My 350 on Donald Trump: reinventing global public organisations

There is a strong argument to be made that
Trump’s challenge to the establishment is also a challenge to the wide range of
global public organisations which are part of the way the whole system works.

The World Bank, IMF and WTO may be the
usual suspects for many people. Next in line, the UN and its agencies for their
perceived ineffectiveness to perform their mandate as a promotor and guarantor
of peace and security and development, and the whiff of corruption that surrounds
it. International NGOs have become a target of accountability challenges from
the public, private and governmental donors, often amplified by the media.

But the reality is far more complex. The web
of who drives global policymaking on key issues of global public goods, those who
ride on its coat-tails, and those who start out as challengers and find it hard
to keep independent is not evenly woven.

Virtually all global public organisations,
intergovernmental and non-governmental, have a case to answer about whether and
how they are truly focused on their mission which is the definition,
negotiation, protection and provision of public goods, or whether they and
their leaders have succumbed to the lure of being part of a global economic and
political elite.

The recent election result in the US should
serve as a call for re-invention for many of these organisations,
re-discovering their call to service of those who have the least voice and
bargaining power in this world.

The biggest risks they face are either
oblivion or subordination to national interests. Global public organisations need
to challenge themselves about the way they operate, are structured and financed
to demonstrate this.  Transparency and formal
accountability to those who they serve will be key.

But the credibility of global public
organisations in the eyes of citizens, especially those who have most to gain
from their work, will also depend on their ability to stay true to mission and
ethics. This will mean a capacity to resist: for all of them the ability to
resist the pressures to align with powers that will seek to make them an
instrument of national interest, for IGOs to resist pressures to close the
space and practice of working transparently and open to access from others, for
NGOs to resist the appeal of co-optation by always trying to be part of the
top-table and inner-circles, and to resist the interest of continuously
increasing their access to funding.