This book illuminates the central role played by international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) in the emergence and development of a comprehensive world polity.

The contributors argue that the enormous proliferation of INGOs since 1875 - including environmental organizations, human rights groups, bodies formed to regulate technical standards, and economic development organizations, among others - both reflects and contributes to the spread of global institutions and cultural principles based on models of rationality, individualism, progress, and universalism.

The contributors contrast this world-polity perspective to other approaches to understanding globalization, including realist and neo-realist analyses in the field of international relations, and world-system theory and interstate competition theory in sociology.