MACMILLAN The Wrecking of the Liberal World Order: La Fine Dell'ordine Liberale Internazionale (Palgrave Studies in International Relations)

The ‘Liberal World Order’ (LWO) is today in crisis. But what explains this crisis? Whereas its critics see it as the unmasking of Western hypocrisy, its longstanding proponents argue it is under threat by competing illiberal projects. This book takes a different stance: neither internal hypocrisy, nor external attacks explain the decline of the LWO – a deviation from its original lane does. Emerged as a project aiming to harmonize state sovereignty and the market, through the promotion of liberal democracy domestically, and free trade and economic cooperation internationally, the LWO was hijacked in the 1980s: market forces overshadowed democratic forces, thus disfiguring the LWO into a Neoliberal Global Order. The book advocates for a revival of its original intellectual premises, that in the aftermath of World War II marked the zenith of political modernity. Review “In this tour de force,  Vittorio Parsi offers a sweeping and penetrating account of the rise and fall of the modern liberal international order, emphasizing its unique and historical contingent emergence on the world stage and its complex and often conflicting internal principles and logics.  Elegant, erudite, and insightful, Parsi chronicles the stormy voyage of the Western democracies as they search for calmer seas and gentler winds". (--G. John Ikenberry Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, USA) “Vittorio Parsi, one of Italy’s leading scholars of international politics, has produced an important contribution to the ongoing debate over the postwar liberal order, what went wrong with it, and whether it might be restored.  Parsi’s insights will be of great benefit to professional scholars, students, and policy officials on both sides of the Atlantic". (--Michael Mastanduno Nelson A. Rockefeller Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, USA) “One of Europe’s most original thinkers offers a penetrating assessment of the Liberal World Order and its prospects.  Recognizing the challenges posed by Russia and China, by terrorism and migration, Vittorio Parsi nonetheless pinpoints the main source of decline in economic and political inequality at home and the pursuit of neoliberal policies of globalization abroad.  A stable international order will only be possible, he argues, if governments attend to human needs, pursue economic justice, and reestablish a social compact to regain their citizens’ trust". (Matthew Evangelista  President White Professor of History and Political Science, Cornell University, USA) “Parsi has written a book of tremendous importance. In concise, persuasive arguments, he outlines the reasons for the steady but certain decline of the liberal world order, and what its next iteration is beginning to look like. For anyone interested in a serious examination of the emerging world order, post-Trump and post-COVID, The Wrecking of the Liberal World Order is a must read”. (Mehran Kamrava Author of A Concise History of Revolution, Professor of Government, Georgetown University Qatar) “Vittorio Parsi’s The Wrecking of the Liberal World Order is exactly the right book for anyone―student, teacher, news reporter, or policymaker―who wants to understand how our domestic and global politics and economics came to such a sorry state, and what we can do to build a better future.  Parsi combines political acuity with historical insight to show us how in recent decades the major liberal democratic countries lost their way, failing in particular to maintain a healthy balance between market capitalism and welfare-states policies aimed at ameliorating market-generated social inequality.   Parsi is unflinching it laying out challenges to the restoration of a more humane liberal world order, including the rise of China, global terrorism, and Trump-style transactional populism.  Yet, he also offers us a pragmatic program for political renewal, one that calls for a re