Awards

• Runner-up for Choice Magazine Outstanding Reference/Academic Book Award 2011
• Runner-up for Choice Magazine Outstanding Reference/Academic Book Award 2011.

Overview

In the second half of the twentieth century, the United States engaged in the most ambitious and far-reaching liberal order building the world had yet seen. This liberal international order has been one of the most successful in history in providing security and prosperity to more people. But in the last decade, the American-led order has been troubled. Some argue that the Bush administration, with its war on terror, invasion of Iraq, and unilateral orientation, undermined this liberal order. Others argue that we are witnessing the end of the American era. ""Liberal Leviathan"" engages these debates. G. John Ikenberry argues that the crisis that besets the American-led order is a crisis of authority. A political struggle has been ignited over the distribution of roles, rights, and authority within the liberal international order. But the deeper logic of liberal order remains alive and well. The forces that have triggered this crisis - the rise of non-Western states such as China, contested norms of sovereignty, and the deepening of economic and security interdependence - have resulted from the successful functioning and expansion of the postwar liberal order, not its breakdown. The liberal international order has encountered crises in the past and evolved as a result. It will do so again. Ikenberry provides the most systematic statement yet about the theory and practice of the liberal international order, and a forceful message for policymakers, scholars, and general readers about why America must renegotiate its relationship with the rest of the world and pursue a more enlightened strategy - that of the liberal leviathan.

Full Product Details

9780691125589

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Reviews

His book lucidly explains how the end of the Cold War allowed the U.S.-dominated Western system to expand to the rest of the world. Ikenberry's account has an intuitive appeal. There's always more than enough chaos to argue that the world is in crisis . . . he writes thoughtfully about the challenge of integrating rising powers into global governance. . . . As a clear and informed synthesis of the existing scholarship on global governance, this book is a success. -- David Bosco, American Prospect

[A]mbitious and thought-provoking. -- Gideon Rachman, Financial Times International orders guide how major powers interact with one another and with less powerful states: how they cooperate and compete in trade and security and when and why they respect one another's sovereignty. Ikenberry's important book tackles this complex subject, giving readers a deep understanding of the factors that determine the type of international order... Liberal Leviathan is a valuable guide to understanding the factors that will determine its eventual shape. -- Foreign Affairs Liberal Leviathan is a brilliant inquisition into the nature of international order, politics of unipolarity, and substance of United States foreign policy... Drawing equally on international relations theory, history, and political theory, Liberal Leviathan offers a probing analysis into the challenges to the current U.S.-led international order and its likely future. -- David A. Lake, Global Governance This is a valuable work of international relations theory. -- Choice Liberal Leviathan is a great review of the state of the art of broad and narrow Realist and liberal theories being discussed in American academia. -- Cesar de Prado, International Affairs His book lucidly explains how the end of the Cold War allowed the U.S.-dominated Western system to expand to the rest of the world. Ikenberry's account has an intuitive appeal. There's always more than enough chaos to argue that the world is in crisis ... he writes thoughtfully about the challenge of integrating rising powers into global governance... As a clear and informed synthesis of the existing scholarship on global governance, this book is a success. -- David Bosco, American Prospect

Author Information

G. John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. His books include ""After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars"" (Princeton).

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