Experimenting with global governance: understanding the potential for generational change

Abstract

The appropriate role for the United Nations in international dispute resolution is a matter of high profile discussion and controversy. This paper begins with this ambivalence about the appropriate role for the United Nations in the world and examines several sets of issues that relate to the future of support for the UN within the US and the prospects for global governance more generally. First, we briefly review two thematic strands in previous and contemporary scholarship:(1) arguments for increased global governance in contemporary world affairs, driven by perceptions of the changing nature of the political, social, economic and military challenges in the contemporary world system. This debate is also put in the context of the relevance of public support for global governance institutions; and (2) why it is valuable to study how the current generation of adolescents perceive issues of global governance and the impact that their views may have on that nexus in the coming years. We then move to an analysis of data generated from an experimental study of American adolescents and their attitudes toward global governance.

Keywords:

• Experiments
• Global education
• Governance
• Foreign policy attitudes

Acknowledgements

This article was originally prepared for presentation at the annual meetings of the International Studies Association (ISA), Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 16–20 March 2004. The authors wish to thank Francis Beer, Victor Asal, Marie Henehan and Vicki Golich for comments on earlier drafts. All the authors are associated with the GlobalEd Project, University of Connecticut, www.globaled.uconn.edu.

Notes

1. The data discussed in this paragraph are from surveys obtained online at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, www.ropercenter.uconn.edu. The question wording for the question discussed in this paragraph was: ‘Do you think the United Nations is doing a good job or a poor job in trying to solve the problems it has had to face?’ (In some instances, ‘in general’ was added to the beginning of the question.) The surveys were conducted by a variety of polling organisations, all asking the same question at different points in time. The wording for the question discussed in the next paragraph was: ‘I am going to read a list of possible foreign policy goals that the United States might have. For each one please say whether you think that it should be a very important foreign policy goal of the US, a somewhat important foreign policy goal, or not an important goal at all. … Strengthening the United Nations. These surveys were conducted for the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.

2. It is worth noting that the public thought strengthening the UN was a higher priority than did those in the elite sample. This elite/mass gap in opinions about the UN is consistent with other research about foreign policy attitudes that has shown the existence of an elite/mass gap (Wittkopf, 1994).

3. The anthology edited by David Held and Anthony McGrew (2000) is an excellent place to start for an overview of research in the globalisation field.

4. It is worth noting that the role of the public in shaping foreign policy has been a rather controversial scholarly issue over the past several decades. Scholars have argued that public attitudes can have a negative impact on policy (Lippmann, 1955; Morgenthau, 1978) or even that public attitudes are too unstable to be useful as a guide (Almond, 1950; Rattinger, 1991). Yet there is also a wide body of literature that argues that public attitudes do matter for the policy process because they set the boundaries of the potential political options that are available to policy‐makers even if public attitudes do not determine actual policy choices (Russett, 1990; Powlick, 1991; Risse‐Kappen, 1992; Sobel, 2001). Still other scholars view public opinion as stable, coherent, and responsive to information at least in the aggregate (Page & Shapiro, 1992; Page & Barabas, 2000). A substantial body of work supports that position for the American public (Wittkopf, 1986, 1990; Holsti, 1992, 1996; Murray, 1996; Chanley, 1999), and there are comparable findings for European and Japanese publics (Bobrow, 1989; Gabel, 1998).

5. One recent effort in forecasting the future of international relations is seen in the Summer 1999 issue of International Studies Review, guest edited by Davis B. Bobrow.

6. Easton and Dennis found that these attitudes were formed by the time of entry into middle school (see also Alvik, 1968). They also explicitly replace the more common language of system ‘maintenance’ or system ‘stability’ with persistence, which they argue more effectively captures the ultimate concern of political socialisation research—how socialisation keeps the system’s broad parameters in place and functioning. This distinction is important, they contend, because it helps transcend the conservative bias of early political socialisation research, which underemphasised possibilities for alternative discourses within the system (and ignored the socialisation processes and agents fueling them).

7. These feelings are, of course, critical to the evolution and persistence of a democracy‐sustaining and enhancing ‘civic culture’ (Almond & Verba, 1963).

8. The reader should remember that ‘Simcon’ is the project’s simulation control person who oversees and facilitates the simulation process. The word ‘Simcon’ is not included in the pre‐survey, as students have no contact with Simcon prior to the simulation. It is included in the post‐survey, as Simcon in many instances plays a mediation/facilitation role among the participants and thus provides a ‘global governance’ benchmark for the students involved in the experience.

9. The reader should note that the control group displayed a statistically significant difference with the mean response from the high school sample only for the first survey question (displayed in Figure 1). Control group data has only been collected to date for some of the high school samples. The differences in the response means were not statistically significant for the dispute resolution or security question.

10. Key: Q1: UN as diplomatic facilitator; Q2: UN as facilitator of dispute resolution; Q3: State’s as providers of security.

11. The term ‘realist’ refers to a theoretical perspective in the political science/international relations field that emphasises the distinct role of the state in global interactions and the role played by the pursuit of state power in those interactions.

12. The reader should note that the texts for all the responses to these questions can be obtained from the GlobalEd Project. Space, however, dictates that we only excerpt some of the responses here.

13. A recent book title Educating citizens (2003) lays out a rationale for preparing undergraduates for moral and civic responsibility. But while this is certainly a laudable set of educational goals, our research suggests that earlier intervention may be needed and more directly productive (Colby et al., 2003).