Constructing Global Order: Agency and Change in World Politics Unavailable

In this clear and compelling book, Acharya examines who makes and manages international order. Like many constructivists, he is interested in the part that norms play in answering these questions. Specifically, how are global norms created, promulgated, resisted, and modified through contestation among interested parties? The book differs from many other accounts of norms by focusing on the role of the global South in this process of contestation. Acharya argues that these developing states and the non-state actors within them have significant agency in shaping global norms. He contends that weaker states can resist and alter norms through appeals to localization and subsidiarity. This simple resistance to norms, however, is the least interesting part of the story. Acharya demonstrates how poor and relatively less powerful states are able to propagate new norms as sources of leverage in disputes with great powers and the global North more broadly, again, by appealing...