Inaugural Conference Advancing Next-Generation Leadership in Global Public Policy : Research, Training, & Practice

Paris, Monday-Tuesday 16-17 October 2006

Public policymaking today faces challenges unprecedented in their scale and complexity. Public policies have traditionally been formulated and implemented within national borders by governments or their representatives. Transnational problems were cooperatively addressed, if at all, through formal and often rigidly institutionalized intergovernmental relations. This policymaking structure is being overtaken by inter-related effects of globalization and emerging technologies. Domestic policies alone can no longer address many issues that transcend increasingly permeable frontiers and engage shifting coalitions of global interests. In recent years, this fluid policy environment has evoked numerous experiments to revise institutional arrangements, rule-making, and policy coordination. Many engage non-state actors as well as official institutions. The transformation of practices, however, has very often outpaced analyses of the problems they are meant to address.

The premise of this conference is that the public policy research community and policy schools must attain and sustain a deeper understanding of evolving de facto global public policy practice, help improve tools to identify and analyze today’s — and tomorrow’s — most critical public policy challenges, and use this learning to develop knowledge and skills for new generations of effective policymakers.

This conference will address emerging policy challenges and practices that are global – in the sense of involving transnational forces or having transnational effects and costs – and use its findings to inform new models of globally-oriented public policy teaching and research that are both more effective in public policy schools and more useful to policy practitioners.

Monday, 16 October 2006

08.00-09.00 Registration

09.00

Welcome : Richard Descoings, Director, Sciences Po Paris

Introduction : Public Policy and Public Policy Education  : Robin Lewis, Executive Director, Global Public Policy Network

09.30-12.00

Panel One : Global Problems and Challenges for Public Policy in the 21st Century

Transnational challenges are not new. What is changing are the speed at which they spread, the scale of their potential effects, and the impossibility of addressing them solely through local or national policies. Global epidemics and global climate change are obvious and dramatically observable examples of transnational problems. Effects of economic globalization may generate global market failures in the provision of some public goods, as well as negative externalities in areas such as the environment, resource use, and social transfers. As more countries follow development pathways demanding high consumption of energy and natural resources, more economic and environmental effects fall across national boundaries. While technological and scientific innovation worldwide offer new possibilities whose impacts are global, their regulation still tends to be local. No nation-state by itself can address these transnational challenges — or opportunities. We face not only deficiencies in coordination of actions, but also threshold differences in identifying and measuring problems — the prerequisite to reaching consensus on public policy priorities.

Issues to be addressed include :

 What kinds of analyses are needed to identify major transnational problems ?

 What knowledge, approaches, and skills will be essential for policymakers and public policy managers ?

 Which policies are still best left to national or local actors ? What distinguishes such issues from those that are better addressed through transnational action ?

Panel One Global Problems and Challenges for Public Policy in the 21st Century

Moderator : Patrick Dunleavy, Professor, London School of Economics

Pascal Lamy, Director, World Trade Organization

Kishore Mahbubani, Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

Alfred Stepan, Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government and Dean Emeritus, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs

Commentator : Howard Davies, Director, London School of Economics

14.30-17.00

Panel Two : Shaping Global Public Policy : Actors and Accountability

In a classical model, policymaking responds to well-mobilized interest groups, in concert with the political/election cycle. But it often fails to respond well to broader constellations of preferences. Several problems are familiar to social scientists : free riders, opportunism, principal-agent, and “impossibility” dilemmas — well-organized minorities get their preferences addressed, other minorities don’t, and majorities rarely do. These political failures are compounded in global public policy issues, where there is even greater tension between local political cycles and jurisdictions and the sustained and large-scale action often necessary for effective global policy implementation. Policy competition may offer beneficial effects, but it may also involve “policy market failures,” negative externalities, and other limitations.

For there to be effective global public policies, new assignments of responsibilities must be accompanied by new mechanisms of political and democratic accountability. But we have little systematic knowledge of how such accountability may be established. The term “governance” is used to suggest more flexible and multi-layered interactions among many actors of diverse origins, but there is scant discussion and less consensus regarding how emerging non-state actors or transnational actors may be held accountable. Absence of such accountability raises risks of poor decisions or political backlash. In this session, we will address the critical question of establishing accountability in the context of more complex, diffuse and diverse governance processes.

Issues to be addressed include :

 How can broader participation in public policy debate be encouraged and facilitated ?

 How can accountability for non-state actors be measured and promoted ?

