Liberalism Constructed and Contested: Politics, Governance, and the Law

Abstract

At first sight, politics, governance, and the law seem distinct and easily categorized as separate disciplines within the social sciences. Yet when considering them from global perspectives, they are ultimately contested, as are the relations among them. Generically, politics might be seen as the continuous self-design of a polity through ways of gaining and arranging power; governance as the way in which governments might function effectively and simultaneously, when conceived of globally, as transnational and global regimes beyond national realms of sovereignty; and law as a social technique by which societies and the international community choose and live by the norms they have reason to value.