Global policymaking is fundamentally political: the assumption that “if only people could agree, then we would live in a better world” makes for a deeply problematic starting point for the analysis of global governance. Any collective course of action is bound to favor some groups more than others, and to embody a particular vision of the common good at the expense of alternative perspectives. Focusing on social conflict as the engine of global governance helps us to bring politics to the fore, not as a hindrance but as the natural condition of society – global or otherwise. In any policymaking process, power dynamics and unequal participation ultimately remain; however, inclusive contemporary global practices claim to be. Likewise, the competing value systems and ideologies that structure global policymaking can never be fully arbitrated by objective and neutral means. We connect our framework and cases to the broader politics of global governance, identifying two basic cleavages between globalists and sovereigntists, on one hand, and between issue-specific Leftist versus Rightist positions. This impressionistic overview has the advantage of showing how global policymaking, far from floating in a political void, is in fact embedded in a broader fabric of social conflict.

This chapter explores the concept of global policymaking from a variety of angles. We begin by reviewing the development of global policymaking as a distinct field of research. We then define the concept of global policy as world-spanning courses of action over issues of common concern, and tease out its methodological and epistemological implications. The third part contrasts two approaches to global policymaking – that of global public goods, inherited from economics, and that of bricolage, which takes its cue from sociology and anthropology. We side in favor of the latter, as we believe that it better captures the processual and political nature of global governance. We emphasize the “making of” global policy and global governance in order to answer a fundamental question: How are world-spanning collective courses of action over issues of common concern actually generated? By paying closer attention to political processes, we show that the key challenges of global governance do not primarily consist in the search for more efficient solutions to technical problems.

While existing scholarship is correct in stressing that policymakers pursue their interests on the global stage, the overall result is definitely not one of Pareto-optimizing rational design. We argue that global policies form protean patchworks of governance practices and competing universal value claims. Governance practices can be defined as socially meaningful patterns of action that are constitutive of the policymaking process, including its shifting playing field. Values, which capture the ideological dimension of policymaking, refer to the normative beliefs that inform the definition of global problems and the formulation of solutions. We use preliminary evidence to illustrate the value of our framework. We then offer methodological advice to assist in the empirical study and operationalization of governance practices and universal value debates. By identifying prevalent practices, our framework captures the dialectics of inclusion and exclusion, while also making sense of historical shifts in dominant modes of global governance. When it comes to value debates, our framework illuminates the persistence of social conflict as the normal and expected condition of global policymaking. Normative patchworks are generated by global governors out of multidimensional ideological cleavages.

The best way to grasp the politics of global governance is by understanding the making of global policies, that is, global policymaking. Contrary to conventional wisdom, which conceives of this process as the rational production of global public goods, we emphasize the patchwork nature of global policymaking. Our perspective analyzes the bricolage of universal values and political practices that structure global governance. This perspective not only builds on but also transcends existing literature studies on regime complexes and fragmentation, orchestration, informal governance, and experimentation, as well as legitimation and contestation. The United Nations forms a great empirical site for the study of global policymaking, sitting at the apex of major international dynamics. Our three case studies – the making of the Sustainable Development Goals, of the Human Rights Council, and of the Protection of Civilians doctrine – span the key subfields of development, human rights, and security.

Building on comparative analysis, this chapter identifies ten trends that we feel capture key dynamics of global policymaking in the early twenty-first century: the clash of sovereignties, the growing focus on individuals, the universalization of aspirations, the promotion of a holistic narrative, the orchestrating role of international organizations, the pursuit of inclusion, increasing codification, the emphasis on expertise, the resilience of the North–South divide, and Western hegemony. The arrangement of these dynamics, which embody a combination of practices and values, obviously differs across issue areas. Nonetheless, most of these ten trends are observable in pretty much any instance of global policymaking today. The ultimate goal of this comparative exercise is to determine whether there are (1) practices that recur more often than others and (2) worldviews that seem to regularly triumph over others. Among others, we observe that sovereignty remains central to global governance but sometimes in heterodox ways; codification is a much more diverse process than legalization; orchestration is as much about cooperation as it is about competition and collusion; and North–South politics can give way to unexpected alignments.

Designed as a follow-up to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which guided international development policies from 2000 to 2015, the 2030 Agenda proposed a new development road map for the subsequent fifteen-year period. The most iconic SDGs deal with the eradication of poverty and hunger, the fight against climate change, and the creation of a global partnership for sustainable development. The chapter shows that the SDGs’ script was not written in advance for the UN supertanker does not follow a predetermined route. The 2030 Agenda is also a useful reminder that for every global public policy adopted, alternative courses of action that were once part of the conversation are discarded along the way. Our analysis illuminates not only the experimental nature of the SDGs’ creation but also the power relations and the political choices that the SDGs reflected. Among other things, the 2030 Agenda was also profoundly marked by a set of practices related to goal-setting. In addition, convergence around sustainable development can be seen as the silver bullet of the 2030 Agenda, together with the idea that global poverty must be eradicated and that in this process, no one should be left behind.

The protection of civilians in armed conflict (what we have earlier termed the PoC doctrine) has become a policy of major importance in twenty-first-century global governance. Largely driven by the security council, PoC offers another example of global policy that can be understood as a bricolage of practices and values, with improvisation once again playing a key role. This improvisation is especially apparent in the permanent conflict between the desire to make PoC a more consistent global policy and the goal of avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach. An operational challenge for PoC therefore consists in making continual trade-offs between the different visions of “protection,” as well as between the various conceptions of PoC’s proper place among UN priorities. Rather than following a rational design, the history of PoC has been determined by the shifting balance of global power relations and the vagaries of international circumstances. On one hand, PoC has become highly institutionalized thanks to the mobilization of enormous human and financial resources by the UN, member states, and the NGO community. But on the other hand, as a policy, PoC has developed as a succession of improvised or ad hoc decisions.

Far from resulting from a rational design, the Human Rights Council is in fact a perpetual work in progress. In terms of policymaking practices, the level of open-endedness and the role of trial and error in the institutionalization of this UN body is particularly striking. The making of the HRC is testimony to the prevalence of bricolage in global public policymaking: even its anchoring practice, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), is subject to unending revisions. In terms of value debates, this chapter shows how the consensus against the politicization of human rights, which originally led to the demise of the COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, actually hides deep cleavages over universality, equal treatment, and dialog. A lot of these debates pit the North against the South, although the lines demarcating these two camps are often blurred. Today’s HRC forms an amazing bricolage of governance practices and universal values, one characterized by constant adaptation and constructive ambiguity.

The chapter starts from a seeming contradiction in practice theory: on the one hand, change is an ever-present condition at the micro-level; on the other, homeostatic tendencies prevail at the macro-level. Indeed, taking a historical perspective suggests that practices do change, though mostly around the edges, at a slow pace, and often without a clear direction. Drawing on the evolutionary metaphor, the chapter departs from intentional and reflexive accounts of change, to instead focus on the social environment within which practice variations occur. The web of practices helps explain the differential rate of reproduction and success of particular ways of doing things, including subversive, deviant, innovative, and incompetent performances. In order to survive its context of emergence and gain a foothold in the world, a variant practice needs back-up from surrounding modes of action, whether it be through public display, relational crossover, or inscription. By implication, the evolution of (international) practices describes a socially emergent, macro-process in which the social environment provides the structural impetus for some variations to stick around while most drop out.