Rethinking the World

Jeffrey W. Legro is Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. He is also the author of Cooperation under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint during World War II and Rethinking the World: Great Power Strategies and International Order, both from Cornell.

Rethinking the World is sure to stir up controversy. No book that reinterprets some of the most important events in world history, offers an overarching argument for all of them, and calls both realism and liberalism into question can do otherwise. One of the hallmarks of this book is caution. Legro is even-handed in his evaluation of the evidence, cognizant of the methodological problems that he faces, and reticent about claiming too much for the role of ideas. In fact, the argument is a synthetic one in which ideas, power, and domestic politics all have a place. One of Legro's key contributions is an account of how ideas, power, and domestic politics combine in explicit and predictable ways to generate outcomes.(International Studies Review) Legro makes a compelling case that strategic beliefs cannot be reduced to strategic circumstance. He ends by reflecting on the future of the Bush 'revolution' and argues that, absent further terrorist attacks, U.S. foreign policy is likely to tack back to the post-World War II mainstream.(Foreign Affairs)

• 1. Great Power Ideas and Change2. Explaining Change and Continuity3. The Ebb and Flow of American Internationalism4. Germany, from Outsider to Insider5. Overhaul of Orthodoxy in Tokugawa Japan and the Soviet Union6. The Next Century