The study of global governance at the University of Duisburg-Essen received an enormous boost with the establishment of a new university Main Research Area in 2009, dedicated to the study of the Transformation of Contemporary Societies: Building Order in a Borderless World. The authors of this volume have benefited from this opportunity to build cross-disciplinary and international research capacities and they present their research here in the English language in order to underline their aim to make an international contribution to the social scientific understanding of this new phase of globalization.