A World of Polities

Here is a first-rate collection of essays, by two of our most insightful and best informed scholars, reflecting on their career-long collaborative efforts to provide prescient corrections to the IR theory enterprise. A must for those of us who feel that the search for better theories of international relations and global politics is far from being over.

Yosef Lapid, Professor of Government, New Mexico State University, USA

Ferguson and Mansbach are, without question, two of the leading theorists in the field. Their previously published essays are insightful and deeply scholarly, and I have used many of them in courses. I welcome this excellent book that places them, and the authors reflections on a post 9/11 world, in a single place.

Craig N. Murphy, M. Margaret Ball Professor of International Relations, Wellesley College, USA

The authors have been critical to the development of global politics as a novel field of inquiry in political science. Here they bring together some of their key contributions to this pathbreaking effort. Connecting these diverse inquiries is the search for the actual sources of effective influence. This book takes us beyond the traditional answers to this question and uncovers polities, identities and loyalties shaping political outcomes in today’s world.

Saskia Sassen is the Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and author of Territory, Authority, Rights.

Ferguson-Mansbach's work is way ahead of the mainstream, always theoretically provocative as well as reflective of sound scholarship and deeply grounded in historical materials. Their standing in the field is extremely high. This is a collaboration that works and that has endured across a long period of time.

James N. Rosenau, University Professor of International Relations, George Washington University, USA