A gender critique of accountability in global administrative governance

The past six decades have seen the emergence of transgovernmental systems of regulation designed to address the consequences of globalised interdependence, especially in fields such as international security, environmental protection, financial regulation, law enforcement and trade. Systems are created by international treaties and informal intergovernmental networks that vest regulatory powers in public, private and hybrid international institutions, shifting regulatory authority from the domestic to the global level. In 2006, there were almost sixty thousand recorded international institutions, 12 per cent of which exercised elements of public authority. These included (1) formal intergovernmental regulatory bodies, for example, the UN Security Council and its committees; (2) informal intergovernmental regulatory networks and coordination arrangements, such as the Basel Committee; (3) national regulatory bodies operating under an international intergovernmental regime, for example, domestic bodies implementing World Trade Organisation (WTO) obligations; (4) hybrid public-private regulatory bodies, for example, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers; and (5) private regulatory bodies exercising transnational functions, such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). As a result, international regulation is increasingly being directed and implemented by bodies that perform administrative functions but are not subject to control by national governments, domestic legal systems or, in the case of treaty-based regimes, the states party to treaties. This situation has created an accountability deficit in the growing exercise of transnational regulatory power. One danger of this accountability deficit is that cultures of inequity could become entrenched on a global scale. An important, if misunderstood, sphere of observable inequity is that of gender. Individuals marginalised by existing cultures and laws on the basis of gender, or of sex and sexuality (when these issues are conflated), find key interests overlooked on the international stage, either because their identities are not visible or because they are systematically disempowered. For example, transgender people who do not wish to live in a gender binary may find that they are not numerous enough to be recognised on their own terms and their skills and identities not cultivated or mentored. Lack of understanding and vilification hinders them from finding employment or even entering public space in their communities, which reduces their ability to participate in political processes.