Description
The theoretical and historical point of departure for global governance scholarship is the nation-state: global governance continues to be defined as “governance without government”, and the story of the rise of the contemporary global governance system is told as the retreat or decline of the state. This paper argues that it would be more productive to think about global governance as governance at a global scale. Scale is the level at which governance objects are rendered, understood, and acted on; successful scale-making projects abstract from specific events to enable new forms and practices of governance. Instead of being linked to a particular set of actors, activities or issues, scale allows us to reimagine global governance as a form of rule predicated on an understanding of the world as one place. This suggests several new directions for research. First, that we attend to how global governance objects are scaled up from historically specific data and events, and consider what is marginalised or omitted from those renderings. Second, that we consider the processes of technoscientific knowledge formation and contestation that are bound up in scale-making projects. Third, that we revisit the state as an important site for agency and innovation in global governance.
