Global Governance Course

Course Philosophy

Three core principles guide this curriculum:

• Systemic Interdependence: Global political outcomes emerge from dense networks of interdependence in which crises, decisions, and norms propagate across institutions, regions, and policy domains.

• Analytical Pluralism: No single theoretical framework fully captures global order; each reveals specific dynamics while obscuring others.

• Epistemological Reflexivity: All models of global governance are historically situated, reflecting distinct intellectual traditions, institutional interests, and geopolitical contexts.

Global governance refers to the ensemble of institutions, regimes, norms, and informal arrangements through which collective problems are managed in the absence of a world state. It encompasses formal international organisations, treaty systems, financial architectures, and transnational regulatory networks that structure cooperation and conflict across borders.

This course examines global governance as a contested system of authority situating institutions within broader structures of power, hierarchy, and inequality in the international system. Students explore how international organisations, regional institutions, states, corporations, non-governmental actors, and transnational networks collectively shape global order, manage crises, and compete over legitimacy, authority, and power. The course asks not only how global governance functions, but also whose interests it serves, where it succeeds, where it fails, and how it may evolve as the conditions that produced it continue to shift.

MODULE I: Foundations of Global Governance

Week 1: What is Global Governance?

Week 2: Power and Hierarchy in Global Order

MODULE II: Institutions and Regime Complexity

Week 3: International Organisations and Authority

Week 4: Regime Complexity and Fragmentation

Week 5: Collective Action and Global Public Goods

MODULE III: Global Political Economy of Governance

Week 6: Trade Governance and Economic Order

Week 7: Global Finance and Monetary Power

Week 8: Development and Global Inequality

MODULE IV: International Law and Normative Authority

Week 9: International Law and Compliance

Week 10: Human Rights Governance

MODULE V: Crisis and the Future of Global Governance

Week 11: Crisis Governance

Week 12: Futures of Global Governance

Analytical Proposition

Global governance operates as a fragmented and uneven architecture of authority shaped by asymmetries of power, institutional design, and historical path dependence, rather than a unified system of cooperative problem-solving.

Three structural dynamics define its operation:

• Hierarchies of Influence: Formal equality between states masks unequal capacities to set agendas, define norms, and enforce compliance within global institutions.

• Regime Complexity: Overlapping institutions governing the same policy domains generate fragmentation, forum shopping, and strategic institutional competition.

• Compliance Without Sovereignty: States routinely accept externally generated rules that they did not authorise democratically, reflecting pragmatic adaptation instead of pure consent.

Every week of this 12-week course is structured around four distinct learning pillars to ensure you build theoretical knowledge, practical skills, and critical awareness:

• Lecture: Core concepts, theoretical frameworks, and key debates.

• Workshop: Application of concepts to real-world empirical cases.

• Analytical Lab: Hands-on methodological training and data analysis.

• Reflexive Question: A direct challenge designed to unpack hidden systemic assumptions.

Deep Thinking

• What global governance challenge is under analysis, and what are the observable facts about the affected policy domain, the institutional responses deployed, and the material or normative outcomes that can be established before theoretical interpretation begins? (Empirical baseline)

• Who governs and who does not? Identify both the formal institutional authorities and the informal hierarchies of agenda-setting, veto power, and enforcement capacity that determine who actually shapes outcomes, on what terms, and at whose cost. (Agential mapping)

• Which theoretical framework (liberal institutionalism, neo-Gramscian hegemony, constructivist norm diffusion, world-systems analysis, or critical political economy) best accounts for the structure and outputs of the governance arrangement under study, and what assumptions does it make about authority, consent, and compliance? (Theoretical application)

• What does this framework fail to see: which actors are excluded from formal authority, whose interests are structurally marginalised, and what inequalities of power are reproduced beneath the language of cooperative, rules-based problem-solving? (Analytical limitation)

• How does this governance arrangement look from the perspective of a Global South state, a non-Western regional institution, or an actor operating outside the dominant institutional order, and what does that perspective reveal about the political interests embedded in the architecture of global governance itself? (Reflexive critique)

Learning Outcomes

• Analyse institutional structures, power asymmetries, and regime complexity: Evaluate the composition and authority of global governance institutions and regimes, explain how formal and informal power asymmetries shape institutional design and policy outcomes, and map overlapping governance domains to identify fragmentation, forum-shopping, and the structural biases built into legal and regulatory arrangements.

