The rise of global policy and transnational administration

Abstract

The sovereign domain of policy making and administration of the last century is increasingly supplanted by multiple public spheres and policy communities carving out new transnational spaces of policy making and public administration. The old methodological nationalism or ‘Westphalian grammar’ no longer exclusively describes a proliferation of delegated and decentralized policy and administration. This new global policy and transnational administration includes a diverse set of institutions, actors, and individuals interacting with non-state actors and other networks to help states and the global community respond to its most pressing problems. Global policy problems require scholars and practitioners to move past their sector-specific foci and narrow disciplinary (and nation-focused) endeavours to create space for new disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological emphases in which the boundaries between domestic and global are neither finite nor clearly defined.