Tatiana Kostadinova's critical remarks and questions are spot on. Some of them had been on my mind while researching the book, and they all deserve to be raised. I would argue that the possible ways by which my case study could be viewed as relevant to more generalizing approaches to corruption are twofold.

More than 20 years ago, when Eastern European countries embarked on their corruption-prone transitions from communism, Robert Klitgaard (Adjusting to Reality: Beyond “State versus Market” in Economic Development, 1991), once designated the “world's leading expert on corruption” (in The Christian Science Monitor, March 2, 1994), proposed the abandonment of the search for the “many, many causes and conditions” of corruption. In despair at what he saw as academic hair splitting in the burgeoning study of corruption, he claimed to be more “pragmatic” by focusing instead on ways by which policy and management could reduce corruption. In hindsight, Klitgaard's intellectual impatience appears ironic as the debate on the causes of corruption was only about to commence, resulting in an expanding list of suggested causes—often derived from Eastern European experiences.

Reinoud Leenders has written a thoughtful assessment of my book, and I am thankful for the insights he provided. In my response I focus on the main issues raised in the review.

Whether emerging powers embrace or instead challenge the current international order will be an important determinant of international stability in the years ahead. The material primacy of the traditional Western democracies will wane as emerging powers like China, India, and Brazil continue their ascent; that much we know. What remains unclear is how this change in the distribution of global power will affect the rules and institutions that are the infrastructure of international order.

While Charles Kupchan and I share common aspirations for a more flexible and inclusive global order, we clearly differ in our understanding of contemporary China. This difference is about far more than facts. Rather, it reflects a fundamental disagreement about the nature and identification of sociopolitical change itself.

In this provocative new book, Charles Kupchan issues a clarion call to the advanced industrial nations of the West. The global order they have built over two centuries—a system based on liberal democracy at home and free trade abroad—is meeting its demise, he warns. New nations have arisen that neither share the West's historical traditions nor aspire to its contemporary values. The advanced industrial West, Kupchan argues, cannot logically expect nations like China, India, Brazil, and Russia to voluntarily comply with an existing order that is alien to their experiences and unaccommodating to their interests. Nor can the West realistically strong-arm such nations. The fulcrum of relative power has shifted too far to make coercion possible. But the West, he asserts, must not stand idly by. Historically, power transitions—save for a few rare exceptions—have tended to engender violent conflict. This time will be no different, says the author, unless the West moves aggressively to foster a new and far more inclusive global order.

I am grateful to Edward Steinfeld for his thoughtful review of No One's World. I focus my response to his critique on three issues: the rise of the West, the implications of China's ascent, and the challenge of preserving a rules-based international system.

This volume's provocative title recalls a substantial early-twentieth-century literature, spawned by interwar economic instability and the ascent of seemingly thriving authoritarian systems (e.g., fascism and Stalinism), which struggled to explain the fragility of liberal political and economic ideals both at home and abroad. Taking right-wing (e.g., Carl Schmitt's Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy [1928]) as well as left-wing (e.g., Harold Laski's Democracy in Crisis [1931]) forms, that genre combined insights from the latest social scientific scholarship with perceptive and oftentimes prescient political observations. Although we now know that it too often understated liberalism's potential for reform and renewal, abandoning sound analysis for apocalyptic aperçus, that literature sometimes creatively identified liberalism's own internal contradictions as the source of what was then frequently described as “the crisis of our times.”

Thanks to William Scheuerman for his thoughtful and stimulating comments on my book. It is certainly true that the crisis of liberalism in general and of the liberal world order in particular is not a new subject. Then why take it up again? For two reasons: first, many of the previous and contemporary critical analyses of the liberal world order tend to be prejudiced by theoretical and/or political convictions that serve to predetermine their view of the subject. I consider myself a skeptical liberal in the sense that the progress which most liberals talk about is possible and desirable, but it cannot be taken for granted and the obstacles to progress are much more serious than many liberals think. Differently put, there is no end of history, no secure path to modernity for all, no safe, upward arrow towards progress. “History has no libretto,” as Alexander Herzen said.

This is a book about the contributions of mid-twentieth-century classical realists, first and foremost E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, and Reinhold Niebuhr. The argument is that the “realism” defended by these scholars is sadly misrepresented in mainstream textbooks. Textbook renditions of realism emphasize the pursuit of national interest and the importance of Realpolitik, deny morality any meaningful role in international politics, and confirm the primacy of the sovereign nation-state and the fragility of international institutions. Realists look to the balance of power as the major instrument in preserving peace, and they reject the idea that anarchy can be transformed as a result of globalization and interstate cooperation, even in advanced cases of the latter, such as the European Union.

One of the many strengths of Professor Sørensen's thorough critical response to my book is that it underlines the ways in which I tried to challenge what passes for conventional wisdom among IR scholars about realism. I readily confess to an interest in reviving heterodox thinking.