LAUSR

The competition for status between states and the contestation over the fundamental principles of the global order may seem like such well-covered ground in the International Relations literature that there is little left to be said on the topic. Yet Maximilian Terhalle has resolutely contradicted such complacency with this terrific book. By looking specifically at the issue of constitutive legitimacy and how this is negotiated between the major powers, Terhalle has managed to shed new light on how the emerging US–Sino relationship is being translated into a major transition in the global order. The book begins with an extended discussion of the nature of global order and the negotiation of systemic legitimacy among the major powers. Terhalle makes effective use of the work of authors such as Robert Gilpin and Ian Clark to refashion a new framework for analysing what he refers to as today’s hybrid global order. This is then used to analyse the specific ways in which discursive and normative contestation either allows for or impedes largescale institutional redesign in three areas: the security-related rules of global order (including global regimes and East Asian regionalism), the environmental rules of global order (with a particular focus on climate change governance) and the ideology-related aspects of global order (using Responsibility to Protect (R2P) debates over Libya and Syria to illustrate this). While at times the focus on US–Sino relations may slightly overshadow some of the larger challenges posed by a wider set of nonWestern rising/re-emerging powers, the empirical discussion effectively demonstrates the utility of Terhalle’s nuanced understanding of modern great power management. The key to the approach adopted here is in providing a more careful distinction between the internal and external elements of great power management –in other words, treating great power management as an institution of international society with two fundamentally distinct layers: that which is negotiated between the great powers themselves and that which is negotiated between them and the non-great powers. Importantly, Terhalle argues that there is a critical relationship between these two layers – there are no ‘special responsibilities’ conferred on the great powers by the rest of the international society without agreement between these powers about the legitimacy of their respective roles. This is a theoretically sophisticated book that is also not shy about spending time in the empirical details of this relationship. The result is a compelling read that tells us much about how global orders are negotiated and contested but also about how issues of great power politics, global governance and the evolution of global norms can and should be studied in International Relations.