As countries come to terms with the global financial crisis, their citizens become more assertive in many parts of the world. Challenges to conventional wisdom on economic governance are accompanied by the popular rejection of archaic systems of state government. At the global level new economic and political forces challenge former patterns of international domination. In these contexts appropriate governance is the imperative of the age. Economic globalisation in particular requires reassessments of state and corporate governance, as well as reconsideration of how the international political economy is governed – or not governed. [Publisher's abstract]