"In a sweeping study of the West over the last 500 years, Bruce Porter shows the astonishing range of warfare's modernizing effects on states. Warfare unifies, rallies, and bureaucratizes both states and their populaces; warfare triggers nationalism, reform movements, and revolutions. More positively, through its inevitable mobilization of citizenry, war has been a contributing cause of virtually all major social movements and even democracy. Porter examines major civil wars as well as international conflicts, showing how they served as catalysts for the New Monorachies, absolutist states, nation-states, totalitarian states, and contemporary industrial and post-industrial states. Finishing with an examination of the impact on the American state of the Civil War, the two World Wars, and the Cold War, Porter reveals our own paradox: pro-military conservatives denounce big government, forgetting that military might presupposes political power; anti-military liberals embraces to the power of the state to accomplish social ends while hesitating to acknowledge the military origins of that power."--The dust-jacket flaps.

In the five hundred years covered by this volume there was scarcely a year which passed without either war or some open demonstration of hostility between the many sovereign powers which governed Europe. States and peoples lived under the shadow of war, were ceaselessly prompted to consider the possibility of war, had to find ways of dealing with the consequences of war. This volume in the Origins of the Modern State in Europe series focuses on the crucial role of war in the formation of state systems. It starts from the assumption that interstate rivalries and conflicts were at the heart not only of the demarcation of territories, but also of the ever-growing need to mobilize resources for warfare. Institutionalization was consequently highly dependent on such competition. It was for military reasons, and with military aims, that the state secured control of time and space, both at sea and on land. The Origins of the Modern State in Europe series arises from an important international research programme sponsored by the European Science Foundation. The aim of the series, which comprises seven volumes, is to bring together specialists from different countries, who reinterpret from a comparative European perspective different aspects of the formation of the state over the long period from the beginning of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. One of the main achievements of the research programme has been to overcome the long-established historiographical tendency to regard states mainly from the viewpoint of their twentieth-century borders.

This ground-breaking study is the first to employ modern international relations theory to place Roman militarism and expansion of power within the broader Mediterranean context of interstate anarchy. Arthur M. Eckstein challenges claims that Rome was an exceptionally warlike and aggressive state—not merely in modern but in ancient terms—by arguing that intense militarism and aggressiveness were common among all Mediterranean polities from ca 750 B.C. onwards. In his wide-ranging and masterful narrative, Eckstein explains that international politics in the ancient Mediterranean world was, in political science terms, a multipolar anarchy: international law was minimal, and states struggled desperately for power and survival by means of warfare. Eventually, one state, the Republic of Rome, managed to create predominance and a sort of peace. Rome was certainly a militarized and aggressive state, but it was successful not because it was exceptional in its ruthlessness, Eckstein convincingly argues; rather, it was successful because of its exceptional ability to manage a large network of foreign allies, and to assimilate numerous foreigners within the polity itself. This book shows how these characteristics, in turn, gave Rome incomparably large resources for the grim struggle of states fostered by the Mediterranean anarchy—and hence they were key to Rome's unprecedented success.

A long-dominant reading of American politics holds that public policy in the United States is easily captured by special interest groups. Countering this view, Adam Sheingate traces the development of government intervention in agriculture from its nineteenth-century origins to contemporary struggles over farm subsidies. His considered conclusion is that American institutions have not given agricultural interest groups any particular advantages in the policy process, in part because opposing lobbies also enjoy access to policymakers. In fact, the high degree of conflict and pluralism maintained by American institutions made possible substantial retrenchment of the agricultural welfare state during the 1980s and 1990s. In Japan and France--two countries with markedly different institutional characters than the United States--powerful agricultural interests and a historically close relationship between farmers, bureaucrats, and politicians continue to preclude a roll-back of farm subsidies. This well-crafted study not only puts a new spin on agricultural policy, but also makes a strong case for the broader claim that the relatively decentralized American political system is actually less prone to capture and rule by subgovernments than the more centralized political systems found in France and Japan. Sheingate's historical, comparative approach also demonstrates, in a widely useful way, how past institutional developments shape current policies and options.

This book is a comparative study of military operations conducted my modern states between the French Revolution and World War I. It examines the complex relationship between political purpose and strategy on the one hand, and the challenge of realizing strategic goals through military operations on the other. It argues further that following the experience of the Napoleonic Wars military strength was awarded a primary status in determining the comparative modernity of all the Great Powers; that military goals came progressively to distort a sober understanding of the national interest; that a genuinely political and diplomatic understanding of national strategy was lost; and that these developments collectively rendered the military and political catastrophe of 1914 not inevitable yet probable.

