Table Of ContentContending Perspectives on
Global Governance
The end of the Cold War and the birth of the twenty-first century, with their attendant
changes in world politics, have spurred intense interest in “new” approaches to under-
standing world politics. Concurrent and related to this interest, the term “global
governance” has experienced growing usage. For many scholars and policymakers, global
governance seems to capture important, if ambiguous, changes in world politics. This
volume represents an important step towards clarifying the concept of global governance,
and the ideas and dynamics associated with its emergence.
Contending Perspectives on Global Governance is an exploration of global governance from
multiple perspectives. This volume provides:
• conceptual tools and a common vocabulary for navigating the maze that is the
global-governance literature;
• chapters that individually provide fascinating theoretical and empirical examinations
of global governance;
• insight on key points of debate and agreement between contending perspectives
about the structure and process of global governance, and the nature of change in
world politics;
• a window into how traditional international relations theory is responding to the
“new” dynamic of global governance as well as how the phenomenon of global
governance is inspiring theoretical innovations in international relation theory.
This book is essential reading for professionals, academics and students with interests
in global governance and international politics.
Alice D. BaandMatthew J. Hoffmannare Assistant Professors in the Department of
Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware. Alice Ba’s
areas of research and publication include regionalism in East and Southeast Asia,
China–Southeast Asia relations, international organizations and social constructivism.
Matthew Hoffmann specializes in global environmental politics, social constructivism,
and complexity theory. He is author of a volume on global environmental governance:
Ozone Depletion and Climate Change: Constructing a Global Response (2005).
Contending
Perspectives on
Global Governance
Coherence, contestation
and world order
Edited by Alice D. Ba and
Matthew J. Hoffmann
First published 2005
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2005 Alice D. Ba and Matthew J. Hoffmann
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.
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ISBN 0–415–35674–1 (hbk)
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Taylor & Francis Group is the Academic Division of T&F Informa plc.
Contents
Listof contributors vii
Preface and acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction: coherence and contestation 1
MATTHEW J. HOFFMANN AND ALICE D. BA
PART I
Confronting global governance with established 15
perspectives
2 Realist global governance: revisiting cave! hic dragones 17
and beyond
JENNIFER STERLING-FOLKER
3 Global governance, class, hegemony: a historical 39
materialist perspective
HENK OVERBEEK
4 Global governance and hegemony in the modern world 57
system
GIOVANNI ARRIGHI
5 Global governance: an English School perspective 72
TIM DUNNE
6 Regime theory and the quest for global governance 88
ORAN R. YOUNG
vi Contents
7 What’s global about global governance? A constructivist 110
account
MATTHEW J. HOFFMANN
PART II
Global governance as catalyst for new perspectives 129
8 Global governance as disaggregated complexity 131
JAMES N. ROSENAU
9 The European human-rights regime as a case study in 154
the emergence of global governance
LESLIE FRIEDMAN GOLDSTEIN AND CORNEL BAN
10 A private-authority perspective on global governance 178
TIMOTHY J. SINCLAIR
11 Contested spaces: the politics of regional and global 190
governance
ALICE D. BA
12 Global civil society and global governance 213
ROBERT O’BRIEN
13 Liberal imperialism as global-governance perspective 231
DANIEL GREEN
14 Contending perspectives on global governance: dialogue 249
and debate
MATTHEW J. HOFFMANN AND ALICE D. BA
Index 268
Contributors
Giovanni Arrighi is Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. His
main interests are in the fields of comparative and historical sociology, world-
systems analysis and economic sociology. He has done research on the origins
and transformations of the world capitalist system and on the stratification of
the global economy. He is author of The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power,
and the Origins of Our Time (1994) and co-author of Chaos and Governance in the
Modern World System(1999).
Alice D. Ba is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and
International Relations at the University of Delaware. Her areas of research
and publication include regionalism in East and Southeast Asia,
China–Southeast Asia relations, international organizations, and social
constructivism.
Cornel Ban is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the
University of Maryland.
Tim Dunneis Reader in International Relations and Head of the Department
of Politics, University of Exeter, UK. He is author and editor of seven books,
including Human Rights in Global Politics (with Nicholas J. Wheeler, 1998) and
Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order(with Ken Booth, 2002).
Leslie Friedman Goldstein is the Judge Hugh M. Morris Professor of
Political Science and International Relations, University of Delaware, and
has written on public law, gender and law, and political theory. Recent work
includes Constituting Federal Sovereignty: the European Union in Comparative Context
(2001).
