Still a Western World? Continuity and Change in Global Order

Today, the debate on world order is intense. As is always the case in times of transition, the global restructuring of international affairs is generating a deep reflection on how the world is, and how it should be reorganized. After the long frozen period of the cold war and the subsequent years marked by US unipolarism, the world has begun the new millennium with profound shifts. The relative decline of the USA, the crisis in the European Union, the consolidation of the BRIC emerging economies, and the diffusion of the power to non-state actors all constitute significant elements that demand a new conceptualization of the rules of the global game.

In this pluralist and changing context, a number of different narratives are presented by the key actors in the international system. This book analyses these narratives in comparative terms by putting them in the wider framework of the transformation in global governance.

Raffaele Marchetti is Senior Assistant Professor of International Relations at LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome. His research interests lie in global politics and governance, transnational civil society, political risk and democracy. His recent publications include Partnership in International Policy Making: Civil Society and Public Institutions in Global and European Affairs (Palgrave, 2016, ed.); La politica della globalizzazione (Mondadori, 2014); Contemporary Political Agency: Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2013, co-ed. With B. Maiguashca); Global Democracy: Normative and Empirical Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2011, co-ed. With D. Archibugi and M. Koenig-Archibugi); Civil Society, Ethnic Conflicts, and the Politicization of Human Rights (United Nations University Press, 2011, co-ed. With N. Tocci); Conflict Society and Peacebuilding (Routledge, 2011, co-ed. With N. Tocci); Manuale di politica internazionale (UBE, 2010, co-authored with F. Mazzei and F. Petito); and Global Democracy: For and Against. Ethical Theory, Institutional Design and Social Struggles (Routledge, 2008).

Sergio Fabbrini is Director of the School of Government and Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the LUISS Guido Carli University of Rome, where he holds a Jean Monnet Chair. He was the Editor of the Italian Journal of Political Science from 2003 to 2009. He is Recurrent Visiting Professor of Comparative Politics at the Department of Political Science and Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California at Berkeley. Among his recent publications in English are Which European Union? Europe After the Euro Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Compound Democracies: Why the United States and Europe Are Becoming Similar (Oxford University Press, 2010 (second updated edition); America and Its Critics: Virtues and Vices of the Democratic Hyperpower (Polity Press, 2008).