A leading foreign policy thinker uses Chinese political theory to explain why some powers rise as others decline and what this means for the international order Why has China grown increasingly important in the world arena while lagging behind the United States and its allies across certain sectors? Using the lens of classical Chinese political theory, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers explains China’s expanding influence by presenting a moral-realist theory that attributes the rise and fall of great powers to political leadership. Yan Xuetong shows that the stronger a rising state’s political leadership, the more likely it is to displace a prevailing state in the international system. Yan shows how rising states like China transform the international order by reshaping power distribution and norms, and he considers America’s relative decline in international stature even as its economy, education system, military, political institutions, and technology hold steady. Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers offers a provocative, alternative perspective on the changing dominance of states.

During the second half of the twentieth century the countries of East Asia saw one of the most remarkable transformations in human history, from relatively poor societies to global powerhouses of accumulation, proletarianisation and mega-urbanisation. This volume features Marxist scholars from East Asia and Europe who are pioneering a new approach to this transformation using the theory of state capitalism. The essays analyse the histories of countries on either side of the Cold War divide within the broader framework of twentieth century global capitalist expansion, while at the same time offering a sophisticated critique of Developmental State Theory. Contributors are: Tobias ten Brink, Gareth Dale, Jeong Seongjin, Michael Haynes, Kim Ha-young, Kim Yong-uk, Lee Jeong-goo, and Owen Miller

International Relations: Perspectives and Controversies offers an innovative approach to this introductory course. Each of the topical chapters covers an enduring and important debate in the field and examines how political actors or political thinkers explain and defend their different opinions. This format offers the students the chance to understand important issues in International Relations as dynamic struggles over resources and power. Each chapter is structured in four parts. The first part provides a historical overview of the issue, its origins, evolution, and current status. The middle two sections of each chapter map out the opposing or contrasting points of view within the debate. These debates are followed by an evaluation of the merits of each position and the scholarly and political assessment of the situation. The goal of the text is to help students think systematically and critically about international affairs. By distilling the discussion from a variety of viewpoints (rather than simply providing articles by scholars who disagree), the author highlights meaningful distinctions among differing political positions in a way that helps students understand not only the headlines from today and yesterday, but more importantly, those from tomorrow. New! The text has been reorganized to present the discussion of power politics (Chapter 3) before the coverage of war and human nature (Chapter 5). New! Expanded coverage of IOs/NGOs includes the European Union as related to security amidst anarchy (Chapter 3) and the role of Amnesty International and other NGOs in human rights activism (Chapter 10). New! Expanded and updated coverage of the "Clash of Civilizations" in Chapter 12 is found both in the body of the chapter and in the Points of View readings at the end of the chapter. New! Updated Points of View readings, which present primary sources such as official foreign policy statements, government documents, news stories, debate transcripts, and editorials, expand on the chapter discussions. New topics include "Should We Practice Free Trade in Agriculture?"; "Does Foreign Aid Promote Development?"; "Can a Nuclear Iran be Deterred?"; and "Did 9/11 Reflect a Clash of Civilizations?". Marginal glossary allows students to access key terms without interrupting their reading. End-of-chapter pedagogy includes bulleted chapter summaries, a list of key terms with page numbers, suggestions for further reading, critical-thinking questions, endnotes, and references to relevant web sites.

This books surveys the evolution of the international order in the quarter century since the end of the Cold War through the prism of developments in key regional and functional parts of the 'liberal international order 2.0' (LIO 2.0) and the roles played by two key ordering powers, the United States and the People's Republic of China. Among the partial orders analysed in the individual chapters are the regions of Europe, the Middle East and East Asia and the international regimes dealing with international trade, climate change, nuclear weapons, cyber space, and international public health emergencies, such as SARS and ZIKA. To assess developments in these various segments of the LIO 2.0, and to relate them to developments in the two other crucial levels of political order, order within nation-states, and at the global level, the volume develops a comprehensive, integrated framework of analysis that allows systematic comparison of developments across boundaries between segments and different levels of the international order. Using this framework, the book presents a holistic assessment of the trajectory of the international order over the last decades, the rise, decline, and demise of the LIO 2.0, and causes of the dangerous erosion of international order over the last decade.