International Studies Quarterly (2014) 58, 207–215

Rethinking Global Governance? Complexity, Authority, Power,

Change
Thomas G. Weiss
The Graduate Center, The City University of New York

and

Rorden Wilkinson
The University of Manchester

Global governance remains notoriously slippery. While the term arose to describe change in the late twentieth century,
its association with that specific moment has frozen it in time and deprived it of analytical utility. It has become an alter-
native moniker for international organizations, a descriptor for an increasingly crowded world stage, a call to arms, an
attempt to control the pernicious aspects of globalization, and a synonym for world government. This article aims not to
advance a theory of global governance but to highlight where core questions encourage us to go. A more rigorous con-
ception should help us understand the nature of the contemporary phenomenon as well as look “backwards” and “for-
wards.” Such an investigation should provide historical insights as well as prescriptive elements to understand the kind of
world order that we ought to be seeking and encourage us to investigate how that global governance could be realized.

“Global governance” is now ubiquitous, used and abused for referring to a collection of institutions with planetary
by academics and policymakers. A Google search offers a reach. On the other hand, the analytical capacity of the
crude measure, generating over 3.1 million hits at the term has not been mined sufficiently to enable us to get
end of 2012—astonishing given that two decades ago, it a better handle on the underlying dynamics of change.
was almost unknown. Despite or perhaps because of its Our argument is that a deeper investigation of contempo-
omnipresence, global governance remains notoriously rary global governance has the potential to capture more
slippery. While it has potential beyond conveying a sense accurately how power is exercised across the globe, how a
of the complexity of contemporary global authority, it multiplicity of actors relate to one another generally as
has become, among other things, an alternative moniker well as on specific issues, make better sense of global
for international organizations, a descriptor for a world complexity, and account for alterations in the way that
stage packed with ever more actors, a call to arms for a the world is and has been organized (or governed) over
better world, an attempt to control the pernicious aspects time—both within and between historical periods.
of accelerating economic and social change, and a syno- It is our contention that an investigation into global
nym for world government (Craig 2008). governance should concentrate on four primary pursuits.
This imprecision has robbed the term of conceptual First, it should move beyond the strong association that
rigor, in the main forcing us to fall back on more staple has come to exist between the term and virtually any
approaches of international politics for explanatory suste- change in the late twentieth century. It should instead be
nance (Ba and Hoffmann 2005). The best that could per- understood that the complexities of the post-Cold War
haps be said about global governance is that we invoke it era are merely the most concrete recent expression of
to indicate a super-macrolevel of analysis; we do not use global governance, but that forms of world organization
it to convey a discreet and pithy understanding of how have been and will be different in other epochs. Second,
the world works. As such, we have hardly advanced in it should identify and explain the structure of global
answering the question that Lawrence Finkelstein posed authority accounting not just for grand patterns of com-
in the first volume of the journal that took the same mand and control but also for how regional, national,
name, “what is global governance?” He provocatively and local systems intersect with or push against that struc-
answered, “virtually anything” (Finkelstein 1995:368). ture. A concern with multiple levels of governance is not
Our aim is to press for rethinking how we conceive enough although it is a good start (Bache and Flinders
and apply the term. On the one hand, “global gover- 2004). Third, a central preoccupation should be to inves-
nance” has become both widespread and useful for tigate the myriad ways that power is exercised within such
describing growing complexity in the way that the world a system, how interests are articulated and pursued, the
is organized and authority exercised as well as shorthand kind of ideas and discourses from which power and inter-
ests draw substance as well as which help establish, main-
tain, and perpetuate the system. Fourth, it should
Thomas G. Weiss is Presidential Professor of Political Science and Director account for changes in and of the system and focus on
of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The City University
of New York’s Graduate Center. He is Past President of the ISA (2009-10).
the causes, consequences, and drivers of change, not just
Rorden Wilkinson is Professor of International Political Economy in the today but over extended periods of time.
