International Relations and World Politics introduces issues in an organized and comprehensible way, examining them in relation to two trends; three broad, organizing themes or concepts; key actors; and three basic images or perspectives that provide structure for the pages that follow:
- Two trends - increasing globalization and crises of authority - that characterize international relations and world politics
- Key organizing themes or concepts - in particular, security, economy, and identity that structure the three major sections of the book
- Key actors-states, international organizations, and transnational organizations and movements (such as nongovernmental organizations,
multinational corporations, and terrorist groups)
- Three basic images or perspectives on world politics - realism, liberalism (or pluralism as it is frequently called), and global economic
structuralism (which includes Marxism, world-systems, and dependency theory) supplemented by references to other theoretical and
conceptual understandings mentioned below.
Part I Overview
Part II State Security and Statecraft
Part III International Security
Part IV The Global Economy
Part V Identity and Civil Society