Global Policy at 10
Global Policy's Executive Editor, Dr Eva-Maria Nag, takes stock of 10 years of publications, online content, collaborations, debate and events, and on why our platform remains important in an increasingly complex world.
The invitation I recently received from Blanche de Biolley, Co-President of Durham University’s TEDx, to write about Global Policy Journal came at an opportune time of stock taking. The Journal completed its tenth year in 2019 and has entered a new decade in a new post-Brexit – and many other posts… – world.
GP was founded at the LSE in 2010 under no less turbulent circumstances following the global financial and economic crisis of 2008. Since 2013 it has been based at Durham University’s School of Government and International Affairs, and is co-owned by Durham University and the publishing company Wiley-Blackwell. I am part of a small but enthusiastic and truly global team that includes the current general editor Professor Dani Rodrik at Harvard University, deputy executive editor Andrew Sumner at King’s College London, web editor Dr Tom Kirk at the LSE, journal manager Louise Haysey and reviews editor Dr Richard Murphy at Durham University. The production team is in Oxford, Manila and Chennai.
Global Policy’s structures thus mirror what led the original founders of the Journal to set up the Journal in the first place – an acknowledgement of a networked, interconnected world that generates a wealth of experiences, both positive and challenging. The Journal’s founders, namely Patrick Dunleavy, the late David Held, and I attempted to systematically capture the politics and policies of a post-World War II globalised world. We interpreted the global in two ways.
First, we took the global to mean a unit of space that covers all political and geographical areas of the planet we inhabit. Second, we read the global as a receptacle for the idea of the commons and of ‘shared communities of fate’, as David famously put it. Moving beyond the traditional analytical unit of the state as a central actor in international relations, we sought to bring together research into transnational, multi-level and multi-actor policy making.
This meant taking seriously the role of regional players, of policy blocs, of corporations, civil society, and informal policy networks. It also meant exploring old and emerging challenges to the international order of the 20th and early 21st centuries, ranging from nuclear proliferation to climate change and indeed, more future oriented questions of the governance of AI, gene technology, geoengineering, among a range of technologies that have shaped the Information Age.
Moving beyond the analysis of collective action problems, the Journal also sought to be a platform to discuss possible solutions to these challenges. As such, we took the decision to not only publish rigorously researched peer reviewed scholarly articles but to also bring in the voices of practitioners. Policy practitioners contribute shorter commentaries and sometimes longer Policy Insights. Visitors to our website will also see that in addition to our regular board members, we are supported by a practitioners’ advisory board.
It is interesting to recall that at our inception, we were regarded as an unusual journal within a traditionally more austere world of paper publishing. Today I am thrilled to see us as part of a dynamic and ever changing landscape of knowledge production. Ten years on, we can look back on receiving a coveted Journal Impact Factor within a record four years of launching, on a steadily growing number of downloads – over 300,000 full article downloads in 2019 alone – and on exciting collaborations with other universities and organisations to produce thematic special issues on a wide range of topics.
Going back in time to the beginnings of Global Policy Journal, it was clear that we did not want to produce ‘just’ a quarterly journal. We wanted to be part of a daily dialogue with readers and authors using new technologies and media. Accordingly, I raised the funds to set up GP’s website that now serves as a vibrant hub and an online resource for everybody interested in transnational policy making and collective action problems. It also hosts the quarterly Journal and special issues, as well as blogs, online essays, e-books, and research project outputs. It is complemented by a lively social media presence on Facebook and Twitter (@Global_Policy).
Looking ahead, we are preparing to launch a new annual issue in March 2020. Entitled Global Policy: Next Generation, this annual issue is edited by doctoral students based at Global Policy North member universities and aims to reflect cutting edge work done by doctoral students, early career researchers and by researchers in the global South. Watch this space! What keeps us going? A great collaborative team of course, supported by Durham University’s international outlook. This has given us the space to develop editorial projects that matter to both scholars and practitioners. We are also sustained by our commitment to training a new generation of thinkers and doers, whether through our internship programme at SGIA or through GP Next Generation. Engagement with world class authors, practitioners and reviewers also ranks high on the list of rewards. These are our much needed tailwinds as change cannot take place without some form of continuity.
Yet, we also face headwinds, whether through the economic uncertainties of a fast evolving publishing market, pushbacks against gatekeeping – as this is what journals do, and last but not least, questions about our very foundations.
Indeed, analyses of the world we live in increasingly focus on what we do not share. We are now accustomed to the vocabulary of divided countries, populism, elitism, and ethnonationalism, framed in both positive and negative ways. Moreover, there are frictions and factions that threaten international collaboration over areas of shared concern – climate change being foremost, but also global security challenges, pandemics, environmental degradation, and many other cross-border issues. How much of a challenge are these ideational and practical developments to global policy and indeed to Global Policy?
My own brief answer is that the global and Global Policy remain important. We correctly identified a multi-layered world in which there exists a multiplicity of actors and agendas. Our own agenda is not about the search for silver bullets that can solve these complex and often wicked problems. Our agenda is about reflecting and furthering world class rigorous research and thinking on these problems. Global Policy can and will continue to play a vital role in offering and opening the space for meaningful debates and discourses on key policy issues across the world.
Dr. Nag is the Executive Editor of Global Policy Journal and the Acting Co-Director of the Global Policy Institute at the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University. Eva-Maria received her PhD on Indian political thought from the LSE. She is a member of the Practitioners’ Advisory Board of the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, an Advisory Board Member of the Pakistan Journal of International Relations, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Centre for Ethics and Global Politics at LUISS Guido Carli University of Rome. An expert in comparative political theory, her research interests include theories of democracy and violence in South Asia, ideational implications of multipolarity in the international system, climate governance in the developing world, and critical interpretations of the Anthropocene.
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