The pace of globalization is not only confounding traditional governing institutions, but also outstripping the conceptual language by which people describe problems and prescribe solutions. We have all been, in a sense, invaded by the world. Various seemingly-separate events -- such as the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the rampant restructuring of businesses, the rise of international terrorism, and increasing anxiety about the global environment -- are all parts of this plunge into global civilization. Globalization has brought many surprises, and will bring more.     There is an urgent need to develop new language and frameworks of thought that will enable people to deal with the challenges and promises of globalization. No single intellectual movement, ideology or data bank holds a formula for functioning effectively in a global civilization. Nations, corporations, communities and individuals must literally learn their ways into it. They must devise their own strategies for coming to terms with the emergence of a global system of governance and the non-optional nature of global citizenship.     We use the term "governance" deliberately in this context, because the concept of "government" -- implying fixed institutions, clear boundaries and a geographic capital -- is not adequate to the needs of the times. We see much evidence that "world governance" is already a reality, but no reason at all to expect that the sort of "world government" which has been hoped for by generations of past idealists will ever be established. The de facto global governance system is composed of national governments, international organizations such as the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, transnational corporations, and technologically-driven arrangements such as the international currency exchange that "govern" and in many ways change the rules for governments. The mass media have created a "global theater" that is also inescapably a part of this system.     Governments everywhere are being restructured, and are likely to be restructured even more drastically in the decades ahead. An "organizational revolution" has been going on in the private sector, and there are good reasons to expect that a comparable wave of change in public institutions is just beginning. At the same time, families, communities and local economies are being restructured by such globalizing forces as human mobility and new patterns of international trade and information transfer.     Citizenship -- and, indeed, identity -- must be re-thought in this new context. We must honor the need of people for membership in communities -- whether specifically rooted in specific geographic locations and cultural heritages or newly-created and "placeless" -- and at the same time recognize realistically that the processes of globalization draw all people and all communities together into a new kind of citizenship.     The goal of this program is to bring new concepts of global governance and global citizenship into the public dialogue, much as the concept of "sustainable development" has been brought into the public dialogue in recent years.                                                 -- San Francisco, 1992

First Meridian Conference on Global Governance
"The Global Surprise: Reframing Governance and Citizenship"
Commonweal Retreat Center, Bolinas, California
April 30 - May 2, 1993

The first Meridian conference on global governance was organized under the theme of "The Global Surprise" in recognition of the fact that globalization, although a process that had been underway for centuries if not millennia, had been escalating rapidly in recent years and was creating a new set of problems and opportunities for human society. The conference brought together a diverse group of scholars and practitioners to explore the issues and consider future activities.

Participants:
Walter Truett Anderson, Director, Meridian Program on Global Governance
Michael Clague, Social Planning & Research Council of British Columbia
Harlan Cleveland, World Acad. of Art and Science, former Ambassador to NATO
John Fobes, Former Deputy Director-general, UNESCO
Robert E. Horn, Chairman, Information Mapping, Inc.
Michael Lerner, President, Commonweal
Brian Mulconrey, Organizational Learning Laboratory, Austin, Texas
Donald N. Michael, Council, the Club of Rome
Mutombo Mpanya, World University West
Michael Real, Professor of Telecommunications, San Diego State University
Steven Rosell, Director, Project on Governing in an Information Society, Ottawa
James Rosenau, Professor of International Relations, George Washington University
Franz Schurmann, Professor of Sociology and History, Univ. of California, Berkeley

Support for the first Meridian conference on global governance was provided by:
The Jenifer Altman Foundation
The Max and Anna Levinson Foundation

Second Meridian Conference on Global Governance
"Global Governance in a Turbulent World"
Commonweal Retreat Center, Bolinas, California
February 4-6, 1994
Co-sponsored by The World Academy of Art and Science
Supported by a grant from The Jenifer Altman Foundation

At the conclusion of the first Meridian conference on global governance, members of the group had decided to hold a second meeting, to be cosponsored by the World Academy of Art and Science, and to serve as a part of the preparatory activities leading up to the World Academy's assembly which was scheduled to be held in Minneapolis in September of 1994. It would focus some of the discussion of global governance on the question of what kinds of governance structures and processes might be most relevant to the future of sustainable development.

