Issue area and under all circumstances, we do believe that once such a

perspective is taken, new insights may be gained. We therefore con-

clude our article by raising four questions that follow from the notion of

global governance as a specific perspective on world politics and sketch

some initial answers to these questions. First, what is new about a

global governance perspective? Second, what are the central research

questions that emerge from this new perspective? Third, what are the

potential benefits of a global governance perspective? And, finally, what

are its limitations?

When we first presented our argument to our colleagues, one com-

mentator asked if our conception of global governance was in any way

198 Global Governance as a Perspective on World Politicsdifferent from international governance plus transnational actors. Our

response to this question is twofold. First, we believe there is a core dif-

ference in terms of the basic ontological assumptions of a global gov-

ernance perspective as sketched above. Rather than presuming a priori

a hierarchy between international and transnational spheres of political

activity, a global governance perspective is based on the premise that

both spheres have equal ontological status. In short, a global governance

perspective acknowledges that world politics is neither international

governance plus transnational actors nor transnational governance plus

international actors. Accordingly, a research program that builds on this

premise will ask a number of questions, such as: What dynamics char-

acterize the two spheres? What factors determine whether actors seek to

achieve their goals through one sphere and not through the other? And

what kind of interactions exist between the two spheres? Research on

these questions will benefit from previous research on international

relations, but it will transcend the latter by taking transnational politics

seriously.

Second, while the conceptual focus of international relations is

actor-centered—the term centers on how two or more nation-states will

behave when they need to coexist in a single world—the governance

perspective chooses a different point of departure. The most fundamen-

tal observation we make when we make use of our global governance

lens is not the existence of specific actors (e.g., states), but the existence

of norms, rules, and standards that structure and constrain social activ-

ity. As a result, the research agenda associated with a global governance

perspective is different. At its core, it includes such questions as: What

forms of social regulation exist at the global level? Where do global

norms, rules, and standards come from? How are they constructed,

interpreted, implemented, and adjudicated? What relationships exist

between rule makers and rule takers? What are consequences of global

norms, rules, and standards? Who benefits? Who loses?

Ultimately, a theory of global governance would thus differ from a

theory of international politics. Its central unit of analysis would be the

conditions for social activity (e.g., norms and rules) rather than actors

and relations between them. In addition, its methodological challenge

would be complexity rather than parsimony. But what can be expected

from such a theory in the making? In our opinion, such a theory, once

fully developed, should be able to answer three sets of questions: first,

questions focusing on the emergence of global governance arrangements

within and across different policy arenas; second, questions targeting the

conditions for effective global governance; and, finally, questions directed

toward the implications of the current transformation of governance for

Klaus Dingwerth and Philipp Pattberg 199core political concepts such as authority, sovereignty, and democratic

legitimacy. However, such an optimistic view toward a theory of global

governance must also anticipate its limitations. The core challenge is to

balance the tendency toward theoretical complexity with the need for

simplicity to avoid replicating the multidimensional and multicausal

nature of current world politics. It is precisely this point where a clearer

and more precise use of the global governance concept can serve as the

necessary first step toward better theories of world politics. c

Notes

Klaus Dingwerth (dingwerth@uni-bremen.de) is assistant professor at the Insti-

tute for Intercultural and International Studies (InIIS), University of Bremen,

Germany. Philipp Pattberg (philipp.pattberg@ivm.vu.nl) is a project leader at

the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) of the Vrije Universiteit Ams-

terdam and coordinator of the research group New Mechanisms of Global Gov-

ernance (MECGLO) of the Global Governance Project.

For comments on earlier versions of this article, the authors are grateful to

Frank Biermann, Robert Falkner, the editors and anonymous reviewers at

Global Governance, and to various colleagues from the Global Governance

Project (glogov.org). Financial assistance from the German National Academic

Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) and from the Volkswagen

Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.

1. We understand world politics as a neutral concept that refers to political

structures and processes that have transboundary repercussions as the object of

both a global governance and a more traditional “inter-national” perspective.

