Back to basics
Subtitle: state power in a contemporary world
By: edited by Martha Finnemore and Judith Goldstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 376
ISBN-13: 9780199970087; 9780199970094
Subjects: World politics; International relations; Power (Social sciences)
Description: No scholar better exemplifies the intellectual challenges foisted on the Neorealist school of international relations than prominent scholar Stephen Krasner (Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Studies, the Senior Associate Dean for the Social Sciences, School of Humanities and Sciences, and Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department 2005-2007). Throughout his career he has wrestled with realism's promises and limitations. Krasner has always been a prominent defender of realism and the importance of power understood in material terms, whether military or economic. Yet realist frameworks rarely provided a complete explanation for outcomes, in Krasner's analyses, and much of his work involved understanding power's role in situations not well explained by realism.^

If states seek power, why do we see cooperation? If hegemony promotes cooperation why does cooperation continue in the face of America's decline? Do states actually pursue their national interests or do domestic structures and values derail the rational pursuit of material objectives? Krasner's explanations were as diverse as were the problems. They pushed, to use his phrase, "the limits of realism." Edited by Martha Finnemore and Judith Goldstein, Back to Basics asks scholars to reflect on the role power plays in contemporary politics and how a power politics approach is influential today. The arguments made by the authors in this volume speak to one of three themes that run through Krasner's work: state power and hegemony; the relationship between states and markets; conceptions of the nation state in international politics. These themes appeared regularly in Krasner's scholarship as he wrestled, over his career, with fundamental questions of inter-state politics.^

Contributors largely agree on the centrality of power but diverge substantially on the ways power is manifest and should be measured and understood. Many of the contributors confronted the same intellectual dilemmas as Krasner in struggling to define power and its relationship to interests, yet their responses are different. Together, these essays explore new ways of thinking about power's role in contemporary politics and demonstrate the concepts continued relevance for both policy and theory.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Puzzles about power / Martha Finnemore and Judith Goldstein; title: Power politics in the contemporary world: lessons from the scholarship of Stephen Krasner / Martha Finnemore and Judith Goldstein; title: Stephen Krasner: subversive realist / Robert O. Keohane; title: Authority, coercion, and power in international relations / David A. Lake; title: Governance under limited sovereignty / Thomas Risse; title: Three scenes of sovereignty and power / Etel Solingen; title: States and power as ur-force: domestic traditions and embedded actors in world politics / Peter J. Katzenstein; title: Currency and state power / Benjamin J. Cohen; title: International trade law as a mechanism for state transformation / Richard H. Steinberg; title: Choice and constraint in the great recession of 2008 / Peter Gourevitch; title: Power politics and the powerless / Arthur A. Stein; title: Globalization and openness: would a rational hegemon still prefer openness? / Lloyd Gruber; title: The tragedy of the global institutional commons / Daniel W. Drezner; title: Causation and responsibility in a complex world / Robert Jervis; title: Power, bargaining, and persuasion: unevenly mapped terrain / Stephen D. Krasner.