Democracy, sovereignty, citizenship, and the rule of law are foundational yet contested concepts. Their foundational role has been extensively discussed with reference to modern nation-states and global order, and their contested quality has come to the fore through norm contestation. This chapter suggests that contestation’s move into the limelight represents an opportunity to address the future of democracies. It argues that first, norm contestedness is expected due to its value- and practice-based roots. Second, contestedness has implications for everyday norm-use and academic norm-conceptualization. This chapter conceives norms and their multiple contestations as the constitutive ‘glue’ of global ordering rather than as a ‘means’ towards implementing governance rules. This chapter identifies a conceptual gap between state-negotiated norms of global governance and societal contestation of norms. It recalls Tully’s ‘Unfreedom of the Moderns’ claim and the central role of agonism in including the multitude of affected stakeholders in establishing norms of governance. Using the cycle-grid model, this chapter frames democracy from below.

Over the past decades, international institutions, such as treaties and regimes, have proliferated in global governance, and we have seen a tremendous amount of studies on their emergence, maintenance and effectiveness. Increasingly it has become evident, however, that such institutions do not operate in a void but within complex webs of larger governance settings. These large web-like structures, or ‘governance architectures’, are important to understand because they shape, enable and at times hinder the functioning of single international institutions and are crucial variables in determining the overall effectiveness of global governance. In recent years, this concept of governance architecture has effectively shifted the debate to situations in which an area is regulated by multiple institutions and norms in complex settings. This introductory chapter offers conceptual clarity about global governance architectures and their structural features as well as an overview of key insights gained through the last decade of research. We also identify key methodological approaches, challenges, and advances in this field of study.