The historical processes of establishing institutions of global governance and the nature of global polity

I am interested in what the history of international institutions since the Industrial Revolution can tell us about the current prospects for creating a more egalitarian – a more substantively democratic – global polity (see Murphy 1994, 1998). This chapter summarizes some of those lessons in the context of the programs of political action in response to globalization that have interested many of my students over the last few years.