Power in Global Governance: Power without Rulers?

Abstract Is there global governance beyond the State? What kind of power emerges in a global arena? In contrast to the neorealist position, which stresses the role of states in the constitution of international power, many Foucauldian interpretations have emerged that emphasize the role of power networks that are constituted through an episteme. In this article I will focus on global governance through a Platonic notion of power and the relationship Plato establishes between the power of norms and rules. I argue that global governance should be understood as a network of power with different intermediations, based on a global constitution taken as a cognitive frame behind the international legal order. In this sense, new forms of power appear, and are different from the traditional state power activity, based on settled practices and norms. My main thesis is that there can be power without a clear ruler, but there is no power without rational order (based on norms, dispositions, and communicative intermediations), therefore, I examine which kind of rational order appears in global governance in accordance to Plato’s account of power and some remarks recently made by Byung-Chul Han.