All Politics Is Global: Explaining International Regulatory Regimes

by Daniel W. Drezner

Has globalization diluted the power of national governments to regulate their own economies? Are international governmental and nongovernmental organizations weakening the hold of nation-states on global regulatory agendas? Many observers think so. But in All Politics Is Global , Daniel Drezner argues that this view is wrong. Despite globalization, states--especially the great powers--still dominate international regulatory regimes, and the regulatory goals of states are driven by their domestic interests.


As Drezner shows, state size still matters. The great powers--the United States and the European Union--remain the key players in writing global regulations, and their power is due to the size of their internal economic markets. If they agree, there will be effective global governance. If they don't agree, governance will be fragmented or ineffective. And, paradoxically, the most powerful sources of great-power preferences are the least globalized elements of their economies.


Testing this revisionist model of global regulatory governance on an unusually wide variety of cases, including the Internet, finance, genetically modified organisms, and intellectual property rights, Drezner shows why there is such disparity in the strength of international regulations.

Genres: Politics, International Relations, Law, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Daniel William Drezner

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mark got me this book so I could prepare for my environmental policy grad school application. Though I'm not sure that I quite agree with all the claims made here (the UN is basically a non-issue in globalization?), the theory and the case studies were quite interesting.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Textbook for one of my seminars in the upcoming term.