Noted international relations scholar John Ikenberry gives praise to Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance, the new volume edited by SIWPS members Alexander Cooley and Jack Snyder, in a review published in the September/October 2015 issue of Foreign Affairs. Ikenberry describes the book as “fascinating,” noting the originality of the various analyses by Cooley, Snyder, and their contributors.

Ranking the World addresses the important analytical, normative, and policy issues associated with the contemporary practice of “grading states.” The chapters explore how rankings affect perceptions of state performance, how states react to being ranked, why some rankings exert more global influence than others, and how states have come to strategize and respond to these public judgments. The book also critically examines how treating state rankings like popular consumer choice indices may actually lead policymakers to internalize questionable normative assumptions and lead to poorer, not improved, public policy outcomes.

Read Ikenberry’s review on the Foreign Affairs website.

Read more about Ranking the World on the Cambridge University Press website.