2. Cf. Hongying Wang and James N. Rosenau, “Transparency International

and Corruption as an Issue of Global Governance,” Global Governance 7, no.

1 (2001): 25–49; Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighbour-

hood: The Report of the Commission on Global Governance (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1995); Ulrich Brand, “Order and Formation: Global Gover-

nance as a Possible Hegemonic Discourse of the Internationally Political,”

paper prepared for the workshop “Critical Perspectives on Global Governance,”

Amerang, Germany, 1–3 November 2002.

3. Lawrence S. Finkelstein, “What Is Global Governance?” Global Gover-

nance 1, no. 3 (1995): 368.

4. James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel, Governance Without Gov-

ernment: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 1992).

5. Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighbourhood.

6. Claude Bélanger, Concepts in Social Science and History, available at

www2.marianopolis.edu/quebechistory/events/concepts.htm (accessed 15 Octo-

ber 2003).

7. John Gerring and Paul A. Barresi, “Putting Ordinary Language to Work:

A Min-Max Strategy of Concept Formation in the Social Sciences,” Journal of

Theoretical Politics 15, no. 2 (2003): 202.

200 Global Governance as a Perspective on World Politics8. This is not to deny, however, that Gerring and Barresi’s min-max-

strategy may be a very promising second step with regard to theory building in

the study of global governance. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for

this clarification.

9. Finkelstein, “What Is Global Governance?” p. 368.

10. Thomas G. Weiss, “Governance, Good Governance and Global Gover-

nance: Conceptual and Actual Challenges,” Third World Quarterly 21, no. 5

(2000): 795.

11. Cf. Paul Hirst, “Democracy and Governance,” in Jon Pierre, ed.,

Debating Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 13–35; R.

A. W. Rhodes, “The New Governance: Governing Without Government,” Polit-

ical Studies 44, no. 4 (1996): 652–667. For recent contributions that try to bring

some degree of order to the conceptual disarray, see Tanja A. Börzel and

Thomas Risse, “Public-Private Partnerships: Effective and Legitimate Tools of

International Governance,” in Edgar Grande and Louis W. Pauly, eds., Complex

Sovereignty: Reconstituting Political Authority in the Twenty-first Century

(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005); Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks,

“Unraveling the Central State, But How? Types of Multi-level Governance,”

American Political Science Review 97, no. 2 (2003): 233–243; Kees van Kers-

bergen and Frans van Waarden, “Governance as a Bridge Between Disciplines,”

European Journal of Political Research 43, no. 2 (2004): 143–172; and Elke

Krahmann, “National, Regional, and Global Governance: One Phenomenon or

Many?” Global Governance 9, no. 3 (2003): 323–346.

12. Renate Mayntz, “Governance im modernen Staat” (Governance in the

modern state), in Arthur Benz, ed., Governance—Regieren in komplexen Regel-

systemen: Eine Einführung (Governance—governing in complex rule systems:

An introduction) (Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2004), p. 66.

13. Rosenau and Czempiel, Governing Without Government.

14. Gerry Stoker, “Governance as Theory: Five Propositions,” International

Social Science Journal 155 (1998): 17–28.

15. For recent examples published in this journal, see Sverker C. Jagers and

Johannes Stripple, “Climate Governance Beyond the State,” Global Governance

9, no. 3 (2003): 385–399; Benedicte Bull, Morten Bøås, and Desmond McNeill,

“Private Sector Influence in the Multilateral System: A Changing Structure of

World Governance?” Global Governance 10, no. 4 (2004): 481–498.

16. Robert O’Brien, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte, and Marc Williams,

Contesting Global Governance: Multilateral Economic Institutions and Global

Social Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Ronnie D.

Lipschutz, Global Civil Society and Global Environmental Governance: The

Politics of Nature from Place to Planet (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996); Frank

Biermann and Steffen Bauer, Managers of Global Governance: Assessing and

Explaining the Effectiveness of Intergovernmental Organisations, paper prepared

for the International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Convention, Portland,

Oregon, 26 February–1 March 2003; Christoph Knill and Dirk Lehmkuhl, “Pri-