ABSTRACT
Efforts to complete the hitherto prevailing images of the homo economicus and the homo sociologus with a homo cooperativus (Bowles and Gintis 2011; Debiel, Leggewie, and Messner 2014; Messner, Guarín, and Haun 2013) seem to be oddly out of tune with what is going on in the world today. The global agendas for cooperation set up by the post–Cold War World Conferences for the most part have gotten stuck in endless bickering over international responsibilities and national entitlements. States fail to live up to past commitments and hesitate to take on new ones for the future. Globalization, instead of fostering a sense of community, seems to unleash the forces of parochialism and populist thinking. Cosmopolitanism certainly has fewer followers today than in the 1990s. On top of it all, the global constellation of power is shifting. New powers emerge or old ones re-emerge, and there is growing uncertainty about what this will imply for the conduct of International Relations in the future.