• Apply and critically evaluate theoretical frameworks: Deploy International Relations theories (liberal institutionalism, neo-Gramscian political economy, constructivist norm diffusion, and critical political economy) to explain variation in compliance, legitimacy, and authority, while assessing where each framework reproduces rather than interrogates the hierarchies embedded in global governance itself.

• Produce rigorous, evidence-based policy analysis: Construct professional analyses of global governance challenges and structural reform proposals, demonstrating command of institutional detail, theoretical argument, and the capacity to identify whose interests a given governance architecture serves and whose it systematically excludes.

Assessment

Assessment 1: Institutional Governance Analysis (35% | 2,500 words)
Students select one global governance institution, treaty regime, or regulatory arrangement and produce a sustained analytical critique of its authority structure, design features, and embedded power asymmetries. The analysis must identify who formally governs within the institution and who informally shapes outcomes through agenda-setting, veto capacity, or enforcement control; explain how the institution's rules distribute influence among its members; and apply at least two theoretical frameworks from the course, such as liberal institutionalism, neo-Gramscian hegemony, constructivist norm diffusion, or principal-agent theory, to account for the institution's design and observed behaviour. The analysis must explicitly identify what the arrangement excludes: which actors lack formal voice, which interests are structurally marginalised, and which governance gaps the institution leaves unaddressed. Submission Deadline: End of Week 7.

Assessment 2: Capstone Global Governance Futures Report (55% | 5,000–6,000 words)
The primary summative assessment for this course is a professional, scenario-based strategic report assessing a major contemporary global governance challenge. The report must map the key actors and their structural positions within the relevant governance architecture; assess the power asymmetries, institutional design features, and compliance dynamics shaping the problem; and develop three distinct and mutually exclusive long-term scenarios for the evolution of the governance challenge over the next 20 years. The report must deploy multiple theoretical frameworks to explain both the current governance structure and the diverging trajectories of each scenario, and must include a critical assessment of whose interests the dominant governance arrangement serves and what alternative institutional designs its architecture forecloses. Submission Deadline: Sunday of Week 14 (Formal Assessment Period, following the conclusion of Week 12 teaching).

Assessment 3: Seminar Participation and Analytical Engagement (10% | Ongoing)
Participation is assessed continuously throughout the semester. Marks reflect the quality and consistency of engagement across three interconnected dimensions: contribution to seminar and workshop discussions, demonstrating the ability to apply theoretical concepts to empirical cases and to challenge competing interpretations with reasoned argument; performance in the weekly Analytical Labs, showing growing proficiency in applying course methodologies to live data and case material; and conduct in simulation and debate exercises, including the willingness to defend positions under adversarial questioning, respond to new evidence, and revise conclusions accordingly. Attendance is a prerequisite for participation credit, but marks are awarded for the quality and intellectual rigour of engagement rather than for the volume of contribution.

Submission, Formatting Requirements and Academic Integrity

• All written work must be submitted as a PDF file, regardless of the word processor used.

• Use font at 12 points Aptos or Arial. Pages must be numbered. Include your name, student number, course name, assignment title, and word count on the first page; a separate cover page is not required.

• The word count stated in the assignment brief is a guide to scope and depth, not a rigid threshold. Work within 10% of the stated count in either direction. The word count covers the main body of the text, including in-text citations, but excludes the reference list, any tables or figures, and any appendices.

• All written work must follow APA 7th edition throughout. In-text citations use the author-date format: (Yergin, 2020) or Yergin (2020) argues that… For direct quotations, include the page number: (Yergin, 2020, p. 47). The reference list appears at the end of the document, ordered alphabetically by surname. Do not use footnotes for references; footnotes may be used sparingly for substantive clarifications that would otherwise interrupt the argument.

• Formal policies on academic integrity and the use of AI tools vary by institution and will be communicated where applicable. The question beneath those policies does not change: Is the goal to understand, or simply to appear to have understood? A qualification obtained without the knowledge it is meant to represent is a transaction, not an education, and it shortchanges the holder as much as anyone else. I invest genuine effort in connecting students to scholarship, practitioners, and professional networks that extend well beyond any syllabus. Whether that investment meets a reciprocal commitment is, in the end, a question of character rather than compliance.

Literature

• Edkins, J., Zehfuss, M., & Gregory, T. (2025). Global politics: A new introduction (4th ed.). Taylor & Francis.

• Karns, M. P., Johnson, T., & Mingst, K. A. (2024). International organizations: The politics and processes of global governance (4th ed.). Lynne Rienner.

• Kissinger, H. (2015). World order. Penguin.

