Conclusions: Global Leadership of a Glocal Kind

Abstract

Reaffirming the liberalist bent of the findings, as noted in the “Introduction” chapter, the volume’s “Conclusions” chapter also accents a strong realist challenge. Empirically finding the necessary pre-condition to global leadership being more domestic than the theoretically expounded “outside-in”, this chapter finds the realist heat strongest at the inner-most circle, the liberalist at the outer-most, and though contestation prevails in both these domains, they play each other off most robustly in the mid-stream circle. These address, and open up, infinite and dynamic transitions, illustrated particularly in the heavier role of nationalistic (or inside-out) against systemic (or outside-in) imperatives globally, utilizing mostly soft-power instruments presently than hard-power (though one of those transitions is from the former to the latter).