A unique analysis that assesses how we can determine which country will be the next world leader.
Will China surpass the United States as the world's leader? In American Global Pre-eminence, William R. Thompson argues that the answer depends on leads in technological innovation, energy, and global reach. These are the forces that influence the hierarchy of global power--a system which began emerging a thousand years ago and started becoming more evident after the 1490s, especially after Dutch activities in the seventeenth century and British operations in the nineteenth century. The US followed in this fashion after 1945. Yet leads do not last forever. Ironically, as it becomes clearer how technological innovation, military force, and energy power interact, the processes under scrutiny may themselves be fundamentally transforming. Thus, Thompson contends, the real policy question is not whether the US is ahead or behind China but, rather, whether it will remain possible for a single state to lead the global system. As technological innovation, energy consumption, and global reach capability grow less concentrated, the prospects for systemic leadership shrink--even as global problems become more complex and acute. With a sweeping analysis of global power, Thompson provides a foundation for understanding the realities and possibilities of lead states past, present, and future.

William R. Thompson is Distinguished Professor and Rogers Chair in Political Science Emeritus at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Politics, a past President of the International Studies Association, and twice Editor-in-Chief of the International Studies Quarterly. Recent books include Racing to the Top, Shocks and Rivalries in the Middle East and North Africa, and Power Concentration in World Politics.

1. American Systemic Leadership: Its Unparalleled Rise and Slow Retreat
2. System Leadership, Rise and Relative Decline in the Global Political Economy
3. The Rise of the U.S. Economy
4. The 1920-45 Shift in U.S. Foreign Policy Orientation: Theory, Grand Strategies and System Leader Ascents
5. The Relative Decline of the United States
6. The Dysfunctionality of Domestic Politics: A Form of Absolute Decline
7. The Unipolarity Mirage
8. Inching Toward the Primus inter Pares Model and the End of Systemic Leadership as We Have Come to Know It?
9. The Second Sino-American Rivalry
10. The Future of World Order
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