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Global Governance and Power Politics: Back to Basics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Roland Paris
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Extract

For many students of global governance who explore the myriad institutions, rules, norms, and coordinating arrangements that transcend individual states and societies, what really marks the contemporary era is not the absence of such governance but its “astonishing diversity.” In addition to “long-standing universal-membership bodies,” such as the United Nations, writes Stewart Patrick, “there are various regional institutions, multilateral alliances and security groups, standing consultative mechanisms, self-selecting clubs, ad hoc coalitions, issue-specific arrangements, transnational professional networks, technical standard-setting bodies, global action networks, and more.” The proliferation and diversification of governance mechanisms—yielding a jumble of formal and informal arrangements—has supplanted the simpler image of state representatives gathering at official assemblies. Many scholars believe this pluralism opens important new avenues for tackling a growing array of complex transnational problems, particularly at a time when the responsiveness of traditional multilateral institutions is being called into question.

Type
Roundtable: Change and Continuity in Global Governance
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , Winter 2015 , pp. 407 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2015 

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References

NOTES

1 Patrick, Stewart, “The Unruled World: The Case for Good Enough Global Governance,” Foreign Affairs 93, no. 1 (2014), p. 62Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., p. 59.

3 James N. Rosenau and Ernst O. Czempiel, eds., Governance Without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

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5 James N. Rosenau, “Information Technologies and the Skills, Networks, and Structures that Sustain World Affairs,” in James N. Rosenau and J. P. Singh, eds., Information Technologies and Global Politics: The Changing Scope of Power and Governance (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2002), p. 285.

6 Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, “Power in Global Governance,” in Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, eds., Power in Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 6.

7 Notable exceptions include Jamie Gaskarth, ed., Rising Powers, Global Governance and Global Ethics (Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge, 2015); Andrew Hurrell, On Global Order: Power, Values, and the Constitution of International Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); and Barnett and Duvall, eds., Power in Global Governance.

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12 Baumann and Dingwerth, “Global Governance vs Empire,” p. 107.

13 Barnett and Duvall, eds., “Power in Global Governance,” p. 1.

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15 For example, Raymond, Mark and DeNardis, Laura, “Multistakeholderism: Anatomy of an Inchoate Global Institution,” International Theory, 7, no. 3 (2015), pp. 572–616 Google Scholar; Michael Zürn, “Global Governance as Multi-Level Governance,” in David Levi-Faur, ed., Oxford Handbook of Governance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 730–44; and Van Langenhove, Luk, “The Transformation of Multilateralism: Mode 1.0 to Mode 2.0,” Global Policy 1, no. 3 (2010), pp. 263–70Google Scholar.

16 Matthew J. Hoffmann, Climate Governance at the Crossroads: Experimenting with a Global Response after Kyoto (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 5.

17 See, for example, Thomas G. Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson, eds., International Organization and Global Governance (Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge, 2014); and Sophie Harman and David Williams, eds., Governing the World? Cases in Global Governance (Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge, 2013). On “global policy spaces,” see William D. Coleman, “Governance and Global Public Policy,” in Levi-Faur, ed., Oxford Handbook of Governance, pp. 673–85.

18 Alter, Karen J. and Meunier, Sophie, “The Politics of International Regime Complexity,” Perspectives on Politics 7, no. 1 (2009), p. 13Google Scholar. See also Raustiala, Kal and Victor, David G., “The Regime Complex for Plant Genetic Resources,” International Organization 58, no. 2 (2004), pp. 277–309 Google Scholar.

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22 Moisés Naím, The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn't What It Used to Be (New York: Basic Books, 2013); and Taylor Owen, Disruptive Power: The Crisis of the State in the Digital Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

23 Keith Fray, “China's Leap Forward: Overtaking the US as World's Biggest Economy,” Financial Times, FT Data Blog, October 8, 2014.

24 Mead, Walter Russell, “The Return of Geopolitics,” Foreign Affairs 93, no. 3 (2014), pp. 69–79 Google Scholar.

25 Charles Kupchan, No One's World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 7.

26 Kahler, Miles, “Rising Powers and Global Governance: Negotiating Change in a Resilient Status Quo,” International Affairs 89, no. 3 (2013), p. 718CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979).

28 Kupchan, No One's World, pp. x and 186.

29 G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 10.

30 Brooks, Stephen G. and Wohlforth, William C., “Reshaping the World Order,” Foreign Affairs 88, no. 2 (2009), p. 49Google Scholar.

31 David Rothkopf, “A Time of Unprecedented Instability?” Foreign Policy website, July 21, 2014, foreignpolicy.com/2014/07/21/a-time-of-unprecedented-instability.

32 International Panel on Climate Change, Mitigation of Climate Change: Working Group III Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 6–8.

33 Mark Landler, “U.S. and China Reach Climate Accord after Months of Talks,” New York Times, November 11, 2014.

34 See Rothkopf, “A Time of Unprecedented Instability?”