Governance Without Government: Order and Change in World Politics

Rosenau distinguishes governance from government. Government implies formal authority, legitimate decisions, and enforcement capacity. Governance, by contrast, refers to activities backed by shared goals that may or may not derive from legal or formally prescribed responsibilities. This distinction allows the volume to explore how order can be maintained in world politics without a centralized world government. The concept was influential in shaping subsequent scholarship on global governance, though critics note the volume itself is not organized around a single argument about governance without government—its chapters range across diverse topics including the Concert of Europe, the Westphalian system, and democratization.

Governance Without Government builds on Rosenau's earlier theoretical framework in Turbulence in World Politics (1990). In that book, Rosenau argued that global politics had bifurcated into state-centric and multi-centric worlds, generating structural turbulence. The edited volume applies and extends this concern with order and change in a system lacking centralized authority. Rosenau's introductory chapter and his concluding chapter on micro sources of global order connect the volume to his broader trilogy on world politics, which continued with Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier (1997) and Distant Proximities (2003).

K.J. Holsti's chapter examines the Concert of Europe as a historical case of polyarchy in nineteenth-century international politics. The chapter asks how governance functioned without government in a multipolar system where no single hegemon could impose order. The Concert's norms and consultative practices provided a form of governance sustained by shared goals rather than enforcement. This historical case illustrates the volume's broader question: whether order in an anarchic system can be maintained through institutionalized practices and norms rather than centralized authority. The chapter has been cited as a significant contribution to thinking about governance without formal hierarchy.

Mark Zacher's chapter, titled 'The decaying pillars of the Westphalian temple,' examines the erosion of the norms and institutions that constituted the Westphalian order. He identifies pillars such as sovereignty, territoriality, and non-intervention, and analyzes how these have been challenged by changing international practices. The chapter contributes to the volume's broader theme of change and order in world politics by examining how the foundational principles of the state system are being transformed. The analysis of Westphalian decay has become a standard reference in discussions of sovereignty's transformation under globalization.

Oran Young's chapter, 'The effectiveness of international institutions: hard cases and critical variables,' directly addresses whether institutions can govern without government. He examines conditions under which international regimes achieve their intended effects and identifies variables that distinguish effective from ineffective institutions. The chapter provides a framework for assessing institutional performance in an anarchic system, asking whether shared goals and procedural arrangements can substitute for enforcement capacity. This contribution connects the volume to the broader neoliberal institutionalist research program that dominated international relations theory in the 1980s and 1990s.

The book is often cited as if its entire argument concerns governance without government, but a critical assessment notes this is a misreading. The volume's chapters cover topics as diverse as the Concert of Europe, Westphalian decay, neoclassical economics, Ibn Khaldun, European Community politics, and democratization. The governance without government concept is the source of the book's popularity and title, but it is not the central organizing theme of every contribution. The phrase functions as a provocation that some authors engage directly and others treat as background context.