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Some blame the violence and unrest in the Muslim world on Islam itself, arguing that the religion and its history is inherently bloody. Others blame the United States, arguing that American attempts to spread democracy by force have destabilized the region, and that these efforts are somehow radical or unique. Challenging these views, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics reveals how the Muslim world is in the throes of an ideological struggle that extends far beyond the Middle East, and how struggles like it have been a recurring feature of international relations since the dawn of the modern European state. John Owen examines more than two hundred cases of forcible regime promotion over the past five centuries, offering the first systematic study of this common state practice. He looks at conflicts between Catholicism and Protestantism between 1520 and the 1680s; republicanism and monarchy between 1770 and 1850; and communism, fascism, and liberal democracy from 1917 until the late 1980s. He shows how regime promotion can follow regime unrest in the eventual target state or a war involving a great power, and how this can provoke elites across states to polarize according to ideology. Owen traces how conflicts arise and ultimately fade as one ideology wins favor with more elites in more countries, and he demonstrates how the struggle between secularism and Islamism in Muslim countries today reflects broader transnational trends in world history.

How democracies compete with autocracies to bias international order in their favor-and why democracies are losing It is well known, and much discussed, that liberal democracy is in trouble worldwide. Much of this discussion focuses on conditions within individual countries: their inequalities of wealth, political polarization, media environments, and dominant ideologies. In this book, John M. Owen IV sees the failures of democracy as failures of "ecosystem engineering." Like beavers, nesting ants, or (most intensely of all) humans, nations actively reshape their environments to make them more favorable for their own species-this, for Owen, is the true meaning of Woodrow Wilson's phrase "to make the world safe for democracy." However, liberalism has evolved in ways that are no longer conducive to its own survival; meanwhile, autocratic governments in Russia and China are actively reshaping the international environment to favor autocracy. Owen argues that the way to ensure democracy's survival in the United States is to reimagine liberalism-to view it as less about disruption and perpetual openness and more about commitment, community, and country. Liberalism must reject the "great delusion" that it can defeat autocracies everywhere and convert them into liberal democracies, yet also counter moves by China and Russia to make the world safe for autocracy

It is well known, and much discussed, that liberal democracy is in trouble worldwide. Much of this discussion focuses on conditions within individual countries: their inequalities of wealth, political polarization, media environments, and dominant ideologies. In this book, John M. Owen IV sees the failures of democracy as failures of "ecosystem engineering." Like beavers, nesting ants, or (most intensely of all) humans, nations actively reshape their environments to make them more favorable for their own species - this, for Owen, is the true meaning of Woodrow Wilson's phrase "to make the world safe for democracy." However, liberalism has evolved in ways that are no longer conducive to its own survival; meanwhile, autocratic governments in Russia and China are actively reshaping the international environment to favor autocracy.Owen argues that the way to ensure democracy's survival in the United States is to reimagine liberalism - to view it as less about disruption and perpetual openness and more about commitment, community, and country. Liberalism must reject the "great delusion" that it can defeat autocracies everywhere and convert them into liberal democracies, yet also counter moves by China and Russia to make the world safe for autocracy.

Owen argues that the way to ensure democracy's survival in the United States is to reimagine liberalism -- to view it as less about disruption and perpetual openness and more about commitment, community, and country. Liberalism must reject the "great delusion" that it can defeat autocracies everywhere and convert them into liberal democracies, yet also counter moves by China and Russia to make the world safe for autocracy. - publisher.

Introduction It Did Happen Here 1. - Lesson 1 Don't Sell Islamism Short 26. - Lesson 2 Ideologies Are (Usually) Not Monolithic 46. - Lesson 3 Foreign Interventions Are Normal 67. - Lesson 4 A State May Be Rational and Ideological at the Same Time 86. - Lesson 5 The Winner May Be "None of the Above" 110. - Lesson 6 Watch Turkey and Iran 130. - Conclusion What to Do and What Not to Do 156

How should the Western world today respond to the challenges of political Islam? Taking an original approach to answer this question, Confronting Political Islam compares Islamism's struggle with secularism to other prolonged ideological clashes in Western history. By examining the past conflicts that have torn Europe and the Americas-and how they have been supported by underground networks, fomented radicalism and revolution, and triggered foreign interventions and international conflicts-John Owen draws six major lessons to demonstrate that much of what we think about political Islam is wro.

