Man Is by Nature a Political Animal: Evolution, Biology, and Politics. Edited by Peter K. Hatemi and Rose McDermott. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. 352p. $80.00 cloth, $27.50 paper.

Peter K. Hatemi and Rose McDermott's Man Is by Nature a Political Animal brings together some of the most important social scientists working at the intersection of political science, psychology, biology, and cognitive neuroscience. Given recent advances in cognitive neuroscience and given the proliferation of work in political science that draws on these advances, we have decided to invite a range of political scientists to comment on the promise and the limits of this line of inquiry. What can scientific developments in psychology, biology, and neuroscience tell us about “human nature”? Can these discourses reckon with the variation in time and space that has traditionally been at the heart of political science, perhaps even going back to the classic text from which Hatemi and McDermott derive their title, Aristotle's Politics?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

In this provocative new book, Charles Kupchan issues a clarion call to the advanced industrial nations of the West. The global order they have built over two centuries—a system based on liberal democracy at home and free trade abroad—is meeting its demise, he warns. New nations have arisen that neither share the West's historical traditions nor aspire to its contemporary values. The advanced industrial West, Kupchan argues, cannot logically expect nations like China, India, Brazil, and Russia to voluntarily comply with an existing order that is alien to their experiences and unaccommodating to their interests. Nor can the West realistically strong-arm such nations. The fulcrum of relative power has shifted too far to make coercion possible. But the West, he asserts, must not stand idly by. Historically, power transitions—save for a few rare exceptions—have tended to engender violent conflict. This time will be no different, says the author, unless the West moves aggressively to foster a new and far more inclusive global order.

I am grateful to Edward Steinfeld for his thoughtful review of No One's World. I focus my response to his critique on three issues: the rise of the West, the implications of China's ascent, and the challenge of preserving a rules-based international system.

Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide. By Joshua S. Goldstein. New York: Dutton, 2011. 400p. $26.95 cloth, $17.00 paper.

Violence is an ever present and very visible feature of our political landscape. And war—its strategy, its preparation, and its conduct—remains a central preoccupation of political elites and of political scientists. In his new book Winning the War on War, Joshua S. Goldstein sifts the statistical and historiographical evidence to tell a story of how we seem to be winning the long-term fight against war, and why. Goldstein places major emphasis on the rise of international peacekeeping, but he also discusses alternative explanations, such as the liberal peace. In this symposium a number of scholars of international politics, comparative politics, and political theory have been asked to comment on Goldstein's book and on the broader theme it addresses.—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

This volume's provocative title recalls a substantial early-twentieth-century literature, spawned by interwar economic instability and the ascent of seemingly thriving authoritarian systems (e.g., fascism and Stalinism), which struggled to explain the fragility of liberal political and economic ideals both at home and abroad. Taking right-wing (e.g., Carl Schmitt's Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy [1928]) as well as left-wing (e.g., Harold Laski's Democracy in Crisis [1931]) forms, that genre combined insights from the latest social scientific scholarship with perceptive and oftentimes prescient political observations. Although we now know that it too often understated liberalism's potential for reform and renewal, abandoning sound analysis for apocalyptic aperçus, that literature sometimes creatively identified liberalism's own internal contradictions as the source of what was then frequently described as “the crisis of our times.”

Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide. By Joshua S. Goldstein. New York: Dutton, 2011. 400p. $26.95 cloth, $17.00 paper.

Violence is an ever present and very visible feature of our political landscape. And war—its strategy, its preparation, and its conduct—remains a central preoccupation of political elites and of political scientists. In his new book Winning the War on War, Joshua S. Goldstein sifts the statistical and historiographical evidence to tell a story of how we seem to be winning the long-term fight against war, and why. Goldstein places major emphasis on the rise of international peacekeeping, but he also discusses alternative explanations, such as the liberal peace. In this symposium a number of scholars of international politics, comparative politics, and political theory have been asked to comment on Goldstein's book and on the broader theme it addresses.—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Thanks to William Scheuerman for his thoughtful and stimulating comments on my book. It is certainly true that the crisis of liberalism in general and of the liberal world order in particular is not a new subject. Then why take it up again? For two reasons: first, many of the previous and contemporary critical analyses of the liberal world order tend to be prejudiced by theoretical and/or political convictions that serve to predetermine their view of the subject. I consider myself a skeptical liberal in the sense that the progress which most liberals talk about is possible and desirable, but it cannot be taken for granted and the obstacles to progress are much more serious than many liberals think. Differently put, there is no end of history, no secure path to modernity for all, no safe, upward arrow towards progress. “History has no libretto,” as Alexander Herzen said.

Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide. By Joshua S. Goldstein. New York: Dutton, 2011. 400p. $26.95 cloth, $17.00 paper.

Violence is an ever present and very visible feature of our political landscape. And war—its strategy, its preparation, and its conduct—remains a central preoccupation of political elites and of political scientists. In his new book Winning the War on War, Joshua S. Goldstein sifts the statistical and historiographical evidence to tell a story of how we seem to be winning the long-term fight against war, and why. Goldstein places major emphasis on the rise of international peacekeeping, but he also discusses alternative explanations, such as the liberal peace. In this symposium a number of scholars of international politics, comparative politics, and political theory have been asked to comment on Goldstein's book and on the broader theme it addresses.—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

This is a book about the contributions of mid-twentieth-century classical realists, first and foremost E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, and Reinhold Niebuhr. The argument is that the “realism” defended by these scholars is sadly misrepresented in mainstream textbooks. Textbook renditions of realism emphasize the pursuit of national interest and the importance of Realpolitik, deny morality any meaningful role in international politics, and confirm the primacy of the sovereign nation-state and the fragility of international institutions. Realists look to the balance of power as the major instrument in preserving peace, and they reject the idea that anarchy can be transformed as a result of globalization and interstate cooperation, even in advanced cases of the latter, such as the European Union.

Explaining the Iraq War: Counterfactual Theory, Logic and Evidence. By Frank P. Harvey. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 360p. $103.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

The Iraq War initiated by the Bush administration in 2003 was and perhaps continues to be an important episode in world politics, US politics, and the politics of the Middle East. The war also galvanized controversy among public intellectuals and broader publics, and generated strong opposition in many European and Middle Eastern countries. In Explaining the Iraq War, Frank P. Harvey offers an interesting analysis of the war and its causes, and does so in a way that raises broader questions about politics and about the scientific study of politics. We have thus invited a distinguished group of political scientists from a variety of subfields to review the book, both as an account of the Iraq War and as a contribution to political science more generally.—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor