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Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses three challenges to intersectoral governance aspirations: universality/relativism, silos, and top-down rather than bottom-up human-centric foci. It advocates an overlapping consensus holistic approach, with a human security-focused lower case hdpn.

Paper long abstract:

Global intersectoral governance has faced three challenges. First, universal aspirations have been challenged on the grounds of cultural relativism, exceptionalism, and exclusion. Certain groups and actors are seen as being excluded from the “universal” narrative, are forced to occupy a subaltern position, or hail from a different epistemological background, and are, therefore, marginalized by the dominant discourse. Second, despite an ongoing and growing recognition of the interdependencies between the different manifestations of global governance aimed at reconciling conflicting interests, generating (and distributing) collective good, and providing security for all, policy communities have shown reluctance to engage across thematic and operational divides, or at best have engaged across only two of the three pillars of the UN or the HDPN. Third, international humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding initiatives have tended to be top-down, donor or international actor driven, and reliant upon aggregate measurements of governance success.

In response, this paper explores an “overlapping consensus” approach that better reflects the cosmopolitan nature of the global community than does a one size fits all universalist approach and considers the potential for hybridity between perspectives. Furthermore, bearing in mind the significant spillover between sectors, it demonstrates the need for a holistic approach simultaneously embracing security, development, and rights governance perspectives, and humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding communities. Finally, it incorporates human-centered global governance initiatives in a re-imagining of the HDPN as a lower-case hdpn. Top-down and bottom-up initiatives are both important, but in a further imagining of hybridity, must be pursued simultaneously through a multi-stakeholder approach.