Re-thinking global governance and re-imagining the future

Stephen Gill
Stephen Gill

Critical Perspectives on the Crisis of Global Governance: Reimagining the Future (2015) is a new book of critical essays on global governance edited by York Distinguished Research Professor Stephen Gill and published by Palgrave MacMillan.

The book provides forward-looking, critical perspectives on the crisis of global governance. It features new, original and imaginative reflections by leading thinkers in gill booklaw, sociology, politics, economics and international studies. The essays interrogate global governance as it is and offer insight into what it ought to be.

“The book pairs with New Constitutionalism and World Order, published in March 2014 by Cambridge University Press. The books are fruits of a series of initiatives I took in 2010-11 at York in conjunction with a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded research workshop and a one-day landmark public event, which attracted over 250 people in mid-May 2011,” says Gill. “The events brought leading thinkers to reflect upon the impasse in global governance in the context of cascading global crises and to consider its potential futures. ”

Central to Critical Perspectives on the Crisis of Global Governance: Reimagining the Future are these questions: What are the principal forces, structures, movements and ideas shaping global governance under conditions of global crisis? And what are the likely prospects for transformations in the theory and practice of global governance?

In their answers, contributors highlight alternative imaginaries and social forces harnessing new organizational and political forms to counter and displace dominant strategies of rule. In so doing, they suggest that to meaningfully address intensifying economic, ecological and ethical crises of the early 21st century in ways more consistent with greater social justice, democracy and the integrity of the  biosphere will require far more effective, legitimate and far-sighted forms of global governance.

In addition to Gill, contributors to the book include: York Distinguished Research Professor Isabella Bakker; University of Warwick Professor and legal scholar Upendra Baxi; Distinguished University Professor Janine Brodie, Canada Research Chair in Political Economy and Social Governance at the University of Alberta; University of Victoria Professor of International Law and Relations Claire Cutler; Richard Falk, American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University; Saskia Sassen, the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and Centennial visiting Professor at the London School of Economics; and Scott Sinclair, senior research fellow with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

This is the fourth book in as many years for Gill. In 2014, he was the co-editor of New Constitutionalism and World Order. In 2013, he produced a new, enlarged edition of Globalization, Democratization and Multilateralism. It was selected as a “classic in international political economy”, one of the best books published by Palgrave Macmillan in the field in the last 30 years.

In 2012, Gill edited Global Crises and the Crisis of Global Leadership (Cambridge University Press), a collection on global leadership that features innovative and critical perspectives by scholars from international relations, political economy, medicine, law and philosophy, from North and South.

In addition to being a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University, Gill is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and was elected Distinguished Scholar in International Political Economy of the International Studies Association (2006). A prolific author, Gill’s previous publications include: The Global Political Economy (with David Law, 1988); American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (1991 & 2009); Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations (1993 & 2010); Power, Production and Social Reproduction (with York Professor Isabella Bakker, 2003); and Power and Resistance in the New World Order (2003 & 2008).