Perspectives on world politics - Richard Little|Michael Smith

The study of world politics is crucially important; it holds both immense promise and immense difficulty. The sheer complexity of the subject has, however, generated conflict and diversity among academics. By identifying three broad perspectives, Perspectives on World Politics succeeds in presenting a clear and coherent structure with which to approach this complex and difficult subject. Perspectives on World Politics sets out to present students with some of the competing conceptual tools used to analyse world politics. The first perspective, the politics of power and security, stresses the quasi-anarchical nature of the world political system and the consequent concern of states with national security. This approach is challenged by the second perspective, the politics of interdependence and transnational relations. Here both the state and foreign policy process become disaggregated', and as a result the international system explodes' into a complex of coalitions and balances without a clear-cut global hierarchy. The third perspective, the politics of dominance and dependence, stresses the inequality which pervades the structure of the international system.;Here the structure of economic and political relations favours the centre' at the expense of the periphery'. By exploring these conceptual rules, one learns how and why divergent perspectives produce radically different pictures of reality. This second edition, substantially revised and updated, fully reflects recent theoretical developments in the field while maintaining the original structure of the text. As such it should appeal to all those interested in world politics both as a field of academic enquiry and as a practical activity.