The Myth of Global Coordination
Who governs science when no one is in charge: Part 1 of a five-part series.
Editor’s Note: This weekly series explores how science is governed globally in the absence of a world authority, beginning with the myth and reality of coordination without control.
The next generation of mobile communications is being designed in meeting rooms most people will never see, by institutions few smartphone users could name.
Inside the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations agency responsible for coordinating global telecommunications, countries, companies, and research institutions are negotiating the technical foundations for what is widely referred to as 6G. The work takes place through study groups and working parties that meet repeatedly over years, exchanging draft recommendations, performance criteria, and evaluation methods that will eventually define how future networks operate.
The process is procedural and deliberately slow. Drafts circulate for months. Technical contributions are debated line by line. Disagreements are often deferred rather than forced to a vote. Outcomes are adopted by consensus and published openly. None of them are legally binding.
Yet once agreed, these standards shape how mobile networks are built, how devices interoperate, and what capabilities are available to billions of people who rely on mobile connectivity every day. Governments design spectrum policy around them. Manufacturers build equipment to comply with them. Network operators deploy infrastructure assuming global compatibility.
This is global coordination without a central authority, and it is where science diplomacy does much of its most consequential work. Participation in ITU’s standards processes is voluntary, yet its recommendations routinely become global defaults.
“Mobile communications are central to our efforts to ensure that everyone is meaningfully connected,” Doreen Bogdan-Martin, ITU’s secretary-general, said when member countries agreed on the framework for the next generation of mobile technologies. Agreeing on a shared direction, she said, is about ensuring that technical progress is “synonymous with affordability, reliability, and security and resilience, supporting sustainable development worldwide.”
That agreement formalized what the ITU calls IMT-2030, the reference framework for future mobile systems. Work is now underway to define the technical performance requirements and evaluation criteria that candidate 6G technologies will be measured against, with final standards expected toward the end of the decade. Parallel efforts are taking place in industry-led bodies such as 3GPP, which typically translate ITU frameworks into deployable specifications.
No single country controls this process. Influence accrues instead through sustained participation, technical credibility, and the ability to shape consensus over time.
How Coordination Actually Happens
International science and technology governance is often imagined as a hierarchy: global rules negotiated at the top, implemented below. In practice, coordination emerges through accumulation rather than command.
In ITU’s system, study groups are populated by national delegations alongside representatives from industry and academia. Chairs are selected from among participating countries. Secretariats manage continuity, documentation, and process, not outcomes. Decisions are framed as consensus wherever possible, even when agreement reflects compromise rather than unanimity.
Minutes from these meetings reveal familiar patterns: extended debates over wording, careful notation of reservations, and frequent decisions to defer contentious issues to future study cycles. Silence is often treated as assent. Objections must be placed on record to matter.
This procedural architecture is not unique to telecommunications. Similar norms govern scientific advisory bodies across the United Nations system and beyond, from health and environmental assessment panels to technical standards organizations in energy, transport, and data.
Together, these committees form the connective tissue of global science governance. They align expectations, stabilize technical approaches, and create shared reference points without exercising formal authority.
As Mario Maniewicz, director of ITU’s Radiocommunication Bureau, has put it, the development of future mobile systems is expected to drive the next wave of innovative radiocommunication systems, promote digital equity and advance universal connectivity," reflecting what he described as the ITU’s “longstanding multi-stakeholder approach which ensures the development of globally accepted technical and regulatory solutions."
Why Non-Binding Standards Bind
The absence of legal force changes how international standards work. Once adopted, widely accepted standards shape incentives.
Companies build products to conform. Regulators align national frameworks with international benchmarks. Researchers design development roadmaps around anticipated norms. Over time, deviation becomes costly, not because it is prohibited, but because it undermines interoperability.
This is why non-binding technical standards often have effects comparable to regulation. Reversing them requires coordination of a different order. Even powerful countries face friction if they move too far outside established frameworks.
Industry actors recognize this reality. Global mobile connectivity depends on shared technical baselines.
“Our industry connects nearly six billion people, and powers economies worldwide,” Mats Granryd, then-director general of the GSMA, said at the 2025 Mobile World Congress. That scale, he has repeatedly emphasized, is possible only because networks, devices, and systems are built on common standards that allow them to work everywhere.
In this sense, standards function as governance instruments that structure rather than compel behavior.
Authority Without Command
This form of authority is often misunderstood as weak because it lacks enforcement. In practice, it is pervasive.
“Standards are the guidelines that companies use to build their products. They can create a stream of revenue for the holder, funding research, and jobs. The core of the contest remains research, patents, and standards,” James A. Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of the 5G race and the evolution of telecom. Influence in these systems, he has emphasized, flows through norms and adoption rather than formal mandates.
That observation applies well beyond telecommunications. Climate modeling, public health surveillance, nuclear safety, and data governance all rely on expert consensus and shared technical frameworks rather than binding global law.
Science diplomacy operates most effectively in this space. It maintains channels of communication, aligns expectations, and helps prevent fragmentation. Its successes are incremental and often invisible. Its failures become apparent only when coordination breaks down.
The model has limits. It depends on trust, resources, and sustained participation. When political priorities shift or security concerns dominate, cooperation can narrow quickly. Emerging scientific fields, where institutions lag behind innovation, are especially vulnerable.
But the absence of hierarchy describes a different mode of governance.
Who Benefits and Who Doesn’t
As the 2026 study cycle intensifies, the gap between those driving the AI-native architecture of 6G and those merely preparing to adopt it has become a central tension in Geneva.
Coordination without central authority affect participants differently. Influence in committee-based systems follows capacity. Countries and institutions able to send large, experienced delegations shape agendas early and often. Those with limited resources may struggle to track parallel processes or intervene at critical moments.
Once standards are adopted, latecomers must adapt to frameworks they had little role in shaping. Capacity-building initiatives aim to mitigate these imbalances, but structural asymmetries persist.
The myth is that global coordination implies control, or is inherently equitable.
In reality, global science governance works because enough participants continue to accept its informal rules. They attend meetings, negotiate language, and align practices. The system holds because it is continuously reproduced.
Science diplomacy functions as maintenance within that system.
Looking Ahead
The negotiations shaping the technical foundations of future mobile networks illustrate how global science and technology are governed when no one is formally in charge.
Authority is exercised through expertise, procedure, and consensus rather than command. Influence accrues over time. Coordination is real, but contingent.
In Part 2 of this series, the focus turns to the people who operate inside this system: the experts and advisory bodies that wield influence without formal mandates, and the institutional designs that determine when their authority holds, and when it fails.
Next: Part 2 — Experts Without Mandates