This volume provides a novel institutionalist theoretical approach to the rise of new powers and NGOs in relation to international institutions. It reveals the major conflicts that characterise some key contemporary international institutions, such as the UN Security Council, the World Trade Organization, the G7, and the UN Human Rights Council.

Global Crossroads: Rethinking Dominant Orders in Our Contested World is an edited collection of papers mostly presented at the 2019 DEN International Student Conference. This publication is one of the many annual projects conducted under the umbrella of the Democratic Education Network (DEN) which came to existence in 2016 at the then Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster. Today DEN has expanded across multiple departments within the University’s School of Social Sciences, aiming to inspire engagement with communities and involvement in student-led projects. DEN aspires to be a platform for empowering students, offering them opportunities for personal, intellectual and professional development, and enhancing students’ engagement and experience. This book is an articulation of the students’ research and analytical work on some of the most pressing global issues of our times. It is, further, a product of their hard work and skills, developed through DEN, in editing and compiling academic publications — a testimony to DEN’s ability to encourage and empower students to work together and achieve remarkable results.

Contested Worlds provides an introduction both to a multitude of geographical worlds which are currently being actively constructed and contested, and to a range of different perspectives on these worlds being adopted and contested by geographers. It is unique in its focus on the role of contestation in both the construction of geographical studies and in the geographies these studies seek to address. These issues are explored through a combination of general theoretical discussion and detailed international case studies. The areas discussed range in scale from the global, through the regional and national to the local worlds of the inner city, the neighbourhood and the village, with connections drawn between these scales. The book concludes that geography is being made in quite different ways. It asserts that geography is intrinsically a contested enterprise, and that this should be embraced as part of geographers becoming more critically involved in the making, and studying, of new contemporary human geographies.

Political scientists, historians, economists, and sociologists who are concerned with international relations will find this a challenging and welcome addition to the theoretical literature that will shed new light on many longstanding debates within the field.

When do rising powers fail to establish legitimate regional leadership and instead face contestation by their regional challengers? This book investigates how and why the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) project leadership in South America, post-Soviet Eurasia, South and Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, respectively, and in what ways their main regional challengers respond. Based on a systematic conceptualization of the types and drivers of leadership and contestation, the authors assess the impact of the rise of regional powers on weaker states’ security, sovereignty, and status, as well as the consequences of contestation for regional economic development and stability and the regional powers’ bid for greater voice in global governance. By illuminating the sources and effects of power politics in five regions that are increasingly pivotal for the emerging world order, the volume offers a global comparative analysis of contemporary regional contested leadership that will interest scholars and students of international affairs, foreign policy, and area studies.

In order to better understand how the world viewed the US 2016 presidential election, the issues that mattered around the world, and how nations made sense of how their media systems constructed presentations of the presidential election, Robert S. Hinck, Skye C. Cooley, and Randolph Kluver examine global news narratives during the campaign and immediately afterwards. Analyzing 1,578 news stories from 62 sources within three regional media ecologies in China, Russia, and the Middle East, Hinck, Cooley, and Kluver demonstrate how the US election was incorporated into narrative constructions of the global order. They establish that the narratives told about the US election through national and regional media provide insights into how foreign nations construct US democracy, and reflect local understandings regarding the issues, and impacts, of US policy towards those nations. Avoiding jargon-laden prose, Global Media and Strategic Narratives of Contested Democracy is as accessible as it is wide-ranging. Its empirical detail will expand readers’ understanding of soft power as narrative articulations of foreign nation’s policies, values, and beliefs within localized media systems. Communication/media studies students, as well as political scientists whose studies includes media and global politics, will welcome its publication.

This book investigates the geopoliticisation of foreign aid in recent years, against a background of global overarching crises such as climate change, conflict, Covid-19, economic crisis, energy shortages and migration. Foreign aid has historically been understood as assisting both with the development objectives of the recipients and with the trade and geopolitical interests of the donors. In the first decades of the 21st century, however, this balance has been shifted by a series of complex global challenges. This book argues that donors have now moved towards framing aid as a geopolitical instrument, wherein aid can be given or withheld based on power or political intent, thus imposing the donor’s specific values and norms. This book provides an in-depth analysis of this weaponisation of foreign aid within a framework of global disruption and ultimately concludes that the world is at a tipping point towards a new socio-political world order. Asking important questions about the power dynamics at play within the aid sector, this book will be an important read for researchers across development studies, political science, international relations and global affairs.

In the sixth edition of Contested Knowledge, social theorist Steven Seidman presents the latest topics in social theory and addresses the current shift of 'universalist theorists' to networks of clustered debates. Responds to current issues, debates, and new social movements Reviews sociological theory from a contemporary perspective Reveals how the universal theorist and the era of rival schools has been replaced by networks of clustered debates that are relatively 'autonomous' and interdisciplinary Features updates and in-depth discussions of the newest clustered debates in social theory—intimacy, postcolonial nationalism, and the concept of 'the other' Challenges social scientists to renew their commitment to the important moral and political role social knowledge plays in public life

Why and how is America contested by Europe? This new book answers this question and contributes to a better understanding of contemporary transatlantic tensions. Adopting different theoretical perspectives, the leading contributors to this volume assess the European discontent with America and relate this to the unilateral turn of US foreign policy in the twenty-first century. American unilateralism is interpreted by all the authors as the expression of a new conservative nationalism which has been growing in the country since the 1970s and became culturally hegemonic after 9/11. They explore the following key areas: the rise of American conservative nationalism US foreign policy transatlantic relations anti-Americanism the Iraq War the future of American political and cultural hegemony. This book will be vital reading for students of international relations, foreign policy analysis, American and European politics.