Recent BooksMarch/April 2020 167the establishment o a global system o
“responsibility sharing” that would be
hammered out in a worldwide gathering
o donor and host states, international
organizations, and civil society groups.
Aware o the political obstacles to such
action, the authors argue that the ¥rst
step would be to build consensus
around the principles that must guide
the global response to forced displace-
ment—social justice, human solidarity,
and proportional and fair contributions
from outside powers.
Contested World Orders: Rising Powers,
Non-Governmental Organizations, and the
Politics of Authority Beyond the Nation-State
EDITED BY MATTHEW D.
STEPHEN AND MICHAEL ZURN.
Oxford University Press, 2019, 416 pp.
In this impressive collection, political
theorists map the contours o today’s
unsettled global order. Stephen and Zurn
argue that the current struggle over world
order is unlike past great-power collisions,
when the terms o the global order were
decided in a contest between a rising
power and a declining one. In this era, the
global system is so densely institutional-
ized that competition is more complex
and decentralized, with a multitude o
states, international organizations, and
transnational groups aligning and clashing
over the reform o rules and regimes. In
assessing the health o the liberal interna-
tional order and the demands for reform-
ing its old norms and institutions, the
contributors focus on a wide variety o
global institutions, including the World
Trade Organization, the G-7, and the º²
Human Rights Council. Stephen and
Zurn conclude that the rise o China and
other non-Western developing states has
not sparked a clear-cut conict over the
fundamental principles o global order.
Instead, a contest is underway in which
states vie for authority and status primar-
ily within speci¥c international institu-
tions. Rising states do not want to
extinguish the liberal character o the
global system as much as reform exist-
ing intergovernmental institutions to
better advance and protect their socie-
ties and political regimes.Economic, Social, and
EnvironmentalRichard N. Cooper
Good Economics for Hard Times
BY ABHIJIT V. BANERJEE AND
ESTHER DUFLO. PublicAairs, 2019,
432 pp.T
his book, published shortly
before the authors both won
the Nobel Prize in Economics,
in October 2019, covers a wide swath
o structural and policy issues in both
advanced and developing countries.
They write that the discipline o eco-
nomics has much to oer but that it
needs to stretch well beyond the models
that modern economists favor. They
emphasize the importance o dignity for
people from all walks o life, something
the economics profession struggles to
consider in its analysis. The authors’
own research is mainly in developing
countries, especially India, where their
observations are subtle and nuanced.
Their analysis is less nuanced when it
comes to rich countries but valuable