In chapter 1, Reinicke very convincingly contends that economic globalization is not just a quantitative intensification of global economic activity. As he puts it, “economic globalization should not automatically be equated with the globalization of the market economy, or with the emergence of a global market” (48). Instead, globalization marks a qualitative shift, distinguishing globalization from increased economic interdependence between states. Reinicke warns us that our antiquated assumptions of the global market are undermined by the “emergence of a parallel, even competing, set of linkages at the level of production” leading to a “qualitative change in cross-border flows” (49). He contends that economic globalization is a microlevel phenomenon, identified by the changing strategies and organizational structures of the firm. New types of inter- and intrafirm trade and financial mechanisms have substantively changed the very fundamental nature of the international economy, distinguishing the current epoch from even the Golden Age of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Europe.

By locating the locus of change at the firm level, chapter 2 addresses the debate surrounding the meaning and practice of state sovereignty in the current world system. Here, Reinicke makes an important distinction between external and internal sovereignty. External sovereignty, legitimated by other states in the international system, and internal sovereignty, the ability of the state to govern within its own borders, have been conceptually linked to territoriality and bounded space. External sovereignty persists, albeit tenuously, because the nation-state remains the accepted organizational unit in the world system. However, internal sovereignty, or what Reinicke conceptualizes as “political geography,” is threatened because the globalized firm “generates an economic geography that subsumes multiple political geographies” (65). Put in another way, the globalized firm “def[ies] the territorially fixed nature of the nation-state by creating its own, nonterritorial space” (64). States’ internal sovereignty is under attack from the inside out—not the other way around.

After making this theoretical distinction between internal and external sovereignties, Reinicke ambitiously takes on the two main schools of international relations theory: the neorealists and the neoliberals. In chapters 2 and 3, Global Public Policy points out that both the realist and liberal camps assume that the anarchic international system shapes state behavior, albeit in different ways. The key, however, is that both dominant theories of international relations take as their starting points the international structural constraints on external sovereignty and inter-state relations. Because globalization is a microlevel phenomenon that challenges internal sovereignty, realist and liberal theories are conceptually unable to address the fundamental challenges of globalization.

Ultimately, public policy makers seek to make congruent precisely those economic and political geographies that globalization has made incongruent. Statist solutions—such as intervention—tend to fail at this project. Rather, what is needed is a “qualitatively new form of cooperation between states” (85). This new form of global cooperation, what Reinicke calls global public policy, requires the decoupling of public policy making from territoriality. This is accomplished through the inclusion of governments and nonstate actors, such as the private sector and international organizations, in the public policy process. As states are increasingly unable to exercise internal sovereignty, outsourcing the policy making and implementation processes to other actors is required.

To be sure, in the empirical chapters, Reinicke makes a strong case that “mixed regulation” may be the only solution if regulation is to be realized. In chapters 4 to 6, the book lays out in tremendous detail how global policy networks, comprising private firms, governmental institutions, and international organizations, have attempted to regulate global financial markets, the ever growing presence of transnational money laundering, and the proliferation of technology used for noncivilian purposes. As Reinicke puts it, “governments have joined forces with nonstate actors and have begun to outsource the operational aspects of their internal sovereignty in order to strengthen that very sovereignty and thus their own legitimacy” (133). Simply put, in order for the state to survive, it must delegate some of its regulatory responsibilities to other actors that can provide better information, monitoring, and access.

Indeed, Global Public Policy is very convincing in its analyses and policy prescriptions. However, there are three areas that Reinicke underdevelops in his theoretical reasoning and analysis of empirical evidence. First, Reinicke does not provide a conceptual understanding of the role of power in his global public policy framework. For example, Reinicke himself acknowledges that the primary reason Japan finally agreed to the 1988 Basle Agreement to regulate banking capital requirements was the threats of retaliation made by the United States (112–113). If global public policy making is indeed a process of “competitive cooperation” (73–74), then his theory should address the power dynamics and the varying degrees and types of leverage actors bring to the bargaining table. Without attempting to resurrect the realist and liberal schools in the face of Reinicke’s brilliant critique, power, as a heuristic tool, still remains important, especially given the empirical evidence.

Second, the theory of global public policy making requires the near impossible task of first disaggregating state structures, industries, and nonstate actors and issues, and then bringing them all together in a cooperative and productive way around a certain issue area. One of the main criticisms of the international regimes literature is that it is very difficult to integrate certain state actors (such as central banks) from a variety of different national settings around a certain single issue area—let alone the inclusion of nonstate actors in the private sectors and transnational organizations. As well, public policy issues rarely “de-bundle” as nicely as Reinicke suggests. Public policies are usually embedded in a larger policy mix, entailing many more cleavages and interests with which to contend when attempting to promote cooperation at the state, nonstate, and interstate levels.

Finally, because global public policy making is not actually global in scope, those states that are excluded from these arrangements may be at a greater disadvantage had these regulatory regimes not been put into place. These arrangements may make less developed economies, with weaker and less consolidated state structures, even more vulnerable to the vagaries of economic globalization because the very challengers of internal sovereignty (the globalized firm) remain free to move to the more susceptible regions of the world. The current financial crisis in East Asia illustrates well how the still fragile democratic foundations in Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia have been brought into question. In short, “non-global” global policy making could serve to deepen the structural disparity between North and South economies and undermine recent attempts at democratization.

By his own admission, Reinicke stresses that the ideal of global policy making remains unattainable. However, global public policy is within reach provided that there is tremendous leadership, the willingness to compromise, and an awareness of the nontrivial changes in the current global economy. In this respect, then, Global Public Policy is an absolutely necessary book for academicians and scholars alike.