The field of international relations has stagnated with only realist, liberal, Marxist and constructivist paradigms to work with. Groundbreaking and guaranteed to sir debate, Evolutionary Interpretations of World Politics will move the field of international relations beyond its current, and often inadequate assumptions. The contributors describe how states, ideologies, and other areas of analysis evolve, conquer others, or disappear entirely. Change and the fluid nature of history -- though so clearly a part of historical reality -- are not so deeply embedded in other paradigms as they are in the variation and selection model of evolutionary international relations. In this outstanding collection, some contributors lay out the various controversies inherent to the new theory, while others apply the paradigm to specific problems in IR theory.

Introduction; Evolving Toward an Evolutionary Perspective, William R. Thompson; Central Questions About Interpretation Evolutionary World Politics: Problems of Scope and Method, George Modelski; Evolutionary World Politics Enriched: The Biological Foundations of International Relations, Vincent S.E. Falger; Obstacles to an Evolutionary Global Politics Research Program David P. Rapkin; Bridges to Other Perspectives Evolutionary Tendencies in Realist and Liberal IR Theory, Jennifer Sterling-Folker; Divergence or Uniformity in the Modern World?: Answers from Evolutionary Theory, Learning and Social Adaptation, Hendrik Spruyt; The Evolution of International Norms: Choice, Learning, Power and Identity, Stewart Patrick; Applications to Conflict and Cooperation Evolution in Domestic Politics and the Development of Rivalry: The Bolivia-Paraguay Case, Paul R. Hensel; Expectancy Theory, Strategic Rivalry Deescalation, and the Evolution of the Sino-Soviet Case, William R. Thompson; Political Shocks and the De-Escalation of Protracted Conflicts: The Israeli-Palestine Case, Karen Rasler; Applications to International Political Economy Egalitarian Social Movements and New World Orders, Craig N. Murphy; Technological Capacity as Fitness: An Evolutionary Model of Change in the International Political Economy, Sangbae Kim and Jeffrey A. Hart; Continuity vs. Evolutionary Shift: Global Financial Expansion and the State, Brian Pollins; About the Contributors; Index

William R. Thompson is Professor Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of International Relations at Indiana University. He is the author of Emergence of the Global Political Economy (Routledge, 2000) and was formerly the co-editor of International Studies Quarterly.