New book looks at imbalances in globalized governance

A Perilous Imbalance: The Globalization of Canadian Law and Governance, a new book co-authored by Osgoode Hall Law School Professor Stepan Wood, shines an urgent light on the dangerous imbalances in contemporary forms of globalized governance.

The book will launch Wednesday, April 7, from 12:30 to 2pm in the Private Dining Room of the Executive Learning Centre in the Seymour Schulich Building, Keele campus.

Co-author and political economy Professor Stephen Clarkson of the University of Toronto, a senior fellow of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, will join Wood, a core faculty member of the Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS), in introducing A Perilous Imbalance (University of British Columbia Press, 2010).

Left: Stepan Wood

The book advocates for a revitalization of the Canadian state as a vehicle to pursue human security, ecological integrity and social emancipation, and to create spaces for alternative forms of law and governance.

As citizens of a middle power, Canadians know how it feels to be objects of global forces, but they are also agents of globalization who have helped build structures of transnational governance that have highly uneven impacts on prosperity, human security and the environment, often for the worse. A Perilous Imbalance argues that these imbalances need to be recognized and corrected. It situates Canada’s experience of globalization in the context of three interlinked trends, the emergence of a global supraconsitution, the transformation of the nation-state and the growth of governance beyond the nation-state.

Jinyan Li, interim dean of York’s Osgoode Hall Law School; Stan Shapson, vice-president research & innovation; and York Professor Dawn Bazely, director of IRIS; will give the opening remarks, followed by commentary by Osgoode Professor Craig Scott.

Lunch will be served. For more information, contact Joanne Rappaport, Osgoode research coordinator, at jrappaport@osgoode.yorku.ca.