Power Shifts, strongEconomicstrong Change and the Decline of the West.pdfVIP

IRE264 10.1177/0047117812461336International RelationsCox 2012 Kenneth N Waltz Lecture International Relations Power Shifts, Economic 26(4) 369–388 © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub. Change and the Decline co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0047117812461336 of the West? Michael Cox London School of Economics Abstract It has become the new truth of the early twenty-first century that the Western world we have known is fast losing its pre-eminence to be replaced by a new international system shaped either by the so-called BRICs comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China, the ‘rest’, or more popularly by that very broadly defined geographical entity known as Asia. This at least is how many economists, historians and students of world politics are now viewing the future of the larger international system. This essay