The Ebb and Flow of Global Governance
Intergovernmentalism versus Nongovernmentalism in World Politics

Challenges tradition to show how developments in international relations repeat themselves; we may soon experience a return to past trends.

Alexandru Grigorescu (Author)

9781108818650, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 25 March 2021

272 pages, 19 b/w illus. 6 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.427 kg

'… The Ebb and Flow of Global Governance is an innovative contribution to our understanding of the mix of private and governmental actors and their influence in world politics.' Bob Reinalda, H-Diplo

The Ebb and Flow of Global Governance challenges the traditionally dichotomous distinction between international intergovernmental organizations and international nongovernmental organizations. Alexandru Grigorescu argues that international organizations are best understood as falling on an 'intergovernmental-nongovernmental continuum'. The placement of organizations on this continuum is determined by how much government involvement factors into their decision-making, financing, and deliberations. Using this fine-grained conceptualization, Grigorescu uncovers numerous changes in the intergovernmental versus nongovernmental nature of global governance over the past century and a half. These changes are due primarily to ideological and institutional domestic shifts in powerful states. The Ebb and Flow of Global Governance assesses the plausibility of these arguments through archival research on a dozen organizations from the global health, labor, and technical standards realms. Grigorescu concludes that there has been a continuous ebb and flow in world politics, rather than an inexorable movement towards greater roles for nongovernmental actors, as existing literature argues.

1. The Intergovernmental-nongovernmental continuum in global governance
2. Causes of intergovernmentalism and nongovernmentalism
3. Global governance in the health realm
4. Global governance in the labor realm
5. Global governance in the technical standards realm
6. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS]