ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the tensions between growing fragmentation and creative disruption that may lead to new solutions and ways of thinking about the provision of global public goods. The complicated structure of the global political and social space lacks the kinds of synergistic relationships that would make this structure something more than the sum of its parts, and provide coherence, order and patterning in the anarchic global reality. The idea of competition has always been dominant in visions of the anarchical international sphere. International relations started its very existence as a science analysing war and peace and quests for power and prestige – it is as old as humanity. The concept is best described by reference to the processes in which it manifests itself: chemistry, molecular biology, ecology, genetics and physics all offer numerous accounts confirming synergy as non-linear mechanics organising organic and physical life.
