Overview

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.

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9781108818650

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'This superb book is essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of global governance. Grigorescu effectively debunks the myth that international organizations were fully controlled by member states before they opened up to non-state actors in recent years. His historical evidence rather suggests that the 'publicness' of international organizations has been always a matter of degree. Grigorescu's careful analysis also alerts us to the crucial role that domestic political ideologies play in shaping global governance, a factor too often neglected in the literature.' Jens Steffek, Technische Universitat Darmstadt 'The Ebb and Flow of Global Governance is a much-needed addition to the study of international institutions. Grigorescu argues convincingly that our ideal types of institutions are the exception and not the rule, challenging existing conceptualizations of global institutions to better understand evolution and change in global governance. Conceptually innovative and empirically rich, this study will lead towards greater understanding of past and future changes in global governance.' Jon Pevehouse, University of Wisconsin, Madison 'This rich volume introduces global governance as a spectrum from intergovernmental to nongovernmental. Its historical perspective on the changing governance of health, labor and technical standards shows that institutional change has never been unilinear but has fluctuated along this spectrum. Grigorescu neatly connects the domestic and international by showing how shifts in global governance are shaped by the domestic ideologies and institutions of powerful states. The book is a gold mine of empirical observations and intriguing ideas; unlike its subject matter, the book flows without ebbing.' Duncan Snidal, University of Oxford

Author Information

Alexandru Grigorescu is a professor of political science at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Democratic Intergovernmental Organizations? (Cambridge, 2015). Prior to his academic career he worked as a diplomat in the Romanian Foreign Ministry and at the United Nations.

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