SUNY, James N. Rosenau in Global Politics

The central concern that shapes this edited volume is the nature of the African state. Contributors point to an interesting intersection of domestic and external issues that is framed as a glocalized security situation. Individual chapters shed new insights on conflict drivers through case studies on Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Mali, Nigeria, and Somalia, as well as broader issues on the nature of African states. Arguments pivot on three issues, which show the intersection of the domestic and external forces that render the African state as a glocal problem: (a) the colonial roots of the state, (b) problems of governance, and (c) international and regional security imperatives. By problematizing the African state and connecting the security challenges of African states to colonialism, patrimonial rule, and geopolitical security issues, African States brings forth a new way of examining African states through the notion of glocalized security.

In the opening decades of the twenty-first century the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership under Xi Jinping has created a worldwide Sino-centric network, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), to challenge American dominance in world affairs. Encompassing economic, financial, political, and strategic relations, the CCP's belief is that the funds, construction projects, and promises offered by the BRI will generate a widespread perception of the inexorability, legitimacy, and thus acceptability of a Chinese world order. Consisting initially of a land-based "Silk Road Economic Belt," an oceangoing "Maritime Silk Road," and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the BRI has expanded to involve more than 140 countries and includes a Health Silk Road, Digital Silk Road, and Polar Silk Road, but it has also experienced serious challenges. Using power transition theory, Chien-peng Chung carefully investigates and evaluates the enterprise's benefits and shortcomings, concluding that it is still too early to consider the BRI a success.

Pluriversalism within International Relations and the literature on Chinese international relations each embrace ideas of relation and difference. While they similarly strive for recognition by Western academics, they do not seriously engage with each other. To the extent that either succeeds in winning recognition, it ironically reproduces Western centrism and the binary of the Western versus the non-Western. In Relations and Roles in China's Internationalism, author Chih-yu Shih demonstrates, through a critical translation exercise, that Confucian themes enable both the critique and realignment of liberal thought, allowing all of us, including the members of Confucianism and the neo-liberal order, to understand how we adapt to and coexist with each another. In the end, Confucianism not only informs the pluriversal necessity that all are bound to be related but also de-nationalizes China's internationalism.