Constructivist approach of analyzing international relations brought many new elements to the thought on the nature of international reality, which made it possible to explain it and understand it better. One of these elements in the process of analyzing this reality is the concept of identity of participants of international relations. Its analytical phenomenon consists of the fact that it allows us to undertake attempts to understand interests and character of norms and values of participants of international relations. The most important statement brought to scientific thought on international reality by Alexander Wendt’s notion of constructivism relates to the fact that states’ interests in international relations are not given a priori, but they are shaped during interactions with others. Not only is the role of inter-state actors who influence states’ interests in international relations underlined, but it also indicates the important role of other participants of international affairs in articulating national interests. From this perspective, the category of identity in international relations taken up by Constructivism takes account of the social, interactive nature of international reality making it possible to analyze its intangible part.

The objective of this article is to demonstrate the place of the global governance concept in four international relations theories: realism, liberalism, neoliberal institutionalism and social constructivism. Global governance is defined as the sum of ways that institutions and international organizations, both public and private, use to try to cooperate at the global level in order to manage their common affairs. In addition, the paper defines global governance as being a specific perspective on world politics that offers a tool for understanding global change in an era of shifting boundaries and relocated authorities. The main research questions of the article are: how the most influential IR theories have reacted to the global governance concept and why the term ‘global governance’, so popularly and so frequently used in the 1990’s, has not resulted in a stable concept. Conclusions and suggestions presented in the summary point out that global governance held the promise of a radical transformation (predicted by almost every IR theory) of world order at the end of the Cold War. However, this great institutional transformation has never taken place. Therefore, current global politics still remain resistant to any form of world (or global) governance.