Category: 5 Star

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Worth a Look: Who Governs the Globe?

5 Star, Atlases & State of the World, Civil Society, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Truth & Reconciliation, United Nations & NGOs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Worth A Look
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Review

“This path-breaking collaborative work illuminates complex social and political relationships that constitute governing authority in a changing world. New questions provoke deeper reflection than the term ‘global governance' typically stimulates. Specialists need to read this fine book, and so do students.”   Louis W. Pauly, Canada Research Chair in Globalization and Governance, University of Toronto

“This volume makes and illustrates an important fact about global governance today: it isn't only or always the institutional form of actors – be they states, corporations, or NGOs – but their relationships with key constituencies and with one another that shape governance outcomes. Authority, the essence of governance, comes in many guises. I recommend this book highly.”   John Gerard Ruggie, Harvard University

Product Description

Academics and policymakers frequently discuss global governance but they treat governance as a structure or process, rarely considering who actually does the governing. This volume focuses on the agents of global governance: ‘global governors'. The global policy arena is filled with a wide variety of actors such as international organizations, corporations, professional associations, and advocacy groups, all seeking to ‘govern' activity surrounding their issues of concern. Who Governs the Globe? lays out a theoretical framework for understanding and investigating governors in world politics. It then applies this framework to various governors and policy arenas, including arms control, human rights, economic development, and global education. Edited by three of the world's leading international relations scholars, this is an important contribution that will be useful for courses, as well as for researchers in international studies and international organizations.

Original Conference with Presented Papers (2007)

Conference: Who Governs the Globe?
November 16 & 17, 2007

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Review (Guest): The Illusion of Victory – The True Costs of War

5 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Security (Including Immigration), Survival & Sustainment, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, War & Face of Battle
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Ian Bickerton

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant overview of the results of modern conflicts,May 26, 2011

By Tim Johnson (Fremantle, Australia) – See all my reviews

Although I loved Bickerton's excellent book, I did find it a demanding read; chapters one, two and three is not material that a general reader like myself often encounters in the contemporary media: the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 is not a conflict that is considered in accounts of the reasons for contemporary conflicts but the more so that it need be. Far too often the entrails of conflict are not considered and much modern commentary about conflict virtually implies that the event had few if any antecedents implying that it just happened spontaneously. I believe that Illusion of Victory puts that idea away and that seems not to be the author's thesis.

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Review (Guest): The Ultimate Resource 2

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Information Society, Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Survival & Sustainment, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
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Julian Lincoln Simon

5.0 out of 5 stars The doomslayer falls,April 4, 1998

By A Customer

On Sunday, February 8th, psychologist and economist Julian L. Simon succumbed to a heart attack in Maryland. It is difficult to overstate the damage his death will cause the world debate on overpopulation, natural resources, and the environment. Dr. Simon's prolific and energetic mind gave rise to fourteen books and countless papers and lectures, dedicated to overthrowing the dogma that underlies so much of today's environmental discourse.

Simon, still considered a maverick after thirty years of relentless data-gathering, impeccable empirical work, and well-thought out conclusions, questioned the unquestionable. He maintained that the earth is in good shape by every conceivable measure, and that the environmental situation continues to improve each year. Every index of human happiness – food prices, net income, infant mortality, life expectancy, disease rates – has steadily improved. He documented those claims with reams of data, culminating in his 1996 tour de force The State of Humanity. It is absolutely comprehensive, and contains enough obscure data to make the most jaded Trivial Pursuit fan squirm (if you ever want to read about the average lower-class Brazilian's annual starch intake, look no further).

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Stephen E. Arnold : The Landscape of Enterprise Search

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Catastrophe, Education (General), Information Operations
Stephen E. Arnold

Stephen E. Arnold: The New Landscape of Enterprise Search. A Critical Review of the Market and Search Systems. Published by Pandia, Oslo, Norway, 2011.
ISBN: 978-82-998676-0-3

Pandia Book Page

The following enterprise search companies are covered in detail:

Autonomy
Endeca
Exalead
Google Search Solutions
Microsoft and Fast
Vivisimo

Book Page

 

