The Downfall of the American Order?

Edited by Peter J. Katzenstein and Jonathan Kirshner

Narrated by

Available from Audible

Book published by Cornell University Press

The Downfall of the American Order? offers penetrating insight into the emerging global political economy at this moment of an increasingly chaotic world.

For seventy-five years, the basic patterns of world politics and the contours of international economic activity took place in the shadow of American leadership and the institutions it designed—an order designed to avoid the horrors of previous eras, including, most poignantly, two world wars and the Great Depression.

But all things must pass. The global financial crisis of 2008, the legacy of two long, losing wars, and the polarizing and tumultuous presidency of Donald Trump all suggest that global affairs have reached a turning point. The implications of this are profound.

The contributors to this book cast their eyes back on the order that once was, and look ahead to what might follow. In dialogue with each other's appraisals and expectations, they differ in their assessments of the probable, ranging from a hollowed-out American primacy muddling through by default, to partial modifications of old institutions and practices at home and abroad, and to wholesale contestations and the search for new orders.

Contributors: Rawi Abdelal, Sheri Berman, Mark Blyth, Francis J. Gavin, Peter A. Gourevitch, Ilene Grabel, Peter J. Katzenstein, Jonathan Kirshner, and John Gerard Ruggie

REVIEWS:

“It is hard to find a better range of leading scholars than Jonathan Kirshner and Peter J. Katzenstein have gathered in this book to weigh up the end of Pax Americana—perhaps the most important theme of our age. This is a clear-eyed, analytically incisive, and compellingly relevant book for our times.”

—Edward Luce, Financial Times

“This beautifully written and interesting book confronts some of the most serious problems of the 21st century world political economy. It assembles essays by an all-star cast of scholars whose contributions are excellent across the board.”

—John L. Campbell, Dartmouth College, author of American Discontent