INTERNATIONAL POLICY ANALYSIS Global Union Federations and the Challenges of Globalisation TORSTEN MÜLLER, HANS-WOLFGANG PLATZER AND STEFAN RÜB September 2010 ࡯ While, under the aegis of rampant globalisation, Ulrich Beck’s admonition that»the trade unions must reinvent themselves transnationally« is more pertinent than ever, transnational trade union federations remain virtually ignored in the, by now, exten­sive globalisation and global governance literature. ࡯ The present article presents selected results from a larger research project which ad­dressed the question of how the far-reaching changes in the global political order and burgeoning economic globalisation since the 1990s are reflected in the organi­sational policies, agenda and practical tools – in short: in a transformation of the functional profile – of the, at present, 11 Global Union Federations. ࡯ An analytical concept was used to develop these questions borrowed from political science studies of governance in multi-level systems. The categories developed there for national politics constitute the frame of reference and are applied, in modified form, to transnational trade union cooperation.