Perspectives On World Politics Paperback - 1991

From the publisher

The study of world politics is crucially important; it holds both immense promise and immense difficulty. The sheer complexity of the subject has, however, generated conflict and diversity among academics. By identifying three broad perspectives, Perspectives on World Politics aims to present a clear and coherent structure with which to approach this complex and difficult subject. Perspectives on World Politics sets out to present students with some of the competing conceptual tools used to analyze world politics. The first perspective, the politics of power and security, stresses the quasi-anarchical nature of the world political system and the consequent concern of states with national security. This approach is challenged by the second perspective, the politics of interdependence and transnational relations. Here both the state and foreign policy process become disaggregated, and as a result the international system explodes into a complex of coalitions and balances without a clear-cut global hierarchy. The third perspective, the politics of dominance and dependence, stresses the inequality which pervades the structure of the international system.