Conclusion

But they also represent a unique opportunity for governments to regain the initiative in the debate over the future of global governance. It is crucial for member states of the United Nations to understand that GPP networks are meant not to replace governments but to complement them. Empowering those entities that constitute the real basis of legitimate and accountable global governance amounts to neither a zero-sum game nor a power shift. Rather, it provides an opportunity to strengthen those institutions that are charged with the execution of policy. Networks enable governments to better manage the risks and take advantage of the opportunities that economic liberalization and technological change bring, making governments more responsive to their constituents. 

This report has barely skimmed the surface in its survey of the processes and dynamics of trisectoral networks. A comparative examination of recent experiences suggests that networks perform a number of functions. By bringing together actors from different sectors to address specific transnational issues, networks place those issues on the global governance agenda and pressure existing structures to take action. Networks also convene multiple stakeholders in setting regulations and designing standards, and they are deeply involved in the development and dissemination of knowledge. Some networks seek to create markets where they do not yet exist and to deepen them where they are falling short of their potential. Several global networks have been formed to assist in the implementation of intergovernmental treaties. And by involving actors from multiple sectors and levels in the policy-making process, all networks work toward closing the participatory gap in global governance. 

However, for GPP networks to become a reliable and more widely used instrument in the arsenal of global governance, the United Nations has to become an active player. It has to help address the managerial challenges and current weaknesses in these networks, most of all the dual challenge of inclusion. Whether networks become legitimate governance structures and can implement policies on the ground will ultimately depend upon greater inclusion of participants from developing countries and from local institutions at all stages of the policy cycle. 

Two roles for the United Nations in particular stand out. The first is derived from the need for greater inclusiveness in global decision-making. The United Nations should be charged with creating an enabling environment that permits countries, especially in the developing world, to participate in the establishment of trisectoral networks and enables them to implement and enforce the decisions made in these networks in their own domestic institutional and policy context. This includes a focus on capacity-building, widespread dissemination of information, and establishment of a knowledge base that empowers all parties involved to contribute to the debate over the public-policy issue at hand. 

The second role stems from the fact that international organizations in general and the United Nations in particular are in a good position to provide a platform for convening trisectoral networks. Taking on the roles of enabler of existing networks and convenor of new ones presupposes a greater humility, some internal capacity-building on the part of international organizations to ensure a greater emphasis on selectivity, and coordination among them to minimize competition. In reality, however, international organizations often still prefer a bureaucratic, top-down approach that threatens to suffocate the dynamism of emerging networks. For this reason it might be best for now to position networks outside those organizations, to avoid burdening them with the existing organizations' still unresolved internal problems. 

To become reliable team players in GPP networks, the United Nations and its specialized agencies have to implement a number of organizational changes, including mechanisms for prioritizing and coordinating nascent issues. Although GPP networks offer an innovative and dynamic approach to governance, they will not work without adjustments to all their component parts. Collaboration in networks for global public-policy-making requires adjustment on the part of both network participants and the existing institutions in charge of public policy, that is, states and international organizations. This raises a number of critical issues with regard to institutional management, learning, and change, which were discussed in more detail in Chapter 4 and, specifically with regard to the United Nations, in Chapter 5. 

Equally important, governments should not divert funding from other important fields to meet the needs of networks. Rather, they should see participation in trisectoral networks as long-term investments that will ultimately help them meet their responsibilities. In particular, resources spent on ensuring broad inclusiveness in GPP networks that protect the global environment, that fight and contain the spread of communicable diseases, that battle transnational crime, and that ensure food security in today's world are neither "foreign" nor "aid." Rather, they are a global public investment that generates a real return, and one that is shared by all. Governments remain the primary actors, responsible for a wide range of activities, particularly development programs. As UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy has said, "We must not let governments off the hook." GPP networks must therefore be seen as complements to national and intergovernmental governance structures, and not as substitutes. 

Civil society and the private sector must also adjust to better participate in trisectoral networks. Greater transparency, in particular, is necessary. Principles of disclosure-based regulation, guaranteeing other groups sufficient access to ensure that their interests are adequately represented, would build confidence in such a structure. Corporations can also facilitate networks by improving their own internal control and management structures, to encourage dialogue with other sectors. Independent audits and incentive structures that discourage excessive risk-taking are examples of measures that are readily available. The greater the focus on better corporate governance, the lower the risk of market failure and the need for outside regulation. A growing number of corporations and business associations have begun to take the lead in implementing this agenda for change and have become pioneers in GPP. For their part, a number of NGOs have also realized the need for greater transparency and accountability. 

As was hinted in the introduction, we may well be in the early stages of a paradigm shift (in Thomas Kuhn's sense) in the area of governance. The frontiers of knowledge still need to be explored, and ultimately, practice will inform our theorizing. At this stage, however, the prime task is to assemble the lessons learned from existing networks so as to explore the challenges on the way ahead. A clearinghouse could help with this by serving as a hub, a centre for knowledge management that assembles and disseminates the lessons learned in networks around the world. 

In sum, GPP networks do not offer an easy ride, but the difficulties are well worth the risk, given the daunting challenges of a complex world with an ever-expanding multiplicity of actors, interests, and issues to be resolved. Many new and competing interests have surfaced since the end of the Cold War, and where they come into conflict, those conflicts need to be mediated. For too long, the centre of the debate has been left vacant, the podium having been abandoned to the extremes on both ends of the ideological spectrum. It is time to think about how the middle ground can be regained by engaging the different parties in a dialogue -- a dialogue that would help to reoccupy the centre and initiate a process of searching for sustainable responses to the challenges of globalization. 

The stakes are high. Globalization is not, after all, the end of history. It is time to take a proactive stance lest we witness a full-fledged backlash against globalization. The status quo is unsustainable, and a change for the worse by forcing globalization back into national boundaries -- "moving forward into the past" -- is not an unlikely scenario. Networks can help to change this unsustainable status quo for the better by responding to the challenges and taking full advantage of technological change and economic and social integration. Mindful of these benefits, governments are throwing more weight behind GPP networks. Ultimately, it is up to the political will of the member states to fully endorse such a course. But it is the duty of the United Nations to lay out to its members the challenges that face them at the dawning of a new millennium and provide them with an achievable agenda for meeting those challenges.