Introduction

The Commonwealth presents quite a distinctive instance of global governance. It is ‘global’ in the sense that it draws participating governments and non-governmental groups from multiple regions and highly diverse economic and cultural contexts scattered across the planet. However, in contrast to the global institutions discussed in the preceding four chapters, the Commonwealth does not aspire to, and falls far short of, universal membership of all countries. It mostly links former territories of the British Empire, which often have broadly similar arrangements for education, law, mass media, medicine and government, as well as shared cultures of literature and sport. In addition, nearly all member countries of the Commonwealth share English, the principal global lingua franca, as an official language.

The Anglophone Commonwealth bears broad similarities with the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (International Organisation of La Francophonie), which groups governments of fifty-six French-speaking countries, and the smaller Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (CPLP) (Community of Portuguese Language Countries), which assembles eight Lusophone states. The Commonwealth and La Francophonie have comprehensive mandates, including development issues, while the CPLP is more narrowly focused on matters of culture and education. Indeed, the formation of the CPLP in 1996 was in part a reaction to the accession of Mozambique to the Anglophone Commonwealth in 1995 (Shaw 2008: 24–7).