The Downfall of the American Order? offers penetrating insight into the emerging global political economy at this moment of an increasingly chaotic world. For seventy-five years, the basic patterns ...of world politics and the contours of international economic activity took place in the shadow of American leadership and the institutions it designed—an order designed to avoid the horrors of previous eras, including, most poignantly, two world wars and the Great Depression. But all things must pass. The global financial crisis of 2008, the legacy of two long, losing wars, and the polarizing and tumultuous presidency of Donald Trump all suggest that global affairs have reached a turning point. The implications of this are profound. The contributors to this book cast their eyes back on the order that once was, and look ahead to what might follow. In dialogue with each other's appraisals and expectations, they differ in their assessments of the probable, ranging from a hollowed-out American primacy muddling through by default, to partial modifications of old institutions and practices at home and abroad, and to wholesale contestations and the search for new orders. Contributors: Rawi Abdelal, Sheri Berman, Mark Blyth, Francis J. Gavin, Peter A. Gourevitch, Ilene Grabel, Peter J. Katzenstein, Jonathan Kirshner, and John Gerard Ruggie
The Downfall of the American Order? offers penetrating insight into the emerging global political economy at this moment of an increasingly chaotic world. For seventy-five years, the basic patterns ...of world politics and the contours of international economic activity took place in the shadow of American leadership and the institutions it designed—an order designed to avoid the horrors of previous eras, including, most poignantly, two world wars and the Great Depression. But all things must pass. The global financial crisis of 2008, the legacy of two long, losing wars, and the polarizing and tumultuous presidency of Donald Trump all suggest that global affairs have reached a turning point. The implications of this are profound. The contributors to this book cast their eyes back on the order that once was, and look ahead to what might follow. In dialogue with each other's appraisals and expectations, they differ in their assessments of the probable, ranging from a hollowed-out American primacy muddling through by default, to partial modifications of old institutions and practices at home and abroad, and to wholesale contestations and the search for new orders. Contributors: Rawi Abdelal, Sheri Berman, Mark Blyth, Francis J. Gavin, Peter A. Gourevitch, Ilene Grabel, Peter J. Katzenstein, Jonathan Kirshner, and John Gerard Ruggie
The Downfall of the American Order? offers penetrating insight into the emerging global political economy at this moment of an increasingly chaotic world. For seventy-five years, the basic patterns ...of world politics and the contours of international economic activity took place in the shadow of American leadership and the institutions it designed—an order designed to avoid the horrors of previous eras, including, most poignantly, two world wars and the Great Depression. But all things must pass. The global financial crisis of 2008, the legacy of two long, losing wars, and the polarizing and tumultuous presidency of Donald Trump all suggest that global affairs have reached a turning point. The implications of this are profound. The contributors to this book cast their eyes back on the order that once was, and look ahead to what might follow. In dialogue with each other's appraisals and expectations, they differ in their assessments of the probable, ranging from a hollowed-out American primacy muddling through by default, to partial modifications of old institutions and practices at home and abroad, and to wholesale contestations and the search for new orders. Contributors: Rawi Abdelal, Sheri Berman, Mark Blyth, Francis J. Gavin, Peter A. Gourevitch, Ilene Grabel, Peter J. Katzenstein, Jonathan Kirshner, and John Gerard Ruggie
Abstract This paper considers the prospects for global economic governance from the perspective of classical realism. It explains why, from this perspective, the American-led liberal international ...order, is over—and is not coming back. Classical realism anticipates a US renunciation of the orchestration of global governance, one rooted principally in shifts in its purpose, rather than by changes to its relative capabilities. This transformation of American purpose is a consequence of its domestic politics—in particular, the rise in economic inequality, the emergence of plutocracy, and the dysfunctional political polarization stimulated by those trends—a predictable result of a tectonic shift in the culture of capitalism from one associated with the ‘compromise of embedded liberalism’ towards the exaltation of ‘shareholder value’. This yields pessimistic conclusions not only about American foreign policy, which is likely to be more short-sighted, mercurial, and transactionalist, but also regarding the prospects for global economic governance. Realism sees international cooperation as challenging to establish and maintain, given the consequences of anarchy. In the coming years, episodes of cooperation will surely emerge, but they will likely be ad-hoc, mini-lateral, and fragile. Orchestrating ambitious schemes of global economic governance is less likely when a predominant power has lost interest in such things.
What is the realist position on how to deal with the rise of China? One prominent realist approach, associated with John Mearsheimer, calls for the US to do whatever it can to slow China’s rise. ...However, while this is a realist perspective, it is not the realist perspective. In particular, realist approaches that derive from a classical foundation suggest policies fundamentally different from those favored by Mearsheimer. This article argues that realism should return to some of its classical traditions. It reviews why, from a classical realist perspective, the rise of China must be viewed with alarm, but argues that Mearsheimer’s approach — offensive realism — is wrong, and dangerous. Many of these errors are rooted in structuralism; a classical realist approach, which allows for the influence of history and politics, provides greater analytical purchase and wiser policy prescriptions than offensive realism.
