Abstract

The tendencies observed in the development of the world political and economic processes running on the background of the obviously decreased effectiveness of the traditional international institutes in the regulatory policy in terms of the global problems of social action refresh the search for adequate governance models able to meet today’s challenges. Club alliances characterized by the limited number of participants and non-public decision-making come forward as an alternative to the classical international organizations. Poor institutionalization of such formations and informal practices prevailing in their activities question the democratic and legitimate nature of the decision-taking procedures. This paper is devoted to the club forms of political governance as informal power-exercising mechanisms. The analysis carried out here focuses on political practices of decision-shaping and making within the context of club models of global governance. Investigating the club model shaping evolution demonstrated that decision-taking forms can do public good under the optimized conditions that are similar to the market ones. The participation principles studied prove that extended club membership as a rule decreases its effectiveness and complicates consensus decision-shaping. The participation practices analyzed therein helped define the criteria for club governance effectiveness and determine the ‘club’ decision legitimation parameters. Such characteristics of club governance functioning as informality, membership exclusivity, elitism and actual lack of accountability were found to make these clubs often perceived as non-democratic alliances and their decisions as non-legitimate. However, the aforementioned features of the club governance mechanisms trigger off new alliances formed by outsiders rather than diminish the popularity of the club formats, which can have a legitimate fracturing effect realized in public protests that are most frequent during summits. The main challenge for the club forms of power exercise on the global level remains the search for mechanisms able to maintain a balance between governance effectiveness and democratic decision-taking.