World Politics: International Relations and Globalization in the 21st Century.

• Author: Sonaullah, Iqbal
• Position: Book review

World Politics: International Relations and Globalization in the 21st Century By Jeffrey Haynes, Peter Hough, Shahin Malik and Lloyd Pettiford Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2017, 475 pages, $15.25, ISBN: 9781473970380

To begin with, this is a text book on international relations and globalization. The body of knowledge produced in World Politics: International Relations and Globalization in 21st Century is broadly divided into six parts. These six parts are subsequently divided into 28 chapters spread over 475 pages. The book provides almost all of the crucial information necessary to understand the major issues in the domain of international relations.

Navigating through the exciting and complex realms of global politics, the book begins by providing basic information about what international relations means in the context of globalization. This has remained one of the most discussed themes of international politics over the previous two decades. World Politics talks, with certain precision, about the development of international society, often reflecting on the need for such a system to maintain global peace and equilibrium.

To advance the argument, the second part of the book--the history of global and international relations--provides a necessary context for the development of international relations. Subdivided into three parts, the book aims to explain the global political developments that emerged from the Second World War. This chapter also talks about the Cold War era and the subsequent irrelevance of bipolarity in world politics. This section briefly discusses European nationalism and imperialism. Unfortunately, it merges religion and nationalism, where religious-nationalism "derives political legitimacy from religious and not secular doctrine" (p. 41). But to frame Iran, Saudi Arabia and ISIS in the same political frame is unfair.

The most important section of the book is the third part, which gives a basic understanding of all the significant theories of international relations. Although it does not delve in detail into these theories, it does make a significant attempt to relate these theories to contemporary global political scenarios.

For Realists, the volume argues, no government can 'enforce laws' in world politics (p. 95); the idea of 'national interest,' thus, will always take priority over the dogma of international security. This means that every state ought to be capable of protecting itself, which, fundamentally...