Book Review: Global Public Governance. Toward World Government?
| Author | Robert Marshall |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00207020221143288 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
state actors, rather than the primarily domestic actors that Pratt examines. Pratt spends a
few paragraphs doing this in the conclusion, where he examines normative change in
climate governance (169–170), but this is an obvious area of future research and theory
testing.
Overall, this is an impressive first book and an important contribution to scholarship
analyzing the post-9/11 era.
Sorpong Peou
Global Public Governance. Toward World Government?
New Jersey: World Scientific Publishing, 2022. 531 pp. US$168.00 (cloth); US$88.00 (paper)
ISBN: 978-9-811-25892-3
Reviewed by: Robert Marshall (rmarshal@ryerson.ca), Toronto Metropolitan University,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
DOI: 10.1177/00207020221143288
Globalization has become one of the most prominent, and at times controversial and
challenging, features of contemporary life, often seeming like an epic conflict between
the churning fluidity of cross-border flows (whether they be trade, finance, illegal drugs,
peoples, information, microbes, viruses/germs, or environmental degradation) and the
inertia of the nation state anchored in its unchanging territory. This often leads to
intense debates about which of these forces will, or should, win out in the long run. As a
part of this, many have debated whether the nation state is dead or dying. If so, what has
potentially risen in its place? Global Public Governance, by Toronto Metropolitan
University’s Dr. Sorpong Peou, is the work of a senior scholar drawing upon his years
of studying, researching, writing, and teaching in the field of International Relations
and Global Political Economy. The book sets out to address this very question. Or-
ganized around a theme of global governance, Global Public Governance explores the
importance of states and nonstate actors alike, each of whom, Peou argues, is seeking to
provide global public goods through various forms of collective action. Dividing his
book into four sections—conceptual and theoretical issues, security and legal di-
mensions, social and cultural dimensions, and economic and environmental
dimensions—Peou uses each to explore eight global subsystems—global security,
human rights, global criminal justice, global health, global education, global finance,
global trade, and the global environment. As articulated in the introduction, “Global
Public Governance seeks to answer the question of effectiveness by engaging theo-
retical, policy and empirical issues”(xxiv). Peou further notes that it is “important to
ask an analytical question about the extent to which the system has been effective and
why”(xxv).
1
1. Emphasis in original.
Book Reviews 531
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