Rising Powers and Global Governance: The Joint Stakeholders Program

A group of fast-growing developing economies are increasingly entering the international stage that was previously dominated by Europe, the United States and Japan. These rising powers bring with them a whole set of new experiences and perspectives on global governance. The established global governance structures (such as the UN Security Council, the G8 or others) face the challenge of effectively integrating these new influences and experiences in order to be able to perform the task of providing the global public goods that they were created for.

What does this mean for the working of international institutions and global governance mechanisms? What are the contributions of rising powers to global governance? How can existing international institutions and governance mechanisms be changed to make most out of the new geopolitical realities? What does this mean for European foreign policy? These are some of the questions that the Joint Stakeholders Program seeks to explore.

In doing so, we put particular emphasis on China, India and Brazil and their respective roles in addressing global challenges. In areas such as energy governance, climate change, humanitarian assistance and development aid, these countries increasingly contribute to and influence global governance. As the largest “rising power,” China has attracted tremendous efforts on the part of European policy-makers to create cooperative mechanisms with Beijing to jointly address policy challenges. China therefore serves as a particularly important case study for cooperating with rising powers in a multilateral framework.´

Our work on China and global governance builds on strong academic partnerships with some of the leading Chinese research institutes, such as Peking University’s School of International Studies (SIS), Fudan University’s School of International Relations and Public Affairs (SIRPA) as well as the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS).