Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century

wonder why it is being reviewed for a journal on public administration. After all, while it is true that the book deals with public goods, and public good provision is the core task of public administration, the book obviously concentrates on g l o b a l public goods. “Global public goods” and “international cooperation”—are not these matters that belong to a separate field, namely the field of International Relations? To some extent, this book challenges this line of thinking. Not that the book addresses issues regarding what does or does not constitute the field of public administration. It does not. But what it does challenge is the common view regarding the separation between domestic public good provision within a nation and international public good provision between nations. More broadly, the book argues that the neat separation between domestic policy-making and international policy-making (which incidentally gave rise to the separation of International Relations from more domestic-oriented fields like public administration) is being lost. Indeed, the overarching policy message emanating from the book is that “we have entered a new of public policy, defined by a growing number of concerns that straddle national borders.” As a result, “international cooperation is no longer just a matter of external affairs. It is first and foremost a process of national policy formulation” (p. xxix) The book was published for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and its three editors, Inge Kaul, Isabelle Grunberg, and Marc Stern, are all officials at UNDP. The book boasts a distinguished and diverse group of contributors, including luminaries such as Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, leading scholars on public goods such as Todd Sandler and Scott Barrett, and leading officials from multilateral development organizations and NGOs. In edited works of this kind, the inevitable diversity of the contributions can be advantageous, as when differing yet complementary perspectives are provided on a given topic. Yet too often, it seems, that diversity proves to be disadvantageous, as when the perspectives and the topics are so loosely related as to lead one to question whether indeed the contributions even belong in a single book. Fortunately for this work, with perhaps a couple exceptions, the various contributions fit together fairly well. This may be due to the fact that, despite the authors’ diversity and number (29), they start from a shared sense that globalization is increasingly blurring the lines between domestic and international issues. This, in turn, imbues an ever-greater number of these issues with the characteristics of global public goods p r o b l e m s . What are the characteristics of public goods, and in particular, global public goods? What are these increasing number of issues that appear to fit, to a greater or lesser extent, the characteristics of global public goods? Looking ahead, what changes, in terms of institutions and policies, are needed to adequately address these issues? These three questions effectively underlie the organization of the book, with the first main section, “Concepts,” consisting of three papers dealing with the definition of global public goods, and how international public goods are analyzed from both economics and political science perspectives. The second, and largest, section of the book deals with “Case Studies” covering all manner of issues that the authors argue exhibit important characteristics of international public goods. Reflecting one of the most important overall contributions of the book, the issues discussed include not only © International Review of Public Administration 2000, Vol. 5, No. 2