ABSTRACT
Global governance is a permissive concept. Like globalization, with which it is often associated, the frequency with which global governance is invoked in the scholarly literature and in policy practice far exceeds the number of times it is precisely or carefully defined. As a result, the term ‘global governance’ is applied to a wide variety of different practices of order, regulation, systems of rule and patterned regularity in the international arena. It is permissive in the sense that it gives one license to speak or write about many different things, from any pattern of order or deviation from anarchy (which also has multiple meanings) to normative preferences about how the world should be organized. This chapter begins, therefore, with an attempt to provide a general definition of the
concept of global governance, with particular reference to the governance of security affairs. It then considers Inis Claude’s classic three-fold typology for addressing the subject of power and international relations (Claude 1962), in which he distinguished analytically between balance-of-power systems, collective security arrangements and world government. It illustrates the application (and complex integration) of these general analytical frameworks, with specific reference to different historical periods of order and global governance over the course of the past two centuries. Next, it discusses how global governance is managed, from the international society of states (Bull 1977), to arguments about the importance of hegemony for order and governance (Gilpin 1975, 1981), international regimes (Keohane and Nye 1977), institutions (Keohane and Martin 1995; Martin 1992), international law (Abbott and Snidal 2000), global norms (Katzenstein 1996; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998), or private authority (Cutler et al. 1999a; Hall and Biersteker 2002). The chapter concludes with a consideration of the increased salience of different institutional actors, particularly non-state actors, involved in contemporary global governance, and a comparison of different bases of governance.
