Reconstituting the Global Public Domain — Issues, Actors, and Practices

Abstract

This article draws attention to a fundamental reconstitution of the global public domain — away from one that for more than three centuries equated the ‘public’ in international politics with sovereign states and the interstate realm to one in which the very system of states is becoming embedded in a broader and deepening transnational arena concerned with the production of global public goods. One concrete instance of this transformation is the growing significance of global corporate social responsibility initiatives triggered by the dynamic interplay between civil society actors and multinational corporations. The UN Global Compact and corporate involvement in HIV/AIDS treatment programs are discussed as examples. The analytical parameters of the emerging global public domain are defined and some of its consequences illustrated by the chain of responses to the Bush Administration’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocol by a variety of domestic and transnational social actors.