Varieties of Global Governance

Abstract

Global governance is a term to describe the regulation and management of problems that cross sovereign state boundaries. Narrowly, the debate about global governance is one that revolves around fine-tuning of the status quo. In this usage, the concept has assisted technocrats and politicians in reducing the scope for disagreement by moving the focus away from overtly political issues. Although global governance has been deployed in this way, other participants in the discussion, notably dissident policy intellectuals and academics, have sought to debate the concept of global governance more widely. This chapter examines transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and hegemonism as schools of thought, identifying their differences, commonalities, and contributions. These are broadly summarized in Table 5.1.