Bringing together an outstanding group of thinkers, Worlds in Collision is the essential book for understanding the debate about the future of global order in the wake of international terrorism and the war in Afghanistan. For years to come, if not decades, the 'war on terrorism' will be the defining paradigm in the struggle for global order. When the victim of such horrific terror attacks happens to be the world's only superpower, the agenda is set for the future global order. This book, offering a comprehensive and provocative collection of viewpoints from leading intellectuals from a...

A group of leading academics considers how the European states system developed as the historical and institutional expression of political community. The scope of this volume is broad, including conventional accounts of the development of the European states system as well as the non-European experience. In particular, it inquires as to how and why a states system triumphed over other forms of political organization.

There is a stark contradiction between the theory of universal human rights and the everyday practice of human wrongs. This timely volume brings together leading scholars to evaluate this paradox. The contributors ask whether human rights abuses are a result of the failure of governments to live up to a universal human rights standard, or whether the search for moral universals is a fundamentally flawed enterprise. The book evaluates the philosophical basis of human rights, and reflects on the structures that affect the development of a global human rights culture.

This book examines how the academic discipline of International Relations has conceptualized the world historical crisis that has shaped world affairs between the end of the First World War and the end of the 1990s. A distinguished group of contributors trace the development of the subject through the main historical periods and in relation to key debates: ethics, power and nationalism; conditions of peace; law and peaceful change; and globalization. It provides the most comprehensive survey of the discipline's past and the key issues to be faced in the future.

Liberal World Order is seen by many as either a fading international order in response to declining American hegemony, or as a failing international order riddled with internal tensions and contradictions. Either way, liberal world order is assumed to be in crisis. The contributors to Liberal World Orders do not reject the argument that liberal order is in crisis. Instead they contend that the crisis is primarily one of authority. This has been compounded by the relative lack of historical context supplied by liberal theorists of 'the international'. By not looking further than the 20th...

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is intended to provide an effective framework for responding to crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. It is a response to the many conscious-shocking cases where atrocities - on the worst scale - have occurred even during the post 1945 period when the United Nations was built to save us all from the scourge of genocide. The R2P concept accords to sovereign states and international institutions a responsibility to assist peoples who are at risk - or experiencing - the worst atrocities. R2P maintains that collective...

The Globalization of International Society re-examines the development of today's society of sovereign states, drawing on a wealth of new scholarship to challenge the landmark account presented in Bull and Watson's classic work, The Expansion of International Society (OUP, 1984). For Bull and Watson, international society originated in Europe, and expanded as successive waves of new states were integrated into a rule-governed order. International society, on their view, was thus a European cultural artefact - a claim that is at odds with recent scholarship in history,...

The Globalization of International Society re-examines the development of today's society of sovereign states, drawing on a wealth of new scholarship to challenge the landmark account presented in Bull and Watson's classic work, The Expansion of International Society (OUP, 1984). For Bull and Watson, international society originated in Europe, and expanded as successive waves of new states were integrated into a rule-governed order. International society, on their view, was thus a European cultural artefact - a claim that is at odds with recent scholarship in history,...