Mapping a New World Order: The Rest Beyond the West by Vladimir Popov & Piotr Dutkiewicz.

• Author: Knox, Allison G.S.
• Position: Book review

Popov, Vladimir and Piotr Dutkiewicz, eds. Mapping a New World Order: The Rest Beyond the West. Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2017. X+218 pages. Hardcover, $130.00.

Mapping a New World Order: The Rest Beyond the West, edited by Vladimir Popov and Piotr Dutkiewicz, is an intriguing book using the lens of an economic perspective to analyze and predict international politics in a post-Cold War, twenty-first century world. The book is a collection of articles that examine different aspects of international politics as it intersects with various issues in economics. As the title would suggest, the authors make scholarly predictions based on the numerous events that have taken place in the twentieth century.

The title suggests that international political climate is changing and essays included in this book that support this notion. The authors argue that the income gap between the West and the Rest--as they put it--is decreasing, marking a substantial shift in how international politics will play out in the twenty-first century. The authors also explain that the United States is losing its financial ranking to China, while the West is slowly giving way to other players in the international community. The authors examine the factors contributing to this with a compilation of ten essays.

This book highlights three main arguments in the literature: economic convergence and divergence, "proposes that a new developmentalism should go beyond the reductionist approach of two dominating economic schools," (p.197) and various policy processes that improve the "well-being of the rest." The perspectives the articles include are intriguing and certainly paint the picture of an international political structure that is shaped by numerous economic and political factors. Mapping a New World Order: The Rest Beyond the West, is a well-rounded look at economics and world politics. The book includes essays that focus on the Global South and its GDP growth, growth rates...