Global Politics: Firmly in the Next Phase

Abstract

The New Dynamics of Multilateralism: Diplomacy, International Organizations, and Global Governance. Edited by JoAnn Fagot Muldoon Jr., James P. Aviel, Richard Reitano, Earl Sullivan. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2011. 384 pp., $37.00 paperback (ISBN 9780813344812). Transnational Actors in Global Governance: Patterns, Explanations, and Implications. Edited by Christer Jonsson, Jonas Tallberg. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2010. 272 pp., $85.00 hardback (ISBN 978-0-230-23905-0). Who Governs the Globe? Edited by Deborah D. Avant, Martha Finnemore, Susan K. Sell Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 456 pp., $34.99 paperback (ISBN 9780521122016). It is perhaps banal to observe that the study of global politics is evolving. Theoretical debates are no longer dominated by “realism versus liberalism versus constructivism.” The lines between international and domestic politics have long been blurring. Many have shed traditional labels, like “international relations.” Much less banal is an effort to determine our destination. Toward what are we evolving? What are the key debates and questions that will orient our efforts in the future? The answers to these questions are unclear. Nonetheless, the three edited volumes under consideration here give us some excellent food for thought. Although each makes an important contribution to three distinct literatures, I focus here on what reading them together can tell us about the state of the field. The Jonsson and Tallberg volume, Transnational Actors in Global Governance: Patterns, Explanations, and Implications , is part of the ongoing Transdemos research project, headquartered at Lund and Stockholm Universities. The larger project explores the contribution of transnational actors to the democratization of global governance. While only one volume in the series of Transdemos research products is under review in this essay, it is important to note that two others were published simultaneously. One, edited by Bexell and Morth (2010), “concerns the mushrooming in recent decades of so-called public-private partnerships as alternatives or complements to traditional international organizations in tackling global problem areas. Why have these hybrid organizational entities emerged at this time? What different forms can ‘partnerships’ assume? Are they really the win-win solutions they are often depicted as?” (Jonsson and Tallberg, p. ix). A second volume, edited by Erman and Uhlin (2010), “concerns the character of transnational actors themselves. How is their expanding role in global governance legitimized? As transnational actors frequently claim to contribute to the democratization of global governance, it is …