The literature around energy policy has been steadily growing (Colgan, 2010; Florini, 2008, Florini and Savacool, 2009, 2011; Lesage et al., 2010), however the global governance of energy policy has been far less explored. My research has identified that energy policy has been seen traditionally from a hard-nosed geopolitical viewpoint, regarding energy security as a zero-sum game. More recently market-liberals however see markets and institutions as central. Global energy governance is seen by many as fragmented, and this fragmented nature of energy is under-researched and often discussed from a market-liberal viewpoint. This paper aims to further the literature by discussing the fragmentation of the global energy governance through using the geopolitical/realist account and testing this against the case study of the International Energy Agency (IEA) to see whether this account holds up.
