World Politics into the 21st Century

[This book] introduces students to world politics by focusing on enduring patterns in the politics of strategic choice; it integrates international and domestic politics throughout all the substantive topics in the text. By focusing on the process of strategic interaction in international and domestic politics - and on how they are connected - students can make sense of world politics even as the issues, actors, and contexts change. [In this book] the four central issues in world politics - security, international political economy, human rights, and the environment - and their key concepts are all introduced in historical context. Doing that gives history a theoretically informed story line that not only makes it more interesting, it also leads students to consider the many ways in which ideas and worldviews have been shaped by historical and cultural roots.-Pref.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.