Becoming Global Governors: Self-Agentification, Recognition, and Delegation in World Politics

The emergence of new global governors and the ensuing complexity marks one of the most noticeable characteristics of contemporary global politics. However, this core axiom of global governance has not been unpacked in terms of why and how new actors emerge. This is surprising, since the emergence of new global governors raises fundamental questions about the very architecture of global governance. To unpack the dynamics of agency emergence, the article proposes a conceptual framework eclectically derived from relationalism. The framework defines foundational terms and allows us to posit assumptions on self-agentification, recognition, and delegation. We illustrate the framework and its mechanisms by reconstructing the emergence and evolution of corporate agency within the United Nations (UN) from initial debates in the 1960s to the UN Global Compact and conclude that this is mostly a story of contested recognition rather than self-agentification, with the international community and, in particular, states of the global north, inviting business to become more active.