Global governance is fast becoming a ubiquitous phrase, succeeding globalization as the latest buzz term. But exactly what does it mean? For many scholars and policymakers the term captures important aspects of world politics. This unique volume delivers and compares the key perspectives of the leading thinkers in the area, equipping the reader with an excellent understanding of the debate now defining and mapping the future of this term. This comparative approach is underpinned by a lucid theoretical framework which guides the reader towards building a clear sense of the debate and its complexities. A wide range of empirical issues are covered, including those of Security, International Political Economy, Environment, Human Rights, Social Movements and Regulation. Including theorists of social constructivism, liberal imperialism and realism, this is an essential book for students and scholars which stimulates discussion and presents a fully rounded picture of global governance.

Global governance is fast becoming a ubiquitous phrase, succeeding globalization as the latest buzz term. But exactly what does it mean? For many scholars and policymakers the term captures important aspects of world politics. This unique volume delivers and compares the key perspectives of the leading thinkers in the area, equipping the reader with an excellent understanding of the debate now defining and mapping the future of this term. This comparative approach is underpinned by a lucid theoretical framework which guides the reader towards building a clear sense of the debate and its complexities. A wide range of empirical issues are covered, including those of Security, International Political Economy, Environment, Human Rights, Social Movements and Regulation. Including theorists of social constructivism, liberal imperialism and realism, this is an essential book for students and scholars which stimulates discussion and presents a fully rounded picture of global governance.

Since the UN's creation in 1945 a vast nexus of global and regional institutions has evolved, surrounded by a proliferation of non-governmental agencies and advocacy networks seeking to influence the agenda and direction of international public policy. Although world government remains a fanciful idea, there does exist an evolving global governance complex - embracing states, international institutions, transnational networks and agencies (both public and private) - which functions, with variable effect, to promote, regulate or intervene in the common affairs of humanity. This book provides an accessible introduction to the current debate about the changing form and political significance of global governance. It brings together original contributions from many of the best-known theorists and analysts of global politics to explore the relevance of the concept of global governance to understanding how global activity is currently regulated. Furthermore, it combines an elucidation of substantive theories with a systematic analysis of the politics and limits of governance in key issue areas - from humanitarian intervention to the regulation of global finance. Thus, the volume provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical assessment of the shift from national government to multilayered global governance. Governing Globalization is the third book in the internationally acclaimed series on global transformations. The other two volumes are Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture and The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate.

The issues that increasingly dominate the 21st century cannot be solved by any single country acting alone, no matter how powerful. To manage the global economy, prevent runaway environmental destruction, reign in nuclear proliferation, or confront other global challenges, we must cooperate. But at the same time, our tools for global policymaking - chiefly state-to-state negotiations over treaties and international institutions - have broken down. The result is gridlock, which manifests across areas via a number of common mechanisms. The rise of new powers representing a more diverse array of interests makes agreement more difficult. The problems themselves have also grown harder as global policy issues penetrate ever more deeply into core domestic concerns. Existing institutions, created for a different world, also lock-in pathological decision-making procedures and render the field ever more complex. All of these processes - in part a function of previous, successful efforts at cooperation - have led global cooperation to fail us even as we need it most. Ranging over the main areas of global concern, from security to the global economy and the environment, this book examines these mechanisms of gridlock and pathways beyond them. It is written in a highly accessible way, making it relevant not only to students of politics and international relations but also to a wider general readership.

A groundbreaking analysis that sheds new light on global governance

Most literature on international arbitration is practice-oriented, technical, and promotional. It is by arbitrators and largely for arbitrators and their clients. Outside analyses by non-participants are still very rare. This book boldly steps away from this tradition of scholarship to reflect analytically on international arbitration as a form of global governance. It thus contributes to a rapidly growing literature that describes the profound economic, legal, and political transformation in which key governance functions are increasingly exercised by a new constellation that include actors other than national public authorities. The book brings together leading scholars from law and the social sciences to assess and critically reflect on the significance and implications of international arbitration as a new locus of global private authority. The views predictably diverge. Some see the evolution of these private courts positively as a significant element of an emerging transnational private legal system that gradually evolves according to the needs of market actors without much state interference. Others fear that private courts allow transnational actors to circumvent state regulation and create an illegitimate judicial system that is driven by powerful transnational companies at the expense of collective public interests. Still others accept that these contrasting views serve as useful starting points of an analysis but are too simplistic to adequately understand the complex governance structures that international arbitration courts have been developing over the last two decades. In sum, this book offers a wide-ranging and up-to-date analytical overview of arguments in a vigorous nascent interdisciplinary debate about arbitration courts and their exercise of private governance power in the transnational realm. This debate is generating fascinating new insights into such central topics as legitimacy, constitutional order and justice beyond classical nation state institutions.