'Global governance' has become a key concept in the contemporary study of international politics, yet what the term means and how it works remains in question.

Governing the World: Cases in Global Governance takes an alternative approach to understanding the concept by exploring how global governance works in practice through a set of case studies on both classical issues of international relations such as security, labour and trade, and more contemporary concerns such as the environment, international development, and governing the internet.

The book explores the processes, practice and politics of global governance by taking a broad look at issues of human rights governance and focusing on detailed aspects of a topic such as torture and rendition to help explain how governance does, or does not, work to students and researchers of international politics alike. Bringing together a diverse and international group of scholars, each chapter responds to a set of questions as to what is being governed, how and who by and offers issue-specific case studies and recommended reading to develop a full understanding of the issue explored and what it means for global governance.