Power in Concert: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Global Governance. By Jennifer Mitzen (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2013) 264 pp. $90.00 cloth $32.50 paper Unavailable

The study of global governance has grown tremendously in recent years, in part because the concept embraces many facets of contemporary international relations (ir) and efforts to deal with the variety of issues and problems that transcend the borders of states. In 2005, Barnett and Duvall noted, “In little more than a decade the concept has gone from the ranks of the unknown to one of the central orienting themes in the practice and study of international affairs.”¹ Now, in addition to efforts to analyze the wide variety of actors and arrangements involved in addressing contemporary global challenges, scholars are looking back in time to examine earlier initiatives that presage more contemporary ones, possibly to glean insights relevant to international governance today.² Mitzen’s Power in Concert aims to extend our understanding of the core role of states and their intentionality in global governance and to “push...