ABSTRACT
Paul Kennedy’s early body of work remains relatively well integrated. By the time Rise and Fall appeared in 1987, scholars had written a great deal about how economic prosperity connected to political outcomes. In 1993’s Preparing for the 21st Century, Kennedy examines transnational forces rather than the “nation-state”, as the main unit of analysis. He expects that population growth, resource scarcity, environmental damage, and a globally widening wealth-gap will fundamentally undermine the power of the nation-state. In The Parliament of Man, published in 2006, Kennedy continues the pessimistic discussion he began in Preparing. But this time he has a solution in mind: the United Nations, a global institution founded to promote cooperation between nations. The American international relations scholar John Ikenberry writes that in Parliament of Man Kennedy focuses on how the UN’s role in “supporting social and political advancements” or “peacekeeping and the promotion of human rights” has produced some success.
