Sharing sovereignty for policy outcomes

After the hyperglobalists declared the demise of the nation state in the early 1990s, more sober and qualified analysis soon followed by authors defending its continued relevance. They stressed that states remain central actors in international politics even if they must share their sovereignty with non-state actors. Much of the debate dominating the globalisation literature now revolves around the extent to which states and non-state actors share authority, and how they do this, rather than whether one possesses it and the other does not. Rather than saying that regulation is now driven by non-state actors, that authority for policy-making has moved from the public to the private sector, or that regardless of states’ regulatory preferences the market is in charge, the contributions in this issue explore some of the many ways in which state and market actors share authority for policy outcomes.