Dichotomy of Power

Dichotomy of Power studies the future of the nation-state as the world's basic political organization and the foundation of modern international relations. Richard A. Matthew argues that this Hegelian construct—once championed as the rational and preferred basis for global order—developed through a series of dichotomies: the cut and thrust of realism mediated by idealism; coercive power politics balanced by a constitutive mode of power; and a collaborative search for a just society. The book analyzes the conceptualization of the nation-state in the Western tradition of political thought, from the classical bifurcation of politics to the postmodern debate about the nation-state as the ideal mechanism for organizing power in a new global age.

Richard A. Matthew is Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of California, Irvine. He is the coeditor (with Daniel H. Deudney) of Contested Grounds: Security and Conflict in the New Environmental Politics (1999).