School of Social Sciences, and Research Director of the Brooks World Poverty Our aim is not to advance a theory of global gover-
Institute, at the University of Manchester. nance but to highlight where core questions encourage
Weiss, Thomas G. and and Rorden Wilkinson. (2014) Rethinking Global Governance? Complexity, Authority, Power, Change. International Studies Quarterly,
doi: 10.1111/isqu.12082
© 2013 International Studies Association
208 Rethinking Global Governance?

us to go. We pick up on earlier work that has fallen by international organization fell into disuse,” Sinclair
the wayside and seek to re-energize the search for a bet- (2012:16) reminds us. “International Organization, the
ter understanding of “global governance as it has been, journal which carried this name founded in the 1940s,
is, and may become” (Hewson and Sinclair 1999:ix). If increasingly drew back from matters of international
our propositions are correct, and if better answers to the policy and instead became a vehicle for the development
questions that global governance encourages us to ask of rigorous academic theorizing.”
are forthcoming, a more rigorous conception should help These developments paved the way for a raft of works
us understand the nature of the contemporary phenome- about growing global complexity, the management of
non as well as look “backwards” and “forwards.” Such an globalization, and the challenges confronting interna-
investigation should provide historical insights and pre- tional institutions (Cox 1994; Prakash and Hart 1999). In
scriptive elements to understand the kind of world order part, global governance replaced an immediate predeces-
that we ought to be seeking and encourage us to investi- sor as a normative endeavor, “world-order studies,” which
gate how that global governance can come about. The was seen as overly top-down and static. Having grown
value-added of the concept results from opening our eyes from World Peace through World Law (Clark and Sohn
to how the world was, is, and ought to be organized— 1958), world order failed to capture the variety of actors,
certainly better than simply “muddling through” as we networks, and relationships that characterized contempo-
seek to counter the threats that confront the planet rary international relations (Falk and Mendlovitz 1966–
(Lindblom 1959). 1967). When the perspectives from world-order scholars
We begin with an overview of the intellectual genesis started to look a little old-fashioned, the stage was set for
of the term, concentrating on why global governance a new analytical cottage industry. After his archival labors
emerged, what it was intended to depict, and how its to write a two-volume history of world federalism, Joseph
meaning has evolved over the last two decades. Here, we Barrata aptly observes that in the 1990s “the new expres-
show how its emergence was bound up with a specific set sion, ‘global governance,’ emerged as an acceptable term
of changes in authority and the exercise of power that in debate on international organization for the desired
became visible at the end of the twentieth and beginning and practical goal of progressive efforts, in place of
of the twenty-first century. While the term arose to ‘world government.’” He continues: scholars “wished to
describe change in the late twentieth century, its associa- avoid using a term that would harken back to the think-
tion with that specific moment has frozen it in time and ing about world government in the 1940s, which was lar-
deprived it of a greater capacity to understand change. gely based on fear of atomic bombs and too often had
Put another way, “global governance” has come to mean no practical proposals for the transition short of a revolu-
world governance without world government and not a tionary act of the united peoples of the world” (2004, vol.
more generic analytical tool for understanding how the 2:534–535). Barnett and Duvall said it more adroitly:
globe is organized. We then explore what global gover- “The idea of global governance has attained near-celeb-
nance has helped us explain, but also what it has missed. rity status. In little more than a decade the concept has
Imprecision has resulted in a feebler conceptual tool gone from the ranks of the unknown to one of the cen-
than it should for understanding how the world is tral orienting themes in the practice and study of interna-
organized and how power is exercised. We then spell out tional affairs” (2005:1).
the four desirable components of an investigation. The Yet, the emergence of the term—and changes in the
penultimate section considers how, despite its emergence way that aspirations for insights from it were expressed—
from—and indeed its relationship with—a specific and did not empty global governance of the normative con-
quite recent historical moment, global governance has tent stemming from preoccupations that motivated previ-
considerable traction in looking back to explain the ous generations of international relations and
nature and complexities of, as well as wholesale changes international organization scholars. In this way, global
in, previous global orders, and in looking forward to how governance came to refer to collective efforts to identify,
the contemporary world ought to be organized. understand, or address worldwide problems and pro-
cesses that went beyond the capacities of individual states.
It reflected a capacity of the international system at any
The Emergence of Global Governance
moment in time to provide government-like services in
Mainstream thinking has shifted decidedly away from the the absence of world government. Global governance
study of intergovernmental organization and law toward encompassed a wide variety of cooperative problem-
global governance. The term itself was born from a mar- solving arrangements that were visible but informal (for
riage between academic theory and practical policy in the example, practices or guidelines) or were temporary
1990s and became entwined with that other meta-phe- formations (for example, coalitions of the willing). Such
nomenon of the last two decades, globalization. Rosenau arrangements could also be more formal, taking the
and Czempiel’s (1992) theoretical Governance without Gov- shape of hard rules (laws and treaties) or else institutions
ernment was published just about the same time that the with administrative structures and established practices to
Swedish government launched the policy-oriented Com- manage collective affairs by a variety of actors—including
mission on Global Governance under the chairmanship state authorities, intergovernmental organizations, non-
of Sonny Ramphal and Ingmar Carlsson (Commission on governmental organizations, private sector entities, and
Global Governance 1995). Both set in motion interest in other civil society actors (Weiss and Thakur 2010).
