a global platform on which a truly global debate on the future of our societies can unfold that we need first to find a commonly shared vocabulary of concepts. Such shared vocabulary helps both to establish a global forum and to frame the debate, because the procedural aspects and the substantive arguments are intrinsically linked. This also means a twofold task, namely to coin new concepts that better encompass our present perceptions, and to abandon those which no longer suit them. In positive terms, the present article therefore advocates the joint use of the novel concepts of “global governance” and the “creative economy” while, in negative terms, calls for the abandonment of the widely used “developed versus developing country” dichotomy. Global governance and the creative economy are chosen for their special features related to paradoxical modes of thinking, better to encompass change and the accelerating modes of the perception of that change. They both seem to be better suited to the complex realities that we draw up through the perceptions generated by our various sensory instruments. By contrast, the “developed versus developing country” dichotomy serves as an example of the outdated mode of exclusively binary thinking, both in terms of a statistical and factual analysis as well as in a survey of the most prominent international legal documents. It is argued that this conceptual distinction obstructs the basis for a broader global solidarity, by artificially dividing the world into so-called “developing countries”, on the one hand, and “developed countries”, on the other. In summary, the facts and data underlying both lines of arguments appear to be better suited to our striving for a more unitary and coherent approach to the solution of many urgent global problems. Finally, this line of argument is also supported by a meta-juridical consideration of change, which, ultimately, is believed to support the claim that ‘we all want to live in “developing countries”’.Key words: Global governance; Creative economy; Change; Sustainable development; International law; United Nations; Institutional reform; Comparative la

The governance of religion and law: Insights from the prohibition of usury

Religion and law are often portrayed as belonging to different, isolated spheres and as conflicting with each other, especially with regard to the process of governing today's global economic and political affairs. The portrayal and handling of such conflicts are especially reflected in media reports and are ultimately part of the public debates that precede legislative action dealing with a great variety of legal issues, including, but not limited to, sumptuary laws, the wearing of the headscarf and other apparel in public, the acceptance and application of a cultural defense in criminal law, and the exclusion of various cultural products, such as food, beverages, or motion pictures, from international trade. This article argues against this dominant perception, positing that religion and law are instead complementary and merely operate at different levels of perception, effectively pursuing the same purpose. Therefore, it is advocated that greater caution or a so-called “precautionary principle of incomplete information” should be applied to various legislative proposals that are aimed at sanctioning various issues of religious relevance by strict positive laws. This argument is further supported by a brief reference to the prohibition of riba (usury and interest) in Islamic banking and its relevance in the world today

The ‘Cultural Industries’: A Clash of Basic Values? A Comparative Study of the EU and the NAFTA in Light of the WTO. EDAP 4/2004

Originally coined in the 1940s by protagonists of the Frankfurt School, the concept of ‘culture industry’ was gradually transformed from a derogatory term into the potentially more constructive concept ‘cultural industries’ in the context of the global culture and trade debate. The present article uses three paintings by the Belgian painter René Magritte to visually outline the framework of the conceptual and perceptive challenges, which were introduced by the various technological innovations underlying the various sectors embraced by the cultural industries and highlights some of the consequences these entail for the regulation of international trade. In particular, two legal precedents concerning the periodicals industry -involving, on the one hand, the EU and, on the other hand, the NAFTA and the WTO - are used to highlight the potential for a clash between cultural and commercial considerations as they are conceptually combined in the cultural industries. For the sake of greater clarity it is shown that in the overall regulatory process such a clash can occur either at the level of the legal idea, or the legal norm, or the legal decision. The article concludes by emphasising the need for a balance between cultural and commercial considerations with a view of their mutual reconciliation in the regulation of international trade, both at the global as well as the regional level