Cosmopolitan Power in International Relations: A Synthesis of Realism, Neoliberalism, and Constructivism

How can nations optimize their power in the modern world system? Realist theory has underscored the importance of hard power as the ultimate path to national strength. In this vision, nations require the muscle and strategies to compel compliance and achieve their full power potential. But in fact, changes in world politics have increasingly encouraged national leaders to complement traditional power resources with more enlightened strategies oriented around the use of soft power resources. The resources to compel compliance have to be increasingly integrated with the resources to cultivate compliance. Only through this integration of hard and soft power can nations truly achieve their greatest strength in modern world politics, and this realization carries important implications for competing paradigms of international relations. The idea of power optimization can only be delivered through the integration of the three leading paradigms of international relations: Realism, Neoliberalism, and Constructivism. Such an integration is manifest in a cosmopolitan theory of power.

Author: Giulio M. Gallarotti
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 09/27/2010
Pages: 326
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.10w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780521138123

Review Citation(s):
Choice 06/01/2011

About the Author
Gallarotti, Giulio M.: - Giulio M. Gallarotti is Professor of Government and Tutor in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University. He has also been a Visiting Professor in the Department of Economic Theory at the University of Rome. He is the author of The Anatomy of an International Monetary Regime: The Classical Gold Standard 1880-1914 and The Power Curse: Influence and Illusion in World Politics. He has published numerous articles in leading journals across a number of disciplines: economics, politics, law, history, and business.