• Mazower, M. (2013). Governing the world: The history of an idea, 1815 to the present. Penguin.

• Pease, K. K. S., & Belo, D. (2025). International organizations: Perspectives on global governance (7th ed.). Routledge.

• Weiss, T. G., & Wilkinson, R. (Eds.). (2023). International organization and global governance (3rd ed.). Routledge.

Research articles do not appear in the bibliography above. This is intentional. Each week, students are expected to identify a peer-reviewed article relevant to that week’s topic, bring it to the seminar, and share it with the group. The lecturer contributes selections alongside the class. This practice develops independent literature-searching habits, exposes the seminar to a wider range of scholarly perspectives than any fixed reading list could provide, and keeps the course in sustained contact with current debates in the field.

Course Structure and Content

MODULE I: Foundations of Global Governance

Week 1: What is Global Governance?

Core Question: How is collective order produced without a world government?

Topics: Definitions of governance; authority beyond sovereignty; multilateralism; legitimacy in international order; formal versus informal governance structures.

Theoretical Lens: English School / international society theory (Bull's account of order without government), introduced alongside liberal institutionalism as a contrasting baseline for the rest of the course.

Analytical Lab: Groups of 3–4, each assigned a different issue area (health, trade, or climate). Each group produces a one-page actor map categorising relevant actors into states, international organisations, private/corporate entities, and informal networks, with brief annotations (200 words total). Groups present their map in a 10-minute seminar slot.

Reflexive Question: Who defines what counts as a "global problem" in the first place?

Additional Literature 

• • Bull, H. (2012). The anarchical society. Bloomsbury Publishing.

  • Keohane, R. O. (1984). After hegemony: Cooperation and discord in the world political economy. Princeton University Press

Week 2: Power and Hierarchy in Global Order

Core Question: Is global governance a cooperative system or a structured hierarchy?

Topics: Structural power; agenda-setting mechanisms; institutional inequality; informal empire; veto power and institutional capture.

Theoretical Lens: Neo-Gramscian international political economy (Cox's distinction between problem-solving and critical theory) and Strange's concept of structural power.

Analytical Lab: Pairs select one major international organisation (e.g., the IMF, the World Bank, or the UN Security Council). Each pair produces a short table comparing formal voting share against observed agenda-setting influence for four or five member states, plus a 300-word interpretive paragraph. Findings are pitched to the seminar in two minutes per pair.

Reflexive Question: Does formal equality between states obscure deeper, unaddressed hierarchies of power?

Additional Literature 

• • Cox, R. (1987). Production, power, and world order: social forces in the making of history. Columbia University Press.

  • Lake, D. A. (2009). Hierarchy in international relations. Cornell University Press.

  • Strange, S. (1996). The retreat of the state: The diffusion of power in the world economy. Cambridge University Press.

MODULE II: Institutions and Regime Complexity

Week 3: International Organisations and Authority

Core Question: How do international organisations shape state behaviour?

Topics: Bureaucratic delegation; principal-agent theory; compliance mechanisms; enforcement limits; treaty systems and legal bindingness.

Theoretical Lens: Principal-agent theory of delegation, read against Barnett and Finnemore's constructivist account of bureaucratic autonomy and pathology.

Analytical Lab: Individually, students build a comparative matrix (mechanism type, binding force, sanctions, observed compliance rate) for two international regimes of their choice, plus a 250-word assessment of which regime's enforcement body behaves more like an independent agent relative to its state principals. Submitted ahead of seminar to structure discussion.

Reflexive Question: Why do states comply with rules they played no part in designing?

Additional Literature 

• • Barnett, M., & Finnemore, M. (2004). Rules for the world: international organizations in global politics. Cornell University Press.

  • Hawkins, D. G., Lake, D. A., Nielson, D. L., & Tierney, M. J. (Eds.). (2006). Delegation and agency in international organizations. Cambridge University Press.

  • Weaver, C. (2008). Hypocrisy trap: The World Bank and the poverty of reform. Princeton University Press.

Week 4: Regime Complexity and Fragmentation

Core Question: What happens when multiple institutions govern the same issue?

Topics: Institutional overlap; strategic fragmentation; forum shopping; norm conflict and regime clash.

Theoretical Lens: Regime complexity theory (Alter and Raustiala; Keohane and Victor's "regime complex" framework for fragmented governance domains).