global governance. The publication of the commission’s It is also worth noting that the need to refresh think-
report, Our Global Neighbourhood, coincided with the first ing about how to better utilize international organizations
issue of the Academic Council on the United Nations underpinned the efforts of scholars working under the
System journal Global Governance. This newly minted auspices of the “Multilateralism and the United Nations
quarterly sought to return to the global problem-solving System,” a project coordinated by Robert W. Cox and
origins of the leading journal in the field, which seemed sponsored by the United Nations University (UNU;
to have lost its way. “From the late 1960s, the idea of Sakamoto 1992; Krause and Knight 1995; Cox 1997b; Gill
 Thomas G. Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson 209

1997; Schechter 1999a,b). The stated intention was to to eradicate malaria within a geographic area and to pre-
capture, revitalize, and build upon the legitimacy con- vent those with the disease from entering a territory
noted by the term “multilateralism” as a way of thinking should be seen as qualitatively different from halting ter-
about how to better organize the world. As Cox summa- rorist money-laundering, avian flu, or acid rain. Today no
rized: state, no matter how powerful, can labor under the illu-
sion that it can protect its population from such threats.
“Global governance” means the procedures and prac- Rich states earlier could insulate themselves by erecting
tices which exist at the world (or regional) level for effective barriers, whereas a growing number of contem-
the management of political, economic and social
porary challenges to world order simply cannot be pre-
affairs. One hypothetical form of governance (world
vented by erecting walls. And politicians can no longer
government or world empire) can be conceived as hav-
ing a hierarchical form of coordination, whether cen-
completely shy away from recognizing that reality—except
tralized (unitary) or decentralized (federal). The other
perhaps during elections.
form of coordination would be non-hierarchical, and The development of a consciousness about the global
this we would call multilateral (Cox 1997b:xvi). environment and the consequences of human interac-
tions, and especially the 1972 UN conference in Stock-
An earlier and widely cited project directed by Ruggie holm, is usually seen as a game-changer in the evolution
(1993) had also aimed to substantiate the idea that of thinking. Although other examples abound, sustain-
“multilateralism matters,” albeit less ambitious in the way ability is especially apt to illustrate why we are all in the
that it sought to conceptualize the capacity of this institu- same listing boat. It simply is impossible that such laud-
tional form to be refashioned. Another UNU project able localized actions as environmental legislation in Cali-
actually challenged his more traditional concept of multi- fornia or wind farms in Denmark can put the brakes on
lateralism (Newman, Thakur and Tirman 2006). Yet, the the destructive trajectory of climate change down which
insights of all of these projects were unable to rehabilitate the planet is hurtling (Newell 2012).
the study of global authority via a reclaimed multilateral- The second development underpinning growing inter-
ism. Global governance proved more pervasive and est in global governance was the sheer expansion in the
persuasive. numbers and importance of nonstate actors (NSAs), par-
Global governance also became bound up with another ticularly civil society and for-profit corporations, and
normative project ignited by worries about the shortfalls more especially those with trans-national reach (Willetts
in the capacity of states to reign in the activities of a 2011). While analysts of international relations and inter-
range of actors and to blunt the sharper consequences of national organization had become aware and included
global marketization as well as the seemingly unstoppable them into their thinking and concepts, they were still
actions of powerful international economic institutions. seen as appendages to the state system (Keohane and
In this variation—what Chanda (2008) called “runaway Nye 1971). Such growth has been facilitated by the so-
globalization”—the political authority of some great pow- called third wave of democratization (Huntington 1991),
ers and international economic organizations along with including institutional networks similar enough to facili-
the absence of authority among others (largely those tate greater trans-national and trans-governmental inter-
states that encountered globalization as a quasi-force of actions described by Slaughter (2004) and Grewal (2008),
nature) underpinned growing dissatisfaction in civil soci- a growing disillusionment with state capacity and state
ety (Hall 1998; Hobsbawn 1998). This disgruntlement willingness to deal with social issues, and the onset of a
found expression in mass demonstrations during the more pernicious global economic environment.