 What global governing mechanisms should be applied to the regulation and/or distribution of “global goods” ?

Panel Two Shaping Global Public Policy : Actors and Accountability

Moderator : Dean Lisa Anderson, Dean, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs

Peter Marber, HSBC Halbis Partners, Adjunct Associate Professor, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs

Pierre Sané, Assistant-Director General for Social Sciences and Human Sciences, Ethics and Human Rights, UNESCO

Paul Twomey, President, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

Commentator : Michael Zürn, Dean, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin

Tuesday, 17 October 2006

09.00 – 09.30 Coffee

09.30 - 12.00 Panel Three : Governance Models in Global Public Policy

Globalization of policies undermines the traditional association of national political authority and policy jurisdiction. It is now actively debated whether nation-states or supra-national institutions should be primarily responsible for global public policies. Non-state actors have also emerged as important participants in many global policy arenas.

There are now dense networks of actors and agencies operating at various scales, including international organizations, the private sector, scientific communities, and NGOs. Yet these interactions are rarely institutionalized in a stable way. Roles and responsibilities of different actors are often ill defined, as are methods for cooperation. Some institutions or coalitions, ad-hoc or more formalized, handle complex issues effectively. Their processes sometimes challenge, circumvent or de facto supersede current structures of political authority and policy responsibility. Yet there is little systematic theory or evidence on what issues might be better addressed through hybrid coalitions, or of the kinds of institutions beyond traditional governmental or intergovernmental authorities that would better facilitate transnational problem solving.

Issues to be addressed include :

 What technical means and organizational structures can best address increasingly complex transnational issues ?

 Are there useful means or models for describing and understanding the dynamics of ad-hoc global networks that included a variety of actors ?

 What are the policy implications for reduced national sovereignty ?

Panel Three Governance Models in Global Public Policy

Moderator : Laurence Tubiana, Professor, Sciences Po

Shailaja Chandra, Executive Director, Population Stabilization Fund, India

Takatoshi Ito, Professor of Economics and Director, Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Tokyo

Ousmane Sy, Director, Centre for Political and Institutional Expertise in Africa

Commentator : Deepak Nayyar, Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University

14.30-17.00 Panel Four : Governing Global Cities

Many of the most crucial global public policy challenges are today converging in major cities, which are the 21st Century’s crucibles of social, environmental, economic, political, and lifestyle changes. Globalization is most visibly and increasingly an urban phenomenon : most trade goes through cities, and most labor migration occurs between them. In the developing world, there are enormous challenges in the delivery of the most basic public goods, including energy, health, sanitation, transport, water, and public safety. In the developed world, there are increasing demands for a better environmental footprint for these services, for changes in lifestyles, and for cost-efficiency, along with ongoing challenges in providing public safety and social diversity that works.

The reason that metropolitan areas are such good examples of the issues at the core of this conference is that they provide microcosms of the governance issues at all scales of globalisation. Metropolitan regions face policy issues that transcend municipal boundaries, and typically must solve them with highly fragmented, partial, and overlapping governmental structures. These create problems in assigning responsibilities and achieving accountability, and raise obstacles to effective collective action. In metropolitan regions, many recent “innovations” in governance seem ineffective. They are still faced with failures of both traditional hierarchical decision-making, and of “consultation” and “local democracy” alternatives that often offer only a patina of participation, and achieve little in terms of efficiency. Examining these regional microcosms of global problems will help inform us of ways forward for global public policies, and for teaching and research about them.

Issues to be addressed include :

 What can be done to assure delivery of reliable and high quality public services ? What works and what does not work ?
 Is centralisation (metropolitan government) or decentralisation (fragmentation and pluralism) better for efficiency and satisfaction of preferences in a diverse, complex setting ?
 How can social and economic diversity be accommodated, their benefits maximized, and the potential for conflict minimized ?

Panel Four Governing Global Cities

Moderator : Michael Storper, Professor, Sciences Po Sheila Dikshit, Chief Minister, Delhi, India [invited]

David Dinkins, Columbia University, former Mayor of NYC

Pierre Calame, Director-General, Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation

Antanas Mockus, former Mayor of Bogotá

Commentator : Kenneth Prewitt, Professor, SIPA

17.00-17.30 Closing Remarks : Leadership and the Role of Graduate Policy Schools in Shaping Public Policy

GPPN Academic Directors

Lisa Anderson, Dean, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs

Patrick Dunleavy, Professor, London School of Economics

Michael Storper, Professor, Sciences Po