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This book brings together a group of leading scholars on international relations to develop and apply the concept of polarity on past and present international relations and discuss its applicability and usefulness in the future. Despite a comprehensive debate on a global power shift, often discussed in terms of the decline of the United States, the crisis in the liberal international order, and the rise of China, IR´s main concept of power, 'polarity', remains undertheorized and understudied. The great powers and their importance for dynamics and processes in the international system are central to current debates on international order, but these debates too often suffer from a combination of politicized empirical analysis and reliance on old theoretical debates and conceptualizations, typically originating in the Cold War security environment. In order to meet these challenges, this book updates, conceptualizes, applies and critically debates the concepts of unipolarity, bipolarity, multipolarity and non-polarity in order to understand the current world order.
List of contents
1 Introduction: Understanding polarity in theory and history, description of the content of sections and chapters. (Bertel Heurlin, Nina Græger, Ole Wæver, Anders Wivel).- 2 Polarity in the liberal international order (Charles Kupchan, Robert Lieber, Peter Kurrild Klitgaard, Andre Ken Jakobsen, Rasmus Gjedssø Bertelsen).- 3 Polarity and the US-China problematique (Camilla Sørensen, Anders Forsby, Bertel Heurlin).- 4 Polarity, institutions and domestic politics (Jennifer Sterling-Folker, Eliza Gheorghe, Stuart Kaufman, Barbara Kunz).- 5 Polarity and foreign policy (Kai He, Hans Mouritzen, Anders Wivel and Revecca Pedi, Henrik Larsen).- 6 Contextualizing polarity (Øystein Tunsjø, Peter Toft, Sten Rynning, Carsten Jensen, Georg Sørensen).- 7 The future of polarity (William Wohlforth, Randall Schweller).- 8 Conclusion (Bertel Heurlin, Nina Græger, Ole Wæver, Anders Wivel).
About the author
¿Nina Græger is Professor of International Relations and Head of Department at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Bertel Heurlin is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ole Wæver is Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Anders Wivel is Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Report
"Polarity in International Relations: Past, Present, Future tries to make theoretical sense of a moment of international transformation. ... At the occasion, he meant that every aspect of international politics is in a certain way linked to the polarity of the system, and that the analyst should focus on such a concept in order to make sense of such a realm. Judging by the amount of relevant scholars and different contributions and perspectives the book achieved to gather ... ." (Paulo Bittencourt, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, February 22, 2024)
"Polarity in International Relations brings together a stellar line-up of scholars to present their analysis of polarity, a popular concept during the later stages of the Cold War. ... the chapters are worth engaging with, and it is clear that the editors attempted to bring together different scholars working from varying perspectives. ... the book is very thought-provoking. It is a great addition to the literature ... ." (Lorenzo Cladi, International Affairs, Vol. 99 (2), 2023)
