Joseph Stieb's Reviews > Governing the World: The History of an Idea

A challenging but rewarding book about the evolution of the idea of global governance. Mazower approaches this question since 1815, spending a little time with the Concert of Europe before jumping into a variety of approaches to this problem. He looks at internationalism from the perspectives of communism, nationalism, liberalism, and technocratic elites. I actually found the last strain the most interesting, as you can see this idea playing out in new forms throughout modern history. This is the idea of taking global gov't out of the hands of mendacious, myopic politicians and handing it over to the new epistemic communities of lawyers, doctors, economists, and other scholars. This concept had major purchase before WWI, after WWII in the guise of modernization theory, in the EU, and in various aspects of global gov't today.

Probably the most insightful point in the book (also the thesis) is the idea that effective international governance historically depends on effective national government. The root of this idea for Mazower is the liberal internationalism of people like Mill and Mazzini, who wanted liberal, democratic nations that could interact on the basis of equality and mutual respect. Today we think of the nation-state and the ideology of nationalism as the main impediment to internationalism and global gov't, but it is important to remember that Mazzini and other liberal nationalists struggled largely against the Concert of Europe, a conservative, even regressive version of global gov't that sought to stifle reform and revolution at the national level. Thus, Mazzini envisioned a symbiosis between national reform and an international gov't that would facilitate domestic change rather than block it. Following this point, Mazower claims that Roosevelt's New Deal state (and the broader model of the center-left welfare state of the mid-20th century) did a similar thing regarding the UN and other global regimes. For example, the New Deal state sheltered the American people from the impact of unrestrained flows of goods and people from the world, providing them with economic security at home and sustaining a baseline of popular support for active US engagement in global institutions. The rise of neoliberalism stripped away much of that cushion, buffeting domestic populations with global competition and economic vulnerability to things like population movements and financial shocks, turning populations against global institutions and globalism more broadly. I thought this was a fascinating concept, and it was one of the few non-hysterical critiques of neoliberalism I've encountered.

This is an enlightening but tough book. I'm surprised Penguin published it; the language is difficult and there's minimal effort to fill the reader in on important contextual material. It would be appropriate for advanced undergrads or grad students, and anyone interested (and already fairly informed) on global governance will probably find it useful. I will definitely come back to it for the teaching of int'l politics and possibly for research as well.