A Theory of Global Governance

This book offers a major new theory of global governance, explaining both its rise and what many see as its current crisis. The author suggests that world politics is now embedded in a normative and institutional structure dominated by hierarchies and power inequalities and therefore <italic>inherently</italic> creates contestation, resistance, and distributional struggles. Within an ambitious and systematic new conceptual framework, the theory makes four key contributions. First, it reconstructs <italic>global governance as a political system</italic> which builds on normative principles and reflexive authorities. Second, it identifies the central <italic>legitimation problems of the global governance system</italic> with a constitutionalist setting in mind. Third, it explains the <italic>rise of state and societal contestation</italic> by identifying key endogenous dynamics and probing the causal mechanisms that produced them. Finally, it identifies the conditions under which struggles in the global governance system lead to <italic>decline or deepening</italic>. Rich with propositions, insights, and evidence, the book promises to be the most important and comprehensive theoretical argument about world politics of the twenty-first century.