Preface

Some members of this team of authors have occasionally collaborated together overthe years and decades. Collectively, we all came together for the first time in2004, as part of a larger group working on a project on ‘ResolvingInternational Crises of Legitimacy’, funded by the British Academy. Thatproject was born of our shared interest in issues of international legitimacy,and how this interacted with ‘power’ in world politics. Thespecific legacy of that undertaking was a special issue of the journalInternational Politics, 44 (2/3) 2007. The broaderlegacy was the immense intellectual stimulus of working together as a group, andwhen the opportunity arose to resume this collaboration, it was immediatelyseized. This opportunity was created in 2007 by a funding award from the UKEconomic and Social Research Council (ESRC) that included a collaborativedimension, and we all gratefully acknowledge this generous support. Given thatthroughout we have been variously based in Australia, Canada, Italy, the UK andthe US, the award enabled periodic workshops that brought us together, andwithout which this book would not have been possible.

The award covered a generic project on the social bases of American power. Inpart, this represented a carry-over from the previous study: if an institutionwere to suffer a ‘crisis’ of legitimacy, how might this beresolved? What role should the United States specifically play in bringing aboutthis resolution? These questions appeared to become even more pertinent with theelection of the Barack Obama administration. Our initial intention was toapproach this under the rubric of ‘hegemony’, as this was alreadythe principal element of the cognate research being undertaken by Ian Clark aspart of his individual role in the overall ESRC project. However, in the courseof our meetings, it gradually became clear that what was routinely expected ofhegemons was that they would bear special responsibilities for contributing tothe solution of global problems. Slowly, the main focus on hegemony diminishedand was replaced by that on special responsibilities. We wanted to emphasisethat our theory of special responsibilities was one specific way of elaboratingour general approach to the social constitution of power. This also justifiedthe focus on the US as it offered a useful framework for disaggregating US powerin particular.