meetings of the World Trade Organization, International A third driving force lay in concerns to upgrade the
Monetary Fund, World Bank, European Union (EU), and UN system for the post-Cold War period. Combining wor-
various regional development banks as well as in the ries about the increasingly trans-border nature of prob-
growth of an anti- and then an alter-globalization move- lems and state incapacity to address them with a desire to
ment (Peet 2003; Amoore 2005). The normative result draw from the untapped potential of “new” global actors,
was one of governing globalization (Vayrynen 1999; Coyle scholars and practitioners sought to shore-up the world
2000; Held and McGrew 2002). body by encouraging it not only to reform but also to
In short, potential analytical traction evaporated partner with others to address pressing issues. One aspect
because global governance meant so many different things of this movement pressed the United Nations to recog-
to so many different people. It embodied the hopes and nize the comparative advantage of other actors that were
fears of many at the turn of the millennium, but failed to better able to fulfill key tasks, including roping NGOs
satisfy the need to analyze those tumultuous times. and TNCs more closely into the work of the world organi-
It is worth recalling briefly what those dramatic zation through the Global Compact. Another explored
changes were as well as what the term hoped to describe the capacity for a “complex multilateralism” to emerge
and capture. Three broad developments underpinned designed to capture the capacity of global social move-
the appearance of the notion of global governance: the ments to fill a legitimacy gap in global governance
character of global problems, the nature of actors, and (O’Brien, Goetz, Scholte and Williams 2000:3). Another
the perceived limitations of international measures to still sought to address the “crisis of multilateralism”
govern the planet. through root and branch reform of UN institutions
Beginning in the 1970s, interdependence and rapid (Newman 2007).
technological advances fostered the growing recognition Whatever the exact explanatory weight of the three
that many problems defied the problem-solving capacities driving forces, the emergence and widespread recogni-
of a single state. Prior to this time, and the evidence of tion of trans-national issues that circumscribed state
world wars and the Great Depression notwithstanding, capacity along with the proliferation of NSAs responding
most observers would have argued that powerful states to perceived shortfalls in national capabilities and a will-
could usually solve problems on their own, or at least ingness to address them in the context of a perceived
could insulate themselves from the worst impacts. Efforts crisis of multilateralism combined to stimulate new think-
210 Rethinking Global Governance?

ing. Scholars of international relations and international this altered world. Similarly, students of international
organization began to ask questions about the precise organization have continued to emphasize the role of
role of other actors that were to varying degrees already major powers in intergovernmental organizations as the
global agents. Multinational corporations and philan- central lens through which to view human progress.
thropic institutions, for instance, were obscured from the However, older ways also involved thinking outside of
sight of analysts who focused on states as the only or at these boxes. Harold Jacobson observed that the march by
least the most consequential actors. As a consensus about states toward a world government was woven into the tap-
the pace and extent of global change grew, so did the estries decorating the walls of the Palais des Nations in
impulse to understand the significance of an even greater Geneva—now the UN’s European Office but once the
range of players, extending later to faith actors and finan- headquarters of the defunct League of Nations. They “pic-
cial rating agencies as well as such less salubrious agents ture the process of humanity combining into ever larger
as transnational criminal networks and terrorist move- and more stable units for the purpose of governance—
ments (Sinclair 2005; Madsen 2009; Marshall 2013). At first the family, then the tribe, then the city-state, and
the same time, scholars began to ask what kind of gover- then the nation—a process which presumably would even-
nance was exerted by mechanisms such as markets that tually culminate in the entire world being combined in
had previously been the sole purview of international one political unit” (Jacobson 1984:84). Other than a few
political economists (Cox 1997a). So, whereas states and surviving world federalists, virtually no one believes that is
the intergovernmental organizations that they had cre- where we are headed; and Mazower (2012), for one, is
ated had once monopolized the attention of students of comfortable with the disappearance of this noble but meg-
international organization, the closing decades of the alomaniacal, visionary but delusional idea.
twentieth century encouraged the shift from state-centric Thus, our best shot was to label this complex world
structures to a wide range of actors and mechanisms. where authority was exercised differently “global gover-
These ideas, in turn, were carried over into real-world nance,” but to persist with familiar state-centric ways of
developments. New, or newly recognized, as well as old understanding it, to view all other actors and activities as
actors combined in partnerships, thereby blurring even appendages to the international system that analysts have
further the traditional conception of a world shaped observed since the Peace of Westphalia. What the ups
essentially by the interactions of states and their relative and downs of global change had injected was curiosity
power capabilities. The United Nations “sub-contracted” and new questions. They revolved around how the world
security operations to the North Atlantic Treaty Organiza- was organized and authority and power exercised therein,
tion (NATO) in the Balkans and to the Economic Com- and the knowledge that we lacked by merely peering at
munity of West African States in West Africa as well as to states for insights. But we stopped short of providing real
development and humanitarian NGOs for the delivery of answers to questions that pushed us beyond comfort lev-
services, assistance, and protection (Gordenker and Weiss els with older modes of thinking.
