GLOBAL PUBLIC GOVERNANCE: TOWARD WORLD GOVERNMENT?

Global Public Governance is a text written for students, scholars and lay people interested in learning about this global system, which emerged and has evolved in response to global challenges that no one actor can effectively address. Drawing on what has been published over the last several decades, this text highlights the importance of states and nonstate actors seeking to provide global public goods through collective action. Covering conceptual, theoretical, and empirical issues, as well as eight main themes — global security, human rights, global criminal justice, global health, global education, global finance, global trade, and the global environment — this text offers a comprehensive treatment of global public governance. It concludes that the current system remains far from effective, but world government is not a better alternative. In short, this text proposes a regional approach to global public governance.

Contents:

• Foreword
• Preface
• About the Author
• Introduction: Studying Global Public Governance
• Historical, Conceptual, and Theoretical Issues:
  • What Global Public Governance Is
  • Globalization, Subsystems, and Global Authority
  • Theoretical Traditions and Perspectives in a Nutshell
• The Security and Legal Dimensions:
  • Global Security Governance
  • Global Human Rights Governance
  • Global Criminal Justice Governance
• The Social and Cultural Dimensions:
  • Global Health Governance
  • Global Education Governance
• The Economic and Environmental Dimensions:
  • Global Finance Governance
  • Global Trade Governance
  • Global Environment Governance
• Conclusion: Toward World Government? Potential Benefits and Drawbacks
• Bibliography
• Index

Readership: The text can be used for both undergraduate and early graduate studies, doctoral students will also find the book beneficial in many ways.

'Global Public Governance offers a scholarly and wide-ranging engagement with the varieties of governance beyond borders. It makes a thoughtful and prudent case for a regional approach that is worth the consideration of all who study international politics.' - Michael W DoyleUniversity ProfessorColumbia University

'Sorpong Peou's breadth of knowledge, as well as his well-known expertise in many of the key issues associated with 'global public governance' makes him the ideal guide for anyone interested in exploring this increasingly complex and significant topic. His book is bound to become the standard work on the intriguing set of issues. Highly recommended.' - Richard StubbsProfessor Emeritus of Political ScienceMcMaster University

''Global Governance' are buzz words, frequently used, but rarely understood. This work provides theoretical breadth and depth across a broad set of policy areas, with the result that readers get a comprehensive treatment of what global governance really means.' - Paul F DiehlHenning Larsen Professor Emeritus of Political ScienceUniversity of Illinois

'In this welcome book, Sorpong Peou steps back from the 'blooming, buzzing confusion' of current global governance scholarship to provide a clear, comprehensive, accessible, and — most importantly — sensible integrative overview that will be of use to students, scholars, policy makers, and the interested general public alike.' - David WelchProfessor of Political Science and University Research ChairUniversity of Waterloo

'This book is fascinating, thought-provoking, and very ambitious.' - Edward NewmanProfessor of International Security, University of Leeds

'Professor Peou's excellent book raises an old question: how to organize the world and its various political orders in a way that offers substantial solutions to global problems, especially war and injustice. It offers a state-of-the-art survey, one that indicates that the current international system is in a poor state, and so major innovations are required. It is a welcome contribution to a growing debate within International Relations on what needs to be done.' - Oliver RichmondProfessor of Peace and Conflict StudiesThe University of Manchester

'I heartily recommend Sorpong Peou's Global Public Governance to you. Dr Peou brings to his study of the burgeoning field of Global Governance the invaluable experience of having suffered under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia and hence a rare awareness of the way in which apparently high ideals of internationalism can sink into murderous tyranny. His study covers well the scholarly literature in all of the multiple aspects of world governance and displays both a realistic optimism about what federations can accomplish through the cooperation of their members and a gimlet eye for unintended consequences of attempts at homogeneous world government. It will make a significant contribution to the existing literature and garner deserved praise for its even-handed and open-minded sifting through of the empirical evidence.' - Timothy W BurnsProfessor of Political ScienceGraduate Program Director, Political ScienceBaylor University

'Above all, a great teacher knows how to bring greatness out of students. This book is a perfect example. Professor David Dewitt is well known for the breadth of his understanding of global politics and the way he informs his findings with insights gleaned from the study of regional politics — mainly in the Middle East and East Asia. Here, one of his most eminent students picks up the baton and proposes a theory of global governance which is also very insightful in the way it blends global and regional modes of governance. This is an important book because it moves forward debates which are necessary now about what is really global in world affairs and how that should affect our understanding of global governance.' - Pierre LizéeProfessor of Political ScienceBrock University

'The unprecedented depth, scope, and pace of global political, social, and economic shifts and dynamics make Sorpong Peou's contribution to studying their trajectories and cumulative outcomes in this volume highly acute and necessary. By elaborating on a novel concept of global governance as a coherent system of pluralistic regional security communities, Global Public Governance presents a laudable input in IR scholarship. Empirically rich, conceptually ingenious, and thought-provoking, the book is highly recommended for scholars and policy experts in the realm of global politics.' - Sergey SmolnikovYork Universityformer Professor of International Relations, the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies

'Sorpong Peou's excellent book addresses one of the most important debates in world affairs: whether world politics is being transformed into a system in which all areas of international politics are regulated or 'governed' by international institutions and processes at the expense of a Westphalian, 'international' system of equally sovereign states. He advances the novel argument that the path towards global government passes through regional building blocks. Drawing respectfully and usefully on liberal, critical and realist insights he argues for 'pluralistic regional communities as steppingstones and building blocks' for the development of a global government, a view held by the late, great Norwegian statesman, Thorvald Stoltenberg. The book is written in a language very accessible to academicians, policy makers, students and to the layperson to all of whom I highly recommend. It will be a very fine textbook.' - Robin RamcharanProfessor of International RelationsMahidol University International College

Key Features:

• This book is unique in terms of its emphasis on global public governance broadly defined as a global system based on the idea of addressing global challenges through the provision of global public goods based on collective action
• The book deals with conceptual, theoretical, and empirical issues related to global issues, most notably global security, human rights, global criminal justice, global health, global education, global finance, global trade, and the global environment. Although the various global public goods are underprovided, the book argues that world government is unlikely to perform better
• In fact, a super state is likely to do less well than the current global system. What needs to be seriously considered is the proposal that global public governance based on a regional approach looks more promising