Remapping Global Politics: History's Revenge and Future Shock

Extract

Remapping Global Politics: History's Revenge and Future Shock. By Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 380p. $75.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

This latest book in Yale Ferguson and Richard Mansbach's decades-long research collaboration is exceptionally ambitious. Starting from the controversial claim that current globalizing processes are decreasing states' capacity, legitimacy, and authority while increasing those of many of the other collectivities that populate global politics (p. 312), the authors argue that it is time to redraw “our mental maps of global politics” (p. xi). They set out to do so, proposing to “explain the forces shaping change” along the way (p. xi). Of course to either remap global politics or explain the forces that shape change is a formidable task. It is thus impressive that they have managed to argue their case as successfully as they have, especially in such a lively and often delightfully irreverent way.