toWt the contemporary global realities of power rather than those of 1945 through
to securing the Millennium Development Goals. The interesting question, for
scholar and practitioner alike, is less ‘‘what reform?’’ than ‘‘how to get there?’’
(Maxwell 2005 , 1 ). The ‘‘what’’ questions are set out in the 2005 report of the
Secretary General (http://www.un.org/largerfreedom). For the scholar of inter-
national organization the ‘‘how’’ question is a ‘‘cooperation’’ and ‘‘collective
action’’ question that requires theoretical tools such as game theory but used in a
manner sensitive to the political dynamics of the organization and international
politics.
At this early stage in the twenty-Wrst century, the principal political dynamic in
practical terms revolves around how the rest of the members of the UN deal with
the United States. How do you keep the hegemonic actor wedded to multilateral-
ism and the international organizations through which it functions when the
hegemon is convinced that other states see international organization as a way to
constrain it (Beeson and Higgott 2005 )? This has created an atmosphere of mutual
distrust that is not only inhibiting the institutional reform process but also the
ability to embed important new international norms such as the ‘‘Responsibility to
Protect’’ (see CIGI 2005 , 1 – 12 ).
Like the UN, the EU too exhibits serious contemporary problems. But scholars
of the EU tackle these problems in a diVerent way to researchers working on UN
reform. If enhancing institutional performance is the independent reform variable
and greater representation is the dependent variable when looking at the UN, then
this situation is reversed in current research on the EU. Because the EU is at an
advanced legal and institutionalized state of development (see Stone Sweet 2004 )it
is the politics of the legitimacy deWcit rather than the institutional performance
deWcit to which scholars turn their attention. Performance and legitimacy are
related, but they can work against each other (see Bellamy 2005 ).
Scholars of political theory are battling to identify a balance in the relationship
that allows for eYcient decision-making that is both legitimate and accountable. To
date, there is no deWnitive answer how this might be achieved given the deWciencies
in institutional arrangements on the one hand and the absence of a European
demos on the other. This debate currently turns on diVerent readings of the degree
to which eYciency in the provision of public goods is enhanced or inhibited by too
little (or too much) democratic input. As this chapter shows, transparency and
information sharing, central to the eYcient operation of international organiza-
tion, is not the same as democratic accountability (see Keohane 2004 ; Eriksen and
Fossum 2004 ; Moravcsik 2004 ).
In sum, multilateralism as a principal (and principled) element of global
governance in both the economic and the security domains in the early years
of the twenty-Wrst century—and with it, the standing of many international
organizations—is strained at the global level and at a crossroads at the regional
level. Public goods for a ‘‘just’’ global era—economic regulation, environmental
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