ABSTRACT
The author approaches the study of political economy, in general, and governance, in particular, with a clear understanding that historical and typological methods needed to be sensitive to three parameters. The study of a particular governance arrangement to capture, or at least be attuned to, the empirical spatial and diachronic boundaries of that arrangement. Historical materialists and historical structuralists have long highlighted the generative impacts of global and trans-national divisions of labor, as well as the trans-national and inter-temporal political relations that emerge from labor dynamics. Understanding global governance and the prospects of its democratization entails two steps. First, it involves identifying the characteristics of governance at the levels of divisions of labor, geopolitical spaces and social categories. Second, it involves figuring out how these are mutually constituted and nested. The author's work with typologies has enabled to explore specific instances of governance, such as global framework agreements, with a fuller understanding of their limitations and promise.