1996; Weiss 1998). And as indicated above, the UN itself “IO plus” was basically Finkelstein’s original answer to
also formed a coalition with multinational corporations, “what is global governance?” His reply is not all that dif-
labor unions, and civil society around shared concerns ferent from contemporary responses. Indeed, the journal
for social and environmental standards in the Global that was established to drive forward understandings of
Compact (Hughes and Wilkinson 2001; Ruggie 2001). new worldwide complexities—Global Governance—signaled
These new institutional forms and partnerships encour- a reluctance to break with old ways of thinking in its
aged investigators to ask questions not only about who subtitle, A Review of Multilateralism and International
and what were involved in the organization of the world Organizations.
but also how any particular form of organization came According to Craig Murphy’s masterful history of “glo-
about and its mechanisms of control. Here, work acceler- bal governance” avant le mot since the nineteenth century,
ated on networks and epistemic communities, super-sized international organizations customarily are viewed as
business gatherings like the World Economic Forum and “what world government we actually have” (2000:789). He
counter weights such as the World Social Forum, and is right, but the problem lies elsewhere. At the national
markets and investor decision making (Cox 1992; Haas level, we have the authoritative structures of government
1992; Germain 1997; Sinclair 2005; Stone and Maxwell that are supplemented by governance. However, interna-
2005; Pigman 2007). To borrow an image from James tionally we simply have governance with some architec-
Rosenau, a “crazy quilt” of authority was emerging and tural drawings for modest renovations in international
shifting, resulting in a “patchwork” of institutional ele- structures that are several decades old and not up to pres-
ments that varied by sector and over time (1999:293). He ent building codes. Blueprints sit in filing cabinets while
also correctly attached the adjective “turbulent” to our unstable ground and foundations shift under feeble exist-
world and times and struggled to make sense of “fragme- ing structures, which are occupied by a host of other
gration,” or the simultaneous pulls toward fragmentation actors, processes, and mechanisms that all-too-often
and integration (1990). occupy only our peripheral vision. The result has been
that the value of global governance in understanding
complexity and especially the drivers of change has been
ß a Change…
Plus C
less than fully exploited. We have updated the Finkle-
Yet, for all of the interest that growing complexity stein’s answer: “add new actors and issues and stir.”
engendered, and the new and novel scholarly first-cut in We also have too closely associated the changes that we
thinking about global governance that it generated, old sought to explain with a particular moment in time, the
ways persisted. Three-quarters of a century of distinguish- post-Cold War era. The capacity of existing international
ing the study of international relations from political sci- organizations to address pressing contemporary chal-
ence as one characterized by a focus on states as the lenges is called into question by their demonstrated
primary units of analysis continued to condition thinking inability to bind key states in meaningful ways to address
and weighed heavily on the way that scholars understood global problems—to which efforts to protect the global
 Thomas G. Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson 211

environment, eradicate world poverty, or attenuate Without a concerted effort to press forward our under-
increasing inequalities within and across states and social standing of the complexities of global governance, the
groups bear ample witness. Consequently, the association way that authority and power are exercised, and the idea-
of global governance with the hopes, worries, and com- tional and material aspects of global organization, we risk
plexities of a particular moment runs the risk of turning not only misunderstanding the world around us but also
it into an historical artifact. This consignment brings with underestimating our capacity to make meaningful adjust-
it a risk of losing sight of questions about how the world ments to that order. In short, we can no longer ignore
is organized and authority exercised. In short, we need to global governance’s capacity to understand change—past
rescue the term. and future as well as present.

