Orders of Exclusion: Great Powers and the Strategic Sources of Foundational Rules in International Relations

When and why do powerful countries seek to enact major changes to international order, the broad set of rules that guide behavior in world politics? This question is particularly important today given the Trump administration's clear disregard for the reigning liberal international order in the United States. Across the globe, there is also uncertainty over what China might seek to replace that order with as it continues to amass power and influence. Together, these developments mean that what motivates great powers to shape and change order will remain at the forefront of debates over the future of world politics. Prior studies have focused on how the origins of international orders have been consensus-driven and inclusive. By contrast, Kyle M. Lascurettes argues in Orders of Exclusion that the propelling motivation for great power order building has typically been exclusionary. Dominant powers pursue fundamental changes to order when they perceive a major new threat on the horizon. Moreover, they do so for the purpose of targeting this perceived threat, be it another powerful state or a foreboding ideological movement. The goal of foundational rule writing in international relations, then, is blocking that threatening entity from amassing further influence, a motive Lascurettes illustrates at work across more than three hundred years of history. Far from falling outside of the bounds of traditional statecraft, order building is the continuation of power politics by other means.

Author: Kyle M. Lascurettes
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 04/03/2020
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d
ISBN13: 9780190068554
ISBN10: 0190068558
BISAC Categories:
- History | World | General
- Political Science | Geopolitics
- Political Science | International Relations | General

About the Author

Kyle M. Lascurettes is Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, where he specializes in global order, international institutions, and international relations theory.