Understanding International Relations

✍ Scribed by Chris Brown

• Publisher: Red Globe Press
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 320
• Edition: 5
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The fifth edition of this bestselling textbook offers a comprehensive and engaging introduction to International relations and has been fully updated to cover the dramatic changes in recent world politics. Written in the author’s unique and engaging style, the text explores everything from foreign policy and security to global governance and the global economy, to show how the theories and concepts Brown outlines are the only way to make sense of contemporary issues and events. With reference to such diverse events as Brexit, the Russian armed conflict in Ukraine, the financial crisis, the rise of China, and the challenges of identity politics, the author expertly shows how the range of theories presented in the book allow for an understanding of the destabilising events and developments that characterise global politics today, and will continue to do so in the future. 

This text remains the definitive guide to understanding international relations, and is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students of international relations at any stage of their studies.

     

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Contents
Preface to the Fifth Edition
List of Abbreviations
1 Defining International Relations
Introduction
Perspectives and theories
Conclusion
Further reading
2 The Development of International Relations Theory in the Twentieth Century
Introduction
Liberal internationalism and the origins of the discipline
The ‘realist’ critique of liberal internationalism
The postwar synthesis
IR and the behavioural sciences
Challenges to the realist synthesis
Pluralism and complex interdependence
Further reading
3 International Relations Theory Today
Introduction
From classical realism to structural realism
From structural realism to liberal institutionalism
Constructivism and the ‘English School’
Critical international thought
Feminist theory, gender studies and postcolonialism
Conclusion: the end of IR theory?
Further reading
4 Agency, Structure and the State
Introduction
The agent–structure problem and levels of analysis
The state and international relations
Foreign and domestic policy: agency within the state
Conclusion: from foreign policy to power
Further reading
5 Power and Security
Introduction: statecraft, influence and power
Dimensions of power
Power, fear and insecurity
Conclusion: managing insecurity
Further reading
6 The Balance of Power and War
Introduction
The balance of power
The political conception of war
War in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
Conclusion: the end of state-centric IR?
Further reading
7 Global Governance
Introduction: sovereignty, anarchy and global governance
Functionalism
Integration theory, federalism and neofunctionalism
Global economic institutions: Bretton Woods and after
International regimes and regime theory
Global governance and (collective) security
Conclusion
Further reading
8 The Global Economy
Introduction
The growth of the world economy
Problems and perspectives
Structuralism
The new global economy
The end of the Global South?
Conclusion
Further reading
9 Globalization
Introduction
A new economy?
Neoliberalism and its critics
New global problems: ‘Westfailure’ and the environment
Global civil society?
Further reading
10 The International Politics of Identity
Introduction
Politics in industrial societies
Identity politics post-1989
Globalization and postindustrial society
Democracy promotion, Asian values and the ‘clash of civilizations’
Pluralism and international society
Conclusion
Further reading
11 The Individual and International Relations
Introduction
Human rights
International criminal law
The juridification of world politics?
Humanitarian intervention
Sovereignty as responsibility and the Responsibility to Protect
Conclusion
Further reading
12 International (Dis) Order Today
Introduction
The central system
The rise of ‘populism’
Terrorism and the Islamic State
Reasons to be cheerful
Conclusion
Further reading
Bibliography
Index