Hyper-Collective in Global Policies

A New Framework to Understand Development Aid

Together with Jean-Michel Severino, we developed a series of paper exploring the nature of globalisation and its possible “management”.

First we make the case that globalisation requires pulling together the insights of at least five figures of social interactions: the first one is of course the Market (with its benefits and failures); the second one is the Crowd (and its contagion and trampling phenomena); the third one is the Arena (and its power relations); the fourth one is the Forum (with its ideational and communication phenomena) and the last one is the Contract (opening the possibility of a more ordered global governance). These five different modes of social order combine in real life to shed light on a range of global phenomena. The paper also discusses the normative principles of global governance – namely the nature of order (security and efficacy) and justice (equity, equality and legitimacy) at the global level – as well as six distinctive paradigms for a global policy framework.

We then developed the concept of “hypercollective action” as the defining problematique of global governance. We argue that the diversity of actors and processes of international cooperation have changed so much that the core concept of “collective action” needs to be rethought, as well as the notion of “collective responsibility”. We further analyse possible modes of “hypercollective coordination” identifying five core aspects: authority, incentives, cognitive frameworks, empowerment, and partnerships. States, in this context, can only but should pro-actively be the “strategists” of hypercollective action in order to produce global policies.