InWhen the Movies MatteredJonathan Kirshner and Jon Lewis gather a remarkable collection of authors to revisit the unique era in American cinema that was New Hollywood. Ten eminent contributors, some ...of whom wrote about the New Hollywood movement as it unfolded across the 1960s and 1970s, assess the convergence of film-industry developments and momentous social and political changes that created a new type of commercial film that reflected those revolutionary influences in American life. Even as New Hollywood first took shape, film industry insiders and commentators alike realized its significance. At the time, Pauline Kael compared the New Hollywood to the "tangled, bitter flowering of American letters in the 1850s" and David Thomson dubbed the era "the decade when movies mattered." Thomson's words provide the impetus for this volume in which a cohort of seasoned film critics and scholars who came of age watching the movies of this era reflect upon and reconsider this golden age in American filmmaking.
Contributors: Molly Haskell, Heather Hendershot, J. Hoberman, George Kouvaros, Phillip Lopate, Robert Pippin, David Sterritt, David Thomson
The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 was both an economic catastrophe and a watershed event in world politics. InAmerican Power after the Financial Crisis, Jonathan Kirshner explains how the ...crisis altered the international balance of power, affecting the patterns and pulse of world politics. The crisis, Kirshner argues, brought about an end to what he identifies as the "second postwar American order" because it undermined the legitimacy of the economic ideas that underpinned that order-especially those that encouraged and even insisted upon uninhibited financial deregulation. The crisis also accelerated two existing trends: the relative erosion of the power and political influence of the United States and the increased political influence of other states, most notably, but not exclusively, China.
Looking ahead, Kirshner anticipates a "New Heterogeneity" in thinking about how best to manage domestic and international money and finance. These divergences-such as varying assessments of and reactions to newly visible vulnerabilities in the American economy and changing attitudes about the long-term appeal of the dollar-will offer a bold challenge to the United States and its essentially unchanged disposition toward financial policy and regulation. This New Heterogeneity will contribute to greater discord among nations about how best to manage the global economy. A provocative look at how the 2007-2008 economic collapse diminished U.S. dominance in world politics,American Power after the Financial Crisissuggests that the most significant and lasting impact of the crisis and the Great Recession will be the inability of the United States to enforce its political and economic priorities on an increasingly recalcitrant world.
ISMs matter. They reflect underlying philosophical points of departure and are rooted in specific explicit assumptions about how the world works. The very different expectations and conclusions of ...diverse theories often stem from the fact that those theories were derived from distinct and contrasting paradigmatic roots. To be aware of those foundations is to understand the likely strengths, weaknesses, limitations, controversies, and specific attributes of the various theories. In contemporary international relations (IR) scholarship there is a common claim that we are past paradigms, and many younger scholars are expected to recite this mantra. But making such a claim is a political act, not an intellectual one. It reflects the hegemony of one particular paradigmatic perspective—one with specific analytical building blocks of individualism, materialism, and hyperrationalism—an approach that is a paradigm and one so powerful that it has been described as an “intellectual monoculture.”
Scholars from numerous disciplines continue to study, debate, and value Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War. This review essay first explores and elaborates many of the enduring and vital contributions ...of Thucydides for IR theory. It then assesses and engages three new books, including a major, wide-ranging collection of new essays and a very influential (and deeply flawed) attempt to apply the lessons of that work-one that warns of a "Thucydides Trap" that might unwittingly ensnare the United States and China, resulting in an unwanted and catastrophic war between the two. This review essay argues that, as illustrated by the books under consideration here, contemporary IR scholars would be very well served by taking Thucydides seriously and would benefit from reading and considering his History with great care; at the same time, there are enormous, perilous analytical dangers inherent in attempting to draw conclusions from a superficial reading of The Peloponnesian War.
The future of the dollar Helleiner, Eric; Kirshner, Jonathan
2012, 2009, 2012-09-15, 2009-08-06
eBook
For half a century, the United States has garnered substantial political and economic benefits as a result of the dollar's de facto role as a global currency. In recent years, however, the dollar's ...preponderant position in world markets has come under challenge. The dollar has been more volatile than ever against foreign currencies, and various nations have switched to non-dollar instruments in their transactions. China and the Arab Gulf states continue to hold massive amounts of U.S. government obligations, in effect subsidizing U.S. current account deficits, and those holdings are a point of potential vulnerability for American policy. What is the future of the U.S. dollar as an international currency? Will predictions of its demise end up just as inaccurate as those that have accompanied major international financial crises since the early 1970s? Analysts disagree, often profoundly, in their answers to these questions. In The Future of the Dollar , leading scholars of dollar's international role bring multidisciplinary perspectives and a range of contrasting predictions to the question of the dollar's future. This timely book provides readers with a clear sense of why such disagreements exist and it outlines a variety of future scenarios and the possible political implications for the United States and the world.
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