Analytical Lab: Groups of 4 build a regime-complex diagram (institutions as nodes, overlapping mandates as edges) for one domain (climate or trade), plus a 300-word memo identifying one forum-shopping opportunity created by the overlap. This lab functions as a direct practice run for Assessment 2 (Regime Complexity Mapping), due the following week.

Reflexive Question: Is fragmentation a failure of governance or a strategic resource for powerful states?

Additional Literature 

• • Alter, K. J. (2014). The new terrain of international law: Courts, politics, rights. Princeton University Press.

  • Biermann, F., & Pattberg, P. (Eds.). (2012). Global environmental governance reconsidered. MIT Press.

  • Drezner, D. W. (2007). All politics is global: explaining international regulatory regimes. Princeton University Press.

Week 5: Collective Action and Global Public Goods

Core Question: Why are global public goods persistently under-provided?

Topics: Collective action problems; free-riding; burden-sharing dynamics; cooperation dilemmas in finite resource pools.

Theoretical Lens: Rational-choice collective action theory (Olson), extended to global public goods provision.

Analytical Lab: Individually, students work through a provided dataset of national emissions pledges against global temperature targets, producing a 350-word analysis applying free-rider and burden-sharing logic to the gap between pledges and targets. Submitted as a worksheet.

Reflexive Question: Can a "global interest" exist independently of national interests?

Additional Literature 

• • Kaul, I., Grunberg, I., & Stern, M. C. (Eds.). (1999). Global public goods: International cooperation in the 21st century. Oxford University Press.

  • Olson, M. (1965). The logic of collective action: Public goods and the theory of groups. Harvard University Press.

  • Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press.

MODULE III: Global Political Economy of Governance

Week 6: Trade Governance and Economic Order

Core Question: How are rules of global trade produced and enforced?

Topics: The WTO system; the dispute settlement mechanism; the political economy of protectionism; the concept of embedded liberalism.

Theoretical Lens: Embedded liberalism (Ruggie) as the founding compromise of the postwar trade order.

Analytical Lab: In pairs, students prepare a case brief (parties, legal basis, panel ruling, political economy context) on a contemporary WTO dispute, presented as a 5-minute case briefing (around 400 words written).

Reflexive Question: Is free trade a universal principle or a negotiated power settlement?

Additional Literature 

• • Hoekman, B. M., & Kostecki, M. M. (2009). The political economy of the world trading system: The WTO and beyond (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.

  • Ruggie, J.G. (1998). Constructing the world polity : essays on international institutionalization. Routledge.

  • Wilkinson, R. (2014). What's wrong with the WTO and how to fix it. Polity.

Week 7: Global Finance and Monetary Power

Core Question: How is global financial stability governed?

Topics: The IMF and World Bank; the geopolitics of the dollar system; financial conditionality; crisis governance and emergency lending.

Theoretical Lens: Structural power in international finance (Strange's "states and markets" framework), read against dependency-theory critiques of conditionality.

Analytical Lab: Individually, students build a comparative table of IMF/World Bank lending conditions attached to two borrower states, plus a 300-word reflection on whether the conditions reproduce North–South dependency dynamics.

Reflexive Question: Does financial governance reproduce historic dependency structures between the Global North and Global South?

Additional Literature 

• • Helleiner, E. (1994). States and the reemergence of global finance: From Bretton Woods to the 1990s. Cornell University Press.

  • Stiglitz, J. E. (2002). Globalization and its discontents. W. W. Norton.

  • Strange, S. (2004). States and markets. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Week 8: Development and Global Inequality

Core Question: How does global governance shape development outcomes?

Topics: Development regimes; bilateral and multilateral aid systems; debt governance; structural adjustment programmes and their institutional legacy.

Theoretical Lens: World-systems and dependency theory (Wallerstein), in dialogue with post-development critique (Escobar) of how "development" itself is defined.

Analytical Lab: Groups of 3 produce a comparative profile of two regional development frameworks (for example, the African Continental Free Trade Area against a Bretton Woods-aligned regional programme), using a structured comparison grid plus a 300-word synthesis. This lab anticipates the comparative logic required for Assessment 3.

Reflexive Question: Who defines "development", and with what authority?

Additional Literature 

• • Escobar, A. (2011). Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton University Press.

  • Rodney, W. (1972). How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications.

  • Wallerstein, I. (2004). World-systems analysis: An introduction. Duke University Press.

MODULE IV: International Law and Normative Authority

Week 9: International Law and Compliance

Core Question: What makes international law effective?

Topics: Enforcement limits; reputational mechanisms; socialisation; the tension between state sovereignty and international obligation.

