Global standards as global public goods and social safeguards

Abstract

This chapter examines the emergence of normative global regimes involving the establishment and implementation of globally accepted “rules of the game” (global standards). International global standards are means to overcome institutional and organizational deficits by defining rules for the enabling and constraining of global economic and political cooperation. From the perspective of Governance Ethics, global standards are worldwide governance structures. As such they can be understood as final global public goods which owe their existence to a deliberative process of communication between the relevant stakeholders, a process which itself is an intermediate global public good. Where standards are by nature global public goods but are not accessible to all stakeholders, they can also be understood as global commons. The difference between global public goods and global commons is found to be based in the governance structure for the production and distribution of the goods. In the case of global commons, the elaboration of accessibility and prioritization rules are elementary. The chapter closes by pointing out that global standards on behaviour and global standards on things and processes cannot be separated at the present stage of globalization. Without creating a fundamental awareness of a shared world ethos, without developing a mutual bond of transcultural values, setting globally stable technical standards will be very unlikely. At present, much depends on the development and implementation of global standards of behaviour founded on morals and values, which must, however, correspond to a shared practice at the local level. This is necessary not only because morality ultimately arises and develops by practicing it, but also because the creation and accessibility of global public goods goes hand in hand with a “considerable amount of trial-and-error learning”. Global standards as global public goods must, therefore, possess a property which enables and supports this learning process.