Towards the Private Provision of a Public Good: Exploring the role of Higher Education as an instrument of European cultural and science diplomacy with reference to Africa. EL-CSID Working Paper Issue 2018/17 • May 2018

The European Union’s (EU) universities and their provision of higher education (HE) to international students remains one of its most powerful, global cultural assets. They play an important and growing role in EU cultural and science diplomacy. This is due not only to the quality of EU HE but also to its role as a generator of export income and as a provider of a global public good—both of which are powerful indicators of prestige and international influence. Until now, the World Bank has been the leading supporter of HE in Africa, closely followed by the EU. The EU has developed a sophisticated and wide-ranging set of strategies to assist Africa in enhancing the quality and quantity of provision of its HE. These strategies are discussed in this study. The EU and its member states, through their interactions with Africa, have an established track record of supporting advancements in education. The 10th European Development Fund allocated €45 million to support the Nyerere African Union Scholarship Scheme for some 250 individuals per year and, since 2009, students and higher education institutions across the continent have benefited from the Erasmus Mundus Program. African higher education (HE) has recorded the highest growth rates of all the regions of the world since 2000. Universities in many African countries are experiencing a surge in their enrolments. Between 2000 and 2010, higher education enrolments more than doubled, increasing from 2.3 million to 5.2 million”1. But an 8% average enrolment rate (2014) across all sub-Saharan African nations is still much lower than the average of 20-40% for all other developing regions, including North Africa and the Middle East. Moreover, an ongoing brain drain and reduction in public financing for HE institutions in Africa continues to adversely impact quality. Resources have failed to match higher enrolment figures and public universities are under increasing pressure to deliver more with less. Currently, only one percent of total African GDP is spent on higher education

Not just a "second order" problem in a wider economic crisis: systemic challenges for the global trading system

Reform of the multilateral trade regime is not simply a second order problem within a wider economic crisis. The completion of the Doha Round may be a second order question but the global trade regime faces a series of broader systemic challenges beyond the completion of the current negotiations. This paper identifies five challenges: (i) a marked reduction in popular support for open markets in major OECD countries; (ii) the stalling of a transition from one global economic equilibrium to another; (iii) a lack of clarity and agreement on the agenda and objectives for the WTO as we move deeper into the 21st century; (iv) the demand for fairness and justice in the governance of the WTO—the 'legitimacy' question and (v) the rise of regional preferentialism as a challenge to multilateralism. Failure to address these challenges will represent not only a fundamental question for the future of the WTO as the guarantor of the norms and rules of the global trade regime specifically, but also the ability to establish greater coherence in global economic governance overall when its need is arguably greater than at any time since the depression years of the 20th century inter-war period

Justice unbound? Globalisation, states and the transformation of the social bond

Conventional accounts of justice suppose the presence of a stable political society, stable identities, and a Westphalian cartography of clear lines of authority--usually a state--where justice can be realised. They also assume a stable social bond. But what if, in an age of globalisation, the territorial boundaries of politics unbundle and a stable social bond deteriorates? How then are we to think about justice? Can there be justice in a world where that bond is constantly being disrupted or transformed by globalisation? Thus the paper argues that we need to think about the relationship between globalisation, governance and justice. It does so in three stages: (i) It explains how, under conditions of globalisation, assumptions made about the social bond are changing. (ii) It demonsrates how strains on the social bond within states give rise to a search for newer forms of global political theory and organisation and the emergence of new global (non state) actors which contest with states over the policy agendas emanating from globalisation. (iii) Despite the new forms of activity identified at (ii) the paper concludes that the prospects for a satisfactory synthesis of a liberal economic theory of globalisation, a normative political theory of the global public domain and a new social bond are remote

Building the normative dimension(s) of a global polity

Globalisation is not what it used to be. Earlier debates over how to read the indicators of economic liberalisation and the impact of technological expansion have now been joined by the increasingly pressing need to explore the social, environmental and political aspects of global change. Earlier discussions emphasised a number of dichotomies within the international political economy – open/closed, state/market and so on. These have proved limited in their ability to inform explanations of change under conditions of globalisation. To these we must now add what we might call the ‘governance from above’, ‘resistance from below’ dichotomy as a popular metaphor for understanding order and change in international relations under conditions of globalisation. But this new binary axis is in many ways as unsatisfactory as those that went before. It too can obscure as much as it reveals in terms of understanding the normative possibilities of reforming globalisation. In this article we wish to suggest that there is perhaps a more useful way of thinking about politics and the changing contours of political life in the contemporary global order. This approach blurs the distinction between governance and resistance by emphasising an ethical take on globalisation

American unilateralism, foreign economic policy and the 'securitisation' of globalisation

This paper traces the ‘securitisation’ of US foreign economic policy since the advent of the Bush administration. It does so with reference to US economic policy in East Asia. It argues that in the context of US economic and military preponderance in the world order, the US has been unable to resist the temptation to link foreign economic and security policy. While there was evidence of the securitisation of economic globalisation in US policy from day one of the Bush administration, it was 9/11 that firmed up this trend. For the key members of the Bush foreign policy team, globalisation is now seen not simply in neo-liberal economic terms, but also through the lenses of the national security agenda of the United States. Economic globalisation is now not only a benefit, but also a ‘security problem’. 9/11 offered the opportunity for what we might call the ‘unilateralist-idealists’, in the Bush Administration, to set in train their project for a post-sovereign approach to American foreign policy. The paper identifies some intellectual contradictions in current US strategy and raises a series of questions about the implications for world order of the consolidation of the trends identified in the paper

