"Public goods" is a standard economic term to refer to goods that, once produced, benefit all – for example, a legal framework or justice system, norms and standards, a clean and healthy environment, or widespread education. The book takes that notion to the global level. Global public goods have benefits that spread across nations, generations and population groups. Examples include financial stability, health, peace, or environmental sustainability.

"Global public bads" result from problems spilling across borders –  such as disease, excessive volatility, pollution, crime and drug-trafficking - or from the systemic accumulation of problems.

An adequate provision of global public goods requires a new approach to foreign affairs, according to which international cooperation forms an integral part of national public policy. "Unfortunately, we often see the opposite  – a trend toward  isolationism and protectionism", says Inge Kaul, co-editor of Global Public Goods.

Contributors to Global Public Goods – which include the 1998 economics Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, the World Bank's chief economist, and Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard's Institute for International Development – propose a re-alignment of public policy to bridge the present gaps.

1. A jurisdictional loop to do away with the traditional separation between foreign and domestic affairs and to link the national and the global levels through strengthened regionalism. In this framework, international goals would be met through national or regional-level action. Also, governments would compensate each other for the effects they cause on other countries, or the international community. This can be thought of as  "trade in global public goods". Through such operations, countries can also be encouraged to adopt policies that produce positive external effects (such as basic research, protection of the environment, etc).

Among the concrete recommendations for action are: 

• to  monitor the effects of policies, positive and negative, that spill across borders by publishing externality profiles for each country.
• To create "foreign affairs departments" within national ministries of the environment, health, finance, employment, science and technology, among others.
• to create regional IMFs.
• to harmonize policies and liberalize trade within "regional clubs".
• to channel aid to regional groups, along the lines of the Marshall Plan.

 
2. A participation loop, to ensure that all concerned actors are involved. Its key elements are:

• a better North-South representation in international fora.
• the expansion of the G7/G8 into a G-16, bringing in eight major developing countries.
• a new tripartism to allow a more systematic involvement of business and civil society in international fora (i.e. representation of social and labour organizations in financial policy-making).
• a voice for the "voiceless", notably the poor and  future generations.
• A Global Participation Fund – self-administered by developing countries, to support their active involvement in global negotiations.

3. An  "incentive loop": Cooperation must make sense at the national level and allow policy-makers to deliver results to their constituencies. For that, incentives have to be strengthened by:

• Getting the prices right. Some resources (such as clean water or pristine forests) are under-priced globally because their positive, global externalities are not taken into account.
• Bargaining across issue areas (e.g. "pollution reduction" in exchange for  "access to technology") and over the longer term.
• A new Global Trusteeship Council– composed of eminent personalities, to assist the UN Secretary-General by suggesting next steps when the international community is at risk of getting caught in collective action problems.

Some countries will also receive transfers from the international community to contribute to the provision of global public goods. But that should not be confused with aid, as is the case now. As Global Public Goods argues, a large amount of aid – maybe even as much as every fourth aid dollar – is today flowing into global concerns rather than to the poorest.

As UNDP Administrator James Gustave Speth notes, "International cooperation today must remain focused on aid – on the poorest countries. But it must also go beyond aid: the global public good agenda is a new, additional challenge."

Where could the momentum for the proposed changes in public policy come from?

It will come from the need to get results. Policy-makers themselves are increasingly aware of the loss in their capacity for policy-making, and will find it in their interest to strengthen their hands.

Therefore, the G7/8 might indeed be ready to expand into a G16, bringing in eight major developing countries.

In addition, both civil society and business are likely to further press governments to cooperate on many issues.