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This chapter will examine the interplay among actors who took part in the process of consensus building towards a post-2015 education agenda via different channels of global governance, including both formal and informal channels.

Most of the forums and entities established as part of the global governance structure are composed of representatives from UN or UNESCO member states, civil society organizations (CSOs) and UN agencies. However, each of these categories has diverse constituent groups; representing these groups is not as straightforward a task as the governance structure seems to assume. Therefore, based on interviews and qualitative text analysis, this chapter will introduce major groups of actors and their major issues of concern, decision-making structure, mode of communication and relationship with other actors. Then, based on an understanding of the characteristics of the various channels and actors, it will present the structural issues that arose during the analysis of post-2015 discourse and the educational issues that emerged as the shared concerns of the ‘education community’. While most of the analysis to untangle the nature of discourse relies on qualitative analysis of texts and interviews, the end of this chapter will also demonstrate the trends of discourse in quantitative terms.

What was the post-2015 discourse for the so-called education community, which in itself has an ambiguous and virtual existence? The keywords post-2015 and post-EFA provide us with an opportunity to untangle how shared norms and codes of conduct were shaped at the global scale.

For three days in early June 1998 the General Assembly of the United Nations was imbued with an air of unity as members strove to find ‘common ground’ against the escalating drug crisis. The international community had gathered together under the auspices of a special session to contemplate a concerted approach to countering the global drug problem. The latter is perceived to be a grave threat to ‘the well‐being of mankind, the independence of states, democracy, the stability of nations, the structure of all societies, and the dignity and hope of millions of people’.

Not only must multinational corporations deal with governments of their home countries and various host countries, they must now contend with the pressures of change exerted through international organizations such as U.N.‐based agencies and public interest groups. The Nestle infant formula controversy, more so than any other event, has crystallized the growing internationalization of conflicts.

The trafficking of women for the purpose of sexual exploitation has become a global business operated by organised crime groups and is now viewed as having reached ‘critical proportions’. Trafficking exists to meet the market demand for women who are used in brothels, the production of pornography and other aspects of the ‘sex industry’. It is nothing less than a modern day slave trade.

Money laundering is agreed to be a terrible crime. Government officials and their allies in the press seem on almost a monthly basis to demand new powers to deal with this menace. Exactly what is the crime?

The investigation and enforcement sub‐group felt that its contribution to this project was best made by suggesting answers to this question:

Through a case study on the governance structures of the UN, the purpose of this paper is to develop a critique of Public and Private Bureaucracies Transaction Cost Economics (PPBTCE) (Williamson, 1999) as a theoretical lens to analyze internal oversight structures.

The authors explore “probity” and “independence” transactions’ attributes through historical narrative case-based research to answer the question – Why did numerous attempts to strengthen the governance of UN internal oversight structures not relieve “probity” hazards?

The analysis shows that at the UN increasing and strengthening the governance of oversight structures, i.e., incentives, did not relieve probity/ethics hazards as predicted in PPBTCE. Secretaries-General and UN General Assembly, entities charged with oversight powers, systematically trumpeted the UN Charter, breaching probity/ethics and disregarding the supervisory independence prerogative of internal oversight structures, hence failing to contribute to the “common good” and to protect the UN mission.

This paper is the first application of PPBTCE to internal oversight transactions within an International organization context testing probity and independence attributes. The authors find that “independence” outweighs the “asset specificity” attribute whenever decisions on the governance of internal oversight arise. As far as sourcing decisions are concerned, the authority of the sovereign and the independence of the judiciary as well as quasi-judiciary transactions are not transferable attributes and, thus, cannot be contracted along with the actors’ ethics. PPBTCE should be modified to include, e.g. “virtues ethics” behavioral assumption as a transaction costs’ reduction device and explanatory framework for “probity” hazards, abandoning the opportunism behavioral assumption.

The emergence of electronic government is reaching considerable proportions in the developed world. It would appear that this new reform is consigning everything that went before it to the wastepaper basket of oblivion. This, however, primarily applies to the intensity of the discussions of and the publications about the issue. The concrete results of virtually all empirical studies available on the net show that practical development lags distinctly behind the possibilities of e-government that are being discussed and proclaimed. Kinder (2002) surveys “tele-democracy” (the term he uses for e-government, K. S.) in 31 European cities covering 14 states and shows that progressive city administrations in Europe are early adopters of tele-democracy with a diffusion rate of 72%. He admits, however, that the selection of the cities that were examined displays a considerable bias: it was conducted on the basis of assumed best practice. Moon (2002) looked into the rhetoric and reality of e-government at the municipal level in the United States and concludes that e-government has been adopted by many municipal governments, but remains at an early stage and has not yielded many of the expected outcomes that the rhetoric of e-government has promised.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

In recent years, the European Commission and various Member States, citing increasingly integrated markets and higher levels of cross-border activity within the European Union (“E.U.”), have called for the adoption of effective collective redress mechanisms for victims of violations of E.U. law. Although many Member States have already adopted collective action procedures under national law, these procedures have been ineffective in stimulating private enforcement of E.U. law and are often divergent in their approach to consolidating claims. E.U. lawmakers, after a lengthy period of investigation and study, have identified a set of guiding principles for the Member States to use in enacting new collective redress procedures within their national systems. The studies and papers solicited from the public during the Commission’s deliberations are explicit in their rejection of the U.S.-style opt-out class action mechanism. In their effort to avoid similarly calamitous results, European lawmakers propose that Member States adopt “opt-in” class actions, while rejecting many of the economic incentives that some believe lead to filing nonmeritorious claims, such as punitive damages and contingency fee arrangements. The European proposal is unlikely in the authors’ view to stimulate private enforcement of European law or increase victims’ access to compensation, given the flaws inherent in the opt-in class action device. Instead of looking to adopt a “U.S.-lite” approach to victim redress which is fundamentally incompatible with many judicial systems within the E.U., the authors propose that Europeans consider adopting a regulatory administered compensation system, modeled after such U.S. examples as the Securities and Exchange Commission Fair Funds and the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. The authors also propose that regulatory administered funds can provide more effective and efficient restitution to victims than traditional litigation.