Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Institutionalisation

Description

This volume of essays, with a new introduction and connective sections, brings together John Gerard Ruggie's most influential theoretical ideas and their application to critical policy questions concerning the post-Cold War international order. The book is divided into three sections: the first part is concerned with international organization and explains how the "new institutionalism" differs from the old, introducing the concepts of regimes, epistemic communities, and multilateralism. The second part of the text, "The System of States", includes explorations of political structure, social time, and territorial space in the world polity. The role of institutions in change of the system in states is also considered. The final section "Making History" discusses America and the issue of "agency" in the post-cold was era, NATO and the future transatlantic security community and the United Nations, and the collective use of force.

"For two decades John Ruggie has arguably been the most original and insightful theorist of his generation in the United States. This book puts conveniently between two covers a collection of his most important papers. Preceded by a new introduction that articulates with admirable clarity and succinctness Ruggie's analytical perspective, "Constructing the World Polity offers a distinct and brilliantly original view of international relations."-Peter J. Katzenstein, Cornell University "John Ruggie's brilliant articles on the theory and practice of world politics, published over the last twenty-five years, are accompanied by a graceful and reflective intellectual autobiography, which reveals much about Ruggie's thought and about the experience of true scholarship. "Constructing the World Polity is essential reading for all serious students of world politics."-Robert O. Keohane, Duke University