On April 24, 2024, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future hosted the U.S. book launch of The Concertation Impulse in World Politics (Oxford University Press, 2024), featuring the book’s author, Andrew F. Cooper. The event also featured the Pardee School of Global Studies’ Sanne Verschuren and Grant F. Rhode as discussants, and was moderated by Pardee Center Interim Director Amb. Jorge Heine.
In the book, Andrew F. Cooper (University Research Chair and Professor, Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo) provides a detailed overview of the contest over international institutions. Drawing on a wide range of scholarship in fields such as international organization, international relations, and international political economy, this book breaks with the widely accepted image of an advance of global governance supported by institutionalized formality, arguing instead for the retention of informal institutionalism. Rather than endorsing the view that world politics is moving inexorably toward a multilateral, rules-based order, Cooper places the onus on the resilience of a hierarchical, self-selected concert model. He reframes the debate with a wider set of highly contested questions: the nature of rules at the global level, the salience of institutional clubs, and the impact of inequality and cooperation among states across the Global North/South divide.
A video recording of the event will be available soon.