Introduction: Situating Global Governance Scholarship

This is the substantive introductory chapter to a Routledge Major Works Series Collection on Global Governance. The purpose of this Major Works Series is to take stock of recent rapid developments in scholarship on what we understand as ‘global governance’, an undeniably important but still ill-defined field of analysis. Although the conceptual, analytical and theoretical boundaries of global governance remain hotly debated, it is increasingly viewed as a vital component to addressing serious public goods challenges. As Martin Wolf of the Financial Times suggests, humanity’s efforts to overcome the tragedy of the global commons ‘could prove to be the defining story of the century’. Whether the challenge is climate change mitigation, health pandemics, financial regulation or terrorism, we need more global cooperation, not less. But what is global governance? How does its conceptualization shape analysis of global politics? And how can it actually be harnessed to enhance human well-being within a rapidly globalizing political reality?