The scholarship on global governance has been developing intensely for more than four decades. Much has been learned regarding delegated authorities, representation, power distribution, political ideologies, hybrid modes of action, and institutional pathologies. What was largely missing, however, was the focus on the “ground”: how de facto policy actions are implemented, innovated, repeated, and somehow standardized. Nele Kortendiek’s recent book, Global Governance on the Ground: Organizing International Migration and Asylum at the Border (2024), provides excellent insights into this underexplored spot. Multistakeholder practice from below is an important component in the cycle of global public policies and needs to be appreciated for its contribution to the effectiveness of actual delivery of policies on the ground. At the same time, we need a cautious, interpretative approach to recognize the limits and even the perils of overemphasizing the relevance of such ground-based inputs.

Global Governance on the Ground sheds light on how informal networks of practitioners develop situated learning leading to the stabilization of new practices in the specific policy domain of international migration and asylum at the borders. It is precisely in areas outside normalized policies that such practitioners, operating “on the ground” and far from home institutions, can experiment, evaluate, and repeat policy options that eventually get consolidated over time and feedback to institutional headquarters.

Migration remains one of the most, if not the most, challenging policy domain of today. Its intractability is due to how it affects the core component of any polity: the composition of community. By modifying the perimeter of who is part of the national compound, migration dramatically transforms society, hence it is a confrontational issue by nature. It consequently remains a most salient topic in any electoral campaign in (mostly) receiving countries. The cleavage identity versus welfare is a fundamental conundrum around which all political parties in global northern countries position themselves. The debate between Philippe Fargues and Anatol Lieven in the edited book Debating Migration to Europe: Welfare versus Identity (Routledge, 2018) is illustrative of this dynamic. Some parties, usually on the left, tend to have a more positive attitude toward migrants because of the appeal to liberal inclusion and a strategic consideration towards sustaining economic growth and the welfarist state with the declining population. Other parties, usually on the right, tend conversely to have a more restrictive position based on the idea of the preservation of national identity according to which (especially culturally diverse) migrants pose a challenge, if not altogether a threat, to a certain idea of the national tradition.

It is within this environment of national political cleavage that we need to understand the operation of International Organizations (IOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) on migrants and asylum-seekers. Not taking into full account the exacerbation of the national debates on these issues prevents us from understanding the difficulties of transnational actors in managing migration at the borders. In fact, the empty spots within which these actors operate are there precisely because global regulations remain extremely controversial. Global policies in the domain of migration are deficient due to the primacy of national regulations and the reluctance to cede sovereignty to supranational institutions.

The book meritoriously focuses on those empty spots. It illuminates the other side of global politics: how “governance is often messy, provisional, and must continuously deal with uncertainty and complexity” (p. 161). By looking at these sites of action, the book helps us to gain a more comprehensive understanding of actual international policymaking as it is implemented on the ground.

Overall, the focus on the liminal spaces for final implementation is important but should not be overstated. These are minor operational details, even though their humanitarian impact may be great, as in the case of defining who should be considered “vulnerable” and worthy of protection. In such end-of-the-policy cases, a margin of discretion is often present. To some extent, this is always true no matter the type or scale of the policy at hand. It is often the case that the final implementer needs to take operational decisions that are not exhaustively prescribed by the official norm. However, the cases analyzed in the book go beyond this common practice and tell us about a greater role for fieldworkers in migration and asylum.

Kortendiek argues for more autonomy for those conducting fieldwork in order to increase their impact. According to the author, “to harness the productive side of governing on the ground and more effectively influence its direction, IOs should consider allowing fieldworkers more discretionary power” (2024, p. 161). We should note, however, that such autonomy only works if fieldworkers can be held accountable, and this is not typical. It is not unusual for a significant number of fieldworkers to be employed on temporary bases, limiting the amount of responsibility. They cannot be held to account if, in the near future, they will probably be in a different position, in a different organization, or in a different place. But even in the case of permanently employed fieldworkers, a second step is the actual assessment of their policy implementations. This topic is notorious, but one that is still largely neglected, or managed through a purely formal procedure. Too often, international (and indeed national) policies are left without a specific assessment of their performance and a clear evaluation of their long-term impact. Even serious misconduct can be left unaddressed. From a prescriptive point of view, more autonomy must be accompanied by stable employment, supplemented by accurate policy assessments to establish a virtuous and accountable practice.

A final point of concern involves the peril linked to legitimacy. The stories in Kortendiek’s book tell us that inputs and innovations come often from below, at times also from nonelected and nondelegated NGOs. The issue around the legitimacy of NGOs is a long-standing point of discussion in both political and academic debates. NGOs can be compared to public institutions, but they can nonetheless still be warranted with a degree of legitimacy under certain conditions. There are basically two positions: vertical and horizontal accountability. Kortendiek argues for the latter with reference to target populations. From this perspective, effective input and redress channels for governance addressees are absent. Instead, there is a need for complaint and participation mechanisms to make sure that appeal channels are working and feedback is systematically integrated into field decision-making. Yet, this horizontal position must necessarily be combined with a strong vertical approach, uniquely positioned to grant full political legitimacy. It is necessary to strengthen the role of authorized public authorities with a political mandate to supervise and grant legitimacy to the fieldworkers on the ground. Their inputs must necessarily pass through a political authority vetting and confirming their legitimacy. This is needed not only because of the linearity of legitimacy, derived from established political authorities, but also because NGOs themselves are, as all political actors are, prone to error and chained into the so-called “marketization” of civil society organizations. NGOs could be structurally biased by a “contract fever” induced by abundances of short-term contracts and would suffer inefficiency because public tenders do not always promote efficiency and that competition does not solely reduce waste. While global governance on the ground can bring about many benefits to global policies, and for this we praise Kortendiek’s book, it should also be carefully interpreted in light of potential negative outcomes, be they simply unintended or altogether illegitimate.