This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on an analysis of the difficult relationship between 'globalization' and 'public governance'. It draws on the traditional forms of linkages between law and the spontaneous generation of rules and standards, such as experience, which was closely related to state law. The book looks at the origin of the state in the 'Westphalian System' and emphasizes that this is only an intermediate step in a much longer ambivalent story. It emphasizes the requirements of global society's 'self-created laws' as being based on the self-organized response to needs for stability of expectations and solution of conflicts. Finally, the book explains the challenge of promoting deliberative democracy as a principle for the formation of a political consensus at European level.