Abstract
This special issue offers a comprehensive comparative analysis of how power operates in international regimes. In particular, the contributions examine how distinct forms of power combine, compete with and resist each other in what we, drawing on Nadelmann (1990), define as global prohibition regimes: institutionalisations of explicit and implicit norms prohibiting certain activities of both state and nonstate actors through systemic diffusion in the international space, in international public law as well as domestic criminal law, and processes by which these norms are enforced with prohibitive but also disciplinary and regulatory effects.