Mapping the Meanings of Global Governance: A Conceptual Reconstruction of a Floating Signifier

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.

The Spread and Domestication of the Term “Austerity:” Evidence from the Portuguese and Spanish Parliaments

“…It is for this reason that Béland and Cox (, 429) argue that ambiguous and polysemic ideas can have the capacity to act as “coalition magnets:” they can appeal to different individuals and groups and used strategically by policy entrepreneurs. For instance, Hofferberth () shows that the conceptual vagueness and ambiguity of “global governance” have constituted it as a “floating signifier”—that is a deluge of different and multiple meanings and interpretations. Similarly, Jabko () suggests that the EU has chosen “market” as a key concept for building power at the European level.…”

“Confusion is a fundamental state of mind”—On the peculiar intellectual career of global governance in international relations

“…Consequentially, references to global governance without specifying which meanings are meant to be invoked only add to and reproduce the general confusion. 2 While there are contributions discussing global governance and its different meanings in a self-reflective fashion (Hewson and Sinclair, 1999;Ba and Hoffmann, 2005;Dingwerth and Pattberg, 2006;Hofferberth, 2015;Pegram and Acuto, 2015), most authors, for practical reasons, sidestep such debates and refer to global governance to make an argument and advance research agendas by assuming that readers at least share a somewhat similar understanding of the concept. 3 Given the wide range of different meanings in use, however, such assumptions become problematic as global governance is, among other things, referred to as a policy notion with its origins in the practitioners' discourse (Weiss, 2000), as an analytical tool to study and assess scale and dimensions of global change (Dingwerth and Pattberg, 2006), as well as an empirical condition reflecting how world politics has changed (Karns and Mingst, 2010).…”

“…It is argued that different understandings reflect ideal types in a matrix constituted by varying degrees of normative and/or analytical commitment as well as differing assessments on the relationship between IR and global governance based on one's view of the discipline as such. Put differently, all contributions to and applications of global governance in one way or another, explicitly or implicitly, position themselves along these lines (Dingwerth and Pattberg, 2006;Hofferberth, 2015). While such positioning has immediate consequences for one's research and findings in and of global governance, in the absence of definitive arguments for one or the other, none of the understandings can claim superiority as the concept is constituted by different commitments (Jackson, 2015: 946).…”

“…Introduced by some as an analytical concept for studying world politics, its original purpose according to others was to provide insight into and explanation for change (Rosenau, 1992). Thus, as has been pointed out by Dingwerth and Pattberg (2006) and Hofferberth (2015), global governance from its very beginning never was a monolithic bloc. Today, references to global governance continuously imply different meanings simply because different scholars attach different commitments to it.…”

“…Drawing on Dingwerth and Pattberg (2006) and Hofferberth (2015), the next section reconstructs different understandings of global governance currently present in the discourse. As such, global governance is advanced interchangeably as a policy notion, an empirical condition and an analytical tool.…”