The Quest for Security: Protection without Protectionism and the Challenge of Global Governance Hardcover – 3 May 2013

Review

The Quest for Security makes for a fascinating read, made all the more timely by the current outcry -- across the country and beyond -- over the unequal distribution of the pains and gains from the economic changes of recent years. The book examines globalization as the multidimensional phenomenon that it is, without complexifying it to the point where the key issues become obscured. It is an important book that offers both an introduction to key issues in global governance to a general audience and advances the debate among expert scholars and policymakers with serious, constructive proposals for making economic globalization politically sustainable by improving average citizens' economic, physical, and environmental security.--Tim Buthe, Duke University

This book takes the many and varied challenges facing the world, from the financial crisis to global warming, and explores how new forms of governance and cooperation can be developed to solve some of them or at least mitigate their effects. This book is original and pathbreaking, and its contributors are at the forefront of thinking about these questions.--Andrew Gamble, Cambridge University

This important book offers new thinking for exceptional times. It draws fascinating parallels between what is happening in the fields of economics, security, and the environment and demonstrates why and how global solutions are the answer to the current interlinked crises.--Javier Solana, former secretary-general of NATO

The "Quest for Security" is one of the most comprehensive assessments of globalization's challenges published to date. From mounting income inequality to the destructive power of climate change to the threat of terrorist attacks, this timely compilation of expert insight deftly exposes where global governance has failed and offers pragmatic solutions for building a secure, sustainable, and just post-crisis world.--George Papandreou, former prime minister of Greece and president of the Socialist International

At a time when most initiatives to reinvigorate the multilateral system and its provision of global public goods are failing, it is encouraging to read the analyses and proposals contained in this volume. The key message of this excellent collection is reassuring: that the governance predicaments posed by globalization are solvable after all; the intellectual battle is not lost and it is still possible, with workable propositions, to win the political one in order to build a better international system. With strong conviction, I buy the argument.--Ernesto Zedillo, director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and former president of Mexico

"The Quest for Security" is one of the most comprehensive assessments of globalization's challenges published to date. From mounting income inequality to the destructive power of climate change to the threat of terrorist attacks, this timely compilation of expert insight deftly exposes where global governance has failed and offers pragmatic solutions for building a secure, sustainable, and just post-crisis world.--George Papandreou, former prime minister of Greece and president of Socialist International

Our interdependent but uncoordinated world, in which we are often at loggerheads with each other, generates many different problems. In an insightful collection of contributions led by Mary Kaldor and Joseph E. Stiglitz, this wonderful book offers constructive ways of avoiding disaster with the help of global cooperation. A great book for our time.--Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize-Winning Economist and Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Harvard University

"The Quest for Security" makes for a fascinating read, made all the more timely by the current outcry--across the country and beyond--over the unequal distribution of the pains and gains from the economic changes of recent years. The book examines globalization as the multidimensional phenomenon that it is, without complexifying it to the point where the key issues become obscured. It is an important book that offers both an introduction to key issues in global governance to a general audience and advances the debate among expert scholars and policymakers with serious, constructive proposals for making economic globalization politically sustainable by improving average citizens' economic, physical, and environmental security.--Tim Buthe, Duke University

"The Quest for Security" makes for a fascinating read, made all the more timely by the current outcry--across the country and beyond--over the unequal distribution of the pains and gains from the economic changes of recent years. The book examines globalization as the multidimensional phenomenon that it is, without complexifying it to the point where the key issues become obscured. It is an important book that offers both an introduction to key issues in global governance to a general audience and advances the debate among expert scholars and policymakers with serious, constructive proposals for making economic globalization politically sustainable by improving average citizens' economic, physical, and environmental security.--Tim Buthe, Duke University

"The Quest for Security" is one of the most comprehensive assessments of globalization's challenges published to date. From mounting income inequality to the destructive power of climate change to the threat of terrorist attacks, this timely compilation of expert insight deftly exposes where global governance has failed and offers pragmatic solutions for building a secure, sustainable, and just post-crisis world.--George Papandreou, former prime minister of Greece and president of Socialist International

The Quest for Security makes for a fascinating read, made all the more timely by the current outcry--across the country and beyond--over the unequal distribution of the pains and gains from the economic changes of recent years. The book examines globalization as the multidimensional phenomenon that it is, without complexifying it to the point where the key issues become obscured. It is an important book that offers both an introduction to key issues in global governance to a general audience and advances the debate among expert scholars and policymakers with serious, constructive proposals for making economic globalization politically sustainable by improving average citizens' economic, physical, and environmental security.

This book takes the many and varied challenges facing the world, from the financial crisis to global warming, and explores how new forms of governance and cooperation can be developed to solve some of them or at least mitigate their effects. This book is original and pathbreaking, and its contributors are at the forefront of thinking about these questions.

Our interdependent but uncoordinated world, in which we are often at loggerheads with each other, generates many different problems. In an insightful collection of contributions led by Mary Kaldor and Joseph E. Stiglitz, this wonderful book offers constructive ways of avoiding disaster with the help of global cooperation. A great book for our time.

At a time when most initiatives to reinvigorate the multilateral system and its provision of global public goods are failing, it is encouraging to read the analyses and proposals contained in this volume. The key message of this excellent collection is reassuring: that the governance predicaments posed by globalization are solvable after all; the intellectual battle is not lost and it is still possible, with workable propositions, to win the political one in order to build a better international system. With strong conviction, I buy the argument.

This important book offers new thinking for exceptional times. It draws fascinating parallels between what is happening in the fields of economics, security, and the environment and demonstrates why and how global solutions are the answer to the current interlinked crises.

The Quest for Security is one of the most comprehensive assessments of globalization's challenges published to date. From mounting income inequality to the destructive power of climate change to the threat of terrorist attacks, this timely compilation of expert insight deftly exposes where global governance has failed and offers pragmatic solutions for building a secure, sustainable, and just post-crisis world.

About the Author

Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University, former chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank, and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton. His books include Making Globalization Work; Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy; The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future; Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development (with Andrew Charlton); and Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress (with Bruce C. Greenwald). In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. Mary Kaldor is professor of global governance and director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit at the London School of Economics. She is the author of The Ultimate Weapon Is No Weapon: Human Security and the New Rules of War and Peace (with Shannon D. Beebe); New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era; and Global Civil Society: An Answer to War. Kaldor was a founding member of European Nuclear Disarmament and of the Helsinki Citizen's Assembly. She is also convener of the Human Security Study Group, which reported to Javier Solana.