3 - Globalisation and public law: A global administrative law?

Summary

In the space of a generation, the term ‘globalisation’ has passed from neologism to cliché. As a commercial phenomenon and political reality, the elision of traditional national borders has opened economies and transformed the context within which political decisions are made. Analysis and critique tend to focus on these two aspects of globalisation: the economic winners and losers, and the distancing of representative government from a great deal of political decision-making. This is understandable since international agencies, expert committees and hybrid interest-driven networks increasingly make decisions that affect large numbers of people. As formerly public responsibilities have been assumed by these new entities, however, there is evidence of an emerging normative context within which such activity takes place, characterised by a demand for accountability in decision-making. Responses to this demand have been piecemeal, sometimes inconsistent, and frequently inadequate. But seen as a whole, those responses have begun to coalesce into an entirely new area of law that may provide a set of rules for accountability in globalisation: a global administrative law.

This phenomenon lies in the interstices of what Peter Danchin describes as the traditional concept of ‘public’ in public international law, and the traditional Westphalian conception of the domestic sphere outlined by Charles Sampford elsewhere in this volume. Whereas Danchin presents a nuanced theoretical critique of the assumptions that underlie ‘internal’ and ‘external’ rationalities, and Sampford exposes tectonic shifts in how legitimacy operates in a post-Westphalian world, this chapter has the more modest task of mapping globalisation as a phenomenon, focusing in particular on the sporadic and at times inconsistent moves towards accountability in this sphere of action.