ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book brings together leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to assess and critically reflect upon the interplay between politics and law in an increasingly transnationalized global political economy. It reveals that contractual governance is not only dominant in regulating the global political economy, but it is a crucial vector of power determining winners and losers and 'who gets what' in global commercial and economic relations. The book seeks to capture the significance of contract as a site of both contestation and cooperation between public and private powers as historically grounded, but specific to the contemporary global political economy. It establishes clearly that private actors such as lead firms in global value chains or international lawyers and arbitrators or transnational agro-corporations have evolved into authoritative private actors setting up, creating, and enforcing transnational contractual relationships.
