Embedded Theorizing: Perspectives on Globalization and Global Governance

In the face of a vast, but highly heterogeneous literature, this paper examines the factors that shape different scientific perspectives on the loosely bounded set of phenomena addressed by the terms 'globalization' and 'global governance'. Based on the secondary analysis of research funded by the German Volkswagen Foundation, the paper shows first how the disciplinary paradigms of economics, law, and the social sciences lead to different perspectives on a shared object. In a second step, intra-disciplinary differences in perspective are analyzed. Based on a comprehensive review of the relevant social science literature, it is first shown how changes in world politics since World War II are reflected in the scientific perspective on globalization and global governance. In a final section, different perspectives of American and European scholars are then linked to differences in geopolitical context that have developed since the end of the Cold War on both sides of the Atlantic. The findings alert scholars to the contingent nature of their ways of perceiving, evaluating, and studying a given scientific object.