What are the main obstacles to the provision of global public goods?

Résumé du document

Global public goods are hard to define. Even though, there is a consensus about the definitions of public goods and collective goods, there exists different approaches. Public goods are supposed to be available for all and they are characterized by two principles: non-rivalry, which means that the consumption of the good by a person does not prevent its consumption by another one, and non-excludability, that means that no one can be excluded from the consumption of the good. When a good does not fulfill these two characteristics, then the public good is impure. One typical example of public good is the traffic control system or national security, which benefits all the citizens in a country. Public goods can be regional, national or even global. Thus, global public goods are a set of international goods whose benefits are supposed to be enjoyed by the governments and the people of all states. Many examples of global public goods exist, for instance, scientific knowledge leading to the discovery of a vaccine, international mechanisms ensuring financial stability, regulations for telecommunications, and so on. Still, there is not a steady consensus about what the term 'global public good' means. Indeed, even though international financial stability, peace, world security, fighting global pandemics of HIV are global public goods, we are not sure to include whether or not other principles like food security, social protection or international political stability.

Extraits

[...] Still, there is not a steady consensus about what the term “global public good” means. Indeed, even though international financial stability, peace, world security, fighting global pandemics of HIV are global public goods, we are not sure to include whether or not other principles like food security, social protection or international political stability. This difficulty we have to precisely identify what are global public goods comes from the fact that this notion was built over “social constructs”. In spite of a certain theoretical consensus about this notion, on a more pragmatic level, the definition is different because it will not include the same things in a country or in another. [...]

[...] Hence, here, we will try to answer this question: what are the main obstacles to the provision of Global Public Goods? To do so, we will first identify the international issues before arguing about the problems on the national scale. Then, we will study the different solutions and strategies that are proposed to tackle these obstacles and to provide Global public goods sufficiently. In this part, we will study the obstacles to the provision of Global public goods on the international scale, notably the free-rider problem. [...]

[...] The result of this is that too few states act and the Global public goods are under supplied. The free rider issue is partly connected to the problems related to international agreements. The management of Global public goods implies global actions and global agreements. But in order to be effective, these agreements must be attractive to the countries, because they cannot be compelled to participate. Another problem is that these international agreements do not generally include sanctions for the participants who do not respect the requirements of the treaty. There are many examples, especially among environmental agreements. [...]

[...] This type of agreement would gather the most important countries and would set a precise objective for the global public good. It would also include a mechanism to monitor the compliance of the signatories; that is why countries would be more inclined to act. Good examples of “cooperative regime” agreements would be the World Trade Organization, that promotes free and open trade, and the Montreal Protocol, that promotes the reduction of ozone-depleting chemicals. There is also an important issue, notably linked to the fight against global climate change, which is known as the “summation problem”. [...]

[...] Another element that witnesses the difficulty to define this term is that, even the organizations studying global public goods characterize it differently. For instance, the World Bank describes GPGs as “resources, services and systems if rule or policy regimes with substantial cross-border externalities that are important for development and poverty-reduction”. The UNDP defines it slightly differently: global public good has to meet two criteria. First, their benefits have a strong quality of publicness (non-rivalry and non-excludability) and second, they benefit the whole humanity (countries, people, generations)”. [...]