Globalization of world politics

We have tried in this new edition of The Globalization of World Politics to follow much the same format as the previous three editions which have proved so successful. However. a number of improvements have been made. Oxford University Press commissioned over twenty reviews of the third edition, and we gained enormously from their comments. They told us what worked and what didn't. We have also been contacted by many of the teachers of International Relations around the world who use the book on a regular basis. Together, all of these comments have helped us identify a number of additional areas that should be covered. To make sure we didn't make the book even longer than it already was, we cut out some chapters that had appeared in the third edition, and also combined some of the history chapters. In their place we added new chapters on the changing character of war, international ethics, and human security. Based on reviewers' comments, we also decided to commission a new chapter on gender and move it to the section on Structures and Processes to highlight the role of gender in structuring world politics.

As the book has been taken up as a major text in more and more countries we have become increasingly aware of the danger of what might be described as an 'Anglo-Saxon' approach to international relations. For this reason, in the new edition, authors have been asked to provide as wide a range of examples from around the world as possible. We have also introduced case studies which focus, in particular, on Africa and the developing world.

Readers who have used previous editions will notice that the two original editors have been joined by Patricia Owens. Patricia had been heavily involved in previous editions and we all agreed that she should become a full editor of the book.