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 achievements and legacy of the Wolfensohn Center for Development at Brookings The Imperative of Development highlights the research and policy analysis produced by the Wolfensohn Center for Development at Brookings. The Center, which operated from 2006 to 2011, was the first home at Brookings for research on international development. It sought to help identify effective solutions to key development challenges in order to create a more prosperous and stable world. Founded by James and Elaine Wolfensohn, the Center’s mission was to “to create knowledge that leads to action with real, scaled-up, and lasting development impact.” This volume reviews the Center’s achievements and lasting legacy, combining highlights of its most important research with new essays that examine the context and impact of that research. Six primary research streams of the Wolfensohn Center’s work are highlighted in The Imperative of Development: the shifting structure of the world economy in the twenty-first century; the challenge of scaling up the impact of development interventions; the effectiveness of development assistance; how to promote economic and social inclusion for Middle Eastern youth; the case for investing in early child development; and the need for global governance reform. In each chapter, a scholar associated with the particular research topic provides an overview of the issue and its broader context, then describes the Center’s work on the topic and the subsequent influence and impact of these efforts. The Imperative of Development chronicles the growth and expansion of the first center for development research in Brookings’s 100-year history and traces how the seeds of this initiative continue to bear fruit. "

Contrary to the common view that globalization undermines social agency, ‘alter-globalization activists', that is, those who contest globalization in its neo-liberal form, have developed new ways to become actors in the global age. They propose alternatives to Washington Consensus policies, implement horizontal and participatory organization models and promote a nascent global public space. Rather than being anti-globalization, these activists have built a truly global movement that has gathered citizens, committed intellectuals, indigenous, farmers, dalits and NGOs against neoliberal policies in street demonstrations and Social Forums all over the world, from Bangalore to Seattle and from Porto Alegre to Nairobi. This book analyses this worldwide movement on the bases of extensive field research conducted since 1999. Alter-Globalization provides a comprehensive account of these critical global forces and their attempts to answer one of the major challenges of our time: How can citizens and civil society contribute to the building of a fairer, sustainable and more democratic co-existence of human beings in a global world?

Presents asymmetry theory, a different paradigm for the study of international relations, derived from China's relationships with its neighbors and the world. This title brings together key writings on the theory and its applications to China's basic foreign policy, particularly towards the United States and the rest of Asia.

In recent years, the nature of conflict has changed. Through asymmetric warfare radical groups and weak state actors are using unexpected means to deal stunning blows to more powerful opponents in the West. From terrorism to information warfare, the Wests air power, sea power and land power are open to attack from clever, but much weaker, enemies. In this clear and engaging introduction, Rod Thornton unpacks the meaning and significance of asymmetric warfare, in both civilian and military realms, and examines why it has become such an important subject for study. He seeks to provide answers to key questions, such as how weaker opponents apply asymmetric techniques against the Western world, and shows how the Wests military superiority can be seriously undermined by asymmetric threats. The book concludes by looking at the ways in which the US, the state most vulnerable to asymmetric attack, is attempting to cope with some new battlefield realities. This is an indispensable guide to one of the key topics in security studies today.

This book summarizes how globalizing capitalism-the economic system now presumed to dominate the global economy-can be understood from a geographical perspective. This is in contrast to mainstream economic analysis, which theorizes globalizing capitalism as a system that is capable of enabling everyone to prosper and every place to achieve economic development. From this perspective, the globalizing capitalism perspective has the capacity to reduce poverty. Poverty's persistence is explained in terms of the dysfunctional attributes of poor people and places. A geographical perspective has two principal aspects: Taking seriously how the spatial organization of capitalism is altered by economic processes and the reciprocal effects of that spatial arrangement on economic development, and examining how economic processes co-evolve with cultural, political, and biophysical processes. From this, globalizing capitalism tends to reproduce social and spatial inequality; poverty's persistence is due to the ways in which wealth creation in some places results in impoverishment elsewhere.

The discourse on globalization has become polarized. Proponents consider globalization as the silver bullet for targeting growth in the world economy and for poor countries specifically, while opponents see it as the poisoned arrow of exploitation and impoverishment of the Third World. Splendidly edited, The Asymmetries of Globalization deals with the 'what' and 'how' but primarily with 'why' globalization has most often negative outcomes for developing countries. It breaks new ground in approaching globalization not only as trade commodities, but also as trade in positional goods ('decommodified trade.') The two novel and munificent forms of post-Ricardian decommodified trade, trade in services and trade in hard currency in the form of currency substitution, are sculpted in the introductory chapter as the foundation of the systematic asymmetries of globalization. The analytical approach of introducing 'positional goods' in the form of decommodified trade, in the discource on globalization, is original. It is also timely in a situation where the tail of trade in 'services' has grown enough to wag the traditional trade-in-commodities dog of globalization. The balance of the chapters in this volume constitute a tapestry of case studies that elaborate and empirically investigate the causes of systematic asymmetries of globalization. The book's appeal transcends economics to make it also highly useful to students across the disciplines of sociology and political science, especially in the fields of international political economy and the politics of international trade. It will certainly enlighten all those working in the general areas of globalization, poverty and economic development.