Some blame the violence and unrest in the Muslim world on Islam itself, arguing that the religion and its history is inherently bloody. Others blame the United States, arguing that American attempts to spread democracy by force have destabilized the region, and that these efforts are somehow radical or unique. Challenging these views, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics reveals how the Muslim world is in the throes of an ideological struggle that extends far beyond the Middle East, and how struggles like it have been a recurring feature of international relations since the dawn of the modern.

If it continues, deglobalization may lead not to atomization but two overlapping international orders: a liberal one (LIO) led by the United States, and an authoritarian–capitalist one (ACIO) led by China. This equilibrium could emerge because a central purpose of international orders is to preserve the domestic regimes of their Great Power sponsors. The United States and China have markedly different domestic regimes, and so as China continues to grow in power and influence, tension over the content of international order should continue to grow. I borrow from Darwinian evolution the notion of 'niche construction': just as organisms alter phenotype selection by manipulating their natural environments, states can alter the 'selection' of domestic regimes by shaping their international environments. Modes of international niche construction include foreign regime promotion, interdependence, transnational interaction and multilateral institutions. The liberal democratic niche constructed by the United States and its allies after the Second World War preserved democracy for many decades. Today, China is attempting through various means to build a niche that will eliminate the liberal bias in international institutions and safeguard its own Market-Leninist regime. The resulting ACIO would select for autocracy and hence be partially separate from the LIO, which selects for liberal democracy.

AbstractEurope is besieged from within and without by anti‐liberal threats. The rise within Europe of populist‐nationalist parties and renewed jihadist attacks interact with pressure from Putin's Russia, Erdogan's Turkey, and actual and aspiring despotisms in Muslim‐majority countries. To varying degrees these threats are reactions to the effects of 21st‐century liberalism on societies. Liberalism always has been chiefly concerned to safeguard individual autonomy or self‐legislation, but the content of autonomy has shifted over two centuries. First‐stage liberalism saw the chief threat to autonomy as the state; second‐stage, as capital; the third‐stage version now ascendant sees traditional norms and institutions as the main menace. Third‐stage liberalism in Europe (and elsewhere) distributes power towards 'symbolic analysts' and away from those adept at services or manual labour. Thus the anti‐liberal backlash: within Europe large numbers of people find themselves less autonomous, in the older senses of the word, and ambivalent about the newer notion of autonomy; while on Europe's periphery many find certain features of liberal societies unappealing and threatening. Defending liberalism will require not only devoting more resources to national security and mitigating the disruptions of economic openness, but revisiting what individual autonomy ought to mean in the 21st‐century world.

"The Global Spread and Contraction of Democracy: A CoEvolutionary Approach" published on by Oxford University Press.

AbstractA politicalspringis an abrupt, broad, sustained increase in public dissent in a state that has prohibited it, as in Czechoslovakia in 1968 or Tunisia in early 2011. Some springs produce offspring – clusters of events within neighbouring states (civic unrest, increased state repression, co-option of dissent, revolution) and among those states (intensification of international rivalries, foreign interventions). An English Spring in 1558–9 produced such a cluster in Northwestern Europe. This article addresses the underlying causal mechanism connecting springs and their offspring, rather than the related correlational question (viz. under what conditions a spring is followed by offspring). That mechanism istransnational group polarisation, or the progressive separation of preferences across a population into pro- and anti-government groups. Transnational polarisation along a pro-versus-anti-government axis is an endogenous process triggered by exogenous events, such as violence or public demonstrations that raise the status of, or threat to, one of the groups. It presents powerful actors across states with new threats and opportunities and can help explain how the Tunisian Spring of early 2011 produced throughout the Arab Middle East infectious unrest, serial repressions and reforms, heightened international tensions, and foreign interventions.