A Leader Without Followers? The United States in World Politics After Bush

While the United States might retain the desire, and up to a point the material capacity, to provide leadership for international society, it is likely to find itself increasingly without followers. Partly this is because the US is less accepted as a model, partly it is because of differences on specific policies, and partly it is because of the changing foundations of legitimacy in international society. Many of the big issues likely to dominate the international agenda in the coming years are more likely to decrease than to increase the willingness of others to follow the US. The waning of US leadership is not just a consequence of the particular incompetence of the George W. Bush administration over the last eight years, though that has surely amplified the problem. It reflects deeper changes that make global hegemony by any single power, or even by the West collectively, decreasingly legitimate.