What is that?
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What is that?

A global contract is a multilateral agreement between significant actors – that would stand above all national or supranational agreements. It effectively regulates critical issues of global relevance within the framework of a sustainable global political order, or calls for the foundation of an institution to regulate these issues. A global contract consists of the following formal criteria:


  • significant issue,

  • global relevance,

  • binding character according to international law,

  • effective sanction mechanism,

  • legitimization of the players,

  • global reach,

  • funding of the implementation,

  • establishment of suitable supporting institutions and flexible decision processes, and

  • effective regulation.


In addition, a global contract also stands for the normative criteria:

  • promotion of sustainability,

  • compliance with the principle of justice,

  • maintenance of peace,

  • safeguarding human rights, and

  • promotion of global welfare.

Alternatively, it does not hinder the realization of these criteria. Such multilateral agreements have until now been reached in the form of international agreements, protocols, international pacts, general declarations, statutes, records, conventions and/or declarations.

Global contracts can imply the development of global political structures in their sphere of influence. Global contracts concern all aspects of the global society and they regulate diverse subject areas: they can deal with economic, social, political, cultural and/or ecological subject matters or interlink them with the field to be regulated.

The Global Contract Report describes a model that allows for the analysis and assessment of present and future global contracts by means of formal and normative criteria. Formal criteria are content-related criteria which can be assessed in the text. In contrast, normative criteria concern the adherence to rules and principles.

A global contract is fundamentally different to a global governance contract. A global governance contract is regarded as a global contract which meets additional criteria.

If you would like to know more about this fascinating topic, you can find a detailed definition and classification in our Global Contract Report.