Reviving Global Governance Global Governance: Backwards and Forwards

These risks should push us to probe more deeply into how Thinking harder about global governance may have utility
the world is truly organized—or as John Ruggie some time beyond understanding where we are and the nature of
ago remarked, how “the world hangs together?” (1998:2). the world order in which we live, or which actors we
What is it that we need to do in order to realize the analyti- should or should not emphasize or ignore when thinking
cal utility of global governance? The first part of an answer about complexity (Jentleson 2012). The questions asked
is to tackle global complexity in a more satisfactory fash- in the closing decades of the twentieth century may also
ion, not to be afraid to disaggregate by issue and by con- be useful in helping us understand where we have come
text, and then to try and fit the data back together into an from and where we are going. And the analytical utility of
explanatory whole. We should not only describe who the global governance as a conceptual device beyond the cur-
actors are and how they connect to one another, but also rent order may lie in ideas advanced about a refashioned
how a particular outcome has resulted and why and on multilateralism immediately after the Cold War’s end.
what grounds authority is effectively or poorly exercised. Earlier we recalled Cox’s distinction between global
We should examine the consequences of new forms of governance as multilateralism and as world government
organization and determine what adjustments might be or empire. This distinction provides a potentially fruitful
made to enhance their utility to meet existing, new, or way of thinking about global governance that removes
changing social goals. Important as well are subtler under- some of the blinkers that its association with the post-
standings and a better appreciation of the differing char- Cold War moment entails. We understand global gover-
acteristics of institutions and the effects when those with nance as the sum of the informal and formal ideas, val-
varying natures and capabilities come together. ues, norms, procedures, and institutions that help all
Another essential task is giving greater thought to the actors—states, IGOs, civil society, and TNCs—identify,
way that power is exercised other than indicating that understand, and address trans-boundary problems. If so,
Germany is not Gabon, that emerging powers are on the we ought to do so not merely on the basis of its contempo-
rise, and that the end of Pax Americana is nigh (Strange rary manifestations, which emerged from a specific and
1987; Layne 2011). In today’s international system, state recent historical moment, which responded to a per-
capabilities matter as do the way that formal and informal ceived need to better understand what was going on, and
institutions mediate relations between states and the way which sought to capture global change as a positive phe-
that goods and services are exchanged and managed. nomenon. Pursuing answers to the question “how is the
When the numbers and kinds of actors proliferate, world governed?” across time should also give us a better
markets are less controlled by states, and more complex idea of where we have come from, why change has hap-
relations exist between actors and markets, questions of pened, and where we are going.
power are less straightforward. Here, we should probe Put differently, if we apply the same kinds of questions
more than the relationship between the birth of the that led to understanding global governance as a plurali-
current phase of international institutions and US power, zation of world politics at the end of the last century,
illustrated by the work of Ikenberry (1992) and Ruggie then we should also be able to determine what kinds of
(1994). We should also reflect on institutional expres- systems of world order existed before the current one,
sions and social groups, epistemic communities and pol- and how power and authority were exercised. In brief, we
icy networks, financial decision making, and changing should have answers about the ultimate drivers of change
capabilities among other actors (Haas 1992; Pogge 2001; and their impact.
Cerny 2010; Hellenier and Pagliari 2011; Stone 2012). A willingness to ask how the world was governed as well
Finally, and despite some notable endeavors (Finnemore as how that governance has changed over time has the
and Sikkink 1998; Gill 2002; Jolly, Emmerij and Weiss potential to destabilize international relations theory. It
2009), we have yet to fully understand the ideas and inter- opens our analytical aspirations to examine a complexity
ests that drive the organizations that we have, and more that, in fact, has always existed; and it requires us to
particularly how they arise and develop, and subsequently account for that complexity by adjusting our theoretical
permeate and modify the international system. Here, ideas lenses to examine that long-standing complexity. As many
themselves are important as are the value systems upon have shown, the global governance of the Westphalian
which they sit, the discourses in which they are embedded, era was more than an anarchic state system alone. For
and the interests to which they speak. So too are the indi- instance, Spruyt (1994) reminds us that a mosaic of
viduals who generate those ideas, the networks through actors—states and nonstates—have always been involved
which they are disseminated, the ways that various institu- in global governance although some states have been far
tions mediate core messages, and the processes through more capable actors than other states and NSAs.
which ideas are translated into forms of organization and Indeed, perhaps the best that we can say about the
policy delivery. Checkel (1997) long ago called for “mid- community of international relations scholars over the
level theory,” and we as a scholarly community have yet to past half-century is that we have manufactured a handle
do that and link ideas to global governance. to grasp how the interstate part of the global governance
212 Rethinking Global Governance?

complex has worked. However, we have spent too little populations). Moreover, this dominant form of organiza-
time thinking about what other agents and forms of tion and the ideas on which it was based were subject to
governance exist and have existed and what the relation- challenges—both ideational and physical—that eroded
ships between them and the interstate system have been the bases of competing imperialisms and helped set in
—not just in the last few decades, but forever. motion the wholesale changes in global governance that
One way to think about global governance over time is we now label “post-colonialism.”
