Criticizing Global Governance

Featuring a collection of essays that reflect on global governance, this work provides an understanding of the various practices that fall under its rubric. It challenges the concept of global governance, focuses on organizational and institutional aspects, and examines the rule systems implemented by global governance practices.

The essays in this collection seek to reflect on global governance and to provide a better critical understanding of the various practices that fall under its rubric. The first part challenges the concept of global governance, the second part focuses on organizational and institutional aspects, and the last part examines the rule systems implemented by global governance practices.

The vocabulary of (global) governance has become a serious contender to imagine world order in the post cold war world. Using different strategies of critique, the contributors argue that global governance denotes a political vocabulary where acts of definition themselves are political moves. Review: The world is governed -- but how?

This terrific collection of new voices from law and political science offers a range of innovative, provocative and fascinating answers to that question. They are united by skepticism about the conventional stories we tell ourselves about global governance -- that ours is a world of anarchic politics, of networked legal regimes, or of market freedom beyond the reach of regulation.

Methodologically diverse, sophisticated and altogether fresh, these probing and interdisciplinary essays will make you think again -- and again. --David Kennedy, Manley Hudson Professor of Law, Harvard Law School An excellent collection of essays by a new generation of critical scholars on central issues of international order.

This book will be read with profit by international relations specialists and international lawyers, as well as the by attentive general public. --Friedrich Kratochwil, Chair of International Relations, European University Institute, Florence This book constitutes a long overdue contribution to the debate on global governance by 'bringing politics back in.' The authors share a common point of departure, namely that global governance is an essentially contested concept.

As a result, Criticizing Global Governance is required reading for anybody who cares about contemporary world politics. --Thomas Risse, Professor of International Politics, Freie Universitat Berlin