May 8
Superstates: Empires of the Twenty-First Century is profiled by Politics Today. “With a groundbreaking twist in thinking about the art and methods of statecraft, Roberts considers the decisions leaders must make to devise and redevise strategies for governance at such a grand scale.” Read the review here.
Tom Stevenson reviews Superstates in the May 4, 2023 issue of the London Review of Books. “Empires are supposed to be a thing of the past, yet in some ways the empires we knew are still with us. The largest states in the world have the scale of empires but, Roberts suggests, they are a new breed . . . Roberts is sceptical that his four superstates will all exist in their present form in a hundred years’ time.” Read the review.
Professor Jonathan Boston reviews Superstates in International Review of Public Administration: “Superstates is engaging, lucid, judicious, well documented, and highly accessible. For those interested in, or troubled by, the abiding dilemmas of contemporary government and governing, whether as researchers, students, and practitioners, Superstates will serve as an invaluable resource. Not only does it provide authoritative empirical analyses, but it also offers discerning ethical counsel and practical wisdom. While readers may not agree with all the author’s arguments, they are bound to find his discussion elegant, shrewd, provocative, and insightful.” Read the review.
The American Association of Geographers has put Superstates on its quarterly list of recommended reading.
And also on the Spring reading list from Battleground.
In the International Journal of Public Administration, Chester A. Newland reviews Superstates. Newland says: “This book is expertly informed, extensively well documented, crafted for interesting study, and importantly useful for professional and popular understanding.” Read the review.
In a recent commentary, the head of macroeconomic research for Saxo Bank, Chris Dembik, draws lessons from America’s First Great Depression for today’s European energy crisis. Read the commentary.
I’m looking forward to talking about Superstates on October 24 in a virtual book talk sponsored by the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Society for Public Administration. Registration details here.
My next book project, with the working title of “The Adaptable Country,” is now under contract with McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Ian Bremmer, President of Eurasia Group, recommends Superstates: “Analysts focus on what the world’s largest and most powerful countries can do to confront climate change, pandemics, and other dangerous threats. Roberts’s Superstates flips the script and asks how these threats will affect the structure, borders, and even existence of the world’s most populous countries. Drawing from the history of empire, the book is a sobering warning of the difficulties our unprecedentedly complex ‘superstates’ will face to survive the next century unscathed.”
Christopher Hood, University of Oxford: “A fascinating and provocative account of the governance challenges facing the rulers of today’s four ‘superstates,’ who must grapple not only with the issues that have beset imperial rulers over the centuries, but also those arising from modern technology and culture.”
Donald Moynihan, Georgetown University: “Superstates looks ahead at the future of governance, where more and more people will be crammed into a few massive polities. Roberts shrewdly considers the lessons from past empires and the challenges of running a modern nation state. The result is an extraordinarily accessible, insightful and challenging field guide to governance around the world in the coming decades.”
Geert Bouckaert, KU Leuven Public Governance Institute: “Are ‘Superstates’ governance utopias or dystopias? And are they self-denying or self-fullfilling? We, the people, want to know. This book makes us understand what to do, and even more, what not to do.”
“This book is expertly informed, extensively well documented, crafted for interesting study, and importantly useful for professional and popular understanding.” – International Journal of Public Administration.
In The Print, Sanjeev Chopra draws on my book Strategies for Governing to discuss geopolitics in South Asia. Read the article.
Alasdair S. Roberts 
