Stephen D. Krasner

The United States has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in the idea that state-building can make the world “safe for democracy” but the return on that investment has been woeful. Witnessing this failure, many observers hold the view that investment in undemocratic countries should halt. Yet ignoring these troubled countries risks our safety. Drawing on his formidable foreign policy experience, Steve Krasner explains that eliminating corruption or holding free and fair elections is often not possible today in many parts of the world but negotiated compromises and halting large-scale theft is. Better security and some economic growth are possible everywhere. How to Make Love to a Despot defines a new and pragmatic American foreign policy vision that quells terrorism and leads to “good governance” around the globe.

Stephen Krasner has been one of the most influential theorists within international relations and international political economy over the past few decades. Power, the State, and Sovereignty is a collection of his key scholarly works. The book includes both a framing introduction written for this volume, and a concluding essay examining the relationship between academic research and the actual making of foreign policy. Drawing on both his extensive academic work and his experiences during his recent role within the Bush administration (as Director for Policy Planning at the US State department) Krasner has revised and updated all of the essays in the collection to provide a coherent discussion of the importance of power, ideas, and domestic structures in world politics.Progressing through a carefully structured evaluation of US domestic politics and foreign policy, international politics and finally sovereignty, this volume is essential reading for all serious scholars of international politics.

Stephen Krasner has been one of the most influential theorists within international relations and international political economy over the past few decades. Power, the State, and Sovereignty is a collection of his key scholarly works. The book includes both a framing introduction written for this volume, and a concluding essay examining the relationship between academic research and the actual making of foreign policy. Drawing on both his extensive academic work and his experiences during his recent role within the Bush administration (as Director for Policy Planning at the US State department) Krasner has revised and updated all of the essays in the collection to provide a coherent discussion of the importance of power, ideas, and domestic structures in world politics.Progressing through a carefully structured evaluation of US domestic politics and foreign policy, international politics and finally sovereignty, this volume is essential reading for all serious scholars of international politics.

The acceptance of human rights and minority rights, the increasing role of international financial institutions, and globalization have led many observers to question the continued viability of the sovereign state. Here a leading expert challenges this conclusion. Stephen Krasner contends that states have never been as sovereign as some have supposed. Throughout history, rulers have been motivated by a desire to stay in power, not by some abstract adherence to international principles. Organized hypocrisy--the presence of longstanding norms that are frequently violated--has been an enduring attribute of international relations Political leaders have usually but not always honored international legal sovereignty, the principle that international recognition should be accorded only to juridically independent sovereign states, while treating Westphalian sovereignty, the principle that states have the right to exclude external authority from their own territory, in a much more provisional way. In some instances violations of the principles of sovereignty have been coercive, as in the imposition of minority rights on newly created states after the First World War or the successor states of Yugoslavia after 1990; at other times cooperative, as in the European Human Rights regime or conditionality agreements with the International Monetary Fund. The author looks at various issues areas to make his argument: minority rights, human rights, sovereign lending, and state creation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Differences in national power and interests, he concludes, not international norms, continue to be the most powerful explanation for the behavior of states.

Stephen Krasner's assumption of a distinction between state and society is the root of his argument for the superiority of a statist interpretation of American foreign policy. Here he challenges the two dominant and rival interpretations of the relationship between state and society: interest group liberalism and Marxism. He contends that the state is an autonomous entity acting on behalf of the national interest, and that state behavior cannot be explained by group or class interest. On the basis of fifteen case studies drawn from extensive public records and published literature on American raw materials policy in the twentieth-century, Professor Krasner provides empirical substance to the debate about the meaning of the "national interest," the importance of bureaucratic politics, and the influence of business on American foreign policy.