The specific goals were to: (a) survey the visions of the global future that had been advanced by major writers and that were contained in the forthcoming project reports of various organizations such as the International Commission on Global Governance; (b) consider the prospects for sustainable development in the light of likely near-future changes in the global governance system; and (c) develop an agenda of follow-up activities to be undertaken by members of this group or recommended to others. The ultimate goals were to increase awareness of the impacts of globalization, to advance the dialogue about global governance, and to help individuals and communities develop the necessary skills to function in a changed and changing world.

As conference planning proceeded, we decided to organize it around a number of major reports on global governance and/or sustainable development that had been written or were in the process of being written, and to bring to the conference key people involved in the writing of these reports. Among these were:

	Michael Clough, forthcoming report, Commission on Global Governance
	Yehezkel Dror, forthcoming report on governance, Club of Rome
	Joao Caraca, forthcoming report on "Limits to Competition," Group of Lisbon
	James MacNeill, Brundtland Commission report, "Our Common Future"

We also decided to use a couple of fairly innovative techniques in the conference itself: a focused dialogue process used by Edgar Schein and his colleagues at MIT's Sloan School of Management, and the visual conference recording techniques developed by Robert Horn.

One of the most important conceptual clarifications that emerged during the conference was Michael Clough's elucidation of the three different visions of global governance that he had observed among members of the Commission: nation-state centered (a future in which sovereign states continue to be the primary players), world-centered (tending toward some form of "world government"), and multi-centric. Most conference participants favored the "third vision," but found it somewhat inadequately developed at the present time.

Participants
Walter Truett Anderson, Vice-president, Meridian; Pres. American Division, WAAS
Janice Brodman, Director, Center for Innovative Management Technologies
Paz Buttedahl, International Development Research Centre
Joao Caraca, Director, Science Department, Gulbenkian Foundation
Michael Clough, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
Harlan Cleveland, President, WAAS; former US Ambassador to NATO
James Dator, University of Hawaii; Past President, World Future Studies Federation
Yehezkel Dror, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
John Fobes, Former Deputy Director-General, UNESCO
John Gardner, former US Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare
Robert Horn, Vice-president, Meridian
Pierre-Marc Johnson, McGill University; Group of Lisbon; former Premier of Quebec
Michael Lerner, President, Commonweal
James MacNeill, Former Secretary-general, Brundtland Commission
Donald Michael, Council, Club of Rome
Henry Miller, Visiting Fellow, Institute for International Studies, Stanford
Motumbo Mpanya, World College West
Maureen O'Hara, Psychotherapist, feminist scholar
Steven Rosell, President, Meridian
James Rosenau, George Washington University
Edgar H. Schein, Sloan School of Management, MIT; Meridian Fellow
Paul H. Silverman, Associate Chancellor, University of California, Irvine
Paul von Ward, Chairman, Delphi International Group 

Summaries of key presentations at the second conference:

James N. Rosenau (University Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University, and author or editor of numerous books including Turbulence in World Politics and Governance without Governments):  There is a difference between governance of the world and governance in the world. The term "global governance" does not necessarily refer to a central authority. Rather, global governance is a lot of governmental and nongovernmental activities that occur in local places, the results of which contribute to the overall order of world affairs.
    At the present time, we are living in a high-complexity, high-dynamism period. This turbulence is overwhelming the three basic parameters of world politics -- the micro, the macro, and the intervening micro/macro.
    The micro level of politics is being transformed by a "skill revolution," in which the analytic and emotional skill levels of adult, healthy citizens all around the world are increasing. People everywhere are more able to construct scenarios of where they fit in the world than were their grandparents.
    The macro level of governance is marked by a bifurcation of global structures -- between the state-centered world of "sovereignty-bound" actors (states), and the multi-centric world of "sovereignty-free" nongovernmental actors. The states are still in business, and still important, but the multi-centric world now interacts with, competes with, and cooperates with the state-centered world.
    The intervening (micro/macro) levels -- between individuals and authority structures -- are transformed by the increasing willingness of people to engage in collective action, and by the eroding authority of states. We move from authority structures that are in place to authority structures that are in crisis.

MICHAEL CLOUGH (Senior Fellow of the Council of Foreign Relations, also currently serving as senior writer on the forthcoming report of the Commission on Global Governance):  One global governance option favored by many is to improve international cooperation by creating new forms of interaction in which final authority continues to reside with the national governments.
    A second option is to move toward some kind of a centralized rulemaking body -- a world government, or at least the beginnings of one.
    There has been extensive discussion of a third option -- global governance, a system of multiple organizations and centers of decision-making.  Some current trends which appear to be moving in that direction include:
    1.  An increase in the range of types of institutions, differing in organizational style and ethos.
    2.  An increase in density, in the number of institutions.  Some make demands on the global system as a whole, some help meet demands.
    3.  A shift in the character of institutions.  This is evident in the flattening of many organizations, and in the "skill revolution" which is transforming the character of individual participation.
    If these developments constitute movement toward a new vision of global governance, this vision might ultimately become the basis for restructuring institutions at all levels to function better and more equitably in such an environment.

