Mapping the Meanings of Global Governance: A Conceptual Reconstruction of a Floating Signifier
| Published date | 01 January 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829814561539 |
| Author | Matthias Hofferberth |
| Date | 01 January 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Forum: Global Governance in the Interregnum |
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2015, Vol. 43(2) 598 –617
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829814561539
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MILLENNIUM
Journal of International Studies
Mapping the Meanings
of Global Governance: A
Conceptual Reconstruction
of a Floating Signifier
Matthias Hofferberth
University of Texas at San Antonio, USA
Abstract
Ever since global governance was introduced to the discipline of International Relations (IR),
it has been criticised for its conceptual vagueness and ambiguity. In fact, how to even speak
and think global governance – whether as a mere description of world politics, as a theoretical
perspective to explain it, or as a normative notion to be realised through global policy – remains
unclear. The article argues that this confusion exists not because of a lack of debate but rather
because of the multiple understandings of global governance that are continuously advanced and
implicitly reproduced within these debates. These different, partially overlapping and partially
contradicting understandings constitute global governance as a ‘floating signifier’. It is argued that
precisely because of this, global governance has obtained its ‘celebrity status’ within and beyond
IR. Advancing a singular definition of global governance thus appears to be an arbitrary exercise
as well as unnecessary disciplining. Rather than reducing global governance to a singular meaning,
the debate in and of global governance would benefit from more self-reflected awareness as to
when and how different concepts and understandings of it are invoked. To provide a framework
for this, the article structures the different meanings of global governance by offering a taxonomy
of different global governance applications.
Keywords
Global governance, IR theory, sociology of the discipline
Sorting out how people think about global governance is a challenge.
[Timothy J. Sinclair, Global Governance]
Corresponding author:
Matthias Hofferberth, Department of Political Science and Geography, University of Texas at San Antonio,
One UTSA Circle, San Antonio, TX 78249-1644, USA.
Email: matthias.hofferberth@utsa.edu
561539MIL0010.1177/0305829814561539Millennium: Journal of International StudiesHofferberth
research-article2014
Forum: Global Governance in the Interregnum
Hofferberth 599
1. James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel, eds., Governance without Government. Order
and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
2. James N. Rosenau, ‘Governance, Order, and Change in World Politics’, in Rosenau and
Czempiel, Governance without Government, 1.
3. Thomas G. Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson, ‘Global Governance to the Rescue: Saving
International Relations?’, Global Governance 20, no. 1 (2014), 31–3.
4. See among others, Lawrence Finkelstein, ‘What is Global Governance?’, Global Governance
1, no. 3 (1995); Robert Latham, ‘Politics in a Floating World. Toward a Critique of Global
Governance’, in Approaches to Global Governance Theory, eds. Martin Hewson and Timothy
J. Sinclair (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), and Craig Murphy, ‘Global
Governance: Poorly Done, Poorly Understood’, International Affairs 76, no 4 (2000).
5. Finkelstein, ‘What is Global Governance?’, 368.
6. Thomas G. Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson, ‘Rethinking Global Governance? Complexity,
Authority, Power, Change’, International Studies Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2014): 207–8.
Introduction
More than twenty years ago, Rosenau and Czempiel introduced the idea of global gov-
ernance to the discipline of International Relations and its study of world politics.1
Perceiving ground-shaking real-world transformations such as ‘hegemons declining’,
‘borders disappearing’, and ‘authorities being challenged by citizens in the squares of
the world’s cities’2, many IR scholars felt that the 1990s marked a turning point in his-
tory. Enthusiastic and anxious at the same time, the emergence of global governance
during this time can in retrospect be understood as a twofold challenge. First, in disci-
plinary terms, conventional ways of studying global problems were criticised. Second,
in political terms, measures designed to solve them were deemed to be failing. Eager to
challenge dominant views on and of world politics at a time when real-world events
seemed to clash with conventional wisdom, global governance fell on fertile ground,
both intellectually and politically, and quickly became attractive, in and beyond IR.3
The enduring attractiveness of global governance can be explained by the fact that it
emphasised the growing complexity of global issues and their solutions and tried to
provide answers on how to study them. Both academics and policymakers were keen to
relate to the notion of increased complexity of ‘the world out there’ since both struggled
with it. Because of different speakers and different audiences, however, multiple under-
standings of global governance emerged which continue to influence the debate today.
Ever since the early ‘mission statements’, different authors, some sympathetic to global
governance and some not, have criticised its conceptual vagueness and ambiguity as
well as its normative content.4 In fact, with global change becoming all the rage, it
seemed that compromises in terms of clarity and conciseness were made to the point
that ‘global governance appears to be virtually anything’.5 This state of conceptual
vagueness, although being discussed manifold and fierce, continues to haunt the debates
in and of global governance to the present day as confusion persists and the slippery
nature of global governance remains its most notorious feature.6
In this article, I argue that the slippery nature of global governance originates in the
simple fact that it is continuously (and deliberately) used to imply different things. It will
be argued that there is not one concept of global governance lacking specificity but many
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