Movement towards political cooperation among transnational actors
Global governance refers to institutions that coordinate the behavior of transnational actors, facilitate cooperation, resolve disputes, and alleviate collective action problems. Global governance broadly entails making, monitoring, and enforcing rules. Within global governance, a variety of types of actors – not just states – exercise power. 
In contrast to the traditional meaning of governance, the term "global governance" is used to denote the regulation of interdependent relations in the absence of an overarching political authority. The best example of this is the international system or relationships between independent states. 
The concept of global governance began in the mid-19th century. It became particularly prominent in the aftermath of World War I, and more so after the end of World War II. Since World War II, the number of international organizations has increased substantially. The number of actors (whether they be states, non-governmental organizations, firms, and epistemic communities) who are involved in governance relationships has also increased substantially.
Various terms have been used for the dynamics of global governance, such as complex interdependence, international regimes, multilevel governance, global constitutionalism, and ordered anarchy.
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Definition.
The term world governance is broadly used to designate all regulations intended for organization and centralization of human societies on a global scale. The Forum for a new World Governance defines world governance simply as "collective management of the planet". Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations, was one of the first organizations to promote global governance.
Traditionally, "government" has been associated with "governing", or with political authority, institutions, and, ultimately, control. "Governance" denotes a process through which institutions coordinate and control independent social relations, and that have the ability to enforce their decisions. However, "governance" is also used to denote the regulation of interdependent relations in the absence of an overarching political authority, such as in the international system. Some now speak of the development of "global public policy".
Adil Najam, a scholar on the subject at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University has defined global governance simply as "the management of global processes in the absence of global government." According to Thomas G. Weiss, director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center (CUNY) and editor (2000–05) of the journal "", "'Global governance'—which can be good, bad, or indifferent—refers to concrete cooperative problem-solving arrangements, many of which increasingly involve not only the United Nations of states but also 'other UNs,' namely international secretariats and other non-state actors." In other words, global governance refers to the way in which global affairs are managed.
Global governance has also been defined as "the complex of formal and informal institutions, mechanisms, relationships, and processes between and among states, markets, citizens and organizations, both inter- and non-governmental, through which collective interests on the global plane are articulated, rights and obligations are established, and differences are mediated".
The definition is flexible in scope, applying to general subjects such as global security and order or to specific documents and agreements such as the World Health Organization's Code on the Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes. The definition applies whether the participation is bilateral (e.g. an agreement to regulate usage of a river flowing in two countries), function-specific (e.g. a commodity agreement), regional (e.g. the Treaty of Tlatelolco), or global (e.g. the Non-Proliferation Treaty). These "cooperative problem-solving arrangements" may be formal, taking the shape of laws or formally constituted institutions for a variety of actors (such as state authorities, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), private sector entities, other civil society actors, and individuals) to manage collective affairs. They may also be informal (as in the case of practices or guidelines) or ad hoc entities (as in the case of coalitions).
However, a single organization may take the nominal lead on an issue, for example the World Trade Organization (WTO) in world trade affairs. Therefore, global governance is thought to be an international process of consensus-forming which generates guidelines and agreements that affect national governments and international corporations. Examples of such consensus would include WTO policies on health issues.
Academic tool or discipline.
In the light of the unclear meaning of the term "global governance" as a concept in international politics, some authors have proposed defining it not in substantive, but in disciplinary and methodological terms. For these authors, global governance is better understood as an analytical concept or optic that provides a specific perspective on world politics different from that of conventional international relations theory. Thomas G. Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson have even argued that global governance has the capacity to overcome some of the fragmentation of international relations as a discipline particularly when understood as a set of questions about the governance of world orders. Other authors conceptualized global governance as a field of practice in which diverse stakeholders, such as public, private, and supra-governmental actors can compete for influence about issues that are not bound to national boundaries. This conceptualization allows to better understand the principles of exclusions of specific stakeholders from the negotiation field as some actors lack the economic, social, cultural and symbolic resources required to gain enough influence.
History.
While attempts of intergovernmental coordination of policy-making can be traced back to ancient times, comprehensive search for effective formats of international coordination and cooperation truly began after the end of the WWI. It was during that post-war period that some of the still existing international institutions (or their immediate predecessors) were founded. Among thinkers who made major contributions to the period discussions on the goals and forms of international governance and policy coordination were J.M. Keynes with his "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" and G. Cassel with his works on the post-war development of the global monetary system.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of a long period of international history based on a policy of balance of powers. Since this historic event, the planet has entered a phase of geostrategic breakdown. The national-security model, for example, while still in place for most governments, is gradually giving way to an emerging collective conscience that extends beyond the restricted framework it represents.
In its initial phase, world governance was able to draw on themes inherited from geopolitics and the theory of international relations, such as peace, defense, geostrategy, diplomatic relations, and trade relations. But as globalization progresses and the number of interdependencies increases, the global level is also highly relevant to a far wider range of subjects, such as climate change, environmental protection and sustainability in general.
