Leading thinkers to speak at global governance conference

Leading international and Canadian thinkers on globalization, global society, political economy, law and international relations will come together for a landmark one-day conference next week looking at the prospects for global governance in a turbulent world.

The Future of Global Governance? will take place Wednesday, May 25, from 11am to 6pm, in the McEwan Auditorium, Seymour Schulich School of Business, Keele campus. It will be hosted by York President & Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri and Vice-President Academic & Provost Patrick Monahan. The conference is free and open to the public and members of the York community (registration details are below).

The speakers will reflect critically on the principal institutions and practices of governance, especially those associated with efforts to stabilize, modify and legitimate the global status quo. They will seek to demystify power relations between leaders and those who are led, and will provide an assessment of the potential for future changes in those relations.

The conference is presented in conjunction with the International Political Economy and Ecology Graduate Summer School, which runs until May 28 and is hosted by York graduate programs in political science, geography and environmental studies. The summer school brings together leading lawyers, political economists, social and development theorists with students to analyze and debate a central characteristic of the global political economy – the “new constitutionalism” in the era of neo-liberal capitalism.

York Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science Stephen Gill (left) of the York & Ryerson Joint Graduate Program in Communication & Culture is course director of the summer school, which includes professors from Princeton University, the University of California, Santa Barbara and Cornell University.

Gill will introduce the Future of Global Governance conference with a talk about “Global Governance: Of What and for Whom? Global Crises and Challenges for Global Governance”. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he is the author of Power and Resistance in the New World Order (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 and 2008) and American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (Cambridge University Press, 1992), co-author of The Global Political Economy: Perspectives, Problems and Policies (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). His latest book, Global Crises and the Crisis of Global Leadership, is forthcoming, published by Cambridge University Press.

Richard Falk (right), the Albert G. Millbank Professor Emeritus of International Law & Politics at Princeton University and a Visiting Distinguished Research Professor in Global & International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will deliver the plenary on “Law, Legitimacy and Globalization: Crises of Global Governance. The author of several books, including Religion and Humane Global Governance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001) and Human Rights Horizons: The Pursuit of Justice in a Globalizing World (Routledge, 2000), Falk was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council to be a special rapporteur for Palestine. Distinguished law Professor Emeritus Upendra Baxi (left) of the University of Warwick and former vice-chancellor of the University of Delhi, will be the respondent.

International relations and international law Professor Claire Cutler (right) of the University of Victoria, will chair session two on social governance, trade and investment, and will be the respondent. Current Trudeau Fellow Janine Brodie (left), Canada Research Chair in Political Economy & Social Governance at the University of Alberta and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, will talk about the crisis of neo-liberal social governance. Scott Sinclair of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives will look at trade and investment agreements and progressive governance.

In the third session on Critical Perspectives on the Future of Global Governance, York political science Professor Isabella Bakker (right), also a current Trudeau Fellow, will chair and respond.

The Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology Saskia Sassen (left) of Columbia University will discuss the question: “How Will Global Governance Respond to Growing Inequality and Global Dispossession?” and Baxi will look at “The Judiciary and the Rule of Law in the Making of Progressive Global Governance”.

For speaker bios, click here and for the program, click here.

For full details and to register to attend, visit the The Future of Global Governance? website or contact Lia Novario, research events coordinator in the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, at ext. 33782.