ABSTRACT
The post-Cold War period has seen a profound transformation of the international order. Superpower rivalry and ideological conflict have given way to globalization as the major material factor shaping international relations. Its impact, however, has been ambiguous. Globalization has produced both: on the one hand, conflict and fragmentation, but, on the other, also new forms of institutional order. While especially in the southern part of the globe globalization has been a major source of violence and conflict, often with ethno-nationalist and religious overtones, it is also the driving force behind the emergence of a system of global governance and the concomitant vertical and horizontal differentiation of international institutions. Global governance refers to a “system of interlocking (mostly, but not exclusively, governmental) institutions, which regulate the behavior of states and other international actors in different issue areas of the world politics” (Rittberger and Bruhle 2001: 2). Vertical institutional growth is mainly the result of new intermediary institutions linking the regional level with the global and national levels of policymaking, while horizontal growth finds its expression in regime-building in policy fields such as security, trade, finance, environment, migration, human rights, and so on. Although the growing web of international institutions is more “thickly” developed in the Triad, consisting of the world’s economic core regions in North America, EU-Europe and East Asia, institution-building – fragmentation and armed conflicts notwithstanding – has also taken place in the global south.