In the 20th century, the risks associated with nuclear fission raised global awareness of environmental threats. The 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty prohibiting atmospheric nuclear testing marked the beginning of the globalization of environmental issues. Environmental law began to be modernized and coordinated with the Stockholm Conference (1972), backed up in 1980 by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. The Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer was signed and ratified in 1985. In 1987, 24 countries signed the Montreal Protocol which imposed the gradual withdrawal of CFCs.
Methods.
Global governance can be roughly divided into four stages:
Global goal-setting.
A "new central approach in global governance" is "global goal-setting". The Sustainable Development Goals (to be achieved during the years 2015 to 2030) are one example of global goal setting. Previously, another attempt at "global governance by goal-setting" were the Millennium Development Goals from the year 2000 to 2015. Earlier examples of global goal-setting include the "Plan of Action of the 1990 World Summit for Children" or the "first Development Decade that dates as far back as 1961". Such governance relies on goals that are not legally binding, leave much national leeway, and do not come with strong institutional arrangements.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were "expected to have a major impact on the United Nations system" which is a key actor within the global governance concept. However, the SDGs have broadly failed to integrate global policies and to bring international organizations together. By and large, the SDGs have not become a shared set of connecting goals, and their uptake in global governance remains limited.
The UN Sustainable Development Goal 16 on "peace, justice and strong institutions" has a target and indicator regarding global governance (to be achieved by 2030). The wording of this Target 16.8 is: "Broaden and strengthen the participation of developing countries in the institutions of global governance." The target has a single indicator which is the "Proportion of members and voting rights of developing countries in international organizations".
Research published in 2023 has shown that the SDGs have not lived up to expectations that they would help integrate the system of global governance. The SDGs are not taken up by a large enough group of international organizations, and organizations continue to cherry-pick SDGs that best fit their interest. In particular, international organizations often cherry-pick SDG 8 (on decent work and economic growth), SDG 9 (on industry and innovation), and SDG 12 (on consumption and production).
International bureaucracies.
International bureaucracies (in the form of intergovernmental treaty secretariats) exert autonomous influence in various domains of global affairs. An example of an intergovernmental treaty secretariat is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Scholars are finding that international bureaucracies can be actors with considerable agency and can have important tasks in contemporary global policy-making. They rely on soft modes of governance to affect global and domestic policy-making due to their lack of coercive power compared to state actors that can enforce legally binding rules. 
International bureaucracies can work as "orchestrators" that interact with non-state actors, such as civil society groups, non-profit entities, or the private sector to encourage national governments to agree on a more ambitious response to collective action problems in the realm of global environmental politics. "Orchestration" can be understood as an indirect mode of governance whereby a given actor (e.g. international organizations or national governments) mobilizes one or more intermediaries to take influence on a certain target group.
As of 2022, there is a general trend towards the involvement of non-state actors into global policy-making. For example, new alliances are being formed between intergovernmental treaty secretariats and non-state actors. 
Global sustainability governance is marked by a highly fragmented system of distinct clusters of international organizations, along with states and other actors. 
Others.
World authorities including international organizations and corporations achieve deference to their agenda through different means. Authority can derive from institutional status, expertise, moral authority, capacity, or perceived competence.
Global environmental governance.
The most pressing transboundary environmental challenges include climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation. Solving these problems now warrants coordination across a variety of institutions featuring many actors and encompassing different levels and scales of governance. The field of global environmental governance has been characterized as “one of the institutionally most dynamic areas in world politics regarding the number of international institutions and actors that have emerged over the past three decades”. 
Following the growth of international environmental institutions from the 1970s, intergovernmental and transnational environmental governance has rapidly proliferated over the last few decades. As a result of this proliferation, domains of institutional competence increasingly overlap. This compounds the fragmentation and institutional complexity of global environmental governance, but also creates opportunities for productive interactions among institutions.
The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) coordinates the environmental activity of countries in the UN. For example, UNEP has played a vital role as a coordinator and catalyzer for an array of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). UNEP was envisioned to take up a leading role in more centralized global environmental governance. However, UNEP has been widely considered as a weak international organization, as many institutional arrangements concerned with regulating environmental matters have become increasingly independent of UNEP over the past decades, resembling a very loosely and sometimes poorly coordinated network. Moreover, some opponents have doubted the effectiveness of a centralized overarching institutional framework to govern global environmental governance and law.
The International Institute for Sustainable Development proposed a reform agenda for global environmental governance (GEG) in 2006. They formulated five goals that "can be the basis of a shared global vision for the global environmental governance system": leadership, knowledge ("science should be the authoritative basis of sound environmental policy"), coherence (see also policy coherence for development), performance, mainstreaming ("incorporate environmental concerns and actions within other areas of international policy and action, and particularly so in the context of sustainable development").
Political scientists have said that structural changes