On Global Order: Power, Values, and the Constitution of International Society - Softcover

Hurrell, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 019923311X ISBN 13: 9780199233113

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2008

Synopsis

How is the world organized politically? How should it be organized? What forms of political organization are required to deal with such global challenges as climate change, terrorism or nuclear proliferation? Drawing on work in international law, international relations and global governance, this book provides a clear and wide-ranging introduction to the analysis of global political order--how patterns of governance and institutionalization in world politics have already changed; what the most important challenges are; and what the way forward might look like.

The first section develops three analytical frameworks: a world of sovereign states capable of only limited cooperation; a world of ever-denser international institutions embodying the idea of an international community; and a world in which global governance moves beyond the state and into the realms of markets, civil society and networks. Part II examines five of the most important issues facing contemporary international society: nationalism and the politics of identity; human rights and democracy; war, violence and collective security; the ecological challenge; and the management of economic globalization in a highly unequal world. Part III considers the idea of an emerging multi-regional system; and the picture of global order built around US empire. The conclusion looks at the normative implications. If international society has indeed been changing in the ways discussed in this book, what ought we to do? And, still more crucially, who is the 'we' that is to be at the centre of this drive to create a morally better world?

This book is concerned with the fate of international society in an era of globalization and the ability of the inherited society of sovereign states to provide a practically viable and normatively acceptable framework for global political order. It lays particular emphasis on the different forms of global inequality and the problems of legitimacy that these create and on the challenges posed by cultural diversity and value conflict.

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Hurrell is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Balliol College, University of Oxford. He has written extensively on international institutions and governance at both the global and regional levels and on the role of major developing countries in contemporary international relations. Previous publications include: co-editor with Ngaire Woods, Inequality, Globalization and World Politics (1999); and co-editor with Rosemary Foot and John Gaddis, Order and Justice in International Relations (2003).

Review

"[Hurrell] gives a complex and robust picture of the interplay between power projection and value commitments."--Political Science Quarterly

"On Global Order consciously and successfully sets out to be the twenty-first-century version of The Anarchical Society...a major statement and required reading for anyone interested in the theory and practice of international relations."--Political Studies Review

"...stands out as an oasis of clarity, intellectual honesty and wisdom in the desert of obscure platitudes..."--Survival

"This book has been eagerly anticipated and it does not disappoint. Its principal concern is with the challenges of global order: capturing shared interests, managing unequal power, and mediating value conflict. This is a subtle and challenging book at every level, and its prime characteristic is its consistent eschewal of facile options, either analytical or prescriptive."--Perspectives on Politics

"To a historian, this book by a political scientist is of considerable interest and usefulness...students of international history can only welcome Hurrell's quest for 'a practically more viable and morally more acceptable form of global political order.'"--International History Review

"delivers...an essential contribution"--Sergio Dellavalle, Senior Research Fellow at the MPI and Professor of State Theory at the Faculty of Law of the University of Turin International and European Law Book Reviews Online

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 019923311X
• ISBN 13: 9780199233113
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 354