Preface.- Part I Size.- Chapter 1: Mega-states vs. Compact Powers: Risks in the Emerging International System.- Chapter 2: Effects of the Size of a Country on its Economic Performance.- Part II Political Regimes and Social Structure.- Chapter 3:Analyzing Dependence and Conflict in a Heterogeneous World: Computer Simulation and Evolutionary Dynamics.- Chapter 4: The Superficial Success of the Development Assistance Committee: Emerging Donors and the Revival of Economic Statecraft.- Chapter 5: How Structural Heterogeneities turned into Political Issues: Lessons from the U.S.–Japan Structural Talks.- Part III Inside a State.- Chapter 6:Role of Third-Party Guarantors in Uncertainty of Preventive Civil War: Can Thucydides Trap be resolved?.- Chapter 7: Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: The Effect of Information Stimulus on Levels of Support for Foreign Aid and Coalition Withdrawal.- Part IV Interactions between the International System, Domestic Society, and Individuals.- Chapter 8:Agent-Based Simulation as a Method for International Political Science: A Way of Expressing Diversity.- Chapter 9: Considering Provision of Global Public Goods with Community Task Game: A Multi-Agent Simulation Analysis.
Masayuki Tadokoro, Professor, Faculty of Law, Keio University, 2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8345 Japan
Susumu Egashira, Professor, Department of Economics, Otaru University of Commerce, 3-5-21 Midori, Otaru-city, Hokkaido 047-8501 Japan
Kazuya Yamamoto, Visiting Fellow, Research Institute for Peace and Security, 1-1-12 Meisan Tmeike Bldg. 8 Floor, Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0052 Japan
This uniquely interdisciplinary volume analyzes the challenges posed by the heterogeneity of the world where radically different players are crammed into increasingly limited political, commercial, social, and ecological space. The rapid rise of Communist Party-ruled China is posing serious challenges to the postwar politico-economic architecture dominated by the United States. Russia, once expected to become a partner of the liberal Western international order, has started behaving in an increasingly unilateral fashion. The developing world is more characterized by failed governance rather than convergence to liberal democracies as was hoped by many Western authors. Given links provided by low-cost carriers, the Internet, and trade and investment, we simply cannot shield ourselves from influences, whether benign or malign, from neighbors on this planet.
The authors, including political scientists, economists, social physicists, and experts on complexity theory and informatics, examine how interactions among actors with different properties can cause problems, and they analyze risks resulting from the interactions. While employing a variety of approaches to address topics such as economic interdependence among democracies and authoritarian states, the development assistance regimes, internal conflicts in developing countries, and cyber security, the whole volume presents a clear overview of challenges and risks the world is facing. This work makes a valuable contribution to students of social sciences as well as to practitioners interested in the emerging global order.