The Challenge of Hegemony: Grand Strategy, Trade and Domestic Politics

The Challenge of Hegemony explains how international forces subtly influence foreign, economic, and security policies of declining world powers. Using detail-rich case studies, this sweeping study integrates domestic and systemic policy to explain these countries’ grand strategies. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications for the future of American foreign policy. His conceptually rigorous and tightly reasoned study … reminds us that power is never value neutral but organizes commercial systems in liberal or imperial terms. —Perspectives on Politics

Lobell’s book is tightly written, nicely argued and thoroughly researched to a fault. He seems to delight in historical detail. The complexity of his approach is refreshing.
—International Affairs

The Challenge of Hegemony is a pleasure to read. It is both theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich.
—International Studies Review

The Challenge of Hegemony offers a compelling reinterpretation of key historical cases and provides wise guidance as to how the United States should wield its power today. –Charles A. Kupchan, Council on Foreign Relations

Lobell demonstrates clearly how the international environment confronting great powers interacts with their domestic political coalitions to produce different grand strategies. Through a masterful sweep of history, Lobell shows us the alternative trajectories before the United States today.
–David A. Lake, University of California, San Diego