Theoretical Lens: Managerial compliance theory (Chayes and Chayes) as a contrast to enforcement-based models of international law.

Analytical Lab: Individually, students conduct a short compliance audit of three or four documented compliance or non-compliance episodes under a single legal regime, noting the legal or political justification given in each case (around 350 words).

Reflexive Question: Is international law a binding authority or a set of structured expectations utilised strategically by states?

Additional Literature 

• • Chayes, A., & Chayes, A. H. (1998). The new sovereignty: compliance with international regulatory agreements. Harvard University Press.

  • Goodman, R., & Jinks, D. (2013). Socializing states: Promoting human rights through international law. Oxford University Press.

  • Guzman, A. T. (2008). How international law works: A rational choice theory. Oxford University Press.

Week 10: Human Rights Governance

Core Question: How are universal norms implemented in a sovereign system?

Topics: The international human rights architecture; monitoring and reporting mechanisms; the politicisation of rights; selective enforcement and state exceptionalism.

Theoretical Lens: Constructivist norm diffusion (Finnemore and Sikkink's "norm life cycle"), read alongside Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) critiques of selective enforcement.

Analytical Lab: In pairs, students compare the treaty reservations entered by three or four states to a single human rights instrument (for example, CEDAW or the ICCPR), producing a 300-word analysis of any regional pattern in the reservations.

Reflexive Question: Can the principle of universality survive geopolitical selectivity in the enforcement of human rights?

Additional Literature 

• • Anghie, A. (2005). Imperialism, sovereignty and the making of international law. Cambridge University Press.

  • Hopgood, S. (2013). The endtimes of human rights. Cornell University Press.

  • Pease, K. K. S., & Belo, D. (2025). International organizations: Perspectives on global governance (7th ed.). Routledge.

MODULE V: Crisis and the Future of Global Governance

Week 11: Crisis Governance

Core Question: How do global institutions respond to systemic shocks?

Topics: Pandemics; financial contagions; climate shocks; emergency coordination mechanisms and the suspension of standard institutional workflows.

Theoretical Lens: Institutionalist crisis-response literature on emergency governance and punctuated institutional change.

Analytical Lab: Groups of 4 reconstruct an annotated timeline of one global crisis (for example, COVID-19 or the 2008 financial crisis), then add a 300-word assessment identifying where institutional coordination broke down.

Reflexive Question: Do systemic crises strengthen global governance architectures or expose their fundamental limits?

Additional Literature 

• • Drezner, D. W. (2014). The system worked: How the world stopped another great depression. Oxford University Press.

  • Helleiner, E. (2014). The status quo crisis: Global financial governance after the 2008 meltdown. Oxford University Press.

  • Kamradt-Scott, A. (2015). Managing global health security: The World Health Organization and disease outbreak control. Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Schwab, K., & Malleret, T. (2020). COVID-19: the great reset. World Economic Forum.

Week 12: Futures of Global Governance

Core Question: Is global governance fragmenting or evolving?

Topics: Multipolarity and institutional drift; the rise of minilateralism and parallel clubs; network governance; the decline of formal multilateral treaties.

Theoretical Lens: Minilateralism and network governance (Naím; Slaughter's "new world order" of government networks) as challenges to formal multilateralism.

Analytical Lab: Extended two-hour workshop. Groups of 4–5 each construct one scenario for the global governance architecture of 2035–2050, producing a 500-word scenario narrative plus a one-page scenario matrix. This lab is the direct working session for Assessment 4 (Global Governance Futures Report).

Reflexive Question: Is global governance still a coherent concept in a fragmented, multipolar world order?

Additional Literature 

• • Acharya, A. (2018). The end of American world order (2nd ed.). Polity.

  • Slaughter, A.-M. (2004). A new world order. Princeton University Press.

  • Weiss, T. G., & Wilkinson, R. (Eds.). (2023). International organization and global governance (3rd ed.). Routledge.

*** This course is designed to be adaptable. The weekly structure, assessment components, and reading load can be adjusted to suit the requirements of a particular higher education institution or the context of individual tutoring, and can be scaled to meet the demands of bachelor’s and master’s degree students alike. The analytical framework and intellectual ambitions of the course remain constant; the format is a starting point, not a constraint.

Updated – June 2026

I have done my utmost to ensure everything is correct, but if you spot any mistakes, please let me know, as I am only human after all. Additionally, if you have a recommendation for another excellent book that could enhance this course, please do share your suggestions.

Contact Form