Mobilizing Multilateral Cultural Values

Curated and produced by The Solutions Lab – Scaling for Sustainable Infrastructure, a joint initiative by GIZ and the Global Solutions Initiative

Global cultural anxieties are shaping responses to multilateralism at the deepest possible level and reported in daily headlines.

This keynote and panel address the viability and need for mobilizing multilateral values from a cultural perspective. The keynote and the panelists have recently contributed to a book on this subject “Cultural Values in Political Economy” (Stanford University Press, July 2020). Members of the panel have advised international organizations such as UNESCO, the World Bank, and the WTO and serve in distinguished capacities for foreign relations in the United States, Canada, and Australia.

How do cultural values affect the political economy of multilateralism and global governance? How can global civil society and states understand and mobilize cultural values that affect issues such as international trade, environmental sustainability, and international cultural flows such as through arts, migration, and education?

The goal of the session is to highlight the importance of cultural values and to operationalize them for global governance. Solutions proposed include shifting the discourse from environmental accountability to responsibility, including norms of cultural diversity in global governance, managing the cultural obstacles to international trade, and fashioning new cultural narratives of multilateralism and cosmopolitanism.

Technical support by Paul Nooney, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University.