Introduction : the significance and problems of transnational governance

This volume examines the challenges to traditional notions of regulation, governance and authority posed by the globalisation of economic and social life. Increasingly, vast financial, technological and corporate processes are eroding the capacities of national governments to meaningfully regulate society. At the same time- as the ongoing global financial crisis that erupted in 2007-08 and the breakdown of the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit demonstrate- efforts at international coordination are proving highly problematic. These developments and crises are themselves, to a significant extent, bound up with deep-seated changes in economic life. These are, in turn, reflected in shifts in ideologies and practices of national and international governance in the 1970s and 1980s. The three planks of the post-Second World War Keynesian Bretton Woods system - capital controls, demand management and full employment - have given way to what has been called the 'Washington Consensus' system of free trade, deregulation and 'shareholder value'. These developments accentuate the changing ways in which authority and sovereignty can be exercised in such a globalised political context (Stiglitz 2008). As globalisation continues to extend and change, it has become increasingly important to understanding the institutional and transnational means by which nation states and others have attempted to govern international phenomena such as financialisation, tax evasion, corruption, terrorism, civil and military conflicts, environmental dangers, social polarisation, and the challenges in human rights implementation.