Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T08:01:32.698Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The global transformation: more than meets the eye

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2016

Paul Musgrave  and
Daniel Nexon
Paul Musgrave*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
Daniel Nexon
Affiliation:
Department of Government and School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
*
E-mail: paul.musgrave@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Buzan and Lawson’s The Global Transformation establishes that many of the basic parameters of world politics originated in the ‘long 19th century’. Despite finding much to admire in their book, we are concerned that it lacks an explicit theory of change. In its drive to highlight the novelty and exceptionalism of the 19th century, it offers insufficient guidance on two key issues: first, how international relations scholars should situate Buzan and Lawson’s ‘global transformation’ in existing debates over transhistorical processes; and, second, how they should apply lessons from that transformation to understanding emergent trends in the contemporary world. We argue that a more explicit study of causal factors might help account for why the 19th century was unusual. We conclude with thoughts about how the field should proceed after The Global Transformation. In particular, it points to how concatenating changes could profoundly alter international politics – an approach we term ‘Exotic International Relations’. Buzan and Lawson’s book therefore serves as a marker for the importance of systematically theorizing how radical potentialities for transformation might rearrange existing structural assemblages in world politics.

Type
Symposium: Theory, History, and the Global Transformation
Information
International Theory , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , November 2016 , pp. 436 - 447
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anievas, Alexander. 2016. “History, Theory and Contingency in the Study of Modern International Relations: The Global Transformation Revisited.” International Theory 8(3):468–480.Google Scholar
Branch, Jordan. 2011. “Mapping the Sovereign State: Technology, Authority, and Systemic Change.” International Organization 65(1):1–36.Google Scholar
Braumoeller, Bear. 2016. “The Promise of Historical Dynamism for the American Study of International Relations.” International Theory 8(3):458–467.Google Scholar
Buzan, Barry, and Lawson, George. 2013. “The Global Transformation: The Nineteenth Century and the Making of Modern International Relations.” International Studies Quarterly 57(3):620–6634.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buzan, Barry, and Lawson, George. 2015. The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Carpenter, Charli. 2016. “The Future of Global Security Studies.” Journal of Global Security Studies 1:1–3.Google Scholar
Goldstone, Jack A. 1998. “The problem of the ‘early modern’ world.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 41:249–284.Google Scholar
Hall, Rodney Bruce. 1999. National collective identity: social constructs and international systems. Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Holsti, Kalevi J. 2004. Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jervis, Robert. 1997. System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kaufman, Stuart, Little, Richard, and Wohlforth, William, eds. 2007. The Balance of Power in World History. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Mann, Michael. 1986. The Sources of Social Power, Volume I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Musgrave, Paul, and Nexon, Daniel H.. 2013. “Singularity or Aberration? A Response to Buzan and Lawson.” International Studies Quarterly 57(3):637–639.Google Scholar
Nexon, Daniel H. 2009. The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owen, John. 2012. The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510-2010. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, Andrew. 2013. “From Global Transformation to Big Bang – A Response to Buzan and Lawson.” International Studies Quarterly 57(3):640–6642.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reus-Smit, Christian. 2016. “Theory, History, and Great Transformations.” International Theory 8(3):422–435.Google Scholar
Spruyt, Hendrik. 1994. The Sovereign State and its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 1984. Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York: Russel Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 1995. “To Explain Political Processes.” American Journal of Sociology 100(6):1594–11610.Google Scholar
Waltz, Kenneth. 1986. “Reflections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to My Critics.” Neorealism and its Critics, edited by Robert O. Keohane, 322–346. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar