The Concertation Impulse in World Politics

In this book, perhaps his most ambitious so far, Cooper brings together a lifetime of work on global governance, diplomacy, and summitry, into a grand synthesis on one of the most significant, yet most neglected phenomena in international relations. The Concertation Impulse in World Politics constitutes a major theoretical breakthrough, conceptualizing the emergence of an alternative to traditional IOs as key entities in the new century. Cooper does justice to the role groups like the G7, the G20 and the BRICS play in a rapidly changing international system, capturing their unique features and dynamics, and providing fresh insights into our troubled and crisis-prone world. * Jorge Heine, Research Professor, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, and Wilson Center Global Fellow *
This fascinating, provocative, and informative book deserves to be widely read. From various cutting-edge perspectives, Prof. Andrew Cooper examines informal concertation and institutionalism in world politics. By putting institutional concert at the center of his book, he analyzes the reasons, motivations for, and different types of institutional concert forms of global governance. * Emel Parlar Dal, Jean Monnet Chair on the EU and Emerging Powers in the Evolving Multilateralism (2020-2023), Marmara University *
Finally a book on how and why powers have been meeting to work in concert for more than half a millennium and still do - a gauntlet thrown down to every student of international organizations. * Iver B. Neumann, author of Governing the Global Polity *
This book offers a historical perspective on the development of informal and formal institutions while also shedding light on the contemporary tensions in the global system. It is a timely work as international institutions-and multilateralism-are under stress. It challenges how we should think about institutional change in terms of the idea of concertation in a context of fluid global environment. A compelling work of scholarship that recasts the study of International Relations and challenges its privileged Northern position. * Mzukisi Qobo, Head of the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, and member of the Presidential Economic Advisory Council, South Africa *
At a time of renewed geopolitical conflict this valuable book refocuses our attention on the importance of informal groupings of major states and of the 'concertation impulse'. Cooper differentiates his analysis from mainstream institutionalist theory in viewing concertation as a fundamental institution of international society, albeit one involving hierarchy and exclusion. Looking to the experience of the G7 and G20, he convincingly argues for the relevance of this kind of ordering in times of crisis and systemic disruption. We are often presented with a dangerous and implausible choice between the restoration of a western-led 'rules-based global liberal order' on the one hand and a world of anarchy and conflict on the other. It is vital that we follow Cooper in thinking through a richer range of institutional alternatives and possibilities. * Andrew Hurrell, Balliol College, Oxford *
a masterful account of the history and logic of modern concert diplomacy. * John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs *