This volume arises out of a workshop entitled “Private Authority and International Order” convened at the Thomas J. Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, 12–13 February 1999. The workshop was organized by Rodney Bruce Hall in consultation with Thomas Biersteker, while Hall was a postdoctoral research fellow in international relations theory at the Watson Institute. The original objective of the workshop was to explore the devolution of state authority, so central to the work of the late Susan Strange, and to do so across issue areas that included, but transcended, the international political economy. At the end of her life, Strange was studying the sources and consequences of the “retreat of the state” and the devolution of authority and sovereign perquisites of public authority to private actors operating in the international political economy. The workshop was organized to explore these phenomena in the realms of international security and international organization, and to generate analytical categories and methodologies to study it.

During the course of the workshop lively debates ensued regarding the nature and consequences of private authority in the international system, as well as the long-term implications of the emergence of private authority for the future of global governance. Workshop participants were persuaded by the fruitfulness of the discussions and agreed that a collection of essays should be assembled to capture the most salient issues that emerged in the discussions.