This interdisciplinary book investigates the problematization of global challenges in world politics by analyzing what they are and how they come to be.

Offering a conceptual framework, including four modes of construction—universalizing, bundling, upscaling, and creating urgency—this book provides a heuristic method for understanding how the process of rendering an issue a “global challenge” unfolds. It examines the role of the global challenges discourse, which may either reinforce or challenge the dominant orders of world politics, such as the capitalist market-based system and the liberal international order. As a consequence, the global challenges discourse facilitates the emergence of new actors and policy fields.

The book will be of interest to students, academics, and practitioners of global governance, international organizations, and, more broadly, international political economy and international relations.