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A New World Order, Anne-Marie Slaughter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 368 pp., $45 cloth, $18.95 paper.
A New World Order highlights a new global reality of transgovernmental networks of governance and their potential positive moral impact on global politics. Anne-Marie Slaughter asks the reader to embrace global governance as an actually existing reality embodied in networks of regulators, judges, and legislators acting across borders and regions, and she argues that global politics can be made better and more just if we more consciously and actively exploit the value of transgovernmental networks. Slaughter acknowledges, however, that progress through such networks is not guaranteed: "Power without norms is both dangerous and useless" (p. 215). A significant aspect of A New World Order is Slaughter's articulation of the kind of norms that would make for better ethical procedures and, one hopes, outcomes. Whether these norms are compelling in the face of the present multiple ethical shortcomings of global governance, however, is uncertain.
A New World Order is broadly situated in the multilateralist approach to American foreign policy and the liberal cosmopolitan approach to international law. Within foreign-policy debates, Slaughter claims that the United States is already heavily involved in transgovernmental networks from which it benefits greatly. Isolationism, unilateralism, and a bluntly coercive approach to international problems are deemed ineffective and out of step with a globalizing world upon which the United States depends. In these arguments, Slaughter puts forward Europe's multilevel governance networks as an explicit model; she...