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The transformations in the existing forms of governmentality and power regimes are deeply rooted within the political economy of advanced neoliberalism, having profound implications in the governance matrix. The new rationalities and instrumentalities of governance involve ‘governing without government’ (Rhodes, 1996) following the delegitimisation and deconstruction of the Keynesian Welfare State and the gradual enactment of what Jessop (2002) calls the Schumpeterian Competition State. This chapter throws open the play field for competing standpoints on governing the mega corporates. Various theorists consider that there is emptiness within the existing global regulatory armoury concerning the operational activities of TNCs. The convolution of ‘steering’ in this poly-centred, globalised societies with its innate uncertainty makes it tricky to keep an eye on the fix of ‘who actually steers whom’ and ‘with what means’. There also appears to be huge disinclination to spot systemic technical description of the evolving modern institutional structure of economic regulation in a composite and practical manner. Thus, the complexity of international issues, their overlapping nature and the turmoil within the arena in which they surface defy tidy theorizing about effective supervision.

This brings in the wider questions dealt with in the chapter – Is globalisation then a product of material conditions of fundamental technical and economic change or is it collective construct of an artifact of the means we have preferred to arrange political and economic activity? The new reflexive, self-regulatory and horizontal spaces of governance are getting modelled following the logic of competitive market relations whereby multiple formally equal actors (acting or aspiring to act as sources of authority) consult, trade and compete over the deployment of various instruments of authority both intrinsically and in their relations with each other (Shamir, 2008). The chapter also looks into these messy and fluid intersections to situate the key actors at the heart of processes of ‘rearticulation’ and ‘recalibration’ of different modes of governance which operates through a somewhat fuzzy amalgamation of the terrain by corporates, state hierarchy and networks all calibrating and competing to pull off the finest probable’s in metagovernance landscape. Unambiguously, this chapter seeks to elaborate on an institutional-discursive conceptualization of governance while stitching in and out of the complex terrain a weave of governances for modern leviathan – the global corporates.

Since much of civil society groups’ attention has been on pressurising specifically corporate companies to take up their responsibility towards society, it has been an area of focus that is attracting increasing debate. Today companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) ranges from ‘going green’ to supporting local charities. However, one thing is increasingly clear: it is not a choice any longer. Employees expect it, and companies need it. What used to be considered good public relations, or window dressing for community relations, is in fact linked to how well a company's employees perform. In fact, in a Global Workforce study done by Towers Perrin (2009) it was found that CSR is the third most important driver of employee engagement overall. For companies in the United States (US), an organisation's stature in the community is the second most important driver of employee engagement, and a company's reputation for social responsibility is also among the top 10 drivers. Importantly, this is one example of the increasing authoritative influence of a rising global civil society in international affairs.

This chapter centers on the global leadership of enterprises and their strategic business decisions as they interact with intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in constructing a supranational global governance regime to address complex global issues. As the world faces myriad issues that transcend state borders, negative externalities of globalization, such as climate change and pandemics, are straining the current system and threatening vulnerable populations. To better understand how firms address these challenges, we present a stakeholder framework involving multinational enterprises (MNEs) in a supranational context and examine their relationships with IGOs, international nongovernmental organizations, and NGOs. A typology of firm behavior is introduced to describe four strategic responses to increased pressure for corporate social responsibility that represent the extent to which firms take leadership roles. Case studies illustrate each of the four archetypes, namely the collaborator, the complier, the counteractor, and the combatant. The situational strength of global governance organizations can have an influence on which strategic response MNEs choose, and ultimately on how MNEs decide to engage in socially responsible behaviors. The interrelatedness of MNEs and global governance organizations will continue to grow as humankind grapples with complex global issues that threaten our way of life. The 4 Cs of MNE strategic responses inform how firms may choose to respond to these challenges.

This chapter provides a legal and theoretical overview of environmental PPMs articulated in private standards. It seeks to expand the debate about environmental PPMs, elucidating important dimensions to the issue from the perspective of global governance and international trade law. One of the arguments advanced in this chapter is that a comprehensive analysis of environmental PPMs should consider not only their role in what is regarded as trade barriers (governmental and market driven) but also their significance in global objectives such as the transition towards a green economy and sustainable patterns of consumption and production.

This chapter is based on an extensive literature review and doctrinal legal research.

This research shows that environmental PPMs represent a key issue in the context of the trade and environment relationship. For decades such measures have been thought of as being trade distortive and thus incompatible with WTO law. Although it seems clear now that they are not unlawful per se, their legal status remains unsettled. PPMs can be regarded as regulatory choices associated with a wide range of environmental concerns. However, in trade disputes, challenged measures involving policy objectives addressing production issues in the conservation of natural resources tend to focus on fishing/harvesting techniques. On the other hand, an important goal of Global Environmental Governance (GEG) is to incentivise sustainable consumption and production in order to achieve the transition to a green economy. In this sense, it can be argued that what are generally denominated as ‘PPMs’ in the WTO terminology can alternatively be regarded ‘SCPs’ in the language of environmental governance. Environmental PPMs are not only limited to state-based measures, such as import bans, tariff preferences, and governmental labelling schemes. Environmental PPMs may also amount to good corporate practices towards environmental protection and provide the rationale for numerous private environmental standards.

