Charles Kupchan, No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 272 pp., $27.95.
No One's World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn
IN 1990, G. John Ikenberry and Charles Kupchan published a research article on hegemonic power in International Organization that originally garnered little notice but proved to be much beloved by scholars. In “Socialization and Hegemonic Power,” Ikenberry and Kupchan argued that hegemons maintained their status through more than brute force or the manipulation of carrots and sticks. Wise hegemons took care to ensure that they educated the elites of subordinate states in their substantive beliefs. In doing so, these elites would learn to accept the ideas that animate the hegemonic power. Their takeaway point was that, while material power mattered, deep levels of socialization permitted a superpower to rule through noncoercive means.
