Globalisation and the UNESCO mandate: multilateral prospects for educational development

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Abstract

UNESCO is analysed in terms of the challenges brought to it by globalisation. In particular, the `logic' of internationalism and its expression after World War Two as functional multilateralism are seen to be under serious challenge from a potential fragmentation of world order. Changes in the character of nation-states and the consequences for structured collaboration between and among them force questions to be posed concerning UNESCO's role in global educational development. An examination of the origins and early constitutional mandate of UNESCO provides opportunity to explore patterns whereby the Organisation might reinvent itself — within existing constitutional parameters — in order to reclaim that relevance so confidently proclaimed for it over fifty years ago.

Introduction

From its earliest days, UNESCO—the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation—has been the subject of on-going debate about its constitutional foundation and its structural capacity to contribute to educational development. The early days of the cold war, and the withdrawal from UNESCO of the United States and United Kingdom in the mid-1980s, were prominent periods when UNESCO's basic design, relevance and prospects were comprehensively challenged (for historical overviews, see Jones, 1988, Spaulding and Lin, 1997). More recently, the dynamics of globalisation have served to pose a less overtly political challenge to UNESCO, a challenge stemming from the essential conflict between the logic of globalisation and the logic of internationalism. With globalisation serving to unravel a structured, functional world order based on the principles of internationalism, it is timely to consider the implications for UNESCO and its on-going potential to contribute to educational development. What makes the matter urgent—and of far more than theoretical interest—is the impact of globalisation through the production of a new international division of labour, with prospects varying widely from country to country for economic and educational development, and the gap between rich and poor nations steadily growing.

The allocation of functions that defined UNESCO as the principal UN agency for educational development emerged more by design than default. The intentionality underpinning the overall shape of post-WW2 arrangements was a prominent feature of allied thinking about how governments would conduct business together. Within an overarching framework that looked to multilateral arrangements to secure a more peaceful, prosperous and morally progressive world, areas of functional activity were allocated among specialised agencies just as a government might allocate various functions among portfolios. But unlike government departments (subject to policy co-ordination and financial control from the centre), UN specialised agencies received legislative, policy and financial autonomy. Left to govern themselves, and even to interpret for themselves the parameters of their constitutional mandates, the specialised agencies that emerged after the cessation of hostilities were subject to the weakest of policy and functional co-ordination from the centre. While on paper the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) saw to it that UN agencies contributed to an ordered set of complementary actions, realities saw agencies free to enjoy their autonomy, each determined to protect its turf, and many unafraid to stray into others' areas of work.

Only once, with Robert Jackson's 1969 `capacity study' on the UN development assistance system (United Nations, 1969), did a serious threat to agency autonomy emerge—in favour of an all-powerful and amply-funded United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), able to finance and control most if not all UN development work. That the heads of the specialised agencies were able to resist the Jackson proposals with relative ease helps explain the subsequent absence of reforms sufficiently powerful to threaten the principle of agency autonomy. The story, rather, has been one of agencies jockeying for policy and financial prominence within the closed confines of the UN system. With prospects remaining remote for deep-seated reform from within, it is pertinent to assess the manner in which globalising forces are impacting on that closed system. Just as national economies and domestic state arrangements can no longer remain innocent of and isolated from globalisation, so too must a closed inter-state system be expected to wither and die unless the implications of globalisation for inter-state collaboration are directly addressed.

Section snippets

Globalisation and the multilaterals

Despite the many and complex ways in which the economic, political and cultural dynamics of a globalising world interact, it is important to keep prominent in any analysis of globalisation its essential core feature—the organisation and integration of economic activity at levels which transcend national borders and jurisdictions. Globalisation is embedded in the 1980s ascendancy of a particular form of capitalism, championed in North America and parts of Western Europe (notably the United

Themes at UNESCO'S establishment

It would cause no surprise to claim that, like its UN counterparts, UNESCO carries with it historical baggage that severely limits its capacity to act flexibly and in appreciably new ways. Such organisations are said to cling to identities, values and operations that appear as residues from the days of their establishment. What is argued here, however, may not conform fully to such a line of argument. Rather, it is proposed that there were aspects of UNESCO's establishment which, if assessed

UNESCO and the politics of educational development

In seeking to account for—and to assess—UNESCO programs and their underlying rationale, it is essential to understand the interaction of the political, economic and bureaucratic dimensions. Conceptual, normative and technical considerations are regularly at the mercy of expediency. It is not possible to understand UNESCO's historical contribution to educational development otherwise. In devising a conceptual basis for its education program, for example, the organisation has had to deal with far

UNESCO and a fragmenting world order

The urgent domestic task facing national governments as they attempt to restore their legitimacy is the activation of their political and functional dimensions with the broad range of constituencies that represent citizens and their interests. The new democracy will look to governments that function with invigorated social organisations in genuine partnerships, business interests included. This basis for the re-regulation of currently dominant economic ideology looks ultimately to human agency

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