Daniel Drezner begins his book by throwing down a gauntlet: “Globalization is responsible for a lot of bad international relations theory” (p. 3). This assertion caused this reviewer to nod in agreement, but it heightened my expectations for what Drezner would produce. These expectations grew as he identified promulgators of “bad international relations theory,” which ranged from commentators, such as Thomas Friedman, to schools of international relations theory, including realism and liberal institutionalism, but especially theories that privilege the agency of nonstate actors in world politics. By and large, the author met this reader's expectations by crafting a rigorous, robust, and accessible analysis of international regulatory regimes.

All Politics Is Global has a simple structure. In Part I, Drezner constructs a “revisionist” theory of international regulatory regimes. In the first three chapters, he announces his intent to bring the great powers back into the analysis of global governance, develops a theory of regulatory outcomes that supports privileging the great powers, and provides a typology of global governance processes to demonstrate that regulatory outcomes differ from regulatory processes.

In Part II, the author explores four case studies to test how well his theory explains them in comparison to other theories: global governance of the Internet (Chapter 4), the international financial system (Chapter 5), genetically modified organisms (GMOs) (Chapter 6), and intellectual property rights and public health (Chapter 7). In the final chapter, he summarizes his arguments, discusses his theory's limitations, and speculates about how changes in international relations may affect international regulatory regimes in the future.

Drezner's salvo against bad IR theory makes his theoretical efforts worthy of heightened scrutiny. His theory explains why “[a] great power concert is a necessary and sufficient condition for effective global governance over any transnational issue” (p. 5). This state-centric, power-oriented approach rejects other interpretations of globalization, which have intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) or nonstate actors (e.g., nongovernmental organizations) primarily shaping regulatory cooperation. Unlike realists, Drezner takes account of IGO/NGO participation in international regulatory politics. Similarly, following liberalism, he argues that domestic actors and institutions determine state preferences, even those of the great powers, rather than the anarchical structure of international politics.

Initially, Drezner's theory sounded as though he had merely visited the IR theory buffet table and taken the bits he liked best. But does it represent a coherent theory? This question highlights the importance of his “theory of regulatory outcomes,” which he develops using game theory models. (For the mathematically oriented, the author provides an appendix describing proofs for his propositions.) His theory building explains 1) how state preferences flow from domestic calculations of economic adjustment costs created by different outcomes in regulatory cooperation, and 2) why the market size of the great powers alters the nature of outcomes over such cooperation.

Drezner carefully defines his terms, and he defines the “great powers” in international regulatory cooperation as the United States and the European Union, based on their respective market sizes and reduced vulnerabilities to external disruptions (pp. 35–36). The great power concert that is necessary and sufficient for effective global governance depends on how U.S. and EU preferences align. Drezner acknowledges that the countries that qualify as great powers can change, and that changes, such as China's continued rise, could make international regulatory cooperation increasingly difficult (p. 219).

After constructing his model, the author argues that it is “unaffected by the introduction of new actors” (p. 63). In assessing the impact of IGOs or NGOs, he distinguishes regulatory outcomes, which the great powers determine, from governance processes, which can involve state and nonstate actors. For Drezner, the key to separating outcomes from processes is the great powers' ability to “forum shop” for governance processes conducive to achieving the outcomes they want (p. 63). This approach leads to his “typology of regulatory coordination,” which predicts four regulatory outcomes (sham standards, rival standards, club standards, and harmonized standards) based on the divergence among 1) the great powers' interests and 2) the great powers' interests and those of other international actors (p. 72).

Drezner tests his model in four case studies, which analyze the development of harmonized standards (e.g., governance of Internet technical protocols), club standards (e.g., international financial standards), rival standards (e.g., data privacy and the Internet; GMO regulation), and sham standards (e.g., regulation of Internet content) predicted by the typology of regulatory coordination. He concludes that his model explains international regulatory regimes better than competing frameworks (see particularly Table 8.1, p. 207). Though not surprising as a conclusion, the quality and rigor of his analysis are impressive, certainly impressive enough to avoid being labeled bad IR theory.

The “semideviant” case that challenges his theory, Drezner concedes, involves the controversy over the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and Public Health (see Chapter 7, pp. 176–203). He admits that arguments that global civil society (GSC) activism shifted the great powers' positions in the adoption of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health (Nov. 2001) “cannot be summarily dismissed” (p. 184).

Although Drezner mounts an alternative explanation, I wondered, on the one hand, whether he conceded too much to GCS arguments, which indicated the power of his analysis in the other case studies. On the other hand, I sensed that the TRIPS case revealed things Drezner did not discuss. He counters the GCS explanation of the Doha Declaration with arguments that draw on the great powers' security concerns about HIV/AIDS and worries about the impact of September 11, 2001, on the WTO's future (pp. 184–94). What jumps out is how the ideas and material actions of nonstate actors (GCS groups and terrorists) and transnational phenomena (epidemic disease, global terrorism, and GCS activism) affected the great powers' approach to international regulatory cooperation in ways not well captured by Drezner's state-centric, power-oriented theory. Read in this light, the case study is more than “semideviant” because it contradicts the assertion that the introduction of new actors does not affect the great power concert.

The author's claim that such a concert is a sufficient condition for effective global governance over any transnational issue invites the hunt for other incidents that might confound the theory. The insufficiency of a great power concert to produce a badly needed international regulatory regime on the sharing and exploitation of avian influenza virus samples might constitute a stronger “deviant” case than the Doha Declaration. Drezner's recognition of his theory's limitations (pp. 207–8) suggests, however, that he welcomes critical scrutiny of the ideas he has impressively added to the body of IR theory.