to evaluate the kinds of ideas about world order that have Murphy’s (1994) International Organization and Industrial
prevailed. In the two-dimensional and static view of the Change: Global Governance since 1850 traces the origins of
Westphalian order as an interstate system, an assertion global governance to the middle of the nineteenth cen-
that the organizing principle is anarchy tells us nothing tury. His examination of public unions as the forerunners
about why the world has been organized that way or why of “global governance” is anomalous in that the term
we need to know about what existed before hand. Such arose, as we have seen, early in the 1990s. However, his
an approach takes us into well-charted territory, but our effort suggests the crucial importance of testing the
way of journeying through it—if we focus on questions of framework of global governance as an approach to under-
how and why the world is organized—is different and standing how the world was organized in other historical
potentially more satisfactory. periods than our own. The utility of Murphy’s work lies
One reason for the emergence of the interstate system in his willingness to connect changes in the form and
as the broad framework that governs the world was a function of global governance with the onset, consolida-
response to ideas that—in the European world at least— tion, and acceleration of another global dynamic that
sought to move away from a form of global governance mainstream international relations has always found it dif-
in which papal authority was supreme to one in which ficult to comprehend—the industrial revolution and the
various secular rulers exercised sovereignty over discrete logic of global capitalism. Others too have used this form
geographic units. While ideas of self-determination found of economic and social organization as a different start-
their first expression here, the move from papacy to state ing point for thinking about how the world is organized
was not necessarily in the interests of the populations and governed (Chase-Dunn and Sokolovsky 1983). These
who were subjected to this new form of governance. Nor works contribute considerably to our understanding of
did it end the influence of the papacy, or of religious what world authority structures we actually have, but they
institutions more generally, in the global governance of do not—attempts to historicize these approaches further
the time. Nor did it extinguish ideas about the subjuga- notwithstanding (Frank and Gills 2003)—fully explore
tion of populations beyond national borders as a “legiti- the kinds of questions an enquiry into the historical man-
mate” product of global governance—though the fight ifestations of global governance demands. Likewise,
against later expressions of European imperialism most Hobson’s (2004) work on the contribution of non-
certainly accelerated the consolidation of self-determina- Western civilizations to the contemporary world and non-
tion as a foundational principle of the subsequent system European forms of organization offers useful insights
of global governance. into—but not a complete platform for—thinking about
Other agents that contributed to how the world was global governance, past and present.
governed until this point—such as mercenary armies and It is also worth bearing in mind that if the questions that
city states to name but two—fell into relative desuetude, led us to define contemporary global governance pluralisti-
but new actors emerged to play a more central role. cally were driven by the need to understand change and
Indeed, we can observe how Hobsbawn’s (1994) “Age of new horizons, we should be able to ask similar questions
Empire” came about as the dominant form of world orga- about earlier epochs and find satisfactory answers. Boli and
nization from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centu- Thomas’s (1997) research on international non-govern-
ries by scrutinizing the role of private enterprises—which mental organizations goes in this direction. Peering into
in many cases started off as “privateer” ventures and the past through the lenses of global governance makes
became the nationally sanctioned “companies” of Euro- one realize that, like globalization which once seemed
pean empires—in extending imperialism as the dominant novel but is not, global governance also is not new.
form of global governance. The call of many historians to learn lessons for the
Asking questions about the rush to empire enables us future from the past resonates loudly (Macmillan 2009).
to see the role of such actors as the British and the Dutch Carr (1961:62) commented that history is an “unending
East India Company, but it also helps to distinguish dialogue between the past and the present.” The rele-
between the kind of global governance in existence vance of this caveat was immediately obvious to three
during the appropriation of European imperial power (as authors of a recent international relations text who argue,
well as the brutal forms of governance to which colonized “One of the often-perceived problems of the social sci-
peoples were subjected) and that which existed once the ences is their lack of historical depth” (Williams, Hadfield
scramble for colonies subsided. The usual route into and Rofe 2012:3). Nothing is more valued in contempo-
thinking about how the world was organized in the nine- rary social science than parsimony, which puts a premium
teenth century is to examine how the balance of power on the simplest of theoretical pictures and causal mecha-
became institutionalized among the major European nisms. History complicates matters, which is one of the
countries through the Holy Alliance and the Concert of reasons that global governance has become widespread as
Europe (Morgenthau 1995:481–489). Yet, this perspective an approach because it “emerges out of a frustration with
tells us merely of efforts to avoid costly and catastrophic parsimony and a determination to embrace a wider set of
wars in Europe, not how the world was governed. Absent causes” (Sinclair 2012:69). Self-doubt and reflection flow
from this view are the competing imperialisms that were naturally from historical familiarity in a way that they do
the dominant frame of global governance along with dif- not from abstract theories and supposedly sophisticated
fering ideas about the subjugation of non-European peo- social science.
