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Andrew Linklater’s Violence and Civilization in the Western States-System is to be both praised and critiqued for opening spaces for discussing civilisational standards in the era of a globalising world. It offers a healthy provocation for inquiry into how non-Western states ought to comprehend the legacies of Western political evolution colouring existing ‘IR’ as a discipline. Linklater’s book inspires three thematic reactions: globalisation does bring harm; the notion of a universal civilisation remains open to debate; and the possibilities of civilising patterns in premodern Southeast Asia serving as supplementary mirrors and extensions of the relationship between violence and civilisation. It is suggested that Linklater’s sequel must consider the trajectory of non-Western sociologies of IR. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To scholars researching the connections between international relations and globalisation, such as those in the five books reviewed here, 'foreign policy' is becoming functionally and descriptively rivalled in a globalising context. Foreign policy, once the theoretically exclusive prerogative of the nation-state, is Violated daily by new developments in non-state actorness arising from transnational technical and welfare issues such as trade, finance, labour standards and environmentalism. These books under review introduce the displacement lexicon of transnational politics, global civil society, non-state resistance and complexity into policymaking consciousness; in short, the post-international era. The conclusion proposes to tease out the preliminary outlines of the post-international challenge to foreign policy on the basis of 'plus non-state' actor-interest considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]