8 - Epilogue: The Badge of the Sheriff

Summary

The final chapter rounds up the analysis and summarizes the main findings from all previous chapters. It concludes that the United States is indeed a sheriff, but a shrewd sheriff. The chapter contextualizes the main conclusions in the book within the current debates in academic and policy circles about the upending demise of the US world order. The chapter discusses the prospects of the US world order in light of the status of US domestic politics. That is the decisive debate: at the end of the day, that is where the sheriff gets its mandate. Regardless of whether the US world order is fading into the past or it is bound to endure in the future, the institutional logic of a consensual leadership will remain an original feature of how a democratic nation can manage and enforce a world order.