China as a mirror and a testing ground for governance beyond the west

Abstract

In the age of globalization, social and environmental challenges are increasingly perceived on a global scale. The underlying assumption is that even the joint effort of all sovereign states cannot wield the influence to effectively address questions like climate change and global inequity. Subsequently, understandings of global politics have also shifted in the last decades. While traditional studies of international politics emphasize the role of sovereign states, governance scholarship has emphasized the role of nonstate actors. An overly state-centered view of politics should be criticized, but it should not lead to the conclusion that states (both as actors and institutional environments) do not matter anymore. Rather, governance as an analytical term should be related to specific governance contexts, in order to take stock of the (remaining) Influence of a wide variety of national state contexts in an age of globalization and pressing social and environmental transformations.