This book develops the idea that since decolonisation, regional patterns of security have become more prominent in international politics. The authors combine an operational theory of regional security with an empirical application across the whole of the international system. Individual chapters cover Africa, the Balkans, CIS Europe, East Asia, EU Europe, the Middle East, North America, South America, and South Asia. The main focus is on the post-Cold War period, but the history of each regional security complex is traced back to its beginnings. By relating the regional dynamics of security to current debates about the global power structure, the authors unfold a distinctive interpretation of post-Cold War international security, avoiding both the extreme oversimplifications of the unipolar view, and the extreme deterritorialisations of many globalist visions of a new world disorder. Their framework brings out the radical diversity of security dynamics in different parts of the world.

This timely book presents fresh, forward-looking analyses of key regions across the globe, organized around power transition theory. Tracking political and economic trajectories broadly, the contributors use cutting-edge data to forecast general trends in regional politics, economics, and diplomacy. Their collective insights into the likely directions of regional dynamics within a changing global order comprise an invaluable guidebook for forward-thinking readers considering where the world is headed in the coming decades and the implications for strategy, politics, and policy.

Observing the dramatic shift in world politics since the end of the Cold War, Peter J. Katzenstein argues that regions have become critical to contemporary world politics. This view is in stark contrast to those who focus on the purportedly stubborn persistence of the nation-state or the inevitable march of globalization. In detailed studies of technology and foreign investment, domestic and international security, and cultural diplomacy and popular culture, Katzenstein examines the changing regional dynamics of Europe and Asia, which are linked to the United States through Germany and Japan. Regions, Katzenstein contends, are interacting closely with an American imperium that combines territorial and non-territorial powers. Katzenstein argues that globalization and internationalization create open or porous regions. Regions may provide solutions to the contradictions between states and markets, security and insecurity, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Embedded in the American imperium, regions are now central to world politics.

Regions in Europe explores the state of regional politics in an increasingly integrated Europe. It argues that the predicted rise of increased political power at the regional level has failed to materialise and is fraught with paradox. In doing so this study locates regions in relation to European integration, globalisation, the nation state, local government, and comparative and national perspectives. Using case studies of the main players in Europe including: * Germany * France * UK * Italy * Spain * the Netherlands * Belgium. the contributors show how and why European regions remain remarkably weak in European governance.

Resource wars, identity conflicts, disinformation, geostrategic rivalries, global power shifts, and an increasing number of non-state actors, make it difficult to analyse contemporary international relations. At the same time, contemporary power rivalries are increasingly affected by currency wars, economic diplomacy, competitive intelligence, economic warfare, indirect strategies, and state capitalism. The events in Ukraine in Spring 2014 reconfirm that Thomas Friedman’s flattening of the world (based on the coincidence of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the emergence of Netscape and the Web; workflow software; uploading; outsourcing; offshoring; supply-chaining; insourcing; in-forming; and “steroids” like Facebook and Instagram) goes hand in hand with the fact that, as postulated by Robert Kaplan, geography still matters in a global world. Globalization exists because of local processes, and local processes are ultimately shaped by globalization. Geography remains among the primary factors shaping a country’s foreign policy. This book addresses the most fundamental geopolitical issues observable in a region where the “great game” of geopolitics is particularly still alive – in East- and South-East Asia. The contemporary geopolitical situation in this part of the world is far from stable: the width and depth of economic integration in the region resonates with the nature of political relations, crises in the global financial system, climate change, and the regional security architecture inherited from the Cold-War era. In terms of power relations, the particular changes in the region’s status quo imply an immediate intensification of the PRC’s activities within the framework of political and security dialogue with its direct neighbors, ultimately leading to a rivalry between China and the United States. The studies presented in this book largely focus on East- and South-East Asian actors and problems, while studies of the situation in other global regions enrich the research by adding a global dimension to the study of regional geopolitical affairs.

In this contribution to the literature on the causes of war, Douglas Lemke asks whether the same factors affect minor powers as affect major ones. He investigates whether power parity and dissatisfaction with the status quo have an impact within Africa, the Far East, the Middle East and South America. Lemke argues that there are similarities across these regions and levels of power, and that parity and dissatisfaction are correlates of war around the world. The extent to which they increase the risk of war varies across regions, however, and the book looks at the possible sources of this cross-regional variation, concluding that differential progress toward development is the likely cause. This book will interest students and scholars of international relations and peace studies, as well as comparative politics and area studies.

This ground-breaking study sets out a new understanding of transformations in the interaction between religion and political authority throughout history.