Friends and foes of international cooperation puzzle about how to explain order, stability, and predictability in a world without a central authority. How is the world governed in the absence of a world government?

This probing yet accessible book examines "global governance" or the sum of the informal and formal values, norms, procedures, and institutions that help states, intergovernmental organizations, civil society, and transnational corporations identify, understand, and address trans-boundary problems. The chasm between the magnitude of a growing number of global threats - climate change, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, financial instabilities, pandemics, to name a few - and the feeble contemporary political structures for international problem-solving provide compelling reasons to read this book. Fitful, tactical, and short-term local responses exist for a growing number of threats and challenges that require sustained, strategic, and longer-run global perspectives and action. Can the framework of global governance help us to better understand the reasons behind this fundamental disconnect as well as possible ways to attenuate its worst aspects? Thomas G. Weiss replies with a guardedly sanguine "yes".

Thomas G. Weiss is one of the worlds leading authorities on the challenges and processes of global governance. Former President of the International Studies Association, Tom is currently Presidential Professor of Political Science at The CUNY Graduate Center and Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies. He is the author of two popular Polity titles on the UN and humanitarian intervention, both in their second edition.

Tables and Figures vi

Abbreviations vii

About the Author x

Foreword by Craig N. Murphy xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

1 Why Did Global Governance Emerge? 8

2 What Is Global Governance? 27

3 What Are Global Governance Gaps? 45

4 Knowledge Gaps 62

5 Normative Gaps 84

6 Policy Gaps 106

7 Institutional Gaps 127

8 Compliance Gaps 149

9 Whither Global Governance? 169

Notes 186

Selected Readings 211

Index 214