Global governance has proliferated significantly in recent decades, resulting in multilevel, pluralistic, complex, entangled, and fragmented forms of governance. While the proliferation of global governance is relatively well documented, little is known about the agency of global governance, namely how it is differentiated and stratified as well as how divisions of labour have emerged in global society. Key to making global governance intelligible is then the careful examination of the very operators of globalization: the individuals as well as social and professional groups who practice global governance and are rooted in evolving national and transnational societies.

In this Global Governance Talk, Mikael Rask Madsen will go behind the façades of global institutions and focus on the deeper structures of global governance. In doing so, he will explain the emergence of new forms of power as they develop around new transnational power elites, operating in, around and beyond a growing number of international institutions and regimes.

Speaker

Mikael Rask Madsen is a Professor of Law at the University of Copenhagen and the Director of iCourts, the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for International Courts. His research addresses the role of legal institutions and professionals in globalization processes. More specifically, his current work address the special interaction between law and global integration, the role and power of lawyers in globalization, the increased importance of supranational legal institutions, and, lastly, the international transformation of law and authority towards networked expertise.

Discussant

Monique J. Beerli, Executive Director of the Global Governance Centre, Geneva Graduate Institute

Moderator

Annabelle Littoz-Monnet, Professor of International Relations/Political Sciences and Director of the Global Governance Centre, Geneva Graduate Institute