ABSTRACT
Just as in the mid-1970s, when political science spoke of ‘political overload’, ‘failure of the state’ and ‘ungovernability’, limits to policy-making or, to be more precise, limits to the state are being discussed. This problem of government action is even more evident at the level of international regimes, which are considered to be ‘global domestic policy without a global government’. Governments and international institutions ignored the protests and the growth of transnational and civil-society groups, which received little media interest. Lack of political control and legitimacy at the local and national level is countered by participation of civil-society groups in advisory committees, by public–private partnerships and the delegation of formerly public tasks to quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations or private institutions. The attractiveness of concepts such as modernisation and sustainable development as well as civil society and global governance arises from problem constellations where traditional structures, ways of thinking and approaches to problem-solving do not seem to hold appropriate solutions any longer.
