The emergence of global governance in several key areas calls into question conventional understandings of world politics in terms of conflicts of interests between sovereign states under conditions of anarchy. At the same time the new phenomena of anti-globalisation demonstrations, transnational social movements and an emergent global civil society point to developments in international relations that are both of profound importance and analytically complex. This volume's starting point is the hypothesis that one way of thinking about these processes is in terms of a dichotomy between the politics of governance and the politics of resistance. Leading scholars from several perspectives reflect on the usefulness of this dichotomy and consider its application to several crucial areas of international relations.