ples and the colonization of uninhabited lands (or that Yet, wrenching global governance from a contemporary
were treated as terra nullius irrespective of indigenous moment and applying it historically is not enough. This
 Thomas G. Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson 213

move would have limited value if it also were not a At the end of the day, we require more satisfactory
valuable approach to understanding tomorrow. The answers to “What is global governance?” Otherwise, we
future-oriented value lies in treating global governance as are left with images from two authors who rarely appear
a set of questions that enable us to work out how the in the pages of the scholarly journals focused on how the
world is, was, and could be governed, how changes in world is organized: Gertrude Stein’s characterization of
grand and not-so-grand patterns of governance occurred, Oakland, “there’s no there, there,” or Lewis Carroll’s
are occurring, and ought to occur. This is an urgent intel- Cheshire cat, a grinning head floating without a body or
lectual task to which scholars should turn. substance.
In comparison with international organization, peering
through the lens of global governance opens the analyst’s
Conclusion
eyes to viewing a host of actors and informal processes of
It is commonplace to state that many of the most intracta- norm and policy formulation as well as change and
ble contemporary problems are trans-national, ranging action. The crucial challenge in the near term is to push
from climate change, migration, and pandemics to terror- the study of global governance beyond the notion of
ism, financial instability, and the proliferation of weapons “add actors and processes into the international organiza-
of mass destruction; and that addressing them success- tion mix and stir.”
fully requires actions that are not unilateral, bilateral, Global problems require global solutions. We have to
or even multilateral, but rather global. Everything is identify cooperation at various levels and with specific
globalized—that is, everything except politics. The policy, actors so that we can determine how global public goods
authority, and resources necessary for tackling such prob- may result from a host of means and forms, formal and
lems remain vested in individual states rather than collec- informal, including supranational authority. There, we
tively in universal institutions. The classic collective action have again uttered a notion that typically qualifies
problem is how to organize common solutions to com- authors for an asylum (Weiss 2009). We can point to
mon problems and spread costs fairly. The fundamental numerous examples of helpful steps in issue-specific glo-
disconnect between the nature of a growing number of bal governance—for instance, the International Commit-
global problems and the current inadequate structures tee of the Red Cross for the laws of war and
for international problem solving and decision making humanitarian principles, the F ederation Internationale
goes a long way toward explaining the fitful, tactical, and de Football Association (or FIFA, its familiar abbrevia-
short-term local responses to challenges that require sus- tion) for the world’s most popular sport (football or soc-
tained, strategic, and longer-run global perspectives and cer), and the International Association for Assigned
action. Names and Numbers (also better known by its acronym,
Can a more comprehensive framework of global gover- ICANN) for the internet.
nance help us to attack that basic disjuncture? Contempo- Yet, we have to do more than hope for the best from
rary global governance is a halfway house between the norm entrepreneurs, activists crossing borders, profit-
international anarchy underlying realist analysis and a seeking corporations, and trans-national social networks.
world state. The current generation of intergovernmental To state the obvious, they can make important contribu-
organizations undoubtedly helps lessen transaction costs tions but not eliminate poverty, fix global warming, or
and overcome some structural obstacles to international halt mass atrocities. In accepting the limits of global gov-
cooperation, as would be clear to anyone examining ernance without global government, our core argument is
international responses to the 2004 tsunami or ongoing that today numerous gaps (Weiss and Thakur 2010; Weiss
humanitarian crises for which we see a constellation of 2013) should and could be better plugged in a variety of
helping hands—soldiers from a variety of countries, UN ways in order to better address key problems confronting
organizations, large and small NGOs, and even Wal-Mart. international society. At the same time, these essential
Global governance certainly is not the continuation of measures should be taken without losing sight of the hori-
traditional power politics. It also is not the expression of zon. Vision is essential because history is not prophecy.
an evolutionary process necessarily leading to the forma-
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