Introducing Global Politics.How should we approach the study of world affairs? How is the world best under-
stood? World affairs have traditionally been
... [Show More] understood on the basis of an interna-
tional paradigm. In this view, states (often understood as ‘nations’, hence
‘international’) are taken to be the essential building blocks of world politics,
meaning that world affairs boil down, essentially, to the relations between states.
This suggests that once you understand the factors that influence how states inter-
act with one another, you understand how the world works. However, since the
1980s, an alternative globalization paradigm has become fashionable. This reflects
the belief that world affairs have been transformed in recent decades by the growth
of global interconnectedness and interdependence. In this view, the world no longer
operates as a disaggregated collection of states, or ‘units’, but rather as an inte-
grated whole, as ‘one world’. Global politics, as understood in this book, attempts to
straddle these rival paradigms. It accepts that it is equally absurd to dismiss states
and national government as irrelevant in world affairs as it is to deny that, over a
significant range of issues, states now operate in a context of global interdepend-
ence. However, in what sense is politics now ‘global’? And how, and to what extent,
has globalization reconfigured world politics? Our understanding of global politics
also needs to take account of the different theoretical ‘lenses’ though which the
world has been interpreted; that is, different ways of seeing the world. What, in
particular, is the difference between mainstream perspectives on global politics and
critical perspectives? Finally, the world stubbornly refuses to stand still. Global poli-
tics is therefore an arena of ongoing and, many would argue, accelerating change.
And yet, certain aspects of global politics appear to have an enduring character.
What is the balance between continuity and change in global politics? [Show Less]