This chapter summarizes the text’s various arguments. It first considers the relationships between the study of political philosophy, political institutions, and international relations and suggests that the study of politics cannot be divorced from the study of other social sciences such as economics, sociology, psychology, philosophy, law, and history. It also contends that the study of politics should be seen as a genuinely international and comparative enterprise and explains how trends in globalization have further eroded the distinctions between domestic and international politics and between the domestic politics of individual nation-states. Finally, it discusses the rise of the so-called ‘new medievalism’, a scenario in which the world is moving towards greater anarchy; signs that global power is shifting from the West to the East; and developments showing that domestic politics and international relations are mutating.
Chapter
23. Conclusion: Retreat from a Globalizing Towards a Post-Western-Dominated World
Stephanie Lawson
Chapter
20. Zhang Taiyan
Patrizia Longo
This chapter looks at Zhang Taiyan’s political theory, revolving around revolution and nationalism. It describes how Zhang tried to build a new politics based on a new universality that does not extinguish particularity. Buddhism influenced most of Zhang’s anti-Manchu propaganda and political theory. The chapter then explains how the ideas of Zhang’s Buddhist political theory are picked up by the post-war Japanese intellectual Takeuchi Yoshimi. It explores the goal of pan-Asianism to negate the West and take Western values to a higher level. Takeuchi and Zhang tried to create a new universality by confronting the West through an anti-imperialist nationalist struggle.
Chapter
5. From the end of the cold war to a new world dis-order?
Michael Cox
This chapter provides a broad overview of the international system between the end of the cold war—when many claimed that liberalism and the West had triumphed—through to the second decade of the twenty-first century, when the West itself and the liberal economic order it had hitherto promoted appeared to be coming under increased pressure from political forces at home and new challenges abroad. But before turning to the present, the chapter looks at some of the key developments since 1989—including the Clinton presidency, the George W. Bush administration's foreign policy following the attacks of 9/11, the 2008 financial crash, the crisis in Europe, the transitions taking place in the global South, the origins of the upheavals now reshaping the Middle East, the political shift from Barack Obama to Donald Trump, the emergence of Asia, and the rise of China. The chapter then concludes by examining two big questions: first, is power now shifting away from the West, and second, to what extent does the current wave of populism in the West threaten globalization and the liberal order?