International political economy (IPE) and the demand for political philosophy in an era of globalisation

Recent years have seen international political economy (IPE) become an increasingly bifurcated field of inquiry. On the one hand deductive, rational choice driven analysis has taken IPE increasingly in the direction of economic analysis toute courte. This has especially been the case in the United States. On the other hand, driven more by the largely inductive tradition in the non-economic social sciences, IPE, especially in a European and 'southern' context has become more, indeed as some would argue excessively, 'reflexive' in direction. One approach asserts its social scientific status while the other asserts its normative imperatives. This bifurcation is undesirable and, this paper argues, unsustainable in the contemporary era. The need to understand and explain globalisation should, in both theory and practice, make this bifurcation redundant. Fortunately there are elements of an evolving IPE that is increasingly historically and empirically grounded, analytically sophisticated and in search of tighter, less indulgent, more policy relevant, normative purchase on key issues of IPE such as justice, equality and development. It is doing this by paying close attention to work on these issues by normative political philosophers. Similarly, political philosophers are recognising the need to come to terms with the research agendas of IPE. This coming together is not an easy process. Indeed it is in its formative stages. But it is an important scholarly project, and one which should cast larger policy shadows over the global order, which is likely to gather momentum over the next few years

The politics of economic crisis in East Asia: some longer term implications

The currency and market turmoils in East Asia since summer of 1997 are every bit as much political crises as they are economic ones. Indeed, the political manifestations of these events may linger long after the necessary economic reforms have been introduced to return at least a semblance of economic normalcy to the region. This paper assess some of the longer term political implications. It does so through 'Asian tinted lenses' rather than Anglo American ones and offers an alternative reading of the East Asian economic crisis to that which exists in the mainstream of western policy analysis. While accepting that particularist explanations apply on a country by country basis, the paper outlines: (i) those aspects of the crisis that appear common to those countries affected to-date: (ii) the importance of the silent but fundamental role of Japan as a factor in the crisis and (iii) notwithstanding the real/ material explanations of the crisis, it argues that the crisis is in large part an ideological one reflecting a western conceptual inability to deal with the Asian model of development's reluctance to converge to with an Anglo-American form of capitalism. While the policy remedies proffered by the IMF are accepted in Asia in the short run, they may well not be appreciated in the long run and a major implication of this interaction may well be an enhancement of the prospect of the continued development of an 'East Asian' as opposed to 'Asia Pacific' understanding of region. Some evidence of regional social learning from the crisis that may well consolidate the trend towards enhanced economic policy coordination that already exists. This could exaccerbate tensions between global and regional interests and severely test the 'APEC consensus' on a commitment to neo-liberalism in the early stages of the twenty-first century

US foreign policy after the election: will it make a difference who wins?

Since the end of the Cold War, the US’s dominant place in the global economic and security orders has strengthened. But these orders face dramatic change. International economic institutions are re-grouping in the wake of recent currency crises and the Seattle meeting of the WTO. Kosovo, East Timor and Chechnya have demonstrated the increasingly difficult dilemma of how international security systems balance respect for a state’s sovereignty with popular demands for humanitarian intervention by other powers. Following his election in November, the new U.S. President will face foreign policy decisions which could result in fundamental changes, ranging from quasi-isolaitonism and aggressive unilateralism at one end of the spectrum, to the U.S. pursuing an engaged ‘international citizen’ and multilateralist role at the other. Which path will the new President follow

Multilalteralism and the limits of global governance

Global governance (GG) is an over-used and under-specified concept. The search for meaningful use is a reflection of the growing despair over the mismatch between the over-development of the global economy and the under-development of a comparable global polity. For the global policy community, driven largely by economic theory, the delivery of public goods via collective action problem solving leads to what I call GG Type I. By contrast, scholarly interest, driven by normative (often cosmopolitan) political theory and focussing on issues of institutional accountability, greater citizen representation, justice and the search for an as yet to be defined global agora leads to a rather loose GG Type II. But, using the IMF and the GATT-WTO as case studies, the paper argues that without the enhancement of GG Type II, the prospects of the continuance of GG Type I—via the economic multilateralism of the 20th century Bretton Woods Institutions (IMF and WB), the WTO—will become unsustainable. It will do so for at least three reasons. The nature of what constitute ‘public goods’ in the 21st century global economy is strongly contested. Both the ability and political will of the US to play the role of self-binding hegemon, under-writing multilateralism, is problematic to say the least. Resistance amongst the world’s ‘rule takers’ to a hegemonic global order is growing. It is not necessary to accept ’Clash of Civilisation’ style arguments to recognise that this is also, in part at least, an ideological contest with security implications of the kind that have dominated the international agenda in the early years of the 21st century. But, perhaps more importantly, it is also a practical-cum-policy issue over the contested nature of what actually constitute ‘global public goods’ in the 21st century. In this context it is appropriate to ask questions about alternative forms of global governance espoused by advocates of G-20 style activities. The paper concludes with an introductory comparative analysis of this evolving economic initiative and the existing economic institutions