• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.29-61
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• 2019

Within the discipline of International Relations (IR), the literatures on global governance (GG) and great power management (GPM) at best ignore each other, and at worst treat the other as a rival or enemy. On the one hand, the GPM literature, like both realism in all its forms, and neoliberalism, takes for granted the ongoing, disproportionate influence of the great powers in the management of the international system/society, and does not look much beyond that. On the other hand, the GG literature emphasizes the roles of smaller states, non-state actors and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and tends to see great powers more as part of the problem than as part of the solution. This paper argues that the rise to prominence of a non-traditional security agenda, and particularly of human security, has triggered a de facto merger of GPM and GG that the IR literature usually treated as separate and often opposed theories. We use the Ebola crisis of 2014-15 to show how an issue framed as human security brought about a multi-actor response that combined the key elements of GPM and GG. The security framing overrode many of the usual inhibitions between great powers and non-state actors in humanitarian crises, including even the involvement of great power military forces. Through examining broadly the way in which the Ebola crisis is tackled, we argue that in an age of growing human security challenges, GPM and GG are necessarily and fruitfully merging. The role of great powers in this new human security environment is moving away from the simple means and ends of traditional GPM. Now, great powers require the ability to cooperate and coordinate with multiple-level actors to make the GG/GPM nexus more effective and sustainable. In doing so they can both provide crucial resources quickly, and earn respect and status as responsible great powers. IGOs provide legitimation and coordination to the GPM/GG package, and non-state actors (NSAs) provide information, specialist knowledge and personnel, and links into public engagement. In this way, the unique features of the Ebola crisis provide a model for how the merger of GPM and GG might be taken forward on other shared-fate threats facing global international society.