Abstract
As we approach the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, it is instructive to re-examine the territory sketched out by James Rosenau in his seminal article (reprinted in this volume as Chapter 1). At the time of its first publication in 1995, few would have contested that the myriad dynamics that made possible the benefits of globalization were also sources of disorder and boundary-traversing dynamics that offered profound challenges to world order as much as to international relations. But was nascent global politics also producing or facilitating commensurate forms of global governance? The uncertainties, paradoxes and ambiguities highlighted as inescapable features of intellectual engagement with global governance are with us still, but so too are Rosenau’s insights into the actors and dynamics that continue to shape world order and to inform investigations into global governance in all its forms. These include the relocation of authority not only ‘outward’ from states toward forms of transnational control mechanisms, including state/non-state configurations, but also ‘downward’ to sub-national groupings and even to individuals1 (sometimes in forms that are not necessarily either inclusive or beneficent). The actors and issues quickly change, but the themes persist, not least because globalization has quickened, spread and intensified. For this reason, the very considerable global governance literature that has now been produced in the years since ‘Governance in the Twenty-first Century’ has not diminished the degree to which trying to discern, create, adjust or sustain global governance is an intellectual adventure.
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Notes
James N. Rosenau, People Count! Networked Individuals in Global Politics (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2007).
James N. Rosenau, ‘Governance, Order and Change in World Politics,’ in James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (eds), Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 4.
Jim Whitman, ‘The Challenge to Deliberative Systems of Technological Systems Convergence,’ Innovation: The European Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 20, No. 4, December 2007, pp. 329–342.
James N. Rosenau, ‘Change, Complexity and Governance in a Globalizing Space,’ in Jon Pierre (ed.). Debating Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 193.
See, for example, Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998)
Helen Yanacopulos, ‘Patterns of Governance: The Rise of Transnational Coalitions of NGOs,’ Global Society, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2005), pp. 247–266
Helmut Anheier a.o., Global Civil Society Yearbook 2009 (London: Sage, 2009).
Rodney Bruce Hall and Thomas J. Beirsteker (eds). The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
James Rosenau has observed that ‘...hierarchies are being supplemented and not replaced by networks’. James Rosenau, Distant Proximities: Dynamics beyond Globalization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 266.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
David Kennedy, ‘Challenging Expert Rule: The Politics of Global Governance,’ Sydney Law Review, Vol. 27, No. 5 (March 2005), p. 6.
Brian R. Copeland and M. Scott Taylor, Trade and the Environment: Theory and Evidence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
John Keane, Global Civil Society? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
See, for example, Ethan A. Nadelmann, ‘Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in International Society,’ International Organization, Vol. 44, No. 4, Autumn 1990; Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,’ International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 4, Autumn 1998, p. 916.
Cass R. Sunstein, ‘Social Norms and Social Roles,’ Columbia Law Review, Vol. 96, No. 4, 1996, pp. 929–930.
Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders; Ann Marie Clark, Diplomacy of Conscience: Amnesty International and Changing Human Rights Norms (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
Jim Whitman, The Fundamentals of Global Governance (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009)
Jörg Friedrichs, ‘Global Governance as the Hegemonic Project of Transatlantic Civil Society,’ in Markus Lederer and Philipp S. Müller (eds). Criticizing Global Governance (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 47
Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security (London: Zed Books, 2001).
Joseph A. Tainter, ‘Problem Solving: Complexity, History, Sustainability,’ Population and Environment, Vol. 22, No. 1, September 2000, p. 36
T.F.H. Allen, Joseph A. Tainter and Thomas W. Hoekstra, Supply-Side Sustainability (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).
Geoffrey Vickers, The Undirected Society, Essays on the Human Implications of Industrialization in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959), p. 55.
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Whitman, J. (2009). Conclusion: The global Governance Prospect. In: Whitman, J. (eds) Palgrave Advances in Global Governance. Palgrave Advances. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230245310_10
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