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Palgrave Macmillan

Polarity in International Relations

Past, Present, Future

  • Book
  • © 2022

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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Table of contents (21 chapters)

Keywords

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.

Reviews

“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

  • Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Nina Græger, Bertel Heurlin, Ole Wæver, Anders Wivel

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

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