YEHEZKEL DROR (Professor of political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, currently writing a report to the Club of Rome, entitled On the Capacity to Govern):  There is no way to approach the subject of global governance without some notions on its desired functions. Here is a paradox: The more matters are turbulent -- and they are turbulent -- the more they require us to design for the unknown. Perhaps we ought not to speak of designing global governance, but rather of designing a process for the constant renewal and readjustment of global governance.
    One can distinguish three main families of functions of global governance:
    1. Avoid the bad -- development such as ecological collapse or doomsday-equipped crazy states. Achieving consensus on evils is relatively easy.
    2. Achieve the good -- such as globalization of human rights.
    3. A third goal -- less discussed -- is to consider what is good and bad. We face many unknowns. What to do about bioengineering? What are different conceptions of global equity, of global justice? What about global drug trafficking? These are not so much questions of implementing policy, but rather of designing a process for the constant renewal and readjustment of global governance.
    Different dimensions of global governance fit the above functions. One should not think of global governance in a mono-dimensional manner. For some purposes, hierarchies are needed. For others, regional arrangements such as the European Union. It is not possible to change global governance without changing national governments. It is necessary for every governance structure to be creative and learning-oriented.

HARLAN CLEVELAND (President of the World Academy of Art and Science and author of numerous books including Birth of a New World):  One important feature of the present terrain is what has come to be called globalization. This can be summarized as about eight different processes -- all related and interacting.
    Perhaps the most obvious one is economic globalization -- the expansion of trade, the international monetary system, and what amounts to a 24-hour stock exchange.
    There is concurrently a political globalization. We have an impressive collection of new organizations. At the same time, we see a ricocheting of political ideas around the world, the most important being the idea of human rights.
    Shading into that is cultural globalization -- words and concepts and ideas becoming very widely shared.
    Then there is biological globalization, with life forms of all kinds escalating their mobility.
    One cause of the above -- a fifth category of globalization -- is international migration: more international refugees than ever before, more confusion about what a refugee is.
    There is also a globalization of the generation gap, with young people everywhere showing a certain uniformity of tastes, interests, and ways of communicating.
    Another globalization is the globalization of inequities -- a shared dominance around the world of those who enjoy certain benefits, and a shared resentment among those who do not.
    Finally, there is the "global citizenship" process, the emergence of global citizens.
    The growing importance of the Information Revolution points toward the declining relevance of geography for most policy purposes. That's a part of the new state of affairs. Another part is the increasing importance of what has been called "social extrusions" -- increasing productivity through increased use of information technology, with no increase in employment. And there has been a mutation in organization. All these suggest a new way of thinking about many kinds of institutions, and about the parts of the UN heritage that might be worth building on. The pervasive empowerment of people by helping them to understand this situation as a whole may be the most important things that can be done about governance, and all the things that are usually thought of under the heading of "government" or "governance" become less important.

JOAO CARACA (Member of the Group of Lisbon, director of the Science Department at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation):  The membership of the Group of Lisbon is drawn from the "Triad" of Western Europe, North America, and Japan. This was done in order to make it clear that the report on The Limits to Competition, which is now being prepared, emanates from inside these developed nations. Something is wrong with the way these countries are conducting their affairs, and this problem has to do with governance.
    The Group's historical perspective is that economics has become dominant, so dominant that its ways of thinking and behaving have been projected into other realms of activity.
    Competition is a good and sound behavior in the market, but it is not the only form of economic behavior: Competitiveness pushed to its extreme works against free markets.
    A global civil society is emerging, and something must be done to connect states and civil society around the world. The Group's report considers four basic social contracts as elements of this connection: (1) a "having" contract concerning basic needs such as water, (2) an Earth contract concerning the environment, (3) a democratic contract concerning government, and (4) a cultural contract concerning community and identity.
    The future becomes a major element in consideration of a new world order: Is there a common project for the future? What is the public good for the global commons? What are the actors and institutions concerned with it?

