What are GANs?

See attchement below to see a short powerpoint description of GANs and GAN-Net.

Traditional approaches to solving global issues are based on the premise that governments can create effective solutions through international agreements and intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank. However, this approach has proven incapable of addressing the scale of important issues in a sufficiently effective and timely manner. GANs have grown up in recent years to fill this gap, offering new strategies to build effective systems.

GANs are distinguished from traditional NGOs and intergovernmental and business organizations because they are formed by diverse stakeholders who are interested in a common issue, and who agree to work together to achieve extraordinary results. The critical contribution that they can provide global issues is their ability to create consensual knowledge and action among diverse stakeholders.

GANs are defined by their strategy, which is distinctive because it combines five elements. A GAN’s strategy:

  1. Is global and multi-level (across and beyond the local, national, regional and international levels of governance)
  2. Implements interdisciplinary action-learning and reflective action (to produce synergies between knowledge development and practice).
  3. Builds multi-stakeholder and cross sectoral, inter-organizational networks (linking international agencies, governments, businesses, civil society organizations and other actors while still utilizing hierarchies or markets as appropriate)
  4. Generates systemic change through a range of non-violent, boundary-crossing and diversity-embracing activities (agenda setting, knowledge generation, capacity building, resource mobilization, conflict resolution, education, certification, etc.)
  5. Realizes the public good in areas of global sustainability and security (while ensuring the empowerment of marginalized groups and harnessing the energy of potentially divergent private interests)

Any particular GAN reflects these characteristics "more rather than less". For example, it takes time to be "global", and some may have trouble engaging one of the organizational sectors such as business.

Active GANs are now addressing a range of issues, including:

  • Corruption
  • Provision of water
  • Climate change
  • Corporate reporting and performance standards
  • Corporate performance
  • Sustainable fishing
  • Sustainable forestry
  • Youth employment
  • Nutrition
  • HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria
  • Micro enterprise

The concept of GAN builds upon Oran R. Young's concept of "regimes" 1, but does not have the same inter-governmental organization tradition associated with regimes. In fact, GANs often purposefully do not include government organizations. The concept of GAN also builds upon the concept of "global public policy network:" 2 developed by Wolfgang Reinicke. However, rather than framing the networks as agents of public policy which is often associated with writing of papers, the term GAN emphasizes their focus upon creating change with public policy as being one of the products.

1 Young, Oran R. 1999a. "The Effectiveness of International Environmental Regimes." Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, -. 1999b. Governance in World Affairs. Ithaca, NY, USA: Cornell University Press.

2 Reinicke, Wolfgang H. 1999-2000. "The Other World Wide Web: Global Public Policy Networks." Foreign Policy:44-57. Reinicke, Wolfgang H. and Francis M. Deng. 2000. "Critical Choices: The United Nations, networks, and the future of global governance." International Development Research Council, Toronto, Canada, Witte, Jan Martin, Wolfgang Reinicke, and Thorsten Benner. 2000. "Beyond Multilateralism: Global Public Policy Networks." International Politics and Society 2.