A study of world politics

This will be my first book review of what is essentially a textbook. But the book and its area of study is such an important and, personally, an intriguing one for me. The book is World Politics: Interests, Interactions, Institutions written by three prominent academicians: Jeffrey Frieden of Harvard University, David Lake of the University of California, San Diego and Kenneth Schultz of Stanford University.

This is the 5th edition of this textbook published in 2022 by WW Norton and Co.

The field of world politics or sometimes called international relations seeks to understand how the people and countries of the world get along or why they do not get along. This is why international relations can go from the topic of open warfare to peaceful cooperation. The authors point out that some countries fight wars against one another and while they are not fighting, spend significant resources preparing to fight, period. Some countries have managed to live in peace for long periods. There are mysteries in analyzing countries of the world through the prism of world politics.  For example, there are countries that engage in lucrative economic dealings selling goods and services around the world. These have made some nations very rich while other nations remain in poverty. One important topic in international relations today is the need for countries to cooperate due to the extreme challenges of climate change. The study of world politics is the main reason for this textbook.

According to the 19th century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle, economics was not a happy science. He said that it was “dreary, desolate and indeed, quite abject and a distressing one; what we might call the dismal science.”

According to the authors, the study of world politics is similar to Carlyle’s criticism. It is true that the history of world politics has many distressing observations. These include international wars that have claimed millions of lives, civil wars and genocide that have claimed millions more and, in most cases, outsiders who might have prevented these deaths and have chosen not to get involved.

The authors, however, also said: “International economic relations have in some cases been harmonious and have generated enormous wealth for some countries. Global income and living standards improved dramatically over the last century, making this the most prosperous time in world history.”

However, this is also one of the worst periods in inequality in living standards. In 2017, less than 9 percent of the world’s population survived on less than $1.90 a day, the world standard for extreme poverty. At the same time, less than 1 percent of the world’s population owned close to 50 percent of total global wealth. This is one of the major causes of the resistance to globalization and has fueled the rise of nationalist and populist movements seeking to reverse the trend of increasing income inequality.

There is some good news in world politics. At the beginning of the 20th century, only a handful of countries around the world had political systems that guaranteed civil and human rights. The effort to protect the global environment was unknown a few decades ago. In recent years, the number of international environmental treaties and organizations has grown dramatically.

The book has five parts. The first two parts deal with the topics of conflict and cooperation in international history and deals with the study of war and political violence. For example, one chapter deals with the topic that asks given the human and material cost of military conflict, why do states sometimes wage war rather than resolve their disputes through negotiation?

The third part discusses the main issues in international economic relations. One interesting topic is in Chapter 7, which raises the question, in spite of the fact that virtually all economic analyses conclude that trade is economically beneficial, why does every country restrict trade in some way?

Part 3 dwells on the new issues associated with global governance. It answers questions like how can the international community be motivated to do what is “right”? Another relevant question is why, in the light of widespread support for the principle of human rights, has the movement to protect those rights not been more successful?

It also tackles the issue of the need for a cleaner and healthier environment and why is it so hard to protect the environment?

Today’s students of world politics must accept the fact that the environment can change suddenly. For example, the authors of the book say: “For hundreds of years, the continent of Europe experience horrific warfare culminating in the first half of the twentieth century in two world wars that claim tens of millions of lives. Today, most of Europe is at peace. And a war? in the foreseeable future is inconceivable.”

And yet, in the same year that this book was published, Russia invaded Ukraine and Europe has become the battleground of a new war.

This book is the most comprehensive book I have found in this subject area. It deals with subjects that are so contemporary and relevant. As the authors wrote in the book: “We study world politics because the bad things that happen in the world distress us and because the good things give us hope that, through understanding and effort, the world could be a better place.”

Thank you to Tim Bautista for this book.

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