PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

What is behind the rise of discourses around global challenges? The introduction presents a rationale as well as a conceptual framework for the study of these challenges in world politics It fleshes out a constructivist approach that analyzes the morphing of issues into global challenges by treating them not as a given but as an improbable development that stands in need of explication. For this purpose, four modes of construction—universalizing, bundling, upscaling, and creating urgency—are identified to probe into the ways that global challenges are brought into being, in both a historical and a contemporary perspective and by a variety of actors such as nation-states, international organizations, scholars, and cities. To cover acts of contestation by these actors, a distinction between challengers and incumbents is made that sheds light on power struggles in world politics. Finally, the 11 contributions to the volume, which operationalize the challengers/incumbents distinction and the four modes of construction, are briefly outlined.