JAMES MacNEILL (Former Secretary-general of the Brundtland Commission): The recommendations of the Brundtland Commission and the prescriptions that came out of the Earth Summit presuppose a system of global governance in which the states are the primary actors and -- through the UN or regional bodies or self-generated coalitions -- have their hands on levers which are connected to the real world. This assumption underlies virtually all of our policy prescriptions. It is an assumption we have now come to doubt.
    This raises a serious question: How can you think about promoting the goals that are at the heart of each of the reports being discussed at this conference -- goals such as equity -- unless you presuppose some system of governance?
    The Earth Summit's prescriptions also presuppose some fairly strong system of governance, although by June '92 there was evidence that states were increasingly unable or unwilling to address the issues that the Earth Summit was convened to address -- issues such as population, global warming and biodiversity. The period leading up to Rio saw the growth of many new coalitions such as the "carbon states" opposed to any action on global warming. They succeeded in removing from the Rio documents any references that would have the effect of reducing future market for fossil fuels. There were also coalitions of contrary scientists, anti-environment NGOs, and others. All these new coalitions have been -- and are being -- increasingly empowered by the Information Revolution. The chip has had the effect of shifting power from nation-states to individuals, scientific institutes, NGOs, industries -- you name it.
    How do we, then, address issues like population and global warming when we don't presuppose a framework of state actors with their hands on levers connected to the real world? How do we frame policy prescriptions in a way that will meet these new conditions?

Third Meridian Conference on Global Governance
"Mapping the 'Third Vision'"
Commonweal Retreat Center, Bolinas, California
March 3-5, 1995
Supported by a grant from The Jenifer Altman Foundation

The problem discussed during the second Conference on Global Governance was the uncertainty and confusion -- even among people in positions of international leadership -- about the future shape of global governance. Michael Clough, reporting on the just-ending Mexico City meeting of the Commission on Global Governance, stated that members of the commission had tended to fall into three categories in this respect: One group favored new forms of international cooperation in which "final authority" would continue to reside with sovereign national governments. A second group saw the inevitable necessity of moving toward some form of a "centralized rule-making body" -- a world government, or at least the beginning of one. A third favored a much more loosely-linked, multi-dimensional system with many organizations and systems of decision-making.

Several participants in the Meridian Global Governance program felt that the "third vision" had great promise -- and that it was, in a sense, already in the process of being realized. The world in the mid-1990s appeared to have clearly moved beyond the era when the nation-states were virtually the sole legitimate players in global governance, and was still very far away from establishing the constitutional world federal government advocated by some.

Although a number of writers had articulated the idea of such a system -- using terms such as "polyarchy," "loosely-coupled system," "nobody-in-general-charge governance," and "ambiguous world order," the concept was still not sufficiently clear and robust to serve as a subject for public discussion and debate, or as a guideline for making policy and restructuring institutions of governance. The Third Meridian Conference was convened for the purpose of exploring it in greater depth and describing it in a way that would make it more accessible to the general public and to people trying in various ways to cope with global issues.

Preparatory reading:

All participants were furnished with copies of the recently-published Our Global Neighbourhood, the report of the Commission on Global Governance, and were asked to be prepared to discuss and critique it during the conference.

.Participants:

Walter Truett Anderson, Director, Meridian program on Global Governance
John H. Barton, Professor of Law, Stanford University
Paz Buttedahl, National Defense College; International Development Research Ctr
Michael Clague, Consultant in social policy and community development, Vancouver
Mary Catherine Bateson, Prof. of Anthropology and English, George Mason University
Harlan Cleveland, President, World Academy of Art and Science
John Fobes, President, Americans for the Universality of UNESCO
Robert Horn, Vice-president, Meridian
Michael Lerner, President, Commonweal
Donald Michael, Club of Rome; Global Business Network
Steven Rosell, Program on Governing in an Information Society (Canada)
Steven T. Walther, Chair, Committee on World Peace Under Law, American Bar Association

Some outcomes of Meridian conferences on global governance:

The second (1994) conference formed the conceptual framework for the panel on "World Governance as an Uncentralized System" that was held at the 1994 Assembly of the World Academy of Art and Science in Minneapolis.  Participants were:

Prof. Lincoln Bloomfield, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (chair)
Sir Sridath Ramphal, co-chair, Commission on Global Governance
Mircea Malitza, Academician, chairman, Black Sea University
Prof. Yehezkel Dror, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Vitality Zhurkin, director, Institute for the Study of Europe, Russia