Conclusion: An Emerging Global Polity

Abstract

In the Introduction, Stefano Guzzini announced the focus of this book as a question of reconciling two seemingly opposite hypotheses about global politics: is power diffusing in the sense often stressed by scholars of International Political Economy of slipping away from states towards other agents, or is it diffusing in the sense used by Foucauldian analysts of global politics, of spreading to ever new parts of the globe as a result of states working through other agents? In this Conclusion, I will begin by pondering the nature of the question understood as a question of homogenizing the globe in political terms. I will then go on to take stock of the situation as it emerges through the cases studies presented in the chapters. I land on a minimal consensus. There is disagreement about how to understand the relationship between state and non-state agents, as well as about the relative importance of these two kinds of agents to global governance, but there is consensus about scale: a growing amount of political stuff is becoming global in character.