Ryan Lecturer Sketches Contours of A New World Order

New ways of conceiving the benefits and dangers of globalization were the subject of the Thomas F. Ryan lecture delivered to the Law Center community on October 29. Speaking at the Gewirz Student Center, Anne-Marie Slaughter said that disputes as to the benefits and risks of globalization can find unexpected resolution through attention to existing and potential networks among regulators in law, trade, and finance. These operate both within and beyond government channels. “Try to see the world in a different way,” Slaughter said, noting that current theoretical constructs can prevent one from grasping that these networks are common.
       Slaughter is currently dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and president of the American Society of International Law. In his introduction, Law Center Professor Dan Tarullo praised Slaughter’s contributions to international law and international relations, noting her ability to challenge prevailing assumptions and to forge a broader engagement among legal academics.
     In her talk, which drew in part from her new book, A New World Order, Slaughter began by describing the traditional command-and-control model, which, she said, has given way to one based on networks. As an example of the new model’s success, she cited coalitions that have emerged between the U.S. and Germany since September 11, 2001 in spite of strained relations between the countries. For Slaughter, the current U.S. call for “coalitions of the willing” was much less effective at stopping terrorism than was information-sharing among financial regulators, justice ministers, and the entire criminal law apparatus. Moreover, by networking with their foreign counterparts, U.S. customs officials effectively expanded the U.S. customs line to other countries. Slaughter also noted how, in the face of  North

Korea's missile shipments to Yemen, watchdog efforts among ten other countries produced a nonprolifera-tion security initiative.
     Slaughter saw these networks as a compelling way around what scholars refer to as the globalization paradox: “We face global problems, we need global capacity to address them, but we’re not willing to have centralized global power.” She proposed that international officials use existing networks more proactively to address global problems.
     Citing networks within the judicial arena, Slaughter described how U.S. Supreme Court justices at international summits have exchanged ideas with their counterparts from Europe, India, and Mexico. Further, justices around the world, able to reach each other online, have negotiated resolutions to international bankruptcy cases.
     In the legislative arena, Slaughter pointed to emerging coalitions such as the International Parliamentary Union and Parliamentarians for Global Action. In commerce and trade, she listed leadership connections among G-7 finance ministers and the World Trade Organization, a world antitrust group known as the Global Competition Network, and international organizations of securities commissioners and insurance supervisors. In the environmental arena, there is the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement.
     Such networks, Slaughter said, exhibit great potential for developing norms, educating members, and addressing global problems. Regulators of all kinds can bring their expertise to bear on rebuilding a country, setting up regulatory agencies and markets and courts, and providing basic security and technical assistance. “If we start thinking about ways we can use networks, the kinds of power they can exercise–the power of information, of socialization, of persuasion–are not a substitute for coercive powers or for existing international institutions, but they greatly extend our reach.”
     The challenge, she said, is to take an active part in developing and enhancing this new world order. She called on her audience to consider ways to make global networks more effective, preventing them from becoming either irrelevant, on the one hand, or dangerous or technocratic, on the other. “It is a new world order–not the new world order,” she concluded. “If we recognize it and shape it, it could be a world order worth having.”