Phi Beta Iota:  For over fifteen years Stephen E. Arnold has been the “virtual CTO” for OSS.Net (ceased operations at end of 2010) and Earth Intelligence Network, of which he is a founding partner.  We have reviewed the 154-page document, and as with all publications by Stephen E. Arnold, author of the still-trenchant Google Trilogy, have found it to be deeply helpful including sharp but polite eviseration of both Google and Microsoft (Microsoft comes out ahead of Google, but has its own sucking chest wounds).  What is clear to us is that none of the major vendors are serious about  the necessary migration to open source software that integrates information sharing, multi-media analytics, cross-disciplinary directories, and deep web applications, for example, integrating c drives and emails across all poverty stakeholders.  The big new trend in this book–and in our own research–is the compelling nature of five minute videos as documents of lasting value.  We are seeing this in open education and non-government decision-support.  Combine that with on demand translation and the way is open for someone to create the M4IS2 system of the future.  We doubt it will be Google, and we are certain it will include OpenBTS for the three billion poor, the center of gravity for future knowledge.

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Review: Global Public Policy – Governing Without Government?

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Environment (Solutions), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Future, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
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Wolfgang Reinicke

5.0 out of 5 stars Pioneering Work, Missing Some Pieces,July 7, 2011

This is a pioneering work, easily a decade ahead of other world-class efforts, my favorite being that of (then) World Bank Vice President for Europe, J. F. Rischard, High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them. It has been largely over-looked, but should gain additional importance, along with the author's additional book, Critical Choices. The United Nations, Networks, and the Future of Global Governance, now that George Soros is sponsoring the Central European University (CEU), and within that university, the author Wolfgang Reinicke has been appointed the inaugural dean of CEU's School of Public Policy and International Affairs. In the context of the essay by George Soros, the first 57 pages of The Philanthropy of George Soros: Building Open Societies, and the now hardened disenchantment with the nation-state system for being ignorant, biased, and non-agile (these and other deficiencies are marvelously articulated by Professor Philip Allot of Cambridge in The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State, one can surmise that Dean Peinicke will seek to focus on integrationist endeavors that demand transparency and accountability for multiple stakeholders in return for stability and mutual gain.

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Review (Guest): Re-Creating the Corporation – A Design of Organizations for the 21st Century

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Economics, Information Society, Intelligence (Commercial), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design
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Russell Ackoff

5.0 out of 5 stars “There are no simple solutions to complex problems”., August 21, 2000

ByTurgay BUGDACIGIL (Istanbul, Turkey) – See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

“This book is a product of applying systems thinking to the management and organization of enterprises”. Russel L. Ackoff writes, “therefore, an understanding of the nature of systems and systems thinking is essential for understanding what this book is about. Although most people can identify many different systems, few know precisely what a system is. Without such knowledge, one cannot understand them, and without such an understanding, one cannot be aware of their implications for their management and organization and for treatment of the most important problems that currently face them” (p.5).

Thus, he firstly argues that a system is a whole consisting of two or more parts that satisfies the following five conditions:

(1). The whole has one or more defining properties or functions.

(2). Each part in the set can affect the behavior or properties of the whole.

(3). There is a subset of parts that is sufficient in one or more environments for carrying out the defining function of the whole; each of these parts is necessary but insufficient for carrying out this defining function.

(4). The way that each essential part of a system affects its behavior or properties depends on (the behavior or properties of) at least one other essential part of the system.

(5). The effect of any subset of essential parts on the system as a whole depends on the behavior of at least one other such subset.

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Review (Guest): On Purposeful Systems – An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Individual and Social Behavior as a System of Purposeful Events

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Information Operations, Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design
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Russell Ackoff, Fred Emery

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterful guide to designing a better world, December 25, 2002

ByW. C. Priest “Dr. W. Curtiss Priest” (Boston, MA United States) – See all my reviews

In 1970 I taught from this book when it was entitled
“Choice, Communication and Conflict”

What makes this book “magical” is Ackoff (from his
management and behavioral science roots) provides
“operational definitions” for many ill-defined words
and concepts — from defining ‘knowledge' & ‘understanding' to providing definitions of feelings/emotions that — operationally — you know — that if certain events take place in a person's life, that you know the feeling they have.

This is only a glimmer of what this book is about. In terms of Kuhn's idea of “paradigm shifts” — this book
represents a shift that has yet to be appreciated, thirty years later!

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