Most academic attention afforded to environmental-PPMs has focused on their impacts on trade or their legality under WTO law. Although legal scholars have already referred to the significance of such measures in the context of environmental governance, this issue has remained almost entirely unexplored. This chapter seeks to fill the gap in the literature in this regard. In particular, it addresses the relevance of environmental PPMs in the context of decentralised governance initiatives such as the UN Global Compact and private environmental standards.

Overall, this chapter assists in the understanding of the significance of environmental PPMs in the context of private environmental standards and other governance initiatives involving goals related to sustainable consumption and production. This chapter adds to the existing body of literature on the subject of PPMs in international trade and environmental governance.

In the era of financial capitalism, how to manage and hold global corporations accountable has become too multifarious a topic for a solitary focus of one theme, to sufficiently outline the whole gamut and implications of their activities. Capitalism is characterized by several well-organized antinomies and contrasts, with reflections of critical dualities that bear a resemblance to the primeval paradoxes of Hellenic philosophy. The challenge of governance of capitalism to be effectual entails breaking out of the entrenched precincts of habitual academic silos. Various standpoints while reasonably informative falls short to explain fully the complex interlinkages between the concept of global governance and the state’s capacity to put into effect its will on corporate power.

Spotlighting on assessing the praxis of political economy at global and national level and the corporate reality, this chapter aims to provide a renewed thrust for the focused recalibration of global regulatory regime. In this chapter, the inquiries take the regulation as the main explanandum for elucidation of the shifting governance framework.

All forms of organization have governance requirements and procedures. Often, these are quite similar despite the form and mission of the organization in question. They only consider governance in the organization environment and rarely look beyond their immediate stakeholders. In many corporations, the immediate stakeholders are even considered to be the investors and only those regardless of the apparency of other close stakeholders such as workers, customers, suppliers, authorities, and interest groups or non-governmental organizations. Even corporations with such narrow views and organizations with a broader stakeholder view are relatively unrealistic and are inappropriate in the modern global world, which we inhabit. Organizations of any form and size need to recognize both the need to consider radical changes in the modern global environment and the opportunities and possibilities presented by the current environment. Therefore, this chapter takes a broad approach and considers governance requirements in the modern world seen from a global perspective for all forms of organization. With global perspective, organizational governance is, here, called New Governance, and it includes the idea, that even the smallest decision can have a dramatic social, economic, or geopolitical impact in other parts of the world. The idea of New Governance is to put on the global lenses when making decisions to consider the potential effect – positive as well as negative – on the local as well as the global perspective, even on the unknown future and on future generations to come. Some may call this sustainable governance, but in this chapter, it is embedded in the New Governance as a concept, which can be nothing else but sustainable in its core idea. The future requirements for New Governance in any kind of organization are discussed, as the relationship between organizations and its global and future stakeholders, and how they form these requirements.

As social movements engage in transnational legal processes, they have articulated innovative rights claims outside the nation-state frame. This chapter analyzes emerging practices of legal mobilization in response to global governance through a case study of the “right to food sovereignty.” The claim of food sovereignty has been mobilized transnationally by small-scale food producers, food-chain workers, and the food insecure to oppose the liberalization of food and agriculture. The author analyzes the formation of this claim in relation to the rise of a “network imaginary” of global governance. By drawing on ethnographic research, the author shows how activists have internalized this imaginary within their claims and practices of legal mobilization. In doing so, the author argues, transnational food sovereignty activists co-constitute global food governance from below. Ultimately, the development of these practices in response to shifting forms of transnational legality reflects the enduring, mutually constitutive relationship between law and social movements on a global scale.

This chapter reviews the changing contours of education governance in today’s global environment in which governments participate in different educational agreements across various levels (supranational and global) or what is identified as the rise of “educational multistakeholderism.” Methodologically it draws up discursive evidence from previous studies in the form of a content analysis to show how the expansion of international regimes (institutions) into new issue areas, such as education, creates an overlap between the elemental (core) regime and other regimes. In exploring how regime theory has been applied to comparative and international education, this chapter draws attention to how new regimes and institutions arise and coexist alongside two or more classes (civil society, nongovernmental, intergovernmental, businesses, and state) of actors and its consequences for education governance. It suggests that regime complex(es) in education, which aims to facilitate educational cooperation and are composed of assemblages from several other regimes, are responsible for governing, steering, and coordinating education governance activities through the use of agreements, treaties, global benchmarks, targets, and indicators. It concludes by suggesting that regimes and regime complex(es) in education are constituted by different types of multistakeholder governance.

The chapter traces the genealogy of the Education for All (EFA) Movement understood as a global regime of educational governance between 1990 and 2005. The chapter sets out the achievements of EFA including some success in uniting diverse interests around a common set of goals. It will also discuss the key tensions related to the Northern and Western-led nature of EFA; tensions between the multilateral agencies over the leadership of EFA and the issues associated with the hegemonic status assumed by the World Bank; the tension between a wider EFA agenda and a narrower focus on a few quantifiable targets; and the associated tensions between more economistic and rights-based views of EFA. It will be argued that the development of these tensions can be understood in relation to different kinds of power linked to the international political economy and to the impact of other global regimes.