<![CDATA[Contemporary global politics is frequently described as marked by the erosion of state sovereignty amid expanding globalization and institutional complexity. Yet such interpretations risk obscuring how political authority is reconfigured rather than diminished. This article reconceptualizes the transformation of political authority as a layered and relational process generated through the interaction of multi-dimensional forms of power and structurally constrained interests within polycentric governance systems. Drawing on a qualitative literature-based analysis, the study integrates Barnett & Duvall (2004) typology of power with scholarship on governance complexity and debates on emerging and middle power agency. It argues that authority in contemporary global governance is produced through the simultaneous operation of compulsory, institutional, structural, and productive power, mediated by legitimacy and embedded within hierarchical global structures. Illustrations from institutional pluralism such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and Indonesia’s mediating authority role in the G20 demonstrate how authority is diffused across governance arenas yet remains asymmetrically distributed in substantive influence. The findings suggest that global governance in the twenty-first century is neither characterized by the disappearance of authority nor by hegemonic replacement, but by adaptive restructuring under conditions of fragmentation and contestation. Authority persists but in layered, negotiated, and stratified form revealing a central paradox of contemporary global order: diffusion in structure, inequality in outcome.]]>
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