After Authority

This book examines the troubled modern nation-state and reflects on the end of authority, sovereignty, and national security, and the implications of that end in the coming decades.After Authority offers an overview of the evolving international political revolution, a historical perspective based on Lipschutz's writings over the years. It also examines the prospects for war and peace in the twenty-first century. During earlier industrial revolutions, long-standing and apparently stable patterns of social behavior, economic exchange, and political authority came under challenge. Today, post World War Two institutions that were formed to create a peaceful, economically-prosperous world, are under severe challenge by globalization, liberalization, and social innovation. Old hierarchies of power and wealth have been undermined as people take advantage of new economic and political opportunities, and the resulting disruption of expectations leads to fear, uncertainty, instability, and violence.Ronnie D. Lipschutz is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the coauthor, with Judith Mayer, of Global Civil Society and Global Environmental Governance: The Politics of Nature from Place to Planet, also published by SUNY Press.