Understanding Global Politics

Klaus Larres is the Richard M. Krasno Distinguished Professor in History and International Affairs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US. He served as Counselor and Senior Policy Adviser at the German Embassy in Beijing, China. Previously he was Professor at the University of London, UK, Queen's University Belfast and the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland and Johns Hopkins University/SAIS in Washington, DC, US. He held visiting professorships and senior fellowships at Yale, Tsinghua University in Beijing, the German Institute of International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin and the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey. He also held the Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. He has published widely on post-1945 global affairs, including several books. In particular, his publications focus on the global Cold War, transatlantic relations in the post-1945 and post-Cold War years and trilateral relations among the US, China and Europe/Germany. Find his website at www.klauslarres.org.Ruth Wittlinger is Associate Professor in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. She has published extensively on memory and identity in post-unification Germany and Europe. She is author of the monograph German National Identity in the Twenty-First Century: A Different Republic After All? and her research has been published in a number of journals including West European Politics, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, German Politics, German Politics and Society and Cooperation and Conflict. She has held research fellowships at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies in Washington, DC, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is currently working on a project which examines the state of the German diaspora in the Former Soviet Union which involves field research in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia/Western Siberia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In 2018, she became Chair of the International Association for the Study of German Politics.

• Introduction I. BACKGROUND: HISTORY AND THEORY 1. Global Politics since 1945 2. Democracy: Problems and Challenges, Opportunities and Design 3. The Global Economy and the "Great Recession" 4. Theorizing Global Politics II. GLOBAL ACTORS 5. The USA 6. The People’s Republic of China 7. Russia’s Resurgent Political Identity 8. India 9. The European Union 10. Germany 11. The United Nations 12. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation 13. IMF and World Bank 14. Non-Governmental Organisations 15. Regional Organisations 16. Multinational Businesses III. TRANSNATIONAL CHALLENGES 17. Global Environmental Politics: Sustainable Development, Climate Change and the Energy Dilemma 18. Transnational Politics of Migration: From States to Regimes and Agents 19. Global Poverty 20. Failing States and Statebuilding 21. Soft and Hard Power 22. The Rise of Religious Fundamentalism 23. Human Rights and the International Criminal Court 24. The Threat of Transnational Terrorism 25. Fighting Corruption Globally: A Case of Norm Diffusion in International Relations 26. Nuclear Proliferation and International Stability