Daniel Green is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and
International Relations at the University of Delaware. His research interests are
in global governance, global-order-building episodes, and constructivist methods
of analysis. He recently edited Constructivism and Comparative Politics(2002).
viii Contributors
Matthew J. Hoffmann is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political
Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware. He is
author of a volume on global environmental governance: Ozone Depletion and
Climate Change: Constructing a Global Response(2005).
Robert O’Brienis LIUNA/Mancinelli Professor of Global Labour Issues and
Associate Director of the Institute on Globalization and the Human
Condition at McMaster University in Canada. His most recent book is an
introductory IPE text with Marc Williams titled Global Political Economy:
Evolution and Dynamics(2004).
Henk Overbeek is Professor of International Relations in the Department of
Political Science of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research interests
are in international political economy. He is the author of Global Capitalism and
National Decline (1990) and the editor of Restructuring Hegemony in the Global
Political Economy (1993). His most recent book is The Political Economy of
European Employment: European Integration and the Transnationalization of the
(Un)Employment Question(editor, 2003).
James N. Rosenau is University Professor of International Affairs at the
George Washington University. A Guggenheim Fellow and former President
of the International Studies Association, his most recent books include Distant
Proximities (2003), Along the Domestic–Foreign Frontier (1997), and Turbulence in
World Politics(1990).
Timothy J. Sinclair is a political scientist at the University of Warwick in
England. A former New Zealand Treasury official, Dr Sinclair spent
2001/2002 as a visiting scholar at Harvard University. His book The New
Masters of Capital: American Bond Rating Agencies and the Politics of Creditworthiness
was published in 2005.
Jennifer Sterling-Folker is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the
University of Connecticut. She is the author of Theories of International
Cooperation and the Primacy of Anarchy: Explaining U.S. International Monetary Policy-
making After Bretton Woods (2002) and editor of Making Sense of International
Relations Theory(2005).
Oran R. Young is a Professor in the Donald Bren School of Environmental
Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the
author and editor of several books, including International Governance: Protecting
the Environment in a Stateless Society (1994), Global Governance: Drawing Insight from
the Environmental Experience(1997), and Governance in World Affairs(1999).
Preface and acknowledgements
The project that produced this volume began as part of a series of discussions
aimed at implementing a new graduate program in Global Governance at the
University of Delaware in the spring and summer of 2001. The discussions grew
into an International Studies Association workshop grant application and a speaker
series the following year. The project culminated in a workshop at the University of
Delaware in October of 2002 and a follow-up meeting at the annual meeting of the
ISA in spring 2003. Throughout this period, the goal has remained the same—to
elucidate the concept of global governance (GG). The goal is lofty, and any attempt
to arrive at a definitive understanding of GG may be a chimera. Indeed, GG entails
multiple perspectives on world politics and social life in an era of globalization.
Thus rather than offer a false synthesis, we have aimed to highlight areas of agree-
ment and contestation between diverse and distinct perspectives. Taken as a whole,
this volume moves the GG debate forward and offers a common vocabulary to
describe changes in our world, our politics, and our thinking.
Numerous people have contributed in myriad ways to bringing this project to
fruition. We would like to acknowledge the International Studies Association
Workshop Grant program for the initial funding to bring together our contribu-
tors for lively discussion and debate. The Department of Political Science and
International Relations and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of
Delaware also provided significant resources without which this volume would
not have been possible. In addition to financial resources we drew upon the intel-
lectual and organizational skills of many people at the University of Delaware.
We would like especially to thank: Joseph Pika, Cindy Waksmonski, Julie
Demgen, Jarret Brachman, and Pooja Rishi. For their contributions as discus-
sants and commentators at the Delaware Workshop we would like to extend our
appreciation to James K. Oliver, Robert Denemark, Rick Sylves, Kenneth
Campbell, William Meyer, Craig Murphy, and Rorden Wilkinson. Our contribu-
tors were models of patience and professionalism in their preparation for the
workshops and this volume—making our jobs as editors a pleasure. We would
also like to thank the anonymous reviewer from Routledge for insightful
commentary. Finally, we extend our appreciation to Craig Fowlie and Laura
Sacha, who have been most supportive in moving this project forward.
Alice D. Ba and Matthew J. Hoffmann
