Key Terms
Global governance
Process by which sovereign states accrue rights and duties in the international community to provide collective goods
Collective goods
Goods available to all regardless of individual contribution
Tragedy of the commons
Depletion of shared resources when individual incentives to act selfishly outweigh incentives to cooperate
Example
Overfishing. No state owns the ocean.
Free riding
Benefiting from collective goods without contributing to them
Genocide
Intentional acts to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in whole or in part
Intergovernmental organization (IGO)
A formal group made up of member states held together by formal agreement. Members are governments, not individuals.
Predecessor
League of Nations (est. 1919, after WWI) - failed because:
Three overarching UN goals
Promoting peace, ensuring human rights, achieving sustainable development.
First mission
1948 (monitoring Israel-Arab armistice) 2020: approximately a dozen ongoing missions, mostly Middle East and Africa More
Functionalism
Cooperation on small issues builds trust for larger cooperation
Founded
1951 (Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands)
Post-Cold War
Soviet Union dissolved 1991; NATO did not dissolve. Instead, expanded to include former Soviet-allied states and some fo
Headquarters
Brussels, Belgium Current members: 27 (UK withdrew - "Brexit" - January 2020) Established current structure: Maastricht
MERCOSUR
Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay (1991); suspended Venezuela in 2017 for democratic noncompliance