A Theory of Global Governance ― Authority, Legitimacy, and Contestation

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 inherently creates contestation, resistance, and distributional struggles. Within an ambitious and systematic new conceptual framework, the theory makes four key contributions. Firstly, it reconstructs global governance as a political system which builds on normative principles and reflexive authorities. Second, it identifies the central legitimation problems of the global governance system with a constitutionalist setting in mind. Third, it explains the rise of state and societal contestation 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 decline or deepening.

Rich with propositions, insights, and evidence, the book promises to be the most important and comprehensive theoretical argument about world politics of the 21st century.

Michael Zurn, Director of the Research Unit 'Global Governance' at the WZB and Professor of International Relations at the Free University of Berlin

Michael Zurn is Director of the Global Governance unit at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and Professor of International Relations at the Free University of Berlin since 2004. He was founding Dean of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin (2004-2009). He is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and the Academy of Europe. He is author of numerous monographs and anthologies, and has published various articles in International Organization, World Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Global Policy, International Theory, Journal of Common Market Studies, West European Politics, Politics, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Zeitschrift fur Internationale Beziehungen, and Leviathan, among others.