Stein Ringen presents his book ‘The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century’. The Chinese political economy is like no other system known to man, now or in history. This book explains how the system works and where it may be moving, and addresses questions such as what are the intentions and priorities of the Chinese leaders? What kind of leader is Xi Jinping, where is he leading China and how radically is he changing the regime? How strong is the Chinese economy and how fast is it growing? And is there ‘totalitarianism with Chinese characteristics’? Drawing on Chinese and international sources, on extensive collaboration with Chinese scholars, and on the political science of state analysis, the author concludes that under the new leadership of Xi Jinping, the system of government has been transformed into a new regime, radically harder than the legacy of Deng Xiaoping; China is less strong economically and more dictatorial politically than the world has wanted to believe.
Oliver Stuenkel presents his book ‘Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers Are Remaking Global Order’. This book examines what China’s rise mean for the future of the international order and what role the so-called BRICS will play in global affairs. Oliver Stuenkel argues that our understanding of global order and predictions about its future are limited because we seek to imagine the post-Western world from a parochial Western-centric perspective. In reality, China and other rising powers that elude the simplistic extremes of either confronting or joining existing order are quietly building a “parallel order” which complements today’s international institutions and increases rising powers’ autonomy. Combining accessibility with expert sensitivity to the complexities of the global shift of power, Stuenkel’s vision of a post-Western world will be core reading for students and scholars of contemporary international affairs, as well as anyone interested in the future of global politics.
We invite Stein Ringen (emeritus professor at University of Oxford) and Oliver Stuenkel ( at Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV)) to discuss.
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Stein Ringen
Stein Ringen, a Norwegian political scientist, is emeritus professor at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, where he from 1990 held the chair in sociology and social policy, and an affiliate of St Antony’s College, Oxford. He started his academic career as a junior fellow at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo and was subsequently Professor of Welfare Studies at the University of Stockholm, senior research scientist at the Norwegian Central Bureau of Statistics, and adjunct Professor at Lillehammer University College. He has held visiting professorships and fellowships in Paris, Berlin, Prague, Brno, Barbados, Jerusalem, Sydney, Hong Kong, and at Harvard University. He has been Head of Research in the Norwegian Ministry of Public Administration, Assistant Director General in the Norwegian Ministry of Justice, a consultant to the United Nations, and a news and feature reporter with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. He is a visiting professor at Richmond, the American International University in London.
His books include What Democracy Is For (Princeton University Press, 2007; Chinese version published by Xinhua in 2012), The Korean State and Social Policy (co-authored, Oxford University Press 2011), The Possibility of Politics (Oxford University Press, 1987 and Transaction, 2006), and Nation of Devils: Democracy and the Problem of Obedience (Yale University Press, 2013, the Chinese version of which, by CITIC Publishers, is currently ‘suspended’ by the censors).
Oliver Stuenkel
Oliver Della Costa Stuenkel is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo, where he coordinates the São Paulo branch of the School of History and Social Science (CPDOC) and the executive program in International Relations. He is also a non-resident Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin, a member of the Carnegie Rising Democracies Network, and a columnist for Americas Quarterly. His research focuses on rising powers; specifically on Brazil’s, India’s and China’s foreign policy and on their impact on global governance. He is the author of the IBSA: The rise of the Global South? (Routledge 2014) and The BRICS and the Future of Global Order (Lexington, 2015) and the Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers Are Remaking Global Order (Polity, 2016). His other publications include, among others, Rising Powers and the Future of Democracy Promotion (Third World Quarterly), The BRICS and the Future of R2P: Was Syria or Libya the Exception? (Global R2P), Emerging Powers and Status: The Case of the First BRICs Summit (Asian Perspective) and The Financial Crisis, Contested Legitimacy and the Genesis of intra-BRICS cooperation (Global Governance). He is the author of Institutionalizing South – South Cooperation: Towards a New Paradigm? submitted to the UN High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
