Renowned scholar Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, who set the standard for the scientific approach to international relations and transformed the field, has returned with a reformulated fifth edition based on extensive reviewer feedback and guided by an emphasis on questions about the causes and consequences of war, peace, and world order. More than ever before, the strategic perspective in international relations is examined with complete clarity, precision, and accessibility. What hasn’t changed is Bueno de Mesquita’s commitment to covering the fundamentals of IR. The foundational topics and examination are all there: the major theories of war, the domestic sources of international politics, an exploration of the democratic peace, the problems of terrorism, the role of foreign aid, democratization, international political economy, globalization, international organizations, international law, and the global environment.
The first part of the book, “Foundations”offers highly accessible coverage of key concepts, introducing students to different ways to think about the national interest and showing them how to use game theory and the strategic perspective/selectorate theory to better understand what happens in all aspects of international affairs. This section uses the debate over North Korea’s nuclear weapons development as an ongoing example to build concepts and build confidence in students’ basic modeling of ideas. Also covered is a basic, intuitive introduction to game theory and other evidence and logic based tools for analyzing international relations.
Part II, “War,” next provides a more thorough evaluation of how domestic political incentives and the domestic institutions of governance shape choices about conflict initiation, escalation, and termination. It also surveys major theories of war and conflict, working through hypotheses derived from constructivism, neo-realism, liberalism, and selectorate theory, and evaluates them against the evidence to see what actually works and what doesn’t.
Chapters in Part III, “Peace,” build on the logic of collective action to help students see why it is so difficult to get national governments to do “what is right” even when they can agree on what is right, with chapters covering the effectiveness of international organizations and international law, as well as a thorough evaluation of environmental issues, human rights enforcement, and the domestic and the international political economy of trade.
Part IV, “World Order” emphasizes efforts to promote the spread of democracy and economic prosperity. It also addresses how to understand and deal with terrorism. Chapters carefully examine which strategies work, which do not, and why. The Arab Spring provides a useful ongoing example of the strengths and weaknesses of foreign aid and military intervention policies.
No other introductory text delivers such an easily-understood contemporary explanation of international politics, while truly enabling students to learn how to mobilize the key concepts and models themselves—and thus develop a new method for thinking about world affairs. More than ever before, Principles provides a comprehensive evaluation of all aspects of international affairs, systematically compares the accuracy of competing approaches to international relations, and walks students through the simple, intuitive models and games that capture the essence of the strategic, selectorate viewpoint.
Key Features:
- NEW! A shift in focus to the causes and consequences of war, peace, and world order, with many new and reorganized chapters, and almost all new examples.
- All new chapters provide a grounding in the problems of collective action and free riding, explaining the important policy differences and consequences for collective action when the outcomes being pursued involve public goods¸ private goods, club goods, or common-pool resources.
- NEW! Chapter on international environmental issues, “Global Warming: Designing a Solution,” compares various strategies for achieving successful international climate change agreements in terms of domestic political factors.
- NEW! Two chapters on trade policy from a domestic political perspective (chapter 10, “Free Trade or Fair: The Domestic Politics of Tariffs”) and from a globalization perspective (chapter 11: “Globalization: International Winners and Losers”).
- NEW! Completely revised chapters on international organizations (chapter 7, “How International Organizations Work, Or Don’t Work) and on international law with an emphasis on human rights policy (chapter 9, “Human Rights, International Law, and Norms”).
- NEW! The tools for thinking strategically are introduced at a slower pace with less math and more of the basic reasoning behind strategic behavior to ease students into a less opinionated, more logic-and-evidence-based way of approaching international affairs.
- NEW! Chapter opener features start each chapter with an overview of key points, followed by a short Assumptions Check quiz that points towards some of the important counter-intuitive results that are established in the chapter.
- NEW! empirical analyses throughout the book, simply presented, help establish the relationship between the historical record and alternative views of international affairs. Every chapter has been updated to account for the latest scholarship and has been thoroughly updated for current world events and an exploration of their causes and consequences.
- Chapter-opener overviews, Bolded key terms, “Assumptions Check” quizzes, “Try This” feature boxes, Full glossary, and An appendix chapter offering a brief survey of world history.
***Package this together with the workbook and save your students 20%!
Applying the Strategic Perspective: Problems and Models Workbook, 5e
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