Global Horizons

Global Horizons is a compelling volume for undergraduate audiences. Framed to elicit solutions to gripping global problems, readers will find themselves thinking critically, worrying about research design, and using sophisticated theoretical tools. Spruyt has written an outstanding text that leaves students informed and motivated, while at the same time providing splendidly balanced coverage of multiple issue areas and approaches. -- Colin Elman, Maxwell School, Syracuse University International relations instructors who seek to provide students with a timely mix of focused theories and engaging case studies will embrace Global Horizons. Spruyt vividly animates the most important analytical debates in the field and uses them to illuminate classic historical episodes as well as critically important contemporary issues such as the US-led invasion of Iraq, global energy security, and international efforts to regulate climate change. -- Alexander Cooley, Barnard College, Columbia University International relations theory is vast and complex, and yet if explained clearly and systematically it can be an invaluable aid that enables students to gain a sophisticated grasp of the forces shaping the world. In this engaging, lucid, smart, and comprehensive book, Spruyt makes theory-the 'tools of the trade'-come alive. Global Horizons is the text for which many of us who teach IR have been waiting: instructors and students who read it will reap rich intellectual rewards. -- Rajan Menon, Lehigh University

"Spruyt has written an outstanding text that leaves students informed and motivated, while at the same time providing splendidly balanced coverage of multiple issue areas and approaches." - Colin Elman, Maxwell School, Syracuse University

In the current era we have the ability to wage global war, interact economically and culturally with any part of the world, and communicate with each other in real time. Our horizons are now global. Time and space have contracted. This text takes the change in our horizons as a key feature of modern international relations, examining how international politics and the relations between nations and states have become global politics.

Rather than survey a large array of issues and theories, Spruyt provides students with particular "tools of the trade" and with different perspectives to understand given empirical puzzles. Each section of the book discusses key theories, which may be useful in understanding the issues in question, and then applies them to empirical cases in order to demonstrate how theory relates to practice. Case studies allow for both an historical and comparative approach.