Overview
- Brings together a group of leading scholars on international relations
- Aims to contribute to discussion and applying concepts of multipolarity to understand the current world order
- Written by Bertel Heurlin, Nina Græger, Anders Wivel, Sofie Lauridsen, and Ole Wæver
Part of the book series: Governance, Security and Development (GSD)
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About this book
This book brings together a group of leading scholars on international relations to develop and apply the concept of polarity on past and present international relations and discuss its applicability and usefulness in the future. Despite a comprehensive debate on a global power shift, often discussed in terms of the decline of the United States, the crisis in the liberal international order, and the rise of China, IR´s main concept of power, ‘polarity’, remains undertheorized and understudied. The great powers and their importance for dynamics and processes in the international system are central to current debates on international order, but these debates too often suffer from a combination of politicized empirical analysis and reliance on old theoretical debates and conceptualizations, typically originating in the Cold War security environment. In order to meet these challenges, this book updates, conceptualizes, applies and critically debates the concepts of unipolarity, bipolarity, multipolarity and non-polarity in order to understand the current world order.
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Keywords
Table of contents (21 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Theorizing Polarity
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Front Matter
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Polarity and International Security
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Front Matter
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Reviews
“Polarity in International Relations: Past, Present, Future tries to make theoretical sense of a moment of international transformation. … At the occasion, he meant that every aspect of international politics is in a certain way linked to the polarity of the system, and that the analyst should focus on such a concept in order to make sense of such a realm. Judging by the amount of relevant scholars and different contributions and perspectives the book achieved to gather … .” (Paulo Bittencourt, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, February 22, 2024)
“Polarity in International Relations brings together a stellar line-up of scholars to present their analysis of polarity, a popular concept during the later stages of the Cold War. … the chapters are worth engaging with, and it is clear that the editors attempted to bring together different scholars working from varying perspectives. … the book is very thought-provoking. It is a great addition to the literature … .” (Lorenzo Cladi, International Affairs, Vol. 99 (2), 2023)
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Nina Græger is Professor of International Relations and Head of Department at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Bertel Heurlin is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ole Wæver is Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Anders Wivel is Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Polarity in International Relations
Book Subtitle: Past, Present, Future
Editors: Nina Græger, Bertel Heurlin, Ole Wæver, Anders Wivel
Series Title: Governance, Security and Development
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05505-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-05504-1Published: 31 August 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-05507-2Published: 01 September 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-05505-8Published: 30 August 2022
Series ISSN: 2945-7815
Series E-ISSN: 2945-7823
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVII, 428
Number of Illustrations: 11 b/w illustrations, 1 illustrations in colour
